Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/517

Rh as the parent stock whence sprang all Olivetan monasteries, which, like that which overlooks the banks of the Arno, we have found usually planted on wooded eminences rising above valleys and plains, as the Mount of Olives commands from a height the city of Jerusalem. The other day, as the carriage toiled up perilous mountain paths, we not unnaturally recurred to the oft-repeated question: — Why did the monks of old choose for their dwelling these inaccessible and inhospitable spots? Was it indeed that they thought to establish as it were a half-way house to heaven? or was it that, from singleness of faith in the ascetic life, they sought through seclusion to cut themselves off from access to the lower world? or could it be that the beauties of nature proved to be precious as a solace and an aid — beauties which here, as in other like sanctuaries, find response in the accumulated treasures of a beauty-loving art? It is scarcely unreasonable to suppose that the good old monks may have been as divided in motive as modern travellers are in mind. Some may have turned with horror from precipices down which pilgrims are known to have been pitched headlong, while others will have rested fondly on the vision of the founder who saw in a dream, on the very site of this sky-soaring monastery, a silver staircase reaching from earth to heaven.

Monte Oliveto Maggiore has shared a common fate; the monastery was despoiled by the French, fine tarsia work was torn from the refectory and the library and used for firewood, the books have been dispersed, and the church, which was once covered with early frescoes, has been modernized in the worst style. Some slight signs of these pictures can still be traced; likewise in a passage between the church and the cloister there are remains of figures which, though of no great merit, show, as is often the case, successive strata of pictures. In the refectory, too, are small fragments of a Last Supper; also round the door leading to the church have been discovered beneath whitewash mutilated portions of a wall-painting. In fact, the whole monastery was at one time a museum rich in treasures of art, and the preservation of what remains is greatly due to the enlightened superior, who kindly conducts strangers through his domains. The last misfortune that has befallen Monte Oliveto is its secularization, with the consequent appropriation of the lands by the State and the dispersion of the monks. Here, as at the great convent at Assisi, only a small clerical staff is retained, whose duties consist in the saying of mass, the education of about a dozen youths, the administration under the government of the estates, and lastly, the entertainment of travellers, ladies included, at a small fixed charge. The scholarly and gentlemanly superior remarked, in a melancholy voice, "We were formerly masters; we are now servants." Utilitarian considerations have, as usual, proved fatal to picturesque effects; the three remaining monks have, by command of the government, exchanged the white raiment of their order for the black gown of parish priests; the artist's eye is no longer delighted by groups of grey friars seated beneath the green olives, or wending their steps at eventide in lines of light among paths of dark cypress-trees.

The student of art, as well indeed as the general traveller, is attracted to this monastery among the mountains by the thirty frescoes which cover the whole of the four walls of the great cloister. These pictures were begun by Luca Signorelli at the close of the fifteenth century, and continued and completed by Bazzi (otherwise Razzi or Sodoma) in the commencement of the sixteenth century. The series comprises the life of St. Benedict, a theme which found favour among painters. The pictorial narrative here before us, in common with others elsewhere more or less complete, gives prominence to the visit of Totila to the saint; here, also, are illustrated many true or apocryphal incidents in his career, such as the overthrow of the heathen temple at Monte Cassino, sundry adventures with the devil, the visit of a company of fair damsels to tempt the monks, with the addition of various legendary miracles. Yet these compositions can scarcely be deemed religious in spirit, at least in the sense in which the word attaches to the severe and devotional pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Indeed the two painters here employed — Signorelli and his successor Buzi — belong to that period of transition when sacred art was passing into secular, and ideal forms became pronounced with the individual traits of naturalism. Signorelli stands conspicuous as the pupil of Piero della Francesca; he was, too, the contemporary of Melozzo da Forli; he belonged to the company of artists who, following in the steps of Paolo Uccello, 