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And then there are the cities, placed each upon a point of vantage: Siena; olive-mantled Chiusi; Cortona, white upon her spreading throne; poetic Montalcino, lifted aloft against the vaporous sky; San Quirico, nestling in pastoral tranquillity; Pienza, where Æneas Sylvius built palaces and called his birthplace after his own Papal name.
Therefore Giotto, who represented the Florentine genius in the fourteenth century, set his stamp upon the Lorenzetti. The mystic painters of Umbria and Siena have their high and honoured place in the history of Italian art.
For the same church he painted another panel, also on canvas, containing a Christ and S. Catherine the Martyr, together with a S. Catherine of Siena, rapt in ecstasy from the earth, a figure as good as any that could possibly be painted in that manner. Returning to Florence, he gave some attention to the study of music; and, delighting much therein, he would sometimes sing to pass the time.
But Renan was apt to allow his emotions to ride him. Another dazzling contrast, which has recently exercised another dextrous Frenchman, is Siena with her Saint Catherine and her Sodoma who betrayed her Saint Catherine, as great a force politically as she was spiritually, and Sodoma, who painted her like a Danae with love-glazed eyes fainting before the apparition of the Crucified Seraph.
In the middle of the vast sad landscape, the place is still, with a silence that can be almost heard. The deserted state of those innumerable cells, those echoing corridors and shadowy cloisters, exercises overpowering tyranny over the imagination. Siena is so far away, and Montalcino is so faintly outlined on its airy parapet, that these cities only deepen our sense of desolation.
What a sweet simple cloister hath this lonely monastery a plain stone walk under a red-tiled arcade supported by rough brick pillars, the walls lined by quaint black-and-white engravings of saints engaged in miracles. There is a well in the centre which used to be of sea-water, but St. Bernard of Siena blessed it and it turned sweet. I have drunk of the water, so I can vouch the story is true.
Ugolino of Siena constructed the wonderful reliquary at Orvieto; this, is in shape somewhat similar to the façade of the cathedral. Verocchio, the instructor of Leonardo da Vinci, accomplished several important pieces of jewelery in his youth: cope-buttons and silver statuettes, chiefly, which were so successful that he determined to take up the career of a sculptor.
Even northerners love Florence and Venice at first sight; those take their hearts by storm; but Perugia, Siena, Orvieto, are an acquired taste, like olives and caviare, and it takes time to acquire it. Alan had not made due allowance for this psychological truth of the northern natures.
He offered his hand to Miss Vivian, who for an appreciable instant hesitated to extend her own. Then she returned his salutation, without any response to his allusion to Siena. She declined to take a seat, and said she was tired and preferred to go home.
By the time that they had both declared that the hotel at Siena was the very worst in all Italy, and that a breakfast without eatable butter was not to be considered a breakfast at all, they had become so intimate that Mr. Glascock spoke of his own intended marriage.
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