spring. Each pair of trees between their
stems and arch of intermingling leaves includes a space of plain,
checkered with cloud-shadows, melting blue and green in amethystine
haze. To right and left the last spurs of the Alps descend, jutting
like promontories, heaving like islands from the misty breadth below:
and here and there are towers, half-lost in airy azure; and cities
dwarfed to blots; and silvery lines where rivers flow; and distant,
vapour-drowned, dim crests of Apennines. The city walls above us wave
with snapdragons and iris among fig-trees sprouting from the riven
stones. There are terraces over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and
houses shooting forward into balconies and balustrades, from which a
Romeo might launch himself at daybreak, warned by the lark's song.
A sudden angle in the road is turned, and we pass from airspace and
freedom into the old town, beneath walls of dark brown masonry, where
wild valerians light their torches of red bloom in immemorial shade.
Squalor and splendour live here side by side. Grand Renaissance
portals grinning with Satyr masks are flanked by tawdry frescoes
shamming stonework, or by doorways where the withered bush hangs out
a promise of bad wine. The Cappella Colleoni is our destination, that
masterpiece of the sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated
marbles,--rosy and white and creamy yellow and jet-black,--in
patterns, basreliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the fanciful
domed shrine. Upon the facade are mingled, in the true Renaissance
spirit of genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme
impartiality. Medallions of emperors and gods alternate with virtues,
angels and cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the
base of the building are told two stories--the one of Adam from his
creation to his fall, the other of Hercules and his labours. Italian
craftsmen of the _quattrocento_ were not averse to setting
thus together, in one framework, the myths of our first parents and
Alemena's son: partly perhaps because both subjects gave scope to
the free treatment of the nude; but partly also, we may venture to
surmise, because the heroism of Hellas counterbalanced the sin of
Eden. Here then we see how Adam and Eve were made and tempted and
expelled from Paradise and set to labour, how Cain killed Abel, and
Lamech slew a man to his hurt, and Isaac was offered on the mountain.
The tale of human sin and the promise of redemption are epitom