Friday 26. [26 January 1894] Oh Bologna is a heavenly place - all the
streets are arcaded, and you walk through long vaulted aisles and
see down vistas of columned courtyards and long arched streets,
pink and yellow with stucco and rich with carving. We went first into the
Piazza Vittore Emmanuele which has the magnificent Palazzo
Pubblico - which was the Legate's palace - on one side; S Petronio all
unfinished, but very fine on another, colonnades down another and
the Podesta's Palace on the fourth. Here King Enzio was imprisoned
and sighed away his heart in verses and fell in love and died - poor
King Enzio. We have seen his tomb in S Domenico. Then we went
into S Petronio (very large and very cold) and then to a palace where
the University used to be - very thrilling it was. The inside all stuccoed
yellow and decorated with the shields of professors and students.
The rooms[?] are now turned into a library; but there is one lined with
cedar which is left just as it was - the empty benches, the empty
professor's chair - it was the first dissecting room and women lectured
here. Then we went past the foolish leaning towers to San Giacomo
where is the best Francia I have seen, a Madonna with saints, painted
for the Bentivogli chapel. Two little exquisite singing angels sit at her
feet, and the naked St Stephen is quite lovely - St Cecilia behind with
lovely frescoes of the history of the saints particularly a marriage and
an entombment by Francia, also frescoes by Costa and [space left
blank]. Then to the Academy which is mighty full of horrid Bologna
people - oh beasts they are Carracci and Reni and Elizabetha Serani
and so on - but has also R.'s S. Cecilia - very lovely and fine but not at
all spiritual - the figures standing up bold and free like Greeks. There
is a charming little head of a girl behind the saint with more ideal
beauty in it. Opposite a golden Perugino, Virgin and Child in the skies
and 4 saints beneath - such an Archangel Michael in all his green and
gold finery and such dreamy exquisite faces and green dream of
distant country behind. Very fine Francias too, some unfortunately
repainted but 3 quite unspoilt - one has the first form of the Bentivogli
picture but not so beautiful. Some Costas and Aspertinis not very
nice. Then we lunched in a cafÈ behind the Church of S Petronio - full
of men and where I'm sure no women were ever seen before. Then
went to S Domenico where in a square outside there were two
charming tombs raised on columns - nice to be buried out in the open
like that. Inside Nicoli's tomb of S Domenico which I felt I was not
educated enough to like properly and Enzio's 18th century monument
and a Lippo Lippi and an old woman with a scaldino which she made
us hold to warm our hands. Then to Santa Maria dei Servi notable for
its charming open arcade of arches outside; then to S Vitale where
there was a Francia with a little head of the Mother and Child let into
the middle of the sky and lovely singing angels underneath. Back to
the hotel for an hour and out to a cafÈ for tea and a vain hunt for a
photograph shop. We finally found the photographs in the hotel. Bed
early.