NICOLO PISANO.
The next morning we took our way up a side turning into the Corso, the handsomest street in Perugia. The shop windows had the day before been made extra gay, to attract the market-sellers; they still showed long strings of cut coral beads.
There is a mass of fine, as well as interesting, fourteenth century building on the left of the Corso: the Collegio del Cambio, and the Palazzo del Pubblico, or, as it is also called, Palazzo Comunale. This has a richly-sculptured doorway, and ends on the Piazza del Duomo; it has quaint iron lamps. On this Piazza, and facing us, we saw the unfinished stone and brick work of the Cathedral, San Lorenzo, with its outside pulpit, from which St. Bernardino preached to the people.
On the left stands the Palace called the Canonica or Seminary, with its cloisters. This belonged to the clergy, and was the dwelling of those Popes who stayed in Perugia during their visits to the city, so greatly beloved and coveted by the Holy See.
THE GREAT FOUNTAIN
PIAZZA DEL DUOMO
In the centre of the Piazza stands the famous fountain usually ascribed to Nicolo Pisano, but said to have been designed by Fra Bevignate, a native of the city. However, the great Pisan sculptor and his son Giovanni made the two large marble basins, and sculptured the panels which decorate them. Nicolo, whose quaint costume is given in the initial, is said to have sculptured the twenty-four statues, now dark with age, but remarkable for the sharpness of their exquisite carving; two of the statues are, however, restorations. The delicate bas-reliefs of the second basin are ascribed to Giovanni Pisano, and are full of variety; the upper basin, with nymphs and lions and the inevitable griffin of Perugia, is supposed to have been cast in bronze by Rossi; water no longer plays from this fountain. It is very beautiful, but it wears a sad and desolate aspect, in perfect harmony with the terrible tragedies which have been so often enacted on this square.
The finest side of the Palazzo Pubblico is that which faces the Cathedral; it has a charming loggia and a grand double flight of steps guarded by the Guelphic lion and the Perugian griffin. There are still traces on this fine old wall showing where the keys of two cities, Siena and Assisi, were hung in chains by the arrogant Perugians, till, in one of the attacks on the city, some mercenary soldiers wrenched them away. The griffin, the quaint emblem of Perugia, is to be found repeated in all the decorative work of the city. The Palazzo Pubblico was built early in the fourteenth century from the design of the Benedictine, Fra Bevignate. The heads of criminals used to be fixed on the steel lances which project from it. When the criminals had been guilty of treason their heads were hung downwards. It was a custom in Perugia to confine criminals in an iron cage hung on this old wall, the miserable creatures being left to starve to death in the cage! The horrible dungeons below can still be seen; they give one some idea of the cruelties enacted in the Middle Ages.
The cathedral of San Lorenzo, on the Piazza del Duomo, is spacious rather than interesting, except for its associations: three Popes who died in Perugia are buried in one tomb in a transept, and in a chapel is preserved the marriage-ring of the Blessed Virgin. We noticed some good wood carving in the stalls.
On the right, beyond the cathedral and its square, is the little Piazza del Papa. On this a bronze statue, vivid green in colour, is raised high on a pedestal. An inscription tells that the statue represents Pope Julius III., and is the work of Vincenzo Danti.
BRONZE STATUE OF
POPE JULIUS III.
The grand old Pope has been sitting enthroned outside the cathedral doors for more than three hundred years, with hand outstretched, in the act of blessing. It almost seems that during these long years the golden sunshine, mingled with the intense blue of the sky, has created the brilliant colour of the bronze, this vivid green which rivals that of the lizards as they dart in and out of the grey old wall behind the Duomo.
Looking at the old Pope under different aspects,-in the sparkle of morning sunshine, in its full meridian glow, or in the gloom that comes to Perugia so swiftly at the heels of day,-one gets to see a different expression in the Pontiff's immovable face.
In the morning it beams on the crowd of crockery sellers, and their wares spread out on the stones around its pedestal, and points proudly to the grand group presented by the fountain and the Palazzo Comunale; at midday the expression is harder; but at eventide a pensive cast comes over the face, more in keeping with the grass-grown street behind the statue, and the ancient grey palaces.
This bronze Pope, Julius III., was not sitting here at the time of the famous preaching of San Bernardino of Siena, on the Piazza del Duomo, when the Perugians flung their grandest vanities into a heap and burned them as a proof of penitence, as the Tuscans did at Florence in the days of Savonarola. This preaching of San Bernardino is commemorated in an old but restored window in the cathedral.
Behind the adjoining Piazza dei Gigli, an open square in front of the Sorbello Palazzo, is a way going steeply upwards to the right; it has bricked steps in the middle, but at the side of these is a long strip of ascending slope, so irregularly paved that it might serve as a specimen pattern of the variously paved streets in the town. Tufts of grass between the stones show that this way is not much used. Its right side is walled by the church of Santa Maria Nuova, and high above it on the left are some quaint houses. This road leads to San Severo, a little chapel containing what is called Raffaelle's first fresco, unhappily very much restored. The view of the country between the houses near it is more interesting than the painting.
This is a very old part of the town; presently, through a tunnel under a low-browed arch, we came out on the Piazza of Monte Sole, surrounded by old palaces. This Piazza marks the summit of one of the two hills on which ancient Perugia was built by the Etruscans; the other hill, Colle Landone, is crowned by Palazzo Donnini, and till the time of wise and valiant Forte Braccio, who, though cruel, seems to have been the best ruler the Perugians can boast of, the valley between these two hills existed.
Forte Braccio caused it to be filled up, and the Piazza Sopra Mura, where the weekly market is held, takes its name from the levelling and sub-structures then effected.
It was from Piazza Monte Sole that the despotic Abbot Monmaggiore fled along the covered way he had made to connect his citadel of Monte Sole with his palaces at Porta San Antonio. On this occasion the nobles joined hands with the citizens against the conspiring French priest, drove the foreigners out of the city, and for the time freed Perugia from the hated Papal yoke.
Going on from the Piazza Monte Sole, a few steps bring us to a tree-shaded terrace with benches placed along it. There is a grand view from the wall that bounds the terrace, and seems to go straight down into the valley. Just below is the red cupola-topped church of Santa Maria Nuova, while the houses of the town lay thickly clustered below. The ancient wall from which we now gaze runs out northward on the right, and on the left goes on till it reaches the famous Etruscan arch near the Piazza Grimani. Beyond are the heights, on one of which stands the convent of San Francesco, outside the extreme northern point marked by the gate of San Angelo; from this we get a glimpse of Subasio. Going out behind the terrace we see the Duomo close by, and soon find our way back to the Corso.
Perugia was never weak; rather she was in all things powerful, and she produced a race of the most renowned Condottieri of Italy, the bloodthirsty Baglioni. Had the brutal nobles and the proud citizens been able to control their passions, and to discipline their ambition; had they been able to behave, in fact, like Christians, Perugia might have held sovereign sway in Umbria.
Instead of this, though nominally governed by the Podestà, or chief magistrate and the Priori, she was frequently forced to defend herself against Papal plots and aggression; almost constantly against the tyranny of her rival nobles, and the mischiefs caused by their brawls between themselves, and with the Raspanti, among whom were the richest and most powerful of the citizens.
Through these centuries, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth, the Piazza del Duomo often ran with blood. It was the chief scene of the fierce struggles which make the eventful history of the hill-city; for until the time of Paul the Third, Perugia never entirely submitted to the personal sway of an alien ruler, though she frequently banished both nobles and Raspanti.
There was a short period of comparative peace when, in the fourteenth century, the Condottiere Biordo Michelotti entered the city at the head of the banished Raspanti, and became supreme ruler in the name of the people. Broils were still frequent between the nobles and the plebs, but Biordo was the first of the brigand despots who tried to free Perugia from Papal encroachments.
Warlike, wicked Guidalotti, Abbot of San Pietro, jealously watched the Captain's success, and justly estimated his power; he resolved to end it, and to restore the influence of the Holy See in Perugia.
Biordo, a valiant, hard-working ruler, had asked in marriage the beautiful Lucrezia Orsini, with whom he hoped, now that the city enjoyed comparative quiet, to end his days in peace. The Abbot thought that these bridal festivities ...
