Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great | Page 3

aristocracy were yet to come.
Governments grant men immunity from danger on payment of a tax. Thus men cease protecting themselves, and so in the course of time lose the ability to protect themselves, because the faculty of courage has atrophied through disuse. Brooding apprehension and crouching fear are the properties of civilized men--men who are protected by the State. The joy of reveling in life is not possible in cities. Bolts and bars, locks and keys, soldiers and police, and a hundred other symbols of distrust, suspicion and hate, are on every hand, reminding us that man is the enemy of man, and must be protected from his brothers. Protection and slavery are near of kin.
Before Raphael, art was not a profession--the man did things to the glory of God. When he painted a picture of the Holy Family, his wife served as his model, and he grouped his children in their proper order, and made the picture to hang on a certain spot on the walls of his village church. No payment was expected nor fee demanded--it was a love-offering. It was not until ecclesiastics grew ambitious and asked for more pictures that bargains were struck. Did ever a painter of that far-off day marry a maid, and in time were they blessed with a babe, then straightway the painter worked his joy up into art by painting the Mother and Child, and presenting the picture as a thank-offering to God. The immaculate conception of love and the miracle of birth are recurring themes in the symphony of life. Love, religion and art have ever walked and ever will walk hand in hand. Art is the expression of man's joy in his work; and art is the beautiful way of doing things. Pope Julius was right-- work is religion when you put your soul into your task.
Giotto painted the "Mother and Child," and the mother was his wife, and the child theirs. Another child came to them, and Giotto painted another picture, calling the older boy Saint John, and the wee baby Jesus. The years went by and we find still another picture of the Holy Family by this same artist, in which five children are shown, while back in the shadow is the artist himself, posed as Joseph. And with a beautiful contempt for anachronism, the elder children are called Isaiah, Ezekiel and Elijah. This fusing of work, love and religion gives us a glimpse into the only paradise mortals know. It is the Ideal--and the Natural.
The swift-passing years have lightly touched the little city of Urbino, in Umbria. The place is sleepy and quiet, and you seek the shade of friendly awnings to shield you from the fierce glare of the sun. Standing there you hear the bells chime the hours, as they have done for four hundred years; and you watch the flocks of wheeling pigeons, the same pigeons that Vasari saw when he came here in Fifteen Hundred Forty-one, for the birds never grow old. Vasari tells of the pigeons, the old cathedral--old even then--the flower- girls and fruit-sellers, the passing black-robed priests, the occasional soldier, and the cobbler who sits on the curbstone and offers to mend your shoes while you wait.
The world is debtor to Vasari. He was not much of a painter and he failed at architecture, but he made up for lack of skill by telling all about what others were doing; and if his facts ever faltered, his imagination bridged the break. He is as interesting as Plutarch, as gossipy as Pepys, and as luring as Boswell.
A slim slip of a girl, selling thyme and mignonette out of a reed basket, offered to show Vasari the birthplace of Raphael; and a brown-cheeked, barefoot boy, selling roses on which the dew yet lingered, volunteered a like service for me, three hundred years later.
The house is one of a long row of low stone structures, with the red-tile roof everywhere to be seen. Above the door is a bronze tablet which informs the traveler that Raphael Sanzio was born here, April Sixth, Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three. Herman Grimm takes three chapters to prove that Raphael was not born in this house, and that nothing is so unreliable as a bronze tablet, except figures. Grimm is a painstaking biographer, but he fails to distinguish between fact and truth. Of this we are sure, Giovanni di Sanzio, the father of Raphael, lived in this house. There are church records to show that here other children of Giovanni were born, and this very naturally led to the assumption that Raphael was born here, also.
Just one thing of touching interest is to be seen in this house, and that is a picture of a Mother and Child painted on the wall. For many years this picture was