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Updated: May 23, 2025
Francis, or at Naples, in the king's chapel, his frescos, though dimmed by the dust of five hundred years, blackened by the smoke of incense, abused by restorers, still show a power of imagination, a spirituality and tenderness of feeling, a simplicity and directness of treatment, which give them place among the most sacred and precious works that Art has yet produced.
Madonnas, saints, and such like pictures which fill the churches of Italy and Spain, works of the old masters, are now chiefly prized for their grace of form and richness of coloring, exhibitions of ideal beauty, charming as creations, but not such as we see in real life; George Eliot's novels, on the contrary, are not works of imagination, like the frescos in the Sistine Chapel, but copies of real life, like those of Wilkie and Teniers, which we value for their fidelity to Nature.
He was invited to add a finishing touch to the Masaccio frescos; Leonardo, the courtly, had smiled a gracious recognition, and Michelangelo had sneezed at mention of his name. Bramante, back at Rome, told Pope Julius the Second, "There is a young Umbrian at Florence we must send for." Great things were happening at Rome about this time: all roads led thitherward.
Alas! what is history and the progress of the arts and sciences but one long Katzenjämmer! Photography cannot give, any more than I, the colors of the frescos, but it can do the drawing better, and, I suspect, the spirit also.
It is a very grand and solemn edifice, octagonal in shape, with a lofty dome, within which is a series of brilliant frescos, painted not more than thirty years ago.
All we feel for certain is that Masolino had not yet escaped from the traditional Giottesque mannerism. Only a group of Jews stoning Stephen and Lawrence before the tribunal remind us by dramatic energy of the Brancacci chapel. The baptistery frescos, dealing with the legend of St. John, show a remarkable advance; and they are luckily in better preservation.
I ought to have said that, instead of driving straight to the old lady's, we alighted at the door of a church near the city gate, and went in to inspect some melancholy frescos, and thence clambered up a narrow street to the cathedral, which has a Gothic front, old enough, but not very impressive.
The walls of this chapel are covered with frescos by Orcagna, representing around the altar the Last Judgment, and on one of the walls heaven and the assembly of the blessed, and on the other, of course, hell. I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation; but, at all events, it was purgatory to look at it. . . .
The "Crucifixion," and the "Assumption of Madonna" are very tall and narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt to fill almost unmanageable space with a connected action. Of the two frescos, the "Crucifixion," which has points of strong similarity to the same subject at Varallo, is by far the best.
The subjects of the frescos I cannot make out, not that they are faded like Giotto's, for they are as fresh as roses, and are done in an exceedingly workmanlike style; but they are allegories of Fame and Plenty and other matters, such as I could never understand. Our whole accommodation is in similar style, spacious, magnificent, and mouldy.
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