[114] Ottaviano Nelli, born sometime towards the end of the fourteenth century, son of Martino Nelli and a native of Gubbio. He was one of the very earliest masters of the Umbrian school of painting, following close and copying without ambition the work of the Sienese. The fresco in S. Maria Nuova at Gubbio is considered his masterpiece. It strives towards beautiful colouring and sentiment rather than correct drawing.
[115] Spello was at one time a Roman colony. The Roman gate _Porta Veneris_ is well preserved. A little to the left of the town, outside its present walls, are the remains of its old theatre. The town is also connected with the mythical history of Orlando, and a long inscription on the walls records the facts minutely.
[116] _Albergo della Posta_--a really admirable inn.
[117] Melanzio, the delightful painter of Montefalco, had noted this blue-green light of spring, he had caught it in his very soul, and put it back into his landscapes, into his Virgin's gown, yes, and even into the shadows on the faces of his saints. "Fourth-rate" a critic called him, but we, who have no wish or power to criticise, loved him for the harmony which we found between his native landscape and his pictures.
[118] This airy old church has been converted into the Pinacoteca of Montefalco. It is one of the few local picture galleries which ever really pleased us. The pictures and frescoes taken from their altars in the neighbouring churches have found a home and not a prison on its wide walls; their dignity and sentiment have not been taken from them in the change of their position.
[119] There are one or two pictures by Lo Spagna in Trevi, the best one in the church of the Lagrime, to the south of the town.
[120] There is considerable doubt felt nowadays as to whether the exquisite little temple once dedicated to the river god Clitumnus which we now see standing above the river, is really the same as that early one described by Pliny. The work on it is certainly very late Roman, if, indeed, it be Roman at all: the emblems are, many of them, purely those of Christian art. But as the temple was turned into a Christian chapel (dedicated to S. Salvadore), it may, perhaps, be that its detail was altered to suit the altered creed. However these things be, the tiny building remains one of the most charming and romantic points in Umbria--one of the sweetest tributes that man's mind ever paid to the spirits of Nature. Before leaving the spot one should walk on to the place below the road, where the river springs straight from the foot of the hills--a limpid stream, rising almost invisibly through the grass and trees which overshadow its mysterious source.