Читать книгу Tuscan Cities - William Dean Howells - Страница 9

It is true that the church bore its age somewhat better; for though Maria must have been beautiful, too, in her youth, her complexion had not that luminous flush in which three hundred years have been painting the marble front of the church. It is this light, or this color, — I hardly know which to call it, — that remains in my mind as the most characteristic quality of Santa Maria Novella; and I would like to have it go as far as possible with the reader, for I know that the edifice would not otherwise present itself in my pages, however flatteringly entreated or severely censured. I remember the bold mixture of the styles in its architecture, the lovely sculptures of its grand portals, the curious sundials high in its front; I remember the brand-new restoration of the screen of monuments on the right, with the arms of the noble patrons of the church carved below them, and the grass of the space enclosed showing green through the cloister-arches all winter long; I remember also the unemployed laborers crouching along its sunny base for the heat publicly dispensed in Italy on bright days — when it is not needed; and they all gave me the same pleasure, equal in degree, if not in kind. While the languor of these first days was still heavy upon me, I crept into the church for a look at the Ghirlandajo frescos behind the high altar, the Virgin of Cimabue, and the other objects which one is advised to see there, and had such modest satisfaction in them as may come to one who long ago, once for all, owned to himself that emotions to which others testified in the presence of such things were beyond him. The old masters and their humble acquaintance met shyly, after so many years; these were the only terms on which I, at least, could preserve my self-respect; and it was not till we had given ourselves time to overcome our mutual diffidence that the spirit in which their work was imagined stole into my heart and made me thoroughly glad of it again. Perhaps the most that ever came to me was a sense of tender reverence, of gracious quaintness in them; but this was enough. In the meanwhile I did my duty in Santa Maria Novella. I looked conscientiously at all the pictures, in spite of a great deal of trouble I had in putting on my glasses to read my "Walks in Florence" and taking them off to see the paintings; and I was careful to identify the portraits of Poliziano and the other Florentine gentlemen and ladies in the frescos. I cannot say that I was immediately sensible of advantage in this achievement; but I experienced a present delight in the Spanish chapel at finding not only Petrarch and Laura, but Boccaccio and Fiammetta, in the groups enjoying the triumphs of the church militant. It will always remain a confusion in our thick Northern heads, this attribution of merit through mere belief to people whose lives cast so little luster on their creeds; but the confusion is an agreeable one, and I enjoyed it as much as when it first overcame me in Italy.