Vercelli

“ In 1536 he painted the cupola of the church of the Madonna dei Miracoli at Saronno; he then returned to Vercelli, but his abode and movements are somewhat obscure till 1539, when it is certain that he left Varallo for ever, settled in Milan, and died there between the years 1546 and 1549. He does not appear to have continued to reside in Vercelli after 1536; we may perhaps, therefore, think that he returned for a time to Varallo, and that the frescoes on the Magi chapel should be given to some date between 1536 and 1539. ”

“ His occupation of Vercelli is a menace to the peace of the duchy.'
After that the other captains, Valperga and Marsilio, who had been wavering, threw in their votes, so that the military opinion was solidly unanimous. ”

“ The frescoes on either side of it—representing the Svenimento, St Catherine fainting into the arms of her two attendant nuns, Alessia and Francesca, overcome by the glory of the vision of her celestial Bridegroom, and St Catherine miraculously fed with the Food of Angels in the Sacred Host—are by Bazzi, and were painted in 1526. Hardly elsewhere (save, perhaps, in the St Sebastian of the Uffizi painted in the previous year) has the wayward painter of Vercelli touched such a height of inspiration; in conception and execution alike, they are among the supreme triumphs of Italian art. ”

“ Vasari expressly states, that he was invited to Siena by some of the noble family of Spannocchi, and that he was a native of Vercelli; in which opinion he is supported by Tizio, Giovio, Mancini, and all who wrote before Ugurgieri. I am confirmed in it by observing his carnations, his style of chiaroscuro, and other peculiarities of the old school of Milan, and of Giovenone, who flourished at Vercelli in the early years of Razzi; and of this style there appears to me traces in the works of Gio. Antonio; especially in those he executed shortly after he had left his master. ”

“ No architectural student should turn his feet homeward from Milan without having first of all visited Vercelli. It is easily reached by railway, passing on the road Novara, where there was only a few years back a fine Lombard cathedral, which has unfortunately been lately supplanted by a modern Italian fabric, even more than usually vapid and uninteresting, and where there is still an old baptistery so plastered and painted as to have lost almost all its old interest. ”

“ He was also a fine painter of portraits. The Bishop of Vercelli possesses one of an old man, scrutinizing some object or other with an eye-glass, executed with great truth and humour; and in the same city, where he spent his latter days, his works are frequently met with, and the more prized the smaller they are found in size. In landscapes and other ornamental pictures, painted in a bold Venetian style, and for distant effect, a Piedmontese, of the name of Paolo Foco, distinguished himself, who lived for a long time in Casale, where the greater number of his works [Pg 491] are to be found. ”

“ Adam had studied at Vercelli, [211] —a new Italian centre with a close English connexion. About 1217 Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, afterwards bishop of Vercelli, was granted the church of{87} Chesterton, near Cambridge, and when he died ten years later he left all his estate, including the church, and a number of books which had been collected at Chesterton or in England, to Vercelli Abbey. Among the gifts were two service books in English, and the famous Codex Vercellensis, which is only less valuable than the Exeter Book as a first source of Anglo-Saxon poetry. ”

“ Here more than in any other piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry we feel near the mediæval drama. Almost every canto is like a scene; and little adaptation would be required to put it upon the stage. The narrative at the beginning is like a prologue, and then after the close of the piece we have an epilogue, in which the author speaks about himself, and weaves his name with Runes into the verses in the manner already described.
The briefest fragment in the Vercelli book is about False Friendship; and it contains a long-drawn simile in which the bee is rather hardly treated. ”

“ The reference here is to the victory, at Vercelli near Milan, by which the Roman general Caius Marius repelled the advance of the Cimbri into Italy, 101 B.C. The sacred fire (supposed to have been brought from Troy by Æneas as the symbol of Vesta, the hearth deity) was kept alive at Rome by six virgins. ”

“ Then, when he was tired of the work of slaughter, to procure for himself a sort of triumph, he brought to Vercelli, in solemn procession, thirty-four of those unfortunates, who, not having faith or strength enough to prefer martyrdom to apostasy, publicly abjured their religion in the presence of the duke and the Jesuit. [203] From that day till very lately, the house of Savoy has more or less persecuted the Waldenses.
Our Protestant readers, we presume, have by this time learned what malignant and unrelenting enemies of their religion the Jesuits have always been. ”

“ In the new state of Piedmont is situated Novara, where, in the archives of the cathedral, Gio. Antonio Merli painted in green earth Pietro Lombardo, with three other distinguished natives of Novara; an excellent portrait-painter for his age. In Vercelli, adjoining it, there flourished about 1460 Boniforte, Ercole Oldoni, and F. Pietro di Vercelli, of which last there is an ancient altar-piece preserved at S. Marco. Giovenone afterwards appeared, who is esteemed in that city as the first instructor of Gaudenzio, although Lomazzo is silent upon it. ”

“ If he fails in reaching the peculiar grace and beauty of Raffaello, he at least greatly partakes of that character, as we observe in his S. Cristoforo, at Vercelli, where, in addition to the picture of the titular saint, he painted upon the walls various histories of Jesus Christ, and others of Mary Magdalen. In this great work he appears more perhaps than in any other, in the character of a beautiful painter, presenting us with the most lovely heads, and with angels as lively in their forms as spirited in their attitudes. ”

“ He covets Vercelli and the lordship of Genoa. Vercelli would be in the day's work in a war on Milan.'
'So it would. We might begin hostilities by occupying it. But Genoa, now ...'
'Genoa can wait until your own work is done. On those terms Montferrat comes in with you.'
'Ha! God's life! You're omniscient.'
'Not quite. But I know a great deal. I know, for instance, that Theodore went to Milan at Gabriello's invitation to offer alliance to Gian Maria on those terms. He left in dudgeon, affronted by Gian Maria's refusal. He's as vindictive as he's ambitious. ”

“ In Europe the convents for virgins increased no less rapidly. Two religious houses for young women were opened at Rome in the days of St. Anthony, and, no doubt, at his instigation. Eusebius, bishop of Vercelli, founded an establishment of the same kind close to his church; but the most remarkable of all these convents was that founded at Milan by St. Ambrose, a religious asylum in which his sister, Marcellina, and her faithful companion, Candida, took refuge. ”

“ This is a small town standing on a level plain in the midst of woods and vineyards and fertile fields. We left it next morning, and after going ten miles we halted a little to feed our cattle at Vercelli, a town under the Duke of Savoy, situated on level ground beside the Zeza,128 [Pg 193] which we crossed in a boat. The aforesaid duke, by employing a vast number of men, has built a fort in a very short space of time—a fine strong place, as far as I could judge from seeing only the outside—and has thereby raised the suspicion of his Spanish neighbours. ”

“ There is a third influence which must not be overlooked—that of foreign architects. Milan Cathedral, designed by a German, is very unlike any other Italian building in style; San Francesco at Assisi was also the work of a foreigner; and the western front of Genoa Cathedral owes much of its peculiar and extremely beautiful character to contact with, and knowledge of, French art; whilst Vercelli is another instance, as far as its interior is concerned, which may be included in this list. ”

“ Husbands were separated from their wives, parents from their children, some two thousand children being placed among papists for the purposes of perversion. These were chiefly sent to the district of Vercelli, in Piedmont. And thus the church of Rome won a triumph even more complete than her sanguinary labours in the low countries. She had now silenced the gospel in Italy. That pure flame in [Pg 61] the valleys of Piedmont no longer shone amidst the darkness. Those pious mountaineers no longer sang their psalms by hill-side, nor offered the worship of a free heart in their lowly dells. ”

“ Meanwhile, there had been brought to Siena by a merchant of the Spannocchi family, as will be related in the proper place, the painter Giovanni Antonio of Vercelli, a young man of passing good ability, who was much employed, particularly in making portraits from life, by the gentlemen of that city, which has always been the friend and patron of all men of talent. Domenico, who was very desirous of returning to his own country, having heard this news, made his way back to Siena ”

“ Andrew's, Chester. On his return to Italy he built the monastery of St. Andrew in Vercelli, strongly English in its architecture. Since the manuscript contained a poem about St. Andrew, it would have been an appropriate gift to St. Andrew's Church in Vercelli. Wülker's theory that it was owned by an Anglo-Saxon hospice at Vercelli rests on very shadowy arguments, since he adduces no satisfactory proof that such a hospice ever existed. ”

“ In the Milanese district, for example, there is the mountain of Varese, and that of S. Carlo of Arona on the Lago Maggiore; and there are S. Francesco and S. Giulio on the Lago d’Orta; then there is the Madonna of Oropa in the mountains of Biella, which sanctuary is in the diocese of Vercelli, as is also S. Giovanni di Campiglio, the Madonna di Crevacore, and Gattinara; there is also the Mount Calvary of Domo d’Ossola, on the road towards Switzerland, and Montrigone below Borgosesia. ”

“ From 363 until his death in 371 he lived at Cagliari in a state of voluntary separation from ecclesiastical fellowship with his former friends Eusebius of Vercelli, Athanasius and the rest, on account of their mild decision at the synod of Alexandria in 362 with reference to the treatment of those who had unwillingly Arianized under the persecutions of Constantius. Lucifer was hardly sufficiently educated to appreciate the real question at issue, and the sect which he thus founded did not continue long after his death. ”

“ In the Council held at Arles in 353. they had all to a Man chosen rather to communicate with the Arians, than be driven from their Sees: in that which was convened Two Years after, at Milan, only Three Bishops were found, viz. Dionysius Bishop of that City, Lucifer of Cagliari, and Eusebius of Vercelli, who, equally unmoved by Threats and Promises, had maintained the Truth with the Loss of their Dignity. The Example of the Bishop of Rome had been followed by the far greater Part of the Bishops of Italy. ”

“ Blume, a German scholar, discovered in the cathedral library at Vercelli an Old English manuscript containing both poetry and prose. The longest and the best of the poems is the Andreas, or Legend of St. Andrew.
How did this manuscript find its way across the Alps into a country where its language was wholly unintelligible? Several theories have been advanced, the most plausible being that advocated by Cook. [1] According to this view it was carried thither by Cardinal Guala, who during the reign of Henry III was prior of St. ”

“ As he grew older, Verrocchio would teach him how you could raise heavy weights by the help of levers or cranes, how to draw up water from immense depths, or how to tunnel through mountains—for the Italians have always been famous for their skill as engineers. But it was the boy Leonardo, and not the man Verrocchio, who invented the plan of so altering the course of the river Arno that a canal might be cut between the cities of Florence and Pisa. ”

“ Vergli (raising his hand to command silence) exclaims: “To some men, moments come into their lives, Which toiling for, they little dreamt to see. Though I have toiled for Right, I never thought That I should see its triumph and behold Dawn breaking in upon the brains of men. I thought to sow good seed and see it root, But dared not hope to reap the golden grain. Yet lo! we stand with sickles in our hands, Ready to reap the produce of our toil. It seems quite wonderful, it seems a dream, Yet ’tis not so, my friends. ”

“ Another student Leonardo may have seen there—a lad into whose soul the level light and aërial illusions of Italian sunsets had passed, in after days famous as Perugino. Verrocchio was an artist of the earlier Florentine type, carver, painter, and worker in metals, in one; designer, not of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or household use, drinking-vessels, ambries, instruments of music, making them all fair to look upon, filling the common ways of life with the reflexion of some far-off brightness ”

“ VI EPIGRAM AND EPIC The years of Vergil's sojourn in Naples were perhaps the most eventful in Rome's long history, and we may be sure that nothing but a frail constitution could have saved a man of his age for study through those years. After the battle of Pharsalia in 48, Caesar, aside from the lotus-months in Egypt, pacified the Eastern provinces, then in 46 subdued the senatorial remnants in Africa, driving Cato to his death, and in September of that year celebrated his fourfold triumph with a magnificence hitherto undreamed. All Italy went to see the spectacle, and doubtless Vergil too ”