The four Evangelists are by _Caravaggio_; the pictures of Roman saints (Cecilia, Alexis, Eustachio, Francesca-Romana), by _Romanelli_.

By the same staircase, passing on the left a wonderful relief of the apotheosis of the wicked Faustina, we may arrive at the _Picture Gallery of the Capitol_ (which can also be approached by a separate staircase, entered from an alley at the back of the building), reached by two rooms inscribed with the names of the Roman Conservators from the middle of the sixteenth century. This gallery contains very few first-rate pictures, but has a beautiful St. Sebastian, by Guido, and several fine works of _Guercino_. The most noticeable pictures are--

_1st Room._--

2. Disembodied Spirit (unfinished): _Guido Reni_.

13. St. John Baptist: _Guercino_.

16. Mary Magdalene: _Guido Reni_.

20. The Cumaean Sibyl: _Domenichino_.

26. Mary Magdalene: _Tintoretto_.

27. Presentation in the Temple: _Fra. Bartolomeo_.

30. Holy Family: _Garofalo_.

52. Madonna and Saints: _Botticelli?_ 61. Portrait of himself: _Guido Reni_.

78. Madonna and Saints: _F. Francia_, 1513.

80. Portrait: _Velasquez_.

87. St. Augustine: _Giovanni Bellini_.

89. Romulus and Remus: _Rubens_.

_2nd Room._--

100. Two male portraits: _Vandyke_.

104. Adoration of the Shepherds: _Mazzolino_.

106. Two Portraits: _Vandyke_.

116. St. Sebastian: _Guido Reni_.

117. Cleopatra and Augustus: _Guercino_.

119. St. Sebastian: _Lud. Caracci_.

128. Gipsy telling a fortune: _Caravaggio_.

132. Portrait: _Giovanni Bellini_.

134. Portrait of Michael Angelo: _M. Venusti?_ 136. Petrarch: _Gio. Bellini?_ 142. Nativity of the Virgin: _Albani_.

143. Sta. Petronilla: _Guercino_. An enormous picture, brought hither from St. Peter's, where it has been replaced by a mosaic copy. The composition is divided into two parts. The lower represents the burial of Sta. Petronilla, the upper the ascension of her spirit.

"The Apostle Peter had a daughter, born in lawful wedlock, who accompanied him in his journey from the East. Petronilla was wonderfully fair; and Valerius Flaccus, a young and noble Roman, who was a heathen, became enamoured of her beauty, and sought her for his wife; and he, being very powerful, she feared to refuse him; she therefore desired him to return in three days, and promised that he should then carry her home. But she prayed earnestly to be delivered from this peril; and when Flaccus returned in three days, with great pomp, to celebrate the marriage, he found her dead. The company of nobles who attended him, carried her to the grave, in which they laid her, crowned with roses; and Flaccus lamented greatly."--_Mrs. Jameson, from the Perfetto Legendario._

199. Death and Assumption of the Virgin: _Cola della Matrice_.

"Here the death of the Virgin is treated at once in a mystical and dramatic style. Enveloped in a dark blue mantle, spangled with golden stars, she lies extended on a couch; St. Peter, in a splendid scarlet cope as bishop, reads the service; St. John, holding the palm, weeps bitterly. In front, and kneeling before the couch or bier, appear the three great Dominican saints as witnesses of the religious mystery; in the centre St. Dominic; on the left, St. Catherine of Siena; and on the right, St. Thomas Aquinas. In a compartment above is the Assumption."--_Jameson's Legends of the Madonna_, p. 315.

123. Virgin and Angels: _Paul Veronese_.

124. Rape of Europa: _Paul Veronese_.

At the head of the Capitol steps, to the right of the terrace, is the entrance to the _Palazzo Caffarelli_, the residence of the Prussian minister. It has a small but beautiful garden, and the view from the windows is magnificent.

"After dinner, Bunsen called for us, and took us first to his house on the Capitol, the different windows of which command the different views of ancient and modern Rome. Never shall I forget the view of the former; we looked down on the Forum, and just opposite were the Palatine and the Aventine, with the ruins of the Palace of the Caesars on the one, and houses intermixed with gardens on the other. The mass of the Coliseum rose beyond the Forum, and beyond all, the wide plain of the Campagna to the sea. On the left rose the Alban hills, bright in the setting sun, which played full upon Frescati and Albano, and the trees which edge the lake, and further away in the distance, it lit up the old town of Labicum."--_Arnold's Letters._

From the further end of the courtyard of the Caffarelli Palace one can look down upon part of the bare cliff of the Rupe Tarpeia. Here there existed till 1868 a small court, which is represented as the scene of the murder in Hawthorne's Marble Faun, or "Transformation." The door, the niche in the wall, and all other details mentioned in the novel, were realities. The character of the place is now changed by the removal of the boundary-wall. The part of the rock seen from here is that usually visited from below by the Via Tor de' Specchi.

To reach the principal portion of the south-eastern height of the Capitol, we must ascend the staircase beyond the Palace of the Conservators, on the right. Here we shall find ourselves upon the highest part of

"The Tarpeian rock, the citadel Of great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth, So far renown'd, and with the spoils enriched Of nations."

_Paradise Regained._

"The steep Tarpeian, fittest goal of treason's race, The promontory whence the traitor's leap Cured all ambition."

_Childe Harold._

The dirty lane, with its shabby houses, and grass-grown spaces, and filthy children, has little to remind one of the appearance of the hill as seen by Virgil and Propertius, who speak of the change in their time from an earlier aspect.

"Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem, et Capitolia ducit, Aurea nunc, olim, silvestribus horrida dumis, Jam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestes Dira loci; jam tum silvam saxumque tremebant."

_Virgil, aen._ viii. 347.

"Hoc quodcumque vides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est, Ante Phrygem Aeneam collis et herba fuit."

_Propertius_, iv. eleg. I.

It was on this side that the different attacks were made upon the Capitol. The first was by the Sabine Herdonius at the head of a band of slaves, who scaled the heights and surprised the garrison, in B.C. 460, and from the heights of the citadel proclaimed freedom to all slaves who should join him, with abolition of debts, and defence of the plebs from their oppressors; but his offers were disregarded, and on the fourth day the Capitol was re-taken, and he was slain with nearly all his followers. The second attack was by the Gauls, who, according to the well-known story, climbed the rock near the Porta Carmentale, and had nearly reached the summit unobserved--for the dogs neglected to bark--when the cries of the sacred geese of Juno aroused an officer named Manlius, who rushed to the defence, and hurled over the precipice the first assailant, who dragged down others in his fall, and thus the Capitol was saved. In remembrance of this incident, a goose was annually carried in triumph, and a dog annually crucified upon the Capitol, between the temple of Summanus and that of Youth.[42] This was the same Manlius, the friend of the people, who was afterwards condemned by the patricians on pretext that he wished to make himself king, and thrown from the Tarpeian rock, on the same spot, in sight of the Forum, where Spurius Cassius, an ex-consul, had been thrown down before. To visit the part of the rock from which these executions must have taken place, it is necessary to enter a little garden near the German Hospital, whence there is a beautiful view of the river and the Aventine.

"Quand on veut visiter la roche Tarpeienne, on sonne a une porte de peu d'apparence, sur laquelle sont ecrits ces mots: _Rocca Tarpeia_. Une pauvre femme arrive et vous mene dans un carre de choux. C'est de la qu'on precipita Manlius. Je serais desole que le carre de choux manquat."--_Ampere, Portraits de Rome._

This side of the Intermontium is now generally known as _Monte Caprino_, a name which Ampere derives from the fact that Vejovis, the Etruscan ideal of Jupiter, was always represented with a goat.[43] On this side of the hill, the viaduct from the Palatine, built by Caligula (who affected to require it to facilitate communication with his friend Jupiter), joined the Capitoline.

We have still to examine the north-eastern height, the site of the most interesting of pagan temples, now occupied by one of the most interesting of Christian churches. The name of the famous _Church of Ara-Cli_ is generally attributed to an altar erected by Augustus to commemorate the Delphic oracle respecting the coming of our Saviour, which is still recognised in the well-known hymn of the Church:

Teste David cum Sibylla.[44]

The altar bore the inscription "Ara Primogeniti Dei." Those who seek a more humble origin for the church, say that the name merely dates from mediaeval times, when it was called "Sta, Maria in Auroclio." It originally belonged to the Benedictine Order, but was transferred to the Franciscans by Innocent IV. in 1252, since which time its convent has occupied an important position as the residence of the General of the Minor Franciscans (Grey-friars), and is the centre of religious life in that Order.

The staircase on the left of the Senators' palace, which leads to the side entrance of Ara-Cli, is in itself full of historical associations. It was at its head that Valerius the consul was killed in the conflict with Herdonius for the possession of the Capitol. It was down the ancient steps on this site that Annius, the envoy of the Latins, fell (B.C. 340), and was nearly killed, after his audacious proposition in the temple of Jupiter, that the Latins and Romans should become one nation, and have a common senate and consuls. Here also,[45]

in B.C. 133, Tiberius Gracchus was knocked down with the leg of a chair, and killed in front of the temple of Jupiter.

It is at the top of these steps, that the monks of Ara-Cli, who are celebrated as dentists, perform their hideous, but useful and gratuitous operations, which may be witnessed here every morning!

Over the side entrance of Ara-Cli is a beautiful mosaic of the Virgin and Child. This, with the ancient brick arches above, framing fragments of deep blue sky--and the worn steps below--forms a subject dear to Roman artists, and is often introduced as a background to groups of monks and peasants. The interior of the church is vast, solemn, and highly picturesque. It was here, as Gibbon himself tells us, that on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers, the idea of writing the "Decline and Fall" of the city first started to his mind.

"As we lift the great curtain and push into the church, a faint perfume of incense salutes the nostrils. The golden sunset bursts in as the curtain of the (west) door sways forward, illuminates the mosaic floor, catches on the rich golden ceiling, and flashes here and there over the crowd (gathered in Epiphany), on some brilliant costume or closely shaven head. All sorts of people are thronging there, some kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, which gleams with its hundreds of silver votive hearts, legs, and arms, some listening to the preaching, some crowding round the chapel of the _Presepio_. Old women, haggard and wrinkled, come tottering along with their _scaldini_ of coals, drop down on their knees to pray, and, as you pass, interpolate in their prayers a parenthesis of begging. The church is not architecturally handsome, but it is eminently picturesque, with its relics of centuries, its mosaic pulpits and floors, its frescoes of Pinturicchio and Pesaro, its antique columns, its rich golden ceiling, its gothic mausoleum to the Savelli, and its mediaeval tombs. A dim, dingy look is over all--but it is the dimness of faded splendour; and one cannot stand there, knowing the history of the church, its great antiquity, and the varied fortunes it has known, without a peculiar sense of interest and pleasure.

"It was here that Romulus in the grey dawning of Rome built the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. Here the _spolia opima_ were deposited. Here the triumphal processions of the emperors and generals ended. Here the victors paused before making their vows, until, from the Mamertine prisons below, the message came to announce that their noblest prisoner and victim--while the clang of their triumph and his defeat rose ringing in his ears, as the procession ascended the steps--had expiated with death the crime of being the enemy of Rome. On the steps of Ara-Cli, nineteen centuries ago, the first great Caesar climbed on his knees after his first triumph. At their base, Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes, fell--and if the tradition of the Church is to be trusted, it was on the site of the present high altar that Augustus erected the 'Ara Primogeniti Dei,' to commemorate the Delphic prophecy of the coming of our Saviour. Standing on a spot so thronged with memories, the dullest imagination takes fire. The forms and scenes of the past rise from their graves and pass before us, and the actual and visionary are mingled together in strange poetic confusion."--_Roba di Roma_, i. 73.

The floor of the church is of the ancient mosaic known as Opus Alexandrinum. The nave is separated from the aisles by twenty-two ancient columns, of which two are of cipollino, two of white marble, and eighteen of Egyptian granite. They are of very different forms and sizes, and have probably been collected from various pagan edifices. The inscription "A Cubiculo Augustorum" upon the third column on the left of the nave, shows that it was brought from the Palace of the Caesars. The windows in this church are amongst the few in Rome which show traces of gothic. At the end of the nave, on either side, are two ambones, marking the position of the choir before it was extended to its present site in the sixteenth century.

The transepts are full of interesting monuments. That on the right is the burial-place of the great family of Savelli, and contains--on the left, the monument of Luca Savelli, 1266 (father of Pope Honorius IV.) and his son Pandolfo,--an ancient and richly sculptured sarcophagus, to which a gothic canopy was added by _Agostino_ and _Agnolo da Siena_ from designs of Giotto. Opposite, is the tomb of the mother of Honorius, Vana Aldobrandesca, upon which is the statue of the pope himself, removed from his monument in the old St. Peter's by Paul III.

On the left of the high altar is the tomb of Cardinal Gianbattista Savelli, ob. 1498, and near it--in the pavement, the half-effaced gravestone of Sigismondo Conti, whose features are so familiar to us from his portrait introduced into the famous picture of the Madonna di Foligno, which was painted by Raphael at his order, and presented by him to this church, where it remained over the high altar, till 1565, when his great niece Anna became a nun at the convent of the Contesse at Foligno, and was allowed to carry it away with her. In the east transept is another fine gothic tomb, that of Cardinal Matteo di Acquasparta (1302), a General of the Franciscans mentioned by Dante for his wise and moderate rule.[46] The quaint chapel in the middle of this transept, now dedicated to St. Helena, is supposed to occupy the site of the "Ara Primogeniti Dei."

Upon the pier near the ambone of the gospel is the monument of Queen Catherine of Bosnia, who died at Rome in 1478, bequeathing her states to the Roman Church on condition of their reversion to her son, who had embraced Mahommedanism, if he should return to the Catholic faith. Near this, upon the transept wall, is the tomb of Felice de Fredis, ob. 1529, upon which it is recorded that he was the finder of the Laocoon. The Chapel of the Annunciation, opening from the west isle, has a tomb to G.

Crivelli, by Donatello, bearing his signature, "Opus Donatelli Florentini." The Chapel of Santa Croce is the burial-place of the Ponziani family, and was the scene of the celebrated ecstasy of the favourite Roman saint Francesca Romana.

"The mortal remains of Vanozza Ponziani (sister-in-law of Francesca) were laid in the church of Ara-Cli, in the chapel of Santa Croce. The Roman people resorted there in crowds to behold once more their loved benefactress--the mother of the poor, the consoler of the afflicted. All strove to carry away some little memorial of one who had gone about among them doing good, and during the three days which preceded the interment, the concourse did not abate. On the day of the funeral Francesca knelt on one side of the coffin, and, in sight of all the crowd, she was wrapped in ecstasy. They saw her body lifted from the ground, and a seraphic expression in her uplifted face. They heard her murmur several times with an indescribable emphasis the word 'Quando?

Quando?' When all was over, she still remained immoveable; it seemed as if her soul had risen on the wings of prayer, and followed Vanozza's spirit into the realms of bliss. At last her confessor ordered her to rise and go and attend on the sick. She instantly complied, and walked away to the hospital which she had founded, apparently unconscious of everything about her, and only roused from her trance by the habit of obedience, which, in or out of ecstasy, never forsook her."--_Lady Georgiana Fullerton's Life of Sta. Fr. Romana._

There are several good pictures over the altars in the aisles of Ara-Cli. In the Chapel of St Margaret of Cortona are frescoes illustrative of her life by _Filippo Evangelisti_,--in that of S.

Antonio, frescoes by _Nicola da Pesaro_;--but no one should omit visiting the first chapel on the right of the west door, dedicated to S.