CHAPTER XII LAGO D'ISEO, LAGO DI GARDA AND THE 'HERE are two excursions that are easily made from Brescia, and neither should on any account be omitted: I mean a visit to the Lago d'Iseo and a visit to the Lago di Garda. The Lago d'Iseo, within an hour of Brescia by train and but fifteen miles by road, though by far the least known, is by no means the least beautiful of the lakes of Lombardy. The Lacus Sebinus of the Romans, it would seem to have been as little known to them as it is to us, for Pliny is the only writer who speaks of it. It owes its beauty, indeed, to its narrowness, and the height and shape of the mountains which everywhere surround it, while the clarity of its waters and their colour add to its delight and make of it, indeed, such a jewel as once seen will be sought for again and again. For it is a very precious relic of the south, here on the northern threshold, with all the luxuriant vegetation of a really southern country given to it by its situation, sheltered from every wind but the south wind and the west, by the greatness of its hills, which hold up the still greater mountains. In its midst, a little nearer its southern shore than its northern, stands up the lofty island called Mont' Isola, two miles long, with the village of Peschiera Maraglio on its southern beach, the village of Siviano a little inland on the north. Iseo itself, the town at which, coming from Brescia, we reach the lake, is a busy little old walled place with a fine old fortress; but the most interesting town on the lake is not Iseo, but Lovere, at the northern end. On the way thither we pass Tavernola, which, amid its vines, is perhaps the loveliest spot on the lake with the loveliest view. At Lovere, on the quayside, you may see the true life of this corner of Paradise, and find, as is meet and right in such a place, pictures by Ferramola and Moroni in the church. But if you come for pictures, an absurd desire in so far away a spot, you can have your fill of them here at the Palazzo Tadini, where you will find works by Civerchio, Domenico Morone, Parmigiano, Badile, Brusasorci and Calisto, and, what is better, a view of the lake which is worth all the troubles of the journey from Brescia to see. Nor if you come by steamer and train should you omit to return at least from Pisogne by road, for it is one of the loveliest I know. From Brescia to Desenzano, on the Lago di Garda, is a little farther than from Brescia to Iseo, but the train service is better. The Lago di Garda, however, is an altogether bigger affair than the Lago d'Iseo. Garda is formed by the Mincio as Iseo is by the Oglio. It is the largest lake in Italy, though in length it is inferior to Como and Maggiore. The Romans called it Benacus and knew it well; Virgil speaks of it, its roaring waves, in the Georgics; Pliny has much to say of it, including of course a theory of its origin, and he asserts roundly that the Mincio flows right through it without allowing its waters to mix with those of the lake; while Catullus, we know, spent much of his life at Sirmio. The southern shores of the Lago di Garda are low and even marshy, but as one goes north the hills arise, and the northern arm of the lake is enclosed by great and grandly precipitous mountains, but there we are within the Austrian frontier. Desenzano, a tiny little place of some four thousand inhabitants, will not keep the traveller long. Nevertheless, its old Castello in the higher part of the town is worth a visit, though it be now merely a modern barracks, for it is founded upon the ruins of Rome, and owes its strength probably to the defence made here against the Hungarians in the tenth century. As for its churches, Desenzano has them in abundance, but her ancient Pieve was destroyed in 1480, and the Church of S. Maria Maddalena, which now stands in its place, is a building of the end of the sixteenth century. Its chief treasure is a picture of the Last Supper ascribed, and I think truly, to Tiepolo. Close to Desenzano, on a barren little hill, stands Maguzzano, with its old Benedictine church and monastery, founded and destroyed in the first years of the tenth century, rebuilt and re-established in the middle of the twelfth, and again in the end of the fifteenth century. Certain vestiges of frescoes remain from that far-off time, as well as a cross of silver-gilt ornamented with precious stones. The monastery of Maguzzano was the most famous on the lake. In the sixteenth century it had its poet, the monk Teofilo Folengo, called Merlin Cocai. But neither Desenzano nor Maguzzano will keep us long from Sirmione, of which Catullus sang so divinely in the most perfect of his Carmina : Poeninsularum, Sirmio, insularumque O, quid solutis est beatius curis ? Cum meus onus reponit, ac peregrino Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum, Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto. Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis. Salve, o venusta Sirmio! atque hero gaude: Ridete, quidquid est domi cachinnorum. Nor is Catullus the only poet who has sung of this place; though one may believe he, rather than Sirmione, was the cause for instance of these perfect verses :— " Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! Tennyson wrote these lines at Sirmione in 1880; and his son tells us that the poet liked the place "the best of anything we had seen in our tour." Sirmione is like a jewel set upon a sceptre: that sceptre is the tiny low peninsula which is thrust far out into the lake from the mainland marsh. From there, indeed from anywhere almost on the south, it has not a very striking appearance, but from the lake it is unique and beautiful. Catullus, as we have seen, likens it to an eye; another poet has called it the Queen of the Naiads; Carducci speaks of it as a flower upon a stalk. Three hills, Cortine to the south, Mavino in the midst, and the Grotte to the north, make the three corners of the little place separated by tiny valleys. On the highest of the three-that is to say, upon Cortineis placed the Roman ruin of which Tennyson speaks. Two gates of this fortress still remain, and one of them surely holds a memory of Catullus; though legend connects him rather with the northern hill, the Grotte, where his villa is said to have stood. Not far from the Roman ruin upon Cortine, the queen of Desiderius in the eighth century founded a Benedictine church and monastery, dedicated to S. Salvatore. Little, however, remains to remind us either of the Queen or of the Benedictines. But one relic at least remains to us of that fierce time in the Church of S. Pietro in a lovely olive-clad spot on Mavino, for it was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and still retains certain rude frescoes. With the rise of liberty in the twelfth century Sirmione possessed herself of a Podestà, but soon came under the rule of the Scaligers, who in the end of the following century surrounded her with walls and built the Castello, the best preserved on the whole lake. Sirmione seems to have been a headquarters for the Patarini in the beginning of the fourteenth century; but here, as elsewhere, they were turned out. It is to the following century we owe the Cathedral, which, however, contains nothing of interest. If we set out from Sirmione for the tour of the lake by steamer we shall return to Desenzano and thence proceed to Salò, the Roman Salodium, past the strange headland of Manerba, which was once crowned, it is said, by a Temple of Minerva, that in the Middle Ages became not a church but a fortress, and the olive-clad islands of S. Biagio and Lechi. Salò is lovelier than Sirmione, though it has not its memories. Memories of its own, however, it possesses in abundance-of its long loyalty to Venice, at a great cost, and of its Lords the Martinenghi, whose palace is there to-day. There remains also in Salò a very beautiful church, the Duomo, a Gothic building begun in October 7, 1453, and dedicated to S. Maria Annunziata. The western door is, however, a fine thing by Sansovino. The interior consists of a nave with aisles upheld by twelve pillars, a transept and choir with polygonal apse. Over the western door is a large Gothic ancona, consisting of ten niches, in each of which is a carved wooden figure gilded; above, the Risen Christ, with two saints |