Tuscany  

"The traveller who to-day goes from Rome to Florence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany and Umbria, bridges in a seven hours’ journey a gap of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves behind him the temples and arches, the Vatican’s marble population of half-nude gods and heroes ; he comes to mediaeval towers, to saints and virgins, and the frescoed folk of the fourteenth century swathed in their heavy garments. The abrupt transition bewilders him ; the sudden change in his artistic surroundings is almost inexplicable. How did it come to pass ? The gods and athletes did not all die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ; surely there was some intermediate period of anticipation and recollection when these incongruous elements were slowly fused together, and when some dim projection of the mediaeval saint stood side by side with a fast-fading memory of the antique demi-god."--Italian Cities (1900) by Edwin Blashfield and Evangeline Wilbour