Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters by Deristhe L. Hoyt
page 115 of 240 (47%)
page 115 of 240 (47%)
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seeking especially those by Andrea del Sarto, who was the only artist
familiar to them, whose paintings are there. They touched and set swinging the bronze lamp which hangs in the nave, and is said to have suggested to Galileo (who was born in Pisa), his first idea of the pendulum. Then, going out, they climbed the famous Leaning Tower, and visited the Baptistery, where is Niccolo Pisano's wonderful sculptured marble pulpit. Afterward they went into the Campo Santo, which fascinated them by its quaintness, so unlike anything they had ever seen before. They thought of the dead reposing in the holy earth brought from Mount Calvary; looked at the frescoes painted so many hundreds of years ago by Benozzo Gozzoli, pupil of Fra Angelico; at the queer interesting _Triumph of Death_ and _Last Judgment_, so long attributed to Orcagna and now the subject of much dispute among critics; and then, wearied with seeing so much, they went into the middle of the enclosure and sat on the flagstones in the warm sun amid the lizards and early buttercups. The next afternoon they went to Siena, and arrived in time to see, from their hotel windows, the sunset glory as it irradiated all that vast tract of country that stretches so grandly on toward Rome. Here they were to spend several days. The young travellers were just beginning to experience the charm which belongs peculiarly to journeying in Italy--that of finding, one after another, these delightful old cities, each in its own characteristic setting of country, of history, of legend and romance. |
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