Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2: Studies from the Chronicles of RomeCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
History
Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2: Studies from the Chronicles of Rome
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
And so it is also in the peaceful ways of art. Giotto, Beato Angelico,
Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, never attained to the greatness of Lionardo or
Michelangelo or Raphael. Sober criticism can never admit that they did,
whatever soft-hearted enthusiasts may say and write. But those earlier
men had something which the later ones had not, both in merit and in
genius. They fought against greater odds, with poorer weapons, and where
their strength failed them, heart and feeling took the place of
strength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to the
heart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusion
could appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic generation that
came after them.
And so, although it be true that art is not dependent on genius alone,
but also on mechanical skill, yet there is something in art which is
dependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something which
touches, that something which creates, that something which itself is
life; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope to
the light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sight
in the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers like
a halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's earliest, truest and tenderest
painters.
[Illustration]
REGION XIV BORGO
Borgo, the 'Suburb,' is the last of the fourteen Regions, and is one of
the largest and most important of all, for within its limits stand Saint
Peter's, the Vatican, and the Mausoleum of Hadrian--the biggest church,
the biggest palace and the biggest tomb in the whole world.
To those who know something of Rome's great drama, the Castle of Sant'
Angelo is the most impressive of all her monuments. Like the Colosseum,
it stands out in its round strength alone, sun-gilt and shadowy brown
against the profound sky. Like the great Amphitheatre, it has been
buffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highest
reach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile invented
in twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet to
the cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is the
crestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereas
the Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successor
how to tear down the outer wall and build a vast palace with a hundredth
part of the great theatre.
Sant' Angelo is a living fortress yet, and nearly a thousand years have
passed, to the certain knowledge of history, since it was ever a single
day unguarded by armed men. Thirty generations of men at arms have stood
sentry within its gates since Theodora Senatrix, the strong and sinful,
flashed upon history out of impenetrable darkness, seized the fortress
and made and unmade popes at her will, till, dying, she bequeathed the
domination to her only daughter, and her name to the tale of Roman
tyranny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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