The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-03
L1pprs FREscoEs.

The Masterpieces in the Cathedral at
 Spoleto Telling the Story cf Mary.
 On first coming to spoleto it is to the Cathedral we climb breathlessly. for her ways are steep and ruinous. to see the frescoes of one of the most delight ful of the Florentine painters. Fra Fi- Hippo Lippi. They are his masterpieces end tell the story in brief of the Virgin Mary in her own Cathedral St. Maria Assunta. The chief fresco is that of the Coronation of the Virgin. Pale from the encounter with death in which but a moment ago she has proved vic torious, tall and slight, Regina Angelo rum is crowned not by Christ her Son, but by God, the Father, in heaven delicate as the petals of the flags in the valleys full of corn powdered with stars that seem to have risen just above the sea. The sun and the moon beneath her feet are lesser glories where she is. About her a company of angels sings and dances for joy, since heaven is by so much richer than our earth. A few with a shy and timid grace, magically charming, hand her some flowers from the highways or the woods of heaven as though to ask her if they might be sweeter than the lilies she loved as a girl or the wild flowers of Palestine The rest of the frescoes, the Anunciation in which she stands so surprised, so agitated that she twists her fingers together and is not sure what to answer; the Nativity magni- ficent fresco, now but 8 shadow, and the Death of the Virgin where Christ himself with tenderness-but with a tenderness and love-carries his mother to heaven are much overpainted and by a lesser hand. And yet we catch some shadow of Filippo in them all, so that even in their ruin they are not the least among the precious things at Spoleto. In quiet and sunny chapel of the great church the dust of Fra Filippo that vagabond and joyous mortal was laid by the jealous people of Spoleto in 14S9 Lorenzo de Medici who seems to have loved him, tried in vain to secure his ashes so thatthey might lie in Flor ence But Spoleto, proud and poor with but little that was very precious in her possession, would not have it so. You are rich and we are poor, she seems to have. said, excuse us then if we keep the bones of this one great man which you can well afford to leave in our keeping. Lorenzo would seem to have consented, perhaps little reluctantly, eontenting himself with building no- ble tomb for the painter in St. Maria Assunta and with composing long Latin inscription.
 The strangely adventurous life that came to an end here in Spoleto is very typical of one aspect at least of the Re- naissance; it's profound passion for lib- erty it's experiment in romance and sentiment, it's desire above everything for passion. And it is curious and not insignificant that it is not in the exci- ting and creative earth of Tuscany that Filippo Lippi the fatal and erring son of the greatest of modern cities, is laid to rest, but among the quiet and bles- sed hills of Umbria, that mystical land that produced no great intelligence,
 
 tent has influenced the world
 It is, however, mood the very oppo- site to this that overwhelns us in the Chiesa del Croceflsso, which has been built from the ruins of a Roman tenn pie. To-day it's facade guards the Campo Santo with it's hard white cross es and beady flowers and all the frip-. pery of modern death, Magnificent pillars, Roman and pagan, group them selves round the choir and chancel, and the nave is ennobled by the remains of the shafts, now ruinons, that once bore the weight of some splendid roof Pa- gan prayers to pagan gods, not dead but living in exile-perhaps in the Hex woods that crown the city, and seem from here to envelope her in their som Der mantle-creep piteously into the warm sunshine that floods the church from the open door They seem to knock at our hearts; and gazing at the feeble and terrible decoration of the Christian altar loaded with hard and crude artificial flowers and candlesticks covered with silver paper, 1t is rather of the nobility of that past that is present everywhere in Italy, of It's beauty and it's sufficiency that we think than of its superstition and decay, in which 1t would sonstimes appear to be closely followed by it's Christian successor And yet that is perhaps over-empha- sized Who. here in Spoleto, can re- sist the touching appeal of that little ugly shrine that greets the traveller on his way to St. Paolo that old thirteenth century church? It is a picture of S. Maria Immaculate, and bears the mar velous and lovely legend, 'Et rnacula virginalis not est in te" As I passed by at evening some children were deck ing the shrine with wild flowers gath cred on the Umbrian hills. The hide- ous cage that guarded Our Lady, per- haps from the stones of. the unbelievers was starred with buttercups as lovely in their tender yellow as those which doubtless in old days sprang up be- meath the footsteps of Persephone as she crossed the rivers of Sicily on her way to Demeter after her unwilling ex- ile from our world.
 The Convent of St. Paoo is now used as poorhouse, round whose walls are pictured not inappropriately perhaps, the Way of the Cross. In so peaceful a spot amid the expresses and olives those who have been a little defeated in a wonderful world contemplate the way to heaven. But whatever it may be that attracts us so strongly in Spoleto,