VIII.xiii. The Green Heart of Italy

"For the sake of a weathered gray city set high on a hill
To the northward I go,
Where Umbria's valley lies mile upon emerald mile
Outspread like a chart.
The wind in her steep, narrow streets is eternally chill
From the neighboring snow,
But linger who will in the lure of a southerly smile,
Here is my heart."
- Amelia Josephine Burr

The morning train from Cortona to Perugia passes by the calm, deserted shores of Lake Trasimene, silent save for that wailing echo of a military defeat, the same gentle breeze that sifts through the grasses at Alesia, Vimy ridge, or the Plains of Abraham, the howl of history long gone by. Hannibal, twenty-two centuries ago, caught Flaminius' troops on the water's edge here, killed fifteen thousand of them and tainted the lake red. For an entire year thereafter, he roamed unopposed through central Italy, before the Romans were finally able to halt his advance at Cannae, the other mythic locus for those itinerant classics enthusiasts. On these calm banks, though, the towns of Ossaia, place of bones, and Sanguineto, place of blood, are the only faint cries that are left.
    Perugia, beyond the shores, seems a far more joyous place. A second Siena, it is alive in a better past of the gentle sort. On this particular Sunday, the city's elegant streets hummed with the lighthearted activity of vacationing Italians, many of them here since Friday's ponte, that luxurious unauthorized extension of the long weekend particular to Southern Europe's social democracies. The city's sprawling, variegated upper town is reached from below via a system of medieval underground streets fitted with modern escalators and enticing produce vendors. Totally devoid of cars, it is the weekend paradise of the modern Italian family. The wide, central Corso Pietro Vannucci, so-named after the city's most famous son and painter better known simply as Perugino, was a sea of Latin humanity. Fighting through stroller gridlock, it was hard to believe that I was amidst the population with the lowest birthrate in the western world.
    I had to wait in line to see that Perugino's little frescoes in the money-changers lodge. In the Cathedral, the chapel that enshrines the apocryphal wedding ring that Joseph gave to Mary was overrun by curious onlookers. After a season of empty towns and deserted museums, Perugia was alive. Taken aback, I sought my typical refuge at the national gallery.
    A country like Italy, burdened with the blessings of both a meddlesome state and an unparalleled artistic heritage, could never settle for a single national gallery. Instead, the state has created its own museums in every region of the country, the so-called Musei Nazionali. Unfortunately, these institutions often suffer from stagnation brought on by a lack of funds for new acquisitions, declining attendance, and lack of involvement within the wider community. Already in possession of enviable collections, the task of expanding or moving forward seems all too daunting, even pointless. Only in rare cases do the greatest masterpieces find themselves in the hands of regional or municipal authorities, which in turn operate their own system of museums and galleries. Overall, the system is far less centralized than those of France or England; Italy's collections, for reasons political as well as logistical, could never be contained in one single place. For such reasons, the nation's capital, extra-Vatican Rome, is relatively lacking in major art museums.
    In terms of hierarchy, the National Gallery of Umbria is near the top. What sets it apart is its dynamism but also its serenity. Though it is on the tall fourth floor of the Palazzo Pubblico, far above the din and bustle of the city, it still attracts crowds on a Sunday afternoon. Traveling through its rooms I was adrift in a jewel-toned dream. The museum represents all the best and worst of modern museum design. It sets the viewer aloft in a daze of Platonic proportions instead of grounding him in the historical past of the glorious painted paradise, and some is lost, and some is gained.
    One of the gallery's treasures is an altarpiece by Fra Angelico. No artist was ever in his life or work more holy, said Vasari of the blessed man. Palpitant before such a masterpiece, any viewer could credit the claim. Looking over an unspeakably tender Madonna and child, Angelico painted a serene Saint Nicholas, three sacks of gold at his feet, a portrait of his lifelong friend Tomaso Parentucelli, the wise, humanist Pope Nicholas V. In miniature, below, a smaller Saint Nicholas performs his famous caring act, dropping three bundles of gold into the house of three young maidens, sparing them from a life of prostitution and poverty. Reaching up to their window, he quietly pushes the three bundles over the sill, almost unnoticed.
    I thought, as I saw this perfect little picture, about how humble and distant men I would never meet, men like Fra Angelico, had taken such a permanent, irrevocable hold on my imagination. Every passing day, no matter where I am, this unexplainable passion consumes me more and more. These are the characters that inhabit my dreams. They are the apostles, the messiahs who had never bothered to write a word in ink but somehow live on through pictures, through time, through what others say, and become something immeasurably larger than themselves. I though about how little Saint Nicholas, even for all his personal associations, was to me not the saint but rather the painter, quiet Fra Angelico, alive in a fragile, almost permanent gaze, part-painter, part-god.



The Palazzo dei Priori and Corso Vannucci in central Perugia


The Fontana Maggiore at Perugia


A young Saint Nicholas, quietly giving alms