As we returned our driver took us about 4 kilometres outside
Poggibonsi to San Lucchese, a church of the 12th or 13th century,
greatly decayed, but still very beautiful and containing a few naif
frescoes. He told us he had sung the Sanctus here at the festa on
the preceding Sunday. In a room adjoining the church, formerly, we
were told, a refectory, there is a very good fresco representing the
"Miraculous Draught of Fishes" by Gerino da Pistoja (I think, but one
forgets these names at once unless one writes them down then and
there). It is dated--I think (again!)--about 1509, betrays the
influence of Perugino but is more lively and interesting than
anything I know by that painter, for I cannot call him master. It is
in good preservation and deserves to be better, though perhaps not
very much better, known than it is. Our driver pointed out that the
baskets in which the fishes are being collected are portraits of the
baskets still in use in the neighbourhood.
After we had returned to London we found, in the Royal Academy
Exhibition, a portrait of our bishop which, though not good, was
quite good enough to assure us that we had not been mistaken as to
his diocese.
The Etruscan Urns at Volterra
As regards the way in which the Etruscan artists kept to a few stock
subjects, this has been so in all times and countries.
When Christianity convulsed the world and displaced the older
mythology, she did but introduce new subjects of her own, to which
her artists kept as closely as their pagan ancestors had kept to
their heathen gods and goddesses.
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