San Gimignano

“ What has become of the soul of San Gimignano who shall say?--but, of a genial modern Sunday, it is as if the heroic skeleton, risen from the dust, were in high activity, officious for your entertainment and your detention, clattering and changing plates at the informal friendly inn, personally conducting you to a sight of the admirable Santa Fina of Ghirlandaio, as I believe is supposed, in a dim chapel of the Collegiata church ”

“ Hardly, indeed, would he be pressed who should be called upon to award the crown of beauty to any one, rather than another, of the smaller towns of central Italy, though San Gimignano would perhaps deserve it. “No other town or castle in Tuscany,” wrote Gino Capponi, “retains more of the Middle Ages and was less invaded by the ages that followed; in those towers, and in the churches and in the houses of massive stone, is still something that cannot be covered up by the thin plastering of modern times; ancient memories keep their possession of it, the new life has hardly entered in.” ”

“ Few towns have a stranger appearance than this of San Gimignano. The humble, mediocre, mediaeval appearance of the houses, and the bare, rude, yet lofty towers that rise from them, look so incongruous as to be almost ludicrous. But the men of Gimignano were very proud of their town lying so high above the sunny plains of Tuscany, and looking down on so many cities, and they were pleased, in their simplicity, to give it this Cybele crown. There are thirteen towers still standing ”

“ San Gimignano affected me, to a certainty, as not dead, I mean, but as inspired with that strange and slightly sinister new life that is now, in case after case, up and down the peninsula, and even in presence of the dryest and most scattered bones, producing the miracle of resurrection. The effect is often--and I find it strikingly involved in this particular reminiscence--that of the buried hero himself positively waking up to show you his bones for a fee, and almost capering about in his appeal to your attention. ”

“ For some distance the road from San Gimignano to San Vivaldo winds continuously upward, and our ascent at length brought us to a region where agriculture ceases and the way lies across heathery undulations, with a scant growth of oaks and ilexes in the more sheltered hollows. ”

“ The small{332} Commune began to have a voice in the counsels of Tuscany. In August 1276, the Sienese sent for peacemakers from San Gimignano, and the Podestà, Fantone de’ Rossi of Florence, with two of the citizens went at their request, “for the utility of that City and for the honour of this Commune.”
This was, indeed, the golden age of San Gimignano, from about 1270 to about 1320. According to Pecori, the population of the terra and contado together amounted to about 16,000 in the fourteenth century. The internal government grew more democratic, more definitely Guelf. ”

“ All the young people seem to have left San Gimignano. There are none but middle-aged and old, and I never in one place saw so many bent old men and women. The town itself is so gray and old and poor that we were glad to leave it. We had enjoyed our drive from Siena so much that Aunt Caroline and Mrs. Sanford thought we might as well drive to Florence. This was forty miles, and we all got rather tired. But the country was beautiful, and after our sixty miles of it by carriage, we feel that we know just what Tuscany is. ”

“ Like Santa Fina he has a noble shrine by Benedetto de Maiano; and he lies, as we are told he wished to do, in Sant'Agostino, the great bare friar's church on the hillside, which is a treasure-house of mediaeval art.
If all the towers of San Gimignano were chimneys belching smoke, and all her mediaeval palaces were ugly modern houses, the world would still visit her to see Gozzoli's inimitable frescoes of the life of Saint Augustine. They are so fresh and unspoiled, so stately and human, so full of quaint imaginings. ”

“ It is a strange pleasant feeling to halt for a moment in such a spot, and take in the wide range of loveliness spread as a banquet before us,—prepared as it would seem during centuries to fill our eyes and hearts, gazed on for a moment and then left for ever, but adding one to the imperishable pictures in our gallery of memory.
We then went over the schools and other public buildings, and we noticed one fact, that the man to whom San Gimignano was most indebted for its civic decorations and prosperity was one of her own people, Onofrio, the “operaio.” ”

“ The choir of Sant'Agostino, as I have remarked above, is a masterpiece by Gozzoli; and the museum in the Palazzo Comunale boasts a fine collection which includes two beautiful pictures by Pinturicchio and Filippino Lippi.
Of all the Palazzi Comunali of vanished republics San Gimignano's is the most forlorn. It seems to have fallen asleep like the rest of the city, and forgotten to do anything but flower and be beautiful. Its faded fourteenth-century courtyard has an outside stairway leading to a raftered loggia; grass grows in its brick pavement ”

“ A fierce war, on a large scale for two such small states, broke out in 1308 between San Gimignano and Volterra. There were no serious battles, but much harrying of the country and burning on both sides, and it was only ended by the intervention of Florence, Siena and Lucca. On the advent of Henry of Luxemburg, the Sangimignanesi sent men to aid King Robert and the Florentines. The Emperor came to Poggibonsi, from which he sentenced San Gimignano to pay a fine, and its walls and towers to be destroyed. ”

“ After luncheon two of the party went to see the Oliveto, a convent three quarters of a mile from the town, which contains a beautiful fresco by Pinturicchio, and we remained to rest in the inn till it was time to recommence our journey.
We had only guide-books, and amused ourselves with them, and with looking at the towers we could see from the window, and wondering what life was like at San Gimignano. Our reflections were interrupted by our host. He and his wife and one servant formed the whole establishment, which was of the poorest and most primitive kind. ”

“ So we went out expecting to find her a mere ghost, pathetic in her faded grandeur, like beautiful San Gimignano or the wind-swept home of Perugino. It is true that grass was growing in the climbing street which leads up the hill past the house of Giovanni Santi, and we were to find out soon enough that the great castle of Federigo, where Castiglione wrote his Golden Book, was falling to decay like his palace at Gubbio. ”

“ San Gimignano now followed the fortunes of Siena, as in its Guelf days it had followed those of Florence. But in 1269, after the battle of Colle di Val d’Elsa, it became Guelf again under the suzerainty of Charles of Anjou, expelled the leading Ghibellines, and took a Captain of the People in imitation of the Florentines. But the neighbouring castle of Poggibonsi still clung to the decaying cause of the Ghibellines, and sheltered the fuorusciti. It was now, in 1270, reduced by the French soldiery of Montfort, aided by the Florentines and Sangimignanesi. ”

“ The towns where the streets are still running red with the blood of the citizens, while the remains of houses and palaces are still smoking in their ruin, are visited by beings of another world, and have mystical gates and windows that open out upon the unseen.
San Gimignano was now Guelf for a while, and sent a well-equipped little force to swell the Florentine host at Montaperti in 1260. After the battle the Ardinghelli, Pellari, Mangieri and other Guelf families fled to Lucca; the Ghibellines took over the government and recalled Neri degli Uberti to serve as Podestà. ”

“ The church is said to have been designed by Giacomo Cozzarelli, shortly before that master reared for Pandolfo his own sumptuous palace near the Duomo, and to have been actually built by four friars of the Order—Filippo and Leone of Florence, Leonardo da Potenza, and Leone da San Gimignano. [159] It is full of terra-cotta work and early Sienese pictures. In the first chapel on the left is a perfect little gem by Sano di Pietro; the Madonna and Child enthroned, with Angels clad{300} in the green and red of hope and love, winged with the white of faith. ”

“ It was still the early dawn of an autumn day in September, 1860, as our party drove out on the Florentine road away from Siena towards San Gimignano. A moist coldness was in the air, and the heights about Siena were only just visible through the dense veil of vapour which filled the valleys. The broad smooth road rejoiced the hearts of the horses, who trotted along with great animation, and the jingle of their bells accompanied our conversation like music. As we advanced the country gradually assumed a less prosperous aspect. ”

“ One could spend a day there studying the frescoes. There are more quaint carvings on the outside of the buildings than in most places we have seen, and in spite of this broad main street, with the trolley cars running through it, it seems still a mediæval town, a cheerful one, not a melancholy one like San Gimignano. Then I shall be very proud when I go home to say that I have actually been in the house where Raphael lived and taught before the world knew how great he really was. ”

“ We left the town by the frescoed gateway, through which we saw the near hills, gray, bare, and furrowed, the long lines of cypresses, the stretches of gray [pg 31] olives, the valley below with its vineyards, and the far mountains, purple and shadowy, the highest topped with many-towered San Gimignano.
It is better not to be jocund with the fruitful grape in the middle of the day when one is tricycling. The cognac we had taken at lunch, weak as it was, and the vermouth made us sleepy and our feet heavy. I sympathized with the men who lay in sound slumbers in every cart we met. ”

“ For instance, in Santa Croce, and San Miniato at Florence, and at Fiesole, wherever the restorer's plaster has been taken off, precious works of the 278 old Masters have come to light. But in all these we have to imagine what a mediæval church was like from the fragments that remain: to see the real Comacine church of the twelfth or thirteenth century, one must go to the ancient city of San Gimignano with its many towers, where they remain untouched by the restorer, and unwhitewashed by the seventeenth-century destroyer. ”

“ Still, even when the more pretentious kind of Italian sculpture was at its lowest, a spark of its old life smouldered here and there in the improvisations of the plasticatore, or stucco modeller; and I hoped to find, in the despised groups of San Vivaldo, something of the coarse naïveté and brutal energy which animate their more famous rivals of Varallo. In this hope we started in search of San Vivaldo; and as the guide-books told us that it could be reached only by way of Castel Fiorentino, we promptly determined to attack it from San Gimignano. ”

“ More characteristic of Siena is Cecco’s contemporary; Folgore da San Gimignano, in his corona of fourteen sonnets addressed to the brigata nobile e cortese, a club of twelve extravagant young Sienese nobles. Month by month through the year he sets forth a round of pleasures of every kind, feasting and hunting, music and jousting (the latter, in spite of a reference to Camelot, of a very harmless, carpet-knight description) , dallying in pleasant places with lovely women. ”

“ Vincenzio had attained to a very fair reputation in Rome, when in the year 1527 the ruin and sack of that unhappy city, which had been the mistress of the nations, took place; whereupon, being grieved beyond measure at the destruction he had witnessed, our artist returned to his native place of San Gimignano. The sufferings which he had undergone may perhaps have diminished his devotion to the studies of art, and the being deprived of that air from which the spirits of those who produce the beauties and marvels of art derive their nourishment, may also have affected him ”

“ While the mass was being performed, we went into the sacristy and saw the “Annunciation,” attributed by some to Ghirlandajo. If really his, it is not worthy of him. After mass we were shown the chapel, which contains his two frescoes. These are beautiful. “Santa Fina favoured while on her death-bed with a vision of St. Gregory, who announces to her the moment of her dissolution,” is the subject of the first. “Santa Fina borne in triumph after death through the streets of San Gimignano,” is the subject of the second. ”

“ We looked over the broad valley, where the vines were festooned, not as Virgil saw them, from elm to elm, but from mulberry to mulberry, and up to San Gimignano, beginning to take more definite shape on its mountain-top. A peasant in peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled up high above his bare knees, crossed the road and silently examined the tricycle. "You have a good horse," he then said; "it eats nothing." We asked him if they were at work in his vineyard. No, he answered; but would we like to look in the wine-press opposite? ”

“ But in no other place is the traveller welcomed with such song and laughter as in Siena, when she holds high festival. I, who have only seen her in her Palio days, cannot think that life is ever dull or languid in her streets and piazze. I have peopled her with mediaeval ghosts since that day in mid-August when I woke and found them in possession. At every sound of music I look round for silken banners, and pretty boys in doublet and hose escorting steel-clad warriors, or the gay spendthrifts of whom Folgore of San Gimignano sang. ”

“ They say he would have been the best physician in Florence, and in Florence are the greatest physicians of the world. He had studied too much, and was sent home for change of air and repose; it was just after his sister began to be ill; they were inseparable, but he died two months after he returned. His funeral was the handsomest that has been seen for years in San Gimignano, and we are famous here for our splendid funerals. He was so impatient to get well and continue his studies that he was imprudent, and got worse every day. ”