It is nine times in ten of no consequence whatsoever;
and, unless you are willing to be regarded as a mere ignoramus,
you should straightway leave it and go and find some ancient picture
of a group of overdressed clothing dummies masquerading as angels
or martyrs, and stand before that one and carry on regardless.
When in doubt, look up a picture of Saint Sebastian. You never
experience any difficulty in finding him - he is always represented
as wearing very few clothes, being shot full of arrows to such an
extent that clothes would not fit him anyway. Or else seek out
Saint Laurence, who is invariably featured in connection with a
gridiron; or Saint Bartholomew, who, you remember, achieved
canonization through a process of flaying, and is therefore shown
with his skin folded neatly and carried over his arm like a spring
overcoat.
Following this routine you make no mistakes. Everybody is bound
to accept you as one possessing a deep knowledge of art, and not
mere surface art either, but the innermost meanings and conceptions
of art. Only sometimes I did get to wishing that the Old Masters
had left a little more to the imagination. They never withheld
any of the painful particulars. It seemed to me they cheapened
the glorious end of those immortal fathers of the faith by including
the details of the martyrdom in every picture. Still, I would not
have that admission get out and obtain general circulation. It
might be used against me as an argument that my artistic education
was grounded on a false foundation.
It was in Rome, while we were doing the Vatican, that our guide
furnished us with a sight that, considered as a human experience,
was worth more to me than a year of Old Masters and Young Messers.
We had pushed our poor blistered feet - a dozen or more of us - past
miles of paintings and sculptures and relics and art objects, and
we were tired - oh, so tired! Our eyes ached and our shoes hurt us;
and the calves of our legs quivered as we trailed along from gallery
to corridor, and from corridor back to gallery.
We had visited the Sistine Chapel; and, such was our weariness,
we had even declined to become excited over Michelangelo's great
picture of the Last Judgment. I was disappointed, too, that he
had omitted to include in his collection of damned souls a number
of persons I had confidently and happily expected would be present.
I saw no one there even remotely resembling my conception of the
person who first originated and promulgated the doctrine that all
small children should be told at the earliest possible moment that
there is no Santa Claus. That was a very severe blow to me, because
I had always believed that the descent to eternal perdition would
be incomplete unless he had a front seat. And the man who first
hit on the plan of employing child labor on night shifts in cotton
factories - he was unaccountably absent too. And likewise the
original inventor of the toy pistol; in fact the absentees were
entirely too numerous to suit me. There was one thing, though,
to be said in praise of Michelangelo's Last Judgment; it was too
large and too complicated to be reproduced successfully on a
souvenir postal card; and I think we should all be very grateful
for that mercy anyway.
As I was saying, we had left the Sistine Chapel a mile or so
behind us and had dragged our exhausted frames as far as an arched
upper portico in a wing of the great palace, overlooking a paved
courtyard inclosed at its farther end by a side wall of Saint
Peter's. We saw, in another portico similar to the one where we
had halted and running parallel to it, long rows of peasants, all
kneeling and all with their faces turned in the same direction.
"Wait here a minute," said our guide. "I think you will see
something not included in the regular itinerary of the day."
So we waited. In a minute or two the long lines of kneeling
peasants raised a hymn; the sound of it came to us in quavering
snatches. Through the aisle formed by their bodies a procession
passed the length of the long portico and back to the starting
point. First came Swiss Guards in their gay piebald uniforms,
carrying strange-looking pikes and halberds; and behind them were
churchly dignitaries, all bared of head; and last of all came a
very old and very feeble man, dressed in white, with a wide-brimmed
white hat - and he had white hair and a white face, which seemed
drawn and worn, but very gentle and kindly and beneficent.
He held his right arm aloft, with the first two fingers extended
in the gesture of the apostolic benediction. He was so far away
from us that in perspective his profile was reduced to the miniature
proportions of a head on a postage stamp; but, all the same, the
lines of it stood out clear and distinct. It was his Holiness,
Pope Pius the Tenth, blessing a pilgrimage.
All the guides in Rome follow a regular routine with the tourist.
First, of course, they steer you into certain shops in the hope
that you will buy something and thereby enable them to earn
commissions. Then, in turn, they carry you to an art gallery, to
a church, and to a palace, with stops at other shops interspersed
between; and invariably they wind up in the vicinity of some of
the ruins. Ruins is a Roman guide's middle name; ruins are his
one best bet. In Rome I saw ruins until I was one myself.
We devoted practically an entire day to ruins.
