Sat. 21. [21 March 1896] Spent all the morning from 8.15 to 12.15
walking about Brescia and seeing pictures - chiefly Morettos. I am
very glad to have made friends with Moretto - he is a great man.
Picture after picture - every church has something of his - with the
same great note of a fine and noble dignity, the note that rings through
Rafael's St Cecilia; picture after picture with the same splendid and
solemn grouping of saints against a dark sky growing lighter towards
the horizon, with a gleam of light where the sky touches the earth, and
above perhaps a Virgin in a halo of golden light kneeling on cloud to
receive the crown, or a risen Christ, or a mother and child, all dignified
and sincere and perhaps more human than spiritual. His colour
strikes one at first as cold, but when one gets accustomed to it one
finds it full of modulations and delicacy - much more beautiful, I shd
think, than Moroni's ever was. Of the pictures I saw I liked these the
best: 2 in S.'s Nazaro e Celso, a coronation of the Virgin with saints
below and a Resurrection - the same sort of composition, a great
Assumption in the Duomo Vecchio, the St Ursula and the 5 Virgins in
S. Clemente and the great altar piece there - the Virgin and child
enthroned in a bower with angels and saints below, and the St
Margaret with 2 other saints in S. Francesco. Romanino I don't much
care for, there is a good altar piece by him in S. Francesco and a
Marriage of the Virgin in S. Giovanni Eo. His heads are always too
large for the bodies! the colour of the S. Francesco picture is fine. I
liked immensely a Marriage of the Virgin by Prato da Caravaggio in
S. Francesco - very noble and simple in composition, fine in colour
and convincing and human. A magnificent piece of architecture
above their heads. There are 2 big pictures by Calisto da Lodi, a
Martyrdom of St Agatha in St Agata - the crucified figure standing out
finely against the sky - it's the first thing you see when you get into the
church, and a Visitation in St Maria Calchera - not quite so good. A
nice Costa in S. Giovanni Eo. The most interesting Foppas are in the
secularized church now the Museo Christiano - frescoes, a great big
crucifixion. There is a fine Titian in 5 compartments in S. Nazaro e
Celso - the Resurrection, the figure of the Christ very splendid and
soaring, also a fine naked saint in the right hand compartment. We
saw the Duomo Vecchio which is very curious and interesting - a
round church, of the 8th century. It was undergoing restoration. It is
much below the level of the ground and has a crypt beneath lower
still. One of the nicest things in Brescia is the Museo Cirico - the sun
came out just as we got there; between the broken columns of the
entrance to the temple violets were flowering and southernwood
giving the most delicious scent - inside there is little of interest except
the winged Victory which is quite superb and gains immensely by
being seen in its own place and alone. Brescia is full of fragments of
very old brick churches - you suddenly come across a round brick
apse with a lovely cornice of moulded brick, or a tower built into an
extraneous wall, brick too with a bold cornice above pointed windows
at the top. We left Brescia at 1 and reached Verona at 3 after a lovely
journey, passing by the Lago di Garda which looked magnificent with
snow capped hills glistening in the sun. We walked about Verona till
6 and I think I never saw a more beautiful place. We went into the
arena which is not so well preserved as the French ones outside but
almost perfect inside and of a lovely oval shape. We then walked
through the Piazza dell Erbe down to St Anastasia where we admired
the door and the noble tomb of Castelbareo, and back onto the
Piazza del Signoria where we had tea at a caffÈ. The doves were
flying all about the Piazza and were quite tame. We explored the
Scaliger palaces all round - it was wonderfully interesting to see the
actual house whose stairs had been so steep to climb! They are all
made - as the Verona buildings seem mostly to be - either entirely of
brick or of alternate layers of bricks and stone. We saw the Scaliger
tombs - Can Grande's and Mastino II's are surely the most lovely
tombs in the world. We shrieked with delight over a guide book in
English which we found here and which described the equestrian
statue of Mastino as "as large as long" and the arms of Alboino as "a
ladder risen by an eagle!" We saw a fine picture in one of the
palaces of the submission of the Veronese to the Doge. We went
down past St Anastasia to the river - St Anastasia has the most
gorgeous brick tower built in compartments with a moulded brick
cornice like those of Brescia at the top of each compartment - and so
home through charming streets where every now and then we came
upon an exquisite white and red brick building or a house with
delicate pointed and cusped windows and a delicious little balcony
before them. Our inn is the Colomba d'oro - very nice. Tired.