Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 164, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1916 — OLD ITALIAN TOWN [ARTICLE]

OLD ITALIAN TOWN

VICENZA OF IMPORTANCE IN i time OFJHE romans. Ito Achievements In Arms Rank S©o©nd to Its Architectural Splendors Once Capital of a Lombard Duchy. Closely massed on both banks of the small Bacchiglioue river, Vicenza with an urban population of 35,UW, has been an important town of northern Italy since the early Roman days, when it was known as Vicetia. It has not played a thrilling role in , Italian history, however, but is noted rather for its architectural splendor than tor its achievements in arms. The surrounding plain, whose luxuriant mulberry trees, with their armies of silk worms, so soon may be supplanted by the cypress fronds of sorrow over countless soldiers’ graves, extend to the north through Thieue and Schio, two manufacturing towns in the Leogra valley, and to the east as far as Venice, 40 miles distant. Sixteen miles to the west, beyond the Berici mountains, lies Verona, with its many Shakespearean associations. Beautiful villas and blossoming fields are a feature of this landscape now overcast with the shadow of invading Austrians. Vicenza’s share in the history-mak-ing of the early middle ages was as a capital of a Lombard duchy. It was one of the cities which farmed the Lombard league in the twelfth century, opposing Frederick Barbarossa during the several campaigns, whereby he attempted to re-etablish the W estern empire on a Charlemagne scale. In 1236 the city was stormed and pillaged by the Sicilian emperor, Frederick 11, a catastrophe which the inhabitants w r ere able to bear with more equanimity after this ruler’s overwhelming defeat before the walls of Parma, when his imperial crown was placed in mockery on the head of a hunchback beggar, who was given a “triumphal entry” into the victorious town. Early in the fourteenth century Vicenza asserted and secured its independence, from Padua, but a hundred years later it came under the extensive sway of Venice. The most distinguished name in Vicenza’s hall of, fame is that of one of the greatest architects of the Italian renaissance, Andrea Palladio, who broke away from the excessively ornate style of his contemporaries and turned, perhaps, too reverently to the simple, stately standards of ancient Rome. His handiwork is preeminently dominant in his birthplace, so much so, in fact, that a famous American novelist has complained that “the cold hand of that friend of virtuous poverty in architecture lies heavy upon his native city.” One of the most interesting structures designed by him is the immense Olimpico theater, modeled after the ancient theaters, and dedicated in 1584. Another great artist of Vicenza was the precocious peasant boy Mantegna, who left his flock of sheep at the age of eleven in order to become a great painter under the patronage of the unique Squarclone, a tailor famous both as art connoisseur and teacher. The stiffness of Mantegna’s draperies is said to be accounted for by his custom of drawing from models clad in paper or in gummed fabrics. As an engraver Mantegna’s fame is assured by his plate, entitled “Entombment,” said to have had 'a greater influence on art than any other ever executed, for its composition was adopted by Raphael, Holbein and Durer.