San Stefano

“ Donato and the dragon together too strong for him, the abbot of St. Stefano “discovered” in his church the bodies of two hundred martyrs at once!—a discovery, it is to be remembered, in some sort equivalent in those days to that of California in ours. The inscription, however, on the façade of the church recorded it with quiet dignity:—“MCCCLXXIV. a dì XIV, di Aprile. Furono trovati nella presente chiesa del protomartire San Stefano, duecento e più corpi de’ Santi Martin, dal Ven. ”

“ The marchesa's nephew had not yet been seen at the hotel that winter, but everybody knew that the young Duke of San Stefano, Prince of Forte-Braccio, was a nephew of the marchesa's and one of the advertisements for her pension. And, while the prince talked to the Baronin and her daughter, Urania Hope stared at him as a miraculous being from another world. She clung tight to Cornélie's arm, as though she were in danger of fainting at the sight of so much Italian nobility and greatness. ”

“ The Marchesa Belloni looked at her in mute amazement. She was here, at San Stefano, in her element as a marchioness; she, the sister-in-law of the old prince, never spoke here of her foreigners' boarding-house; she never met her Roman guests here: they sometimes visited the castle, but only at fixed hours, whereas she spent the weeks of her summer villeggiatura here. And here she laid aside her plausible manner of singing the praises of a chilly room, her commercial habit of asking the most she dared. ”

“ He might even go back to San Stefano; she would love him and bless him throughout, if only she knew that his life was safe. She went further. She seemed to be pleading with fate—or rather with God—for the safety of her son. She would receive Brian with open arms; she would try to love him for Dino's sake. She would do all and everything that Dino required from her, if only she could conquer this terrible helplessness of feeling, this dumbness of tongue which had come over her. ”

“ The Porte refusing to adopt satisfactory measures of reform, Russia declared war and her victorious army advanced to the very gates of Constantinople. The Treaty of San Stefano, which Russia then enforced upon Turkey, created a "Big Bulgaria" that extended from the Black Sea to the Albanian Mountains and from the Danube to the Aegean, leaving to Turkey, however, Adrianople, Saloniki, and the Chalcidician Peninsula. ”

“ And if that other Brian Luttrell is living still, the money would go back to him. Would he divide it with you, do you think, if he got it, even as you would share it all with him?"
"I believe so," answered Dino. "But I should not want it—unless it were to give to the monastery; and San Stefano is already rich. A monk has no wants."
"But I am not a monk. There lies the unfairness of your proposal. You give up what you care for very little: I am to give up what is dearer than the whole world to me. ”

“ Truly great, therefore, is the debt that should be acknowledged to Stefano, because he who walks in darkness and gives heart to others, by showing them the way, brings it about that its difficult steps are made easy, so that with lapse of time men leave the false road and attain to the desired goal. At Perugia, too, in the Church of S. Domenico, he began in fresco the Chapel of S. Caterina, which remained unfinished. ”

“ John the Evangelist in the Apocalypse; and these angels are drawn with so much grace, that it amazes me to find any one in that age capable of so much. Stefano evidently commenced this work with the purpose of completing it in the utmost perfection; and he would have succeeded, had he not been compelled by certain important affairs to return to Florence, and leave it unfinished. [9] Whilst detained by these matters in Florence, he employed the time in painting a small oratory, for the Gianfigliazzi, in an angle of the Lung ’Arno, between their houses and the bridge of the Carraja. ”

“ The oldest edifice of which anything remains is the Church of San Stefano, mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus as the most important in the town. Four ruined walls in a court near the diocesan seminary are believed to have belonged to this very ancient building. The tradition is that it was erected by Stephen, Banus of Bosnia, or by his widow. Gelcich suggestively describes what the building must have been like: “In the church of St. Stephen at Ragusa we must picture to ourselves not a work of art, but a chapel capable of containing few beyond the ministers at the altar ”

“ They are idle and vain imaginations. Assunta knew nothing; Vincenza did not always speak the truth. In any case, it is impossible to prove the truth of her story. It is a sin to let your mind dwell on the impossible. Your name is Bernardino Vasari, and you are to be brought up in the monastery of San Stefano by wise and pious men. Is that not happiness enough for you?"
"Oh, yes, yes, indeed; I wish for nothing else," said Dino, throwing himself at Padre Cristoforo's feet, and pressing his lips to the monk's black gown, while the tears poured down his smooth, olive cheeks. ”

“ Stefano, painter of Florence and disciple of Giotto, was so excellent, that he not only surpassed all the others who had laboured in the art before him, but outstripped his own master himself by so much that he was held, and deservedly, the best of all the painters who had lived up to that time, as his works clearly demonstrate. He painted in fresco the Madonna of the Campo Santo in Pisa, which is no little better in design and in colouring than the work of Giotto; and in Florence, in the cloister of S. Spirito, he painted three little arches in fresco. ”

“ At the conclusion of the war he acted as secretary to General Skobelev at San Stefano. After the war he settled at Munich, where he produced his war pictures so rapidly that he was freely accused of employing assistants. ”

“ It would not, indeed, be unfair to impute a portion of his faults to the peculiar character of his subjects, of whom he was wont to say that they differed so much from, and were so greatly inferior to, any other people of the Peninsula, that he alone could govern them.
Meanwhile, Panizzi’s arrangements for the deliverance of the prisoners of San Stefano had been gradually and surely progressing, and to all appearance hopefully. ”

“ Here, having recovered his health, he executed a painting in fresco, in the transept of the church of Santa Croce, and in the chapel of the Assisi. The subject is the martyrdom of St. Mark, and the work has many figures of considerable merit. [7] Stefano was, at a later period, invited to Rome as a disciple of Giotto; and there he painted certain frescoes, in the principal chapel of St. Peter’s, where stands the altar of the saint; the subjects being stories from the life of Christ. ”

“ Your parents were Italian peasant-folk; and my son, Brian Luttrell, lies buried in the churchyard of an Italian village at the foot of the Western Apennines. You are a native of San Stefano, and your mother was my nurse."
CHAPTER XI. ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE.
"When my child Brian was born we were renting a villa near San Stefano, and were somewhat far removed from any English doctor. My doctor was, therefore, an Italian; and what was worse, he was an Italian monk. I hate foreigners, and I hate monks ”

“ He left a chapel, in the same church, commenced, but not completed. The angels cast from heaven, with Lucifer, are seen falling in various attitudes. The work has suffered greatly from time; but it is still obvious that the foreshortening of the arms, legs, and trunks, is much better than was usual at that time: so that we perceive Stefano to have made some acquaintance with, and even pointed out to his contemporaries, those difficulties which must have beset the painters in their first attempts at foreshortening, but which, by careful study, they afterwards so completely overcame. ”

“ And although time has partly destroyed the labour expended by Stefano on this work, one may still discern confusedly that the apostles are defending themselves with spirit from the fury of the winds and waves. This work, which has been highly praised by the moderns, must certainly have appeared a miracle in all Tuscany at the time when it was produced, Stefano then painted in the first cloister of S. Maria Novella a St Thomas Aquinas, next a door, where he also made a crucifix which has since been much damaged by other painters in restoring it. ”

“ From this period, for more than a century, I can find no records of any alterations made in the fabric of the church, but there exist very full details of the quarrels which arose between its incumbents and those of San Stefano, San Cipriano, San Salvatore, and the other churches of Murano, touching the due obedience which their less numerous or less ancient brotherhoods owed to St. ”

“ The first of these arches exhibits the transfiguration of Christ, with Moses and Elias; and the painter, figuring to himself the splendour by which the three disciples must have been dazzled, has represented them in extraordinary and very beautiful attitudes. The mode in which the figures are enveloped in their draperies proves, also, that Stefano sought to display the form beneath the folds, a thing that had not previously been attempted, nor taken into consideration, even by Giotto himself. ”

“ While abiding in that place he finally arrived at the wished for power of accompanying the labour of his hands with the uninterrupted contemplation of death. For the church of San Martino in Lucca this master painted a picture of the Madonna, with an angel playing on a lute at her feet; San Stefano stands on one side of the Virgin, and San Giovanni on the other; the work is a good one, whether as regards design or colouring, and afibrds full proof of the master’s ability. ”

“ I want nothing but you. I am happy as we are. Why shouldn’t you be too? Because Gilio was rude and Urania prim?... Come and look at your sketches: will you be starting work soon? I love it when you’re working. Then I’ll write something again: a chat about an old Italian castle. My recollections of San Stefano. Perhaps a short story, with the pergola for a background. Oh, that beautiful pergola!... But yesterday, that knife!... Tell me, Duco, are you going to work again? ”

“ Well, now, it's all of that dry, sour old Father Francesco. I never could abide him,—he made such dismal pother about sin; old Father Girolamo was worth a dozen of him. If you would just see our good Father Stefano, now, he would set your mind at ease about your vows in a twinkling; and you must needs get them loosed, for our captain is born to command, and when princes stoop to us peasant-girls, it isn't for us to say nay. It's being good as Saint Michael himself for him to think of you only in the holy way of marriage. I'll warrant me, there's many a lord cardinal at Rome that isn't so good ”

“ Below there are other angels, who are supporting Him, clothed in white garments reaching to their feet, and ending, as it were, in clouds, which was an idea peculiar to Stefano in painting figures of angels, whom he always made most gracious in countenance and very beautiful in expression. In this same work are life-size figures of S. Augustine and S. Jerome, one on either side; and these are supporting with their hands the Church of God, as if to show that both of them defend Holy Church from heretics with their learning, and support her. ”

“ For the draperies, hair, beards, and other details are executed and composed with such grace and care that they prove him to have possessed a far better idea of unity in art than was to be found in the works of Giotto, master of Stefano his father. In his youth Giottino painted in S. Stefano at the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, a chapel by the side door, and although it has suffered a great deal from the damp, yet enough remains to prove the skill and genius of the craftsman. ”

“ He next went to Assisi and in the apse of the principal chapel of the lower church, where the choir is, he began a representation in fresco of the Heavenly Glory; and although he did not finish it, what he did perform shows that he used the utmost diligence. In this work he began a series of saints with such beautiful variety in the faces of the youths, the men of middle age and the old men, that nothing better could be desired, and those blessed spirits exhibit so sweet and so united a style that it appears all but impossible that they could have been done by Stefano at that time. ”

“ In 1885 he was appointed director of the Antwerp Academy. Other important works by Verlat are the panoramas of the battle of Waterloo and the treaty of San Stefano, “Christ between the Two Thieves,” “Defending the Flock” (Antwerp Gallery) , “Oxen Ploughing in Palestine” (Antwerp Gallery) , “Godfrey of Bouillon at the Siege of Jerusalem” (Brussels Gallery) , and “Sheep-Dog Defending the Flock” (Brussels Gallery) . He executed a series of original etchings, and published in 1879 a book on the Antwerp Academy. He died at Antwerp on the 23rd of October 1890. ”

“ Spirito, and which had formerly been held at San Felice in Piazza; all which was brought to such perfection as could be attained, insomuch that the dangers formerly incurred at those festivals are no longer to be feared. The Palace and Church erected for the Knights of San Stefano in Pisa, [73] is also a work of mine; as is likewise the completion of the Tribune, or rather Cupola of the Madonna delF Umilta in Pisa, which is one of great importance. ”

“ It had been arranged that Padre Stefano should remain at the convent all night, and that as soon as midnight made it possible he should say the first mass for the repose of the girl's soul. We sat on the terrace talking over the strange events of the last crowded hours, and I noted with satisfaction that the Cavaliere no longer spoke of the Church with that hardness, which had hurt me so often. It is true that the Padre was with us nearly all the time; but not only was Valguanera courteous, he was almost sympathetic ”