and this little house of mean appearance tucked away in a dark and
somewhat dingy street, with only a marble slab to mark it, serves the
purpose well enough. Indeed, if one believed Vasari, one could with
ease imagine Perugino choosing such a spot as this to hide his wife, his
crimes (?) and all his money in, and see him hurrying thither in the
dusk of a December evening from some big church or city where he had
been to paint an altar-piece for prince or pontiff. One can even picture
the long dark cloak he wore to cover up his money bag, his little cap
pressed low upon his rather cloudy forehead, and one can almost hear him
chuckle as he eats his maccaroni and strokes the fair hair of the woman
he so loved, thinking with the joy of malice of all the other women who
would come to pray and weep before his saints and his _Pietàs_.
But this is nothing better than a dream. Blankly one looks at the slab
above the door, at the wall from which even the frescoe of S.
Christopher has vanished, and from the utter silence of the place one
hurries away and further on down the Via dei Priori. The street ends,
and one passes into the open country through the Porta S. Susanna. Just
above is the _Torre degli Scirri_--one of the only specimens remaining
of all the wealth of towers in the past. A tree has grown upon its very
top as though to seal the peace which follows after strife. A little
further on is the small church of the Madonna della Luce. The front of
this church is a very dainty bit of architecture and was designed by
Cesarino Roscetto, a Perugian goldsmith, who also made the silver shrine
in the cathedral which holds the Virgin's ring. It has inside a
beautiful altar piece by some scholar of Perugino. The picture is
exquisite in colour and in sentiment. Siepi gives a long history about
it, which, although it does not altogether fit in with the facts of
dates, we cannot refrain from mentioning here. (Perhaps he was alluding
to some older fresco which has disappeared.) He says that on the 12th of
September 1513 some youths were playing at cards under the
[Illustration: ETRUSCAN ARCH OF S. LUCA]
wall of a butcher's shop which in old days stood outside the church of
S. Francesco. One of them, a young barber, called Fallerio, lost heavily
at the game, whereat he swore a terrible oath, hearing which blasphemy
the Madonna in her shrine by the wayside closed her eyes, and kept them
closed for the space of four whole days. On the 16th she opened them
again. So great was the fame of this miracle, and the sensation it
caused, that processions and great multitudes of people came to worship
before her shrine, and on the 7th of April 1513 her picture was carried
to its present place in the new church which the people built for her,
and she was no longer called the Madonna di S. Luca, but the Madonna of
Light to commemorate this wonderful occurrence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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