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Updated: June 15, 2025
There was the great dome of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the tortuous silver streak that was Arno, spanned by her bridges; there was Giotto's tower, golden-white and rose golden, there the campanile of the Badia, the grim old Bargello, and the battlemented walls of the Palazzo Vecchio; farther still, across the river, the heights of San Miniato al Monte, Bellosguardo, and Mont' Oliveto, cypress crowned.
There was that same grimness there is no other word in the faces of almost all the people Veronica now met, as the road wound higher and then descended through Oliveto, the first of the mountain villages. There was in them all the look of men and women who know that the struggle is hopeless, but who will not, or cannot, die and be at rest.
The Pope was very well satisfied with this work; and in order to make the panelling worthy of the paintings, he sent to Monte Oliveto di Chiusuri, a place in the territory of Siena, for Fra Giovanni da Verona, a great master at that time of perspective-views in inlaid woodwork, who made there not only the panelling right round, but also very beautiful doors and seats, wrought with perspective-views, which brought him great favour, rewards, and honour from the Pope.
Being then summoned to Siena by the General of the Monks of Monte Oliveto, Liberale illuminated many books for that Order; and in these he succeeded so well, that he was commissioned in consequence to illuminate some that had been left unfinished that is to say, only written in the library of the Piccolomini.
With what delicacy and naïveté, almost like a second Luini, but with more of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic themes, may be seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto. They were executed before his Roman visit, and show the facility of a most graceful improvisatore.
The two last frescoes of the Monte Oliveto series indicate that an immense force lay in reserve, waiting an opportunity for some wider and freer field of action, than had hitherto presented itself. That opportunity now came, when, at the age of fifty-nine, he was called upon to undertake the vast work of these Orvieto frescoes.
To which I may add nevertheless that since one ever supremely invoked intensity of impression and abundance of character, I feasted my fill of it at Monte Oliveto, and that for that matter this would have constituted my sole refreshment in the vast icy void of the blighted refectory if I hadn't bethought myself of bringing with me a scrap of food, too scantly apportioned, I recollect very scantly indeed, since my <i>cocchiere</i> was to share with me by my purveyor at Siena.
At Monte Oliveto in Naples, in the Chapel of Paolo Tolosa, there is a panel with an Assumption by the hand of Pinturicchio. This master made an infinite number of other works throughout all Italy, which, since they are of no great excellence, and wrought in a superficial manner, I will pass over in silence.
The beauty of the compositions, the filling of the spaces and the effectiveness of the scheme of decoration are as much above the work of three years before the Mount Oliveto series as is the freedom and dramatic power with which the scenes are rendered. What chiefly strikes one is the homogeneousness of the whole design, each part of the work keeping its due place in the great scheme.
In his distress he sought refuge in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto, which is now occupied by the offices of the Municipality of Naples, and the monastery garden converted into a market-place.
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