[117] Melanzio, the delightful painter of Montefalco, had noted this
blue-green light of spring, he had caught it in his very soul, and put
it back into his landscapes, into his Virgin's gown, yes, and even
into the shadows on the faces of his saints. "Fourth-rate" a critic
called him, but we, who have no wish or power to criticise, loved him
for the harmony which we found between his native landscape and his
pictures.
[118] This airy old church has been converted into the Pinacoteca of
Montefalco. It is one of the few local picture galleries which ever
really pleased us. The pictures and frescoes taken from their altars
in the neighbouring churches have found a home and not a prison on its
wide walls; their dignity and sentiment have not been taken from them
in the change of their position.
[119] There are one or two pictures by Lo Spagna in Trevi, the best
one in the church of the Lagrime, to the south of the town.
[120] There is considerable doubt felt nowadays as to whether the
exquisite little temple once dedicated to the river god Clitumnus
which we now see standing above the river, is really the same as that
early one described by Pliny. The work on it is certainly very late
Roman, if, indeed, it be Roman at all: the emblems are, many of them,
purely those of Christian art. But as the temple was turned into a
Christian chapel (dedicated to S. Salvadore), it may, perhaps, be that
its detail was altered to suit the altered creed. However these things
be, the tiny building remains one of the most charming and romantic
points in Umbria--one of the sweetest tributes that man's mind ever
paid to the spirits of Nature. Before leaving the spot one should
walk on to the place below the road, where the river springs straight
from the foot of the hills--a limpid stream, rising almost invisibly
through the grass and trees which overshadow its mysterious source.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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