Val dArno | Page 8

roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the
horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall
with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings; in which are
inserted pieces of complex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest
of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to
Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tracery out of
the windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at
Nuremberg or Frankfort.
37. If you begin to question, hereupon, who was the Italian robber,
whether of marble or thought, and look to your Vasari, you find the
building attributed to John the Pisan; [1]--and you suppose the son to
have been so pleased by his father's adoption of Gothic forms that he
must needs borrow them, in this manner, ready made, from the
Germans, and thrust them into his round arches, or wherever else they

would go.
[Footnote 1: The present traceries are of fifteenth century work,
founded on Giovanni's design.]
We will look at something more of his work, however, before drawing
such conclusion.
38. In the centres of the great squares of Siena and Perugia, rose,
obedient to engineers' art, two perennial fountains Without engineers'
art, the glens which cleave the sand-rock of Siena flow with living
water; and still, if there be a hell for the forger in Italy, he remembers
therein the sweet grotto and green wave of Fonte Branda. But on the
very summit of the two hills, crested by their great civic fortresses, and
in the centres of their circuit of walls, rose the two guided wells; each
in basin of goodly marble, sculptured--at Perugia, by John of Pisa, at
Siena, by James of Quercia.
39. It is one of the bitterest regrets of my life (and I have many which
some men would find difficult to bear,) that I never saw, except when I
was a youth, and then with sealed eyes, Jacopo della Quercia's fountain.
[1] The Sienese, a little while since, tore it down, and put up a model of
it by a modern carver. In like manner, perhaps, you will some day
knock the Elgin marbles to pieces, and commission an Academician to
put up new ones,--the Sienese doing worse than that (as if the
Athenians were themselves to break their Phidias' work).
[Footnote 1: I observe that Charles Dickens had the fortune denied to
me. "The market-place, or great Piazza, is a large square, with a great
broken-nosed fountain in it." ("Pictures from Italy.")]
But the fountain of John of Pisa, though much injured, and glued
together with asphalt, is still in its place.
40. I will now read to you what Vasari first says of him, and it. (I. 67.)
"Nicholas had, among other sons, one called John, who, because he
always followed his father, and, under his discipline, intended (bent
himself to, with a will,) sculpture and architecture, in a few years
became not only equal to his father, but in some things superior to him;
wherefore Nicholas, being now old, retired himself into Pisa, and living
quietly there, left the government of everything to his son. Accordingly,
when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia, sending was made for John, who,
going there, made the tomb of that Pope of marble, the which, together
with that of Pope Martin IV., was afterwards thrown down, when the

Perugians
[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA.]
enlarged their vescovado; so that only a few relics are seen sprinkled
about the church. And the Perugians, having at the same time brought
from the mountain of Pacciano, two miles distant from the city, through
canals of lead, a most abundant water, by means of the invention and
industry of a friar of the order of St. Silvester, it was given to John the
Pisan to make all the ornaments of this fountain, as well of bronze as of
marble. On which he set hand to it, and made there three orders of
vases, two of marble and one of bronze. The first is put upon twelve
degrees of twelve-faced steps; the second is upon some columns which
put it upon a level with the first one;" (that is, in the middle of it,) "and
the third, which is of bronze, rests upon three figures which have in the
middle of them some griffins, of bronze too, which pour water out on
every side."
41. Many things we have to note in this passage, but first I will show
you the best picture I can of the thing itself.
The best I can; the thing itself being half destroyed, and what remains
so beautiful that no one can now quite rightly draw it; but Mr. Arthur