The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-11-14
Vandalism in Italy.
How Ancient Art Works Are Ruined.

Mr. j. c. Robinson, an English authority on
art, in letter to the London Times says:
''One Of the chief treasures of the South
Kensington sculpture collection is the Can
toria' or marble singing gallery from Santa
Maria Novella, at Florence. L obtained this
noble work about the year 1860 under the fol-
lowing circumstances: Being then in Florence
busily occupied in my official task of gathering
works of art for the museum, then under my
charge, learned that it had been resolved to
restore Santa Maria Novella and that noble
old conventual church, every part of which
was previously well known to me, was shut up
and given over to the tender mercies of an
architect acting under the immediate direction
of the monks. Nobody had any idea OF what
was going to be done, and no one was allowed
to get inside to see However, found means
to obtain access. When I did so, the sight
was heartrending; the glorious old church,
rich in wonderful details, to which clung
thousand memories, was literally chaos,
gutted and pulled to pieces from one end to
the other. The centre pavement, once one of
the most interesting things in Italy, almost
every stone being beautiful sculptured and
inscribed grave slab-the very pavement on
which Boccaccos ladies of the 'Decameron'
are imagined to have trod,-was torn up snd
condemned, and every footstep stirred up
clouds of sacred dust of the thousand old Flor
entine worthless beneath All around lay
heaps of dsmantled affairs, and curious church
stone of the 'Cantora'
| learned that it was actually intended to re-
place this latter splendid work with new one
of entirely different design in black stone! The
thing seemed incredible, yet it was true; and
this was the reason: 1t seems that the monks
of Santa Maria Novella had suddenly been
cursed with wealth. One of their number had
inherited a considerable fortune, and the fatal
idea had occurred to him that the best thing
he could do with it would be to restore the
church. Some demon doubtless whispered
this terrible suggestion, md the same fend
must have prompted the architect who came
forward to carry out the plan. This worthy
persuaded the monks that it was necessary to
make the church and its contents uniform in
style. 'Now, Santa Maria Novella is a four
teenth century building, and from the archi-
tect's point of view, of course, all after addi-
tions were to be transformed or done away
with This tie misguided man actually car
ried out. The entire series of altars which
lined the church on both sides erected at va
rious periods during the sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries, some Of them splendid speci-
mems OF carved aud gilded woodwork, were all
ruthlessly swept away. Fresh affairs were
erected in their places in Florentine black
stone, rows of them all alike, solemn travesties
of fourteenth-century 1talian-Gothic, hideous
and unsightly, and utterly out of keeping with
the great pictures which adorned the old al
tars, and were reinstated in the modern struc-
lures 1t would be tedious however, to re-
count a tithe of the enormities committed; as
regards the marble Cantoria, the work of Bac-
ely d'Agnolo, one of the greatest of the Flor
entine quattro cento sculptors, and which is
lauded as a famous masterpiece by Vassari, it
was sold to this country for a sum amounting
to not one-third the cost of the hideous goth
c' stone gallery put up in its place. To crown
all, the architect had the folly and stupidity at
the conclusion of the work, to publish self
laudatory pamphlet descriptive of his labors.
Comment on this lamentabe story would be
superhuous, things quite as bad have been
done since; the only way to stop them is pub
icty. Italian newspapers would render true
service if they would take the trouble to find
out and denounce the innumerable acts of
vandalism which are rapidly depriving their
beautiful country of the evidences of its an
cient glories, instead of abusing observant for-