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'We must live here! cried Lucy in enchantment. 'Let me spread the shawl for you there! just in front of that glimpse of the river. They had turned a corner of the path. Lucy, whose gaze was fixed upon the blue distance towards Orvieto, heard a hurried word from Eleanor, looked round, and saw Father Benecke just rising from a seat in front. A shock ran through her.
During the last years of his life the Pope sent for him to come to Rome, and there he painted frescoes on the walls of some rooms in the Vatican Palace. From that city he went to Orvieto, a little old city perched on the top of a hill on the way from Florence to Rome, in whose cathedral he painted a noble Christ, with prophets, saints, and angels. He died in Rome."
Gazing on the spasms and convulsions of these grim subjects, we are inclined to credit a legend preserved at Orvieto to the effect that the painter depicted his own unfaithful mistress in the naked woman who is being borne on a demon's back through the air to hell.
When loose as buffaloes on the wild Campagna We roved and dined on crust and curds, Olives, thin wine, and thinner birds, And woke the echoes of divine Romagna; And then returning late, After long knocking at the Lateran gate, Suppers and nights of gods; and then Mornings that made us new-born men; Rare nights at the Minerva tavern, With Orvieto from the Cardinal's cavern; Free nights, but fearless and without reproof, For Bayard's word ruled Beppo's roof.
The Wardens of Works of the Madonna of Orvieto, as has been related in the Life of Simone Mosca, had caused some chapels with ornaments of marble and stucco to be built in the aisles of their church, and had also had some altar-pieces executed by Girolamo Mosciano of Brescia; and, having heard the fame of Taddeo by means of friends, they sent a summons to him, and he went to Orvieto, taking with him Federigo.
As the church of S. Francis at Assisi formed an epoch in the history of painting, by concentrating the genius of Giotto on a series of masterpieces, so the Duomo of Orvieto, by giving free scope to the school of Pisa, marked a point in the history of sculpture.
Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the walls of the Kings, this gate of Lucca, this window of Orvieto, and this tomb at Verona, are all built on the Cyclopean principle. They will stand without cement, and no cement shall be seen outside. Mr. Burgess and I actually tried the experiment on this tomb. Mr. Burgess modelled every stone of it in clay, put them together, and it stood.
They were the innocent causes, indeed, of some evil. Eleanor had been ordered goats' milk by the Orvieto doctor, and the gentleman who had secured the order from the massaja went in fear of his life at the hands of two other gentlemen who had not been equally happy. But in general they brought prosperity, and the popular smile was granted them.
The frescoes of Signorelli, the bas-reliefs of the Pisani, the statuary of Lo Scalza and Mosca, the tarsia of the choir stalls, the Alexandrine work and mosaics of the façade, the bronzes placed upon its brackets, and the wrought acanthus scrolls of its superb pilasters these are the objects for inexhaustible wonder in the cathedral of Orvieto.
While Francesca went away into the garden with his card, her master stood examining the picture on the staircase of that Madonna by an early Italian painter, name unknown, picked up by him at Orvieto, who was so much like his tenant. It really was remarkable, the likeness.
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