[Illustration: SAN DOMINICO, SIENA]
The main strength of Sienese art went possibly into the erection
of the Cathedral, and yet even here the strength is not of the
greatest strain. If, however, there are more interesting temples
in Italy, there are few more richly and variously scenic and
splendid, the comparative meagreness of the architectural idea
being overlaid by a marvellous wealth of ingenious detail.
Opposite the church--with the dull old archbishop's palace on one
side and a dismantled residence of the late Grand Duke of Tuscany
on the other--is an ancient hospital with a big stone bench
running all along its front. Here I have sat a while every
morning for a week, like a philosophic convalescent, watching the
florid facade of the cathedral glitter against the deep blue sky.
It has been lavishly restored of late years, and the fresh white
marble of the densely clustered pinnacles and statues and beasts
and flowers flashes in the sunshine like a mosaic of jewels.
There is more of this goldsmith's work in stone than I can
remember or describe; it is piled up over three great doors with
immense margins of exquisite decorative sculpture--still in the
ancient cream-coloured marble--and beneath three sharp pediments
embossed with images relieved against red marble and tipped with
golden mosaics. It is in the highest degree fantastic and
luxuriant--it is on the whole very lovely. As a triumph of the
many-hued it prepares you for the interior, where the same parti-
coloured splendour is endlessly at play--a confident complication
of harmonies and contrasts and of the minor structural
refinements and braveries. The internal surface is mainly wrought
in alternate courses of black and white marble; but as the latter
has been dimmed by the centuries to a fine mild brown the place
is all a concert of relieved and dispersed glooms. Save for
Pinturicchio's brilliant frescoes in the Sacristy there are no
pictures to speak of; but the pavement is covered with many
elaborate designs in black and white mosaic after cartoons by
Beccafumi. The patient skill of these compositions makes them a
rare piece of decoration; yet even here the friend whom I lately
quoted rejects this over-ripe fruit of the Sienese school. The
designs are nonsensical, he declares, and all his admiration is
for the cunning artisans who have imitated the hatchings and
shadings and hair-strokes of the pencil by the finest curves of
inserted black stone. But the true romance of handiwork at Siena
is to be seen in the wondrous stalls of the choir, under the
coloured light of the great wheel-window. Wood-carving has ever
been a cherished craft of the place, and the best masters of the
art during the fifteenth century lavished themselves on this
prodigious task. It is the frost-work on one's window-panes
interpreted in polished oak. It would be hard to find, doubtless,
a more moving illustration of the peculiar patience, the sacred
candour, of the great time. Into such artistry as this the author
seems to put more of his personal substance than into any other;
he has to wrestle not only with his subject, but with his
material. He is richly fortunate when his subject is charming--
when his devices, inventions and fantasies spring lightly to his
hand; for in the material itself, after age and use have ripened
and polished and darkened it to the richness of ebony and to a
greater warmth there is something surpassingly delectable and
venerable. Wander behind the altar at Siena when the chanting is
over and the incense has faded, and look well at the stalls of
the Barili.
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