DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0246
226
THE MAKERS OR FLORENCE.
simple-minded brother must have regretted the change.
Each cell has its own little secluded window, deep in the
wall, its own patch of sunshine, its own picture. There is
no fireplace, or other means of warming the little chamber
between its thick walls; but no doubt then, as now, the
monks had their scaldinos full of wood embers, the poor
Italian’s immemorial way of warming himself. And be-
tween the window and the wall, on the left side, is the
picture—dim—often but dimly seen, faded out of its past
glory—sometimes less like a picture at all than some
celestial shadow on the gray old wall, some sweet phantas-
magoria of lovely things that have passed there, and cannot
be quite effaced from the very stones that once saw them.
For my own part, I turn from all Angelico’s more perfect
efforts, from the “ Madonna della Stella,” glistening in
gold, which is so dear to the traveler, and all the well-pre-
served examples with their glittering backgrounds, to
those heavenly shadows in the empty cells—scratched,
defaced and faded as so many of them are—in which the
gentle old monk seems to come nearer to the modern
spectator, the pilgrim who has crossed hills and seas to see
all that is left of what was done in such a broad and
spontaneous flood of inspiration. Those saints, with their
devout looks, the musing virgin, the rapt Dominic ; those
sweet spectator angels, so tenderly curious, sympathetic,
wistful, serviceable, that lovely soft embodiment of
womanly humbleness, yet exaltation, the celestial mother
bending to receive her crown. They are not pictures,
but visions painted on the dim conscious air not by
vulgar color and pencil, but by prayers and gentle
thoughts.
There are two separate cells in San Marco more im-
portant than these, yet closely connected with this same
early and peaceful chapter of the convent’s story. We do
not speak of the line of little chambers, each blazoned with
THE MAKERS OR FLORENCE.
simple-minded brother must have regretted the change.
Each cell has its own little secluded window, deep in the
wall, its own patch of sunshine, its own picture. There is
no fireplace, or other means of warming the little chamber
between its thick walls; but no doubt then, as now, the
monks had their scaldinos full of wood embers, the poor
Italian’s immemorial way of warming himself. And be-
tween the window and the wall, on the left side, is the
picture—dim—often but dimly seen, faded out of its past
glory—sometimes less like a picture at all than some
celestial shadow on the gray old wall, some sweet phantas-
magoria of lovely things that have passed there, and cannot
be quite effaced from the very stones that once saw them.
For my own part, I turn from all Angelico’s more perfect
efforts, from the “ Madonna della Stella,” glistening in
gold, which is so dear to the traveler, and all the well-pre-
served examples with their glittering backgrounds, to
those heavenly shadows in the empty cells—scratched,
defaced and faded as so many of them are—in which the
gentle old monk seems to come nearer to the modern
spectator, the pilgrim who has crossed hills and seas to see
all that is left of what was done in such a broad and
spontaneous flood of inspiration. Those saints, with their
devout looks, the musing virgin, the rapt Dominic ; those
sweet spectator angels, so tenderly curious, sympathetic,
wistful, serviceable, that lovely soft embodiment of
womanly humbleness, yet exaltation, the celestial mother
bending to receive her crown. They are not pictures,
but visions painted on the dim conscious air not by
vulgar color and pencil, but by prayers and gentle
thoughts.
There are two separate cells in San Marco more im-
portant than these, yet closely connected with this same
early and peaceful chapter of the convent’s story. We do
not speak of the line of little chambers, each blazoned with