the three altars which fill its eastern wall. In the Gesù, a little ancient church which clings to the hillside close to the cathedral, we discovered an Annunciation by Fra Angelico, almost as beautiful as that exquisite picture which he painted on the wall of his monastery-home in Florence. It is very like the fresco in the corridor of San Marco. The Madonna is sitting in the same light and airy loggia reading in some little book, as the Angel Gabriel, with his iridescent wings still poised for flight, alights at her feet, filling the air with glory. Outside, the grass is starred with the flowers which Angelico loved to paint; and far away, silhouetted against the sky, we see the Angel with a flaming sword driving Man and Woman from their Garden of Paradise, whose gates not even the coming of Christ could reopen on earth.
And then, remembering the story of Filippo Brunelleschi, we went into the Duomo to see the famous sarcophagus which legend claims to be the tomb of the Consul Flaminius, and which the great architect of the dome of Florence Cathedral walked sixty miles to see. For one morning when he was discussing antique sculpture in the Piazza of Santa Maria del Fiore with Donatello and some other artists, Brunelleschi heard of a Roman sarcophagus in Cortona. Straightway he left his companions, and fired by his passion for the works of antiquity, 'just as he was, in his mantle, hood and sabots, without saying a word of where he was going,' came to Cortona and made a drawing of it, returning at last to Florence where he showed it to the astonished Donatello, who had not been able to guess where his friend had disappeared.
But it was in the early morning, as I have said, that we discovered the nameless charm of Cortona—that same charm which we found in a different guise in all the little towns of Umbria and Tuscany. Our inn, though it towered more than a thousand feet above the valley, was at the bottom of the city, for Cortona in the immemorial Etruscan fashion hangs from the crest of her hill. Even the ambitious motor-bus could not climb higher than the Piazza Signorelli, because nearly all the streets above it are so steep that they are built in shallow steps. And they are so deserted that in one of them we found rabbits contentedly nibbling the grass which grew between its paving-stones. So the next morning, very early, while the day was cool, we climbed up to the great church of Santa Margherita, which stands with the ruined Fortezza on the crest of Cortona's mountain.
To me it is always rather strange that this harsh Tuscan citadel should ignore the name of Brother Elias, that great and restless spirit who sought to wed Love not to Poverty, as Francis did, but to Ambition. His name is hardly spoken in Cortona, but the body of Santa Margherita, whom some call the Magdalen of the Franciscans, because they love to draw comparisons between the life of Christ and His humble follower, is enshrined upon the hill-top like the light that cannot be hid. Her church has been restored, and there is little of the ancient building left except her beautiful fourteenth-century tomb, the silver shrine which was the gift of Piero da Cortona, and the lovely rose-window which is preserved in the modern façade. In the aisle are the flags and ship-lantern of some knight of Malta, who prayed to Margherita in the hour of peril, and was saved by her intercession.
Yet it was not for Santa Margherita that we climbed Cortona's hill at dawn, but to see the rich plain of Tuscany in its amphitheatre of blue hills, each with a towered city for its crown—Chiusi, Città della Pieve, Montepulciano, and a host of others to which we had not learned to give their names. It was a panorama of surpassing beauty which opened out before us. Fold on fold the mountains lifted their heads above the mists of the valley, rising always towards the mighty crest of Monte Amiata, which was to loom upon so many of our horizons while we were journeying through the heart of Italy. And far away the sunshine lightened the opal waters of Lake Thrasymene, lying like a forgotten sea in the bosom of the Umbrian hills, with the towers of Castiglione del Lago rosy in the dawn.
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Cortona from the Porta S. Margherita.
Even here the Rocca stood above us on its scarp, the key of the strong citadel which claims descent from Dardanus of Troy. On either side of Santa Margherita the mighty walls, including many courses of Cyclopean masonry, climbed down towards the peaceful plain. We passed through a gap which had once been a gate, and saw them plunging down the hillside holding the crumpled brown roofs of the little shrunken city in their elbow. So was Cortona of the Unknown People fortified; so was the city of the Etruscans girt about, and Hannibal and Flaminius have looked upon these walls as they passed by to battle upon the reedy shore of Thrasymene.
Up on the hillside men and girls were reaping in the shadow of the ancient wall. 'And the reapers, reaping early,' quoth the poet softly to himself. Their laughter floated down to us. Every now and then a girl would straighten her lithe figure, stand upright curved scythe in hand, and sing, her clear notes soaring like a lark's in the crystal air. At our feet Cortona nestled in the embrace of her great wall, and far below, the plain of Tuscany rolled away to the hills where the sunlight fired the towers of other mountain cities.
So in the dawn we grew to love Cortona, for the fantastic beauty which is her own, and for her aloofness. As we passed down into her steep-paved streets we paused a moment in San Francesco, where Brother Elias lies buried with his hopes and ambitions; where, too, is kept the ivory case with a fragment of the True Cross which the Patriarch of Constantinople gave to Elias when he visited that Court as Nuncio of Frederick II. And we lingered in little San Niccolò, which, with its loggia and cypress-garden, is the loveliest of Cortona's churches; and which, for all its poverty, treasures three pictures by Luca Signorelli, who belonged to its confraternity.
Down in the Piazza Signorelli we found the motor-omnibus already waiting to take us to the station. The narrow streets were crowded with black-browed Tuscan peasants selling fruit and vegetables, and doing a thriving business in skinned frogs strung on wooden skewers. These looked particularly unappetising in pails of not too clean water, and the atmosphere was putrid after the freshness of the air above. Again we had the sense of stifling heat and odour, and again the swarms of dirty children who had tracked us yesterday rose, as it were, out of the earth. We were glad enough to leave Cortona, but not until we had experienced many vexatious delays. For when we had fetched our luggage from the inn and settled our account with the rather difficult landlady, the driver of the omnibus was not forthcoming. And when at last we persuaded him to leave the shelter of the cool Palazzo Comunale, a glazier took the ill-chosen opportunity of mending two of the broken windows in the omnibus. We had given up all hope of catching our train when half an hour later we swung out of the town and began our perilous descent down to the plain.
After all we had some minutes to spare, though I should not care to make the journey again, for we took more than one corner of that switchback road on two wheels. But the driver was confident of our approval. 'Ecco signore, the train has not yet arrived,' he cried triumphantly. Facilis descensus Averni!
PERUGIA: DETAIL FROM THE CHOIR OF S. PIETRO DE' CASSINENSI
PERUGIA
'For bodiless dreams through double gateways go
Of horn and ivory, from night's realm forlorn;
And those that through the ivory gate are borne
Deceive, and what they tell is unfulfilled;
But those that issue through the polished horn
Fulfil themselves for mortals to whose sight
They issue.'
J.
