Italian Backgrounds by Edith Wharton

In almost every gallery of Italy there hangs, among the pictures of the earlier period, one which represents, with loving minuteness of topographical detail, a rocky mountain-side honeycombed with caves and inhabited by hermits.

As a rule, the landscape is comprehensive enough to include the whole Thebaid, with the river at the base of the cliff, the _selva oscura_ "fledging the wild-ridged mountain steep by steep," and the various little edifices -- huts, chapels and bridges -- with which the colony of anchorites have humanized their wild domain. This presentment of the life of the solitaries always remained a favourite subject in Italian art, and even in the rococo period, when piety had become a drawing-room accomplishment, the traditional charm of the "life apart" was commemorated by the mock "hermitages" to be found in every nobleman's park, or by such frescoes as adorn the entrance to the chapel of the Villa Chigi, near Rome: a tiny room painted to represent a rocky cleft in the mountains, with anchorites visiting each other in their caves, or engaged in the duties of their sylvan existence.