The Cathedral Builders Part 20

Old authors tell us that "the most famous Masters from foreign parts vied in lending their help to the building of such an important edifice, under the direction of Buschetto."[162] Another old MS.[163]

records that the "Opera of the Duomo was inst.i.tuted in 1080, some years after Buschetto was engaged, and that the first _operai_ of the Council were Hildebrand, son of the Judge Uberto, son of Leo, Signoretto Alliata, and Buschetto of Dulichium who was architect. The head of these was Hildebrand, and the others were ministers and officers of the Opera, as may be found in the archives of the said Opera."[164] Here we have the full organization of the Comacine House of Works. The dignitaries of the city as President, Treasurer, and Ministers, the head architect also a member of the Council of the Opera. Another old writer calls Buschetto _capo della scuola Pisana_.

Niccol, Giovanni, and Andrea da Pisa are fine proofs that the school at Pisa flourished and brought forth brave artists. Even as late as the sixteenth century, when Sansovino was sculpturing the casing of the Holy House at Loreto, we are told that thirty of the best carvers in stone were sent from Pisa to work under the Capo Maestro, Andrea Contucci of Monte Sansovino.[165]

Among the _Magistri_ from other parts in Buschetto's time, one of the chief was doubtless Rainaldo, who, judging from the inscription near the princ.i.p.al door of the facade, was not only a working sculptor in the guild, but also a full-fledged Master--

HOC OPUS EXIMIUM TAM MERUM TAM PRETIOSUM: RAINALDUS PRUDENS OPERATOR, ET IPSE MAGISTER: COSt.i.tVIT MIRE, SOLLERTER, ET INGENIOSE.

It is much to be deplored that this inscription bears no date, so that we cannot tell whether Rainaldo were chief architect after Buschetto, or whether he were only sculptor and executed the front; Buschetto being architect, and designing the whole. Here we have several things to suggest both these artists as Italians, (1) Their names. (2) The Comacine form of their inst.i.tutions, with the _Opera_ at the head. (3) The concourse of Italian _Magistri_ which followed them; but as usual, absolute proof is wanting.

Let us see if their work can throw more light on the question. Is the Pisan church Byzantine? Decidedly not. There are no domes except the central one, which is seen in most Lombard churches; no Oriental arches resting on bulging capitals; but round arches supported on the identical Romano-Lombard composite capitals one sees in every Italian church of the time. The facade too is a very wilderness of Lombard galleries in every direction. Instead of following the line of roof, they cover the whole front, one below another. If Buschetto had brought back from Byzantium an idea of more richness of ornamentation, he certainly worked it out in Italian forms, by merely multiplying his little pillared galleries till a network was formed over the whole building. This was not confined to him; it became a mark of Comacine work for the next two or three centuries, as we may see at Lucca, Ancona, Arezzo, and other places. The style is called Romanesque, and it stands between the heavier Lombard style of the earlier Comacines, and the more finished Italian Gothic of the later ones, as shown in Florence and Milan. They are all, however, only different developments of the same guild.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF PISA CATHEDRAL, 11TH CENTURY.

_See page 212._]

The richness of ornamentation suited the temper of the Pisans at that time. They were proud of many victories, and had brought back from Majorca, Palermo, and other places, various spoils, such as porphyry colonnettes, rare marble, etc. etc.[166] They desired a particularly grand and gorgeous church, and that it should be in a style hitherto unknown. The many antique capitals and columns among the spoils placed at his disposal suggested, of course, arches, so by way of being very original, Buschetto or Rainaldo, whichever of the two designed it, made his facade with four arcades, instead of one, or two, as his brethren in the north were accustomed to do. The colonnettes in these four galleries are fifty-eight in number, some of _rosso antico_, others of the black and gold-streaked Luna marble. The two large columns at the central door are also of antique Greek work; they are beautifully carved in foliage intertwined; the other four columns are fluted and wreathed with foliage. The capitals also are chiefly ancient cla.s.sic work; there are Corinthian and composite ones. The remaining capitals are Comacine work, and have their usual mixture of animals and hieroglyphic figures. Here, too, are the lions of Judah in juxtaposition with the pillars, but as yet they appear above the pillar and not beneath it, as was the invariable custom a century later.

The rude figures of saints at the extremities of the roof, both of the aisles and nave, mark the beginning of that revival of the human figure in sculpture, which was the forerunner of the work of Niccol Pisano. The tower and Baptistery are the natural results of the Duomo, the style being identical; the same round arches in the foundation, and the same circles of Lombard galleries covering the super-structures.

The Baptistery was built by Magister Diotisalvi, somewhere about 1152.

We have no proofs of his origin, but his work and t.i.tle prove him to have graduated in the same guild as Buschetto and Rainaldo,[167] and we find his son and grandsons in Siena and other lodges.

In the Baptistery, the old mystic octagonal form was abandoned, and the circle takes its place. Diotisalvi has here made a perfect bell in tone as well as in form. It is the most acoustic building possible, as any one may prove by singing in rotation the notes of a chord. The whole chord echoes on for several moments with exquisite effect. The Baptistery was begun in August 1152, the first stone being laid in the presence of the Consul Cocco di Tacco Grifi; and two of the _Operai_ (members of the administrative council or _Opera_) named Cinetto Cinetti, and Arrigo Cancellieri, were appointed _soprastanti_ (overseers). Here again we have a distinct connection between the _Opera del Duomo_ and the _laborerium_.

Some of the cla.s.sic spoils of war were given to Diotisalvi for this building. Several of the capitals on the twenty columns supporting the foundation circle of round arches, are Corinthian; and the two pillars at the chief portal are beautiful specimens of ancient work, similar to those in the facade of the Duomo. Between the cla.s.sic remains incorporated into the building, and the statues and sculptures which belong to a later century, it is difficult to distinguish which were the absolute work of Diotisalvi himself. The sculptures on the door-jambs--rather mediaeval scenes relating to Christ and David--and the hieroglyphics of the months were probably his own work. The Baptism of Christ on the architrave, which has the mediaeval expression of baptism by immersion, may be his; and if so, it seems to explain how the Greek element got into Niccol di Pisa's work, for here is his antecedent of a century, showing in his work signs of the same leaning to cla.s.sicism in the midst of a rude and early style. How could he help it when he was living among cla.s.sic remains of sculpture?

The other three doors have also antique spiral columns of Greek marble. A fine piece of work, in Comacine style, is the frieze of interlaced foliage over the west entrance. The second order is a colonnade of fifty-eight arches with sculptured capitals. The third consists of eighteen pilasters and twenty windows. Here are seen the lion between the pillar and the arch, various animals and human heads at the spring of the arches, while above each order is a complicated cornice of pyramids, spires, and arabesques, which suggest a Southern or Eastern influence. The interior is less ornate, but of fine solid architecture. Twelve Corinthian columns and four large pilasters support the arches, forming a peristyle round the building; a similar gallery with slight columns runs above it. The columns are not all of antique marble. Three of them are of granite brought from the Isle of Elba, on May 4, 1155, and two from Sardinia, by Cinetti, one of the overseers we have mentioned.[168] The first pillar was placed on October 1, 1156. The capitals are ornate; some antique, Corinthian, others in Comacine style with animals and _intrecci_. On one of the pillars is engraved--"Deo-ti-salvi, magister hujus operis." Morrona thinks the Baptistery shows a Moorish influence. This is possible, as the whole of the three buildings show the Comacines' first great change of style, after their works in the south at Palermo, and the kingdom of Naples.

Old writers call the style Arabo-Tedesco; and this brings us to the meaning of the word _Tedesco_ in Italian architecture at this epoch.

The fallacy that the Italian Gothic came from Germany, must have got into art histories from a misconception of Vasari's term of opprobrium, "_quei Tedeschi_." He uses it when he speaks of any architecture which is not purely cla.s.sic, even blaming buildings such as Arnolfo's Florentine dome, the churches of a.s.sisi, Orvieto, Lucca, Pisa, etc.

But the writers who interpret this term as meaning the German nation, are reasoning on a fallacy. In the first place, was there any pointed Gothic in Germany before the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries? We will just run over the princ.i.p.al Gothic cathedrals. Bruges was begun in 1358; Cologne is modern of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Lubeck was built in 1341; Attenburg in 1265-1379; Freiburg Dom Kirche in 1484. At Freiburg in Breisgau, the older parts are of the same style as Comacine, while the Gothic parts date from 1513; Strasburg, the Gothic parts between 1318-1439; Magdeburg, 1363.

Before these were built we have at Cologne, S. Gereon's Kirche, with circular arches, date 1227, and S. Pantaleon, 980, but there is not a sign of Gothic in either. Bonn cathedral, built in 1151-1270, is also round-arched. Coblenz is Carlovingian. Mayence, round-arched of the tenth and eleventh centuries (the Gothic side-chapels date from 1260 to 1500). Treves, with round arches, early Romanesque of the eleventh century; choir, later Romanesque of the twelfth century; some parts which are pointed were of the thirteenth century. Hildesheim, a Romanesque Basilica, built in the eleventh century. Dom Insel at Breslau, 1170, is tripart.i.te, on the Comacine plan, and very quaint.

Worms, 996-1016, Lombard style, with round arches; the parts with pointed architecture are much more modern. This list proves that the earliest churches were built by Italian Masters, or at least in the Italian style.

Indeed Hope cla.s.ses most of them as Lombard. The Germans themselves expanded the Lombard style into the pointed, which also came up through Italy, its first signs being seen at a.s.sisi, next at Pisa, and then Florence.

Milan was a later reflex of the perfected German Gothic, though chiefly executed, as we shall see later, by the hands of Comacine Masters.

As I have before remarked, climatic influences greatly determine the style of a national architecture. To the sunny south belong the flat roof; the shady colonnade; the horizontal line and frieze; the fountained court; the smaller windows; and the solid tower. To the north the pointed roof, that snow and rain shall not decay it; the solid b.u.t.tress to resist the greater outward pressure of the high and aspiring sloped roof; the perpendicular tendency in design; the larger windows for a less sunny atmosphere; and the pointed spire to carry up the general lines.

On these lines of fitness the Germans and French perfected their style, and imported it into England. The differences are great, between this northern Gothic and the Italian Gothic, which is always more or less Romanesque. Now if in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries[169] the Germans had not begun to build their glorious pointed minsters, what did Vasari mean by _quei Tedeschi_? I will show from his own description. In his chapter called "_dell'

Architettura_," forming the introduction to his _Lives_, after discussing the three cla.s.sical orders, he says (I will translate literally)--"There is another kind of work which they call _Tedesco_ (German), in which the ornamentation and proportions are very different from the ancient or the modern. (Modern in Vasari's time would be the Renaissance style of Michael Angelo.) This is not used by good architects of these days, but is shunned by them as monstrous and barbarous. Every sign of order is forgotten, it ought rather to be called confusion and disorder. In the buildings, which are so many that they have infected the whole world, you see the portals adorned with thin columns twisted like a vine, and so slight that they could not be supposed to support the weight. And then on their facades and other places they made a cursed ma.s.s of little tabernacles (archlets) one on the other, with many pyramids and points, and such foliage (here Vasari evidently has his eye on Pisa Baptistery), that it seems impossible how they clung together; they seem made of paper, rather than of stone or marble. In these works there are many protuberances, broken lines, brackets, and _intrecci_, quite disproportionate to the building; and frequently, by piling one thing on another, they run up so high that the top of a door touches the roof. (Here Vasari is certainly thinking of the porches of San Zeno at Verona, and the cathedral of Bergamo.) This style was invented by the Goths (does he mean Longobards perhaps?), who having ruined the buildings, and murdered the architects, made the ones who remained build in this way.

They arched their roofs with acute _quarti_ (vaulted roofs) and filled all Italy with this cursed style of building.... G.o.d save any country from coming to such ideas and orders of architecture, which, being utterly deformed and unlike the beauty of our buildings, do not deserve that we should speak any more of them."

Again, in the _Proemio delle Vite_, when praising the solid buildings of the Goths in Ravenna, especially the tomb of Theodoric, with its huge monolithic roof, he goes on to speak of the Dark Ages--"After which," he says, "there arose new architects, who from their barbarous nation derived the kind of buildings which we of to-day call _tedeschi_, the which seem ridiculous to us, although to them they may have appeared to be praiseworthy."

Here are tirades from the old chronicler of art, who swore by the three cla.s.sic orders, and worshipped Michael Angelo and the Renaissance style! Certainly the flat pilaster, triangular pediments, and straight unadorned lines of that art were as far removed as the poles from the florid but meaningful sculpture-architecture of the Comacines in Romanesque times, or its rich Norman and Gothic developments.

However, we gather plainly from this, that when Vasari calls a master _Tedesco_, he means merely Lombard. The reason is easy to see.

Lombardy and North Italy, down to Lucca, were from about 1170 under the rule of the German Emperors, consequently the Comacines were no longer Lombards, nor French as in the Carlovingian times, but Germans.

This is curiously emphasized by an episode in the building of the cathedral at Pisa. When the Pisans wanted to endow the building fund of the church, they wished to buy some land on the Serchio, near Lucca, to help to form a revenue. They had, however, to send Gualando Orlandi and Aldebrando de' Visconti as amba.s.sadors to Germany to obtain permission from the Emperor Henry IV., that the lands close by Lucca might be ceded to Pisa.[170]

The tower of Pisa is too well known to need any description here. The joint masters were Bonanno of Pisa, and a very confusing _Tedesco_. In some authors he is called Giovanni d'Innspruck, in others Guglielmo from Germany. On inquiry as to how Innspruck comes into the question, we find the following perplexing pa.s.sage in Morrona. After quoting the inscription on the tower, "A.D. MCLXXIV campanile hoc fuit fundatum mense Agusti," he continues--"We find from ancient doc.u.ments belonging to the _Opera_, that the building was begun on the vigil of San Lorenzo, and the two above-mentioned architects (Bonanno and Guglielmo) are precisely indicated, excepting only that instead of _Guglielmo Tedesco_, it is written _Giovanni Onnipotente of Germany_--a misinterpretation of the word Oenipons or Oeniponta.n.u.s, which signifies native of Innspruck."[171] The italics are my own, and emphasize what Sig. Morrona styles a precise indication! The pa.s.sage is an astounding bit of unreason, but as neither Giovanni nor Guglielmo is a German form of name, I do not think this theory need trouble us. Whether the builder were German or Italian, whether named John or William, he only carried out the general design of the two buildings, and made a veil of Lombard archlets all over his leaning tower.

We shall find both Bonanno and Guglielmo working at Orvieto some time later. The tower was finished much later, when Andrea di Pisa was Grand Master of the Pisan Lodge; the upper circle of arches belongs to his part of the work.

At Pisa then we have an artistic sphere which might well have produced Niccol di Pisa, even without the influences of the south. We will, as far as the few inscriptions and doc.u.ments allow, see who were the members of this Masonic lodge, which had painters before even the rise of the Siena school, and whose building was the earliest model for the Romanesque style.

Bonanno, who a.s.sisted in the building of the tower, was more famous in the guild for his metal working than for architecture and marble sculpture. The fame of the bronze doors of the Duomo which he cast is now only traditionary, as they were destroyed by the fire on October 25, 1596. The antique inscription has been preserved, and proves that in 1180 Bonanno cast the doors, which had taken him a year to model, and that a certain "Benedict" was _operarius_ at the time.[172]

Bonanno's successor as a master in bronze was a certain Bartolommeo di Pisa, who was, like Bonanno, sculptor, architect, and metal-worker. He was much patronized by the Emperor Frederic, for whom he built the palace at Foggia, and made a tomb. He seems to have been a famous bell-caster; there are inscriptions quoted by Morrona,[173] which have been found on bells in the leaning tower of Pisa, the bells of the churches of St. Francis at a.s.sisi, S. Francesco at Siena, S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno, and S. Cosimo at Pisa, S. Michele at Lucca, etc.

Sometimes his name stands alone; sometimes one of his sons, Lotteringo or Andreotti, is a.s.sociated with him. Later we find the sons' names alone in independent works, and then with the distinctive t.i.tle of _Magister_.

Through this group of Pisan Masters a special connection was established with the south, a link which might account for Pietro, the father of Niccol, being called Pietro da Apulia, for there certainly was an offshoot of the Pisan lodge in that part. Bonanno of Pisa cast the famous bronze doors of Monreale; Bartolommeo was at Foggia; and his son, Magister Lotoringus, pa.s.sed most of his life at Cefalu, where his name appears on a bell dated A.D. 1263. The Emperor Frederic, his father's patron, nationalized him in Cefalu, and after ten years of residence, in 1242 he gave him permission to take a wife from Castro-Vetere in Calabria.

Other metal-workers and bell-casters at Pisa were a Nanni, a Pardo Nardi, and others whose names appear inscribed in the twelfth century.

I do not know whether the Angelo Rossi, whose name with the date 1173 is on a sculptured bell once in the church of S. Giovanni in Pisa (now at Villa di Pugnano), was a fellow-pupil or scholar of Bonanno's. His work is less artistic and masterly.

And now for the sculptors of the lodge. A famous master of the twelfth century was Biduinus, who sculptured the facade of the ancient church of S. Ca.s.siano, near Pisa, the building of which was undoubtedly the work of the Pisan Lodge. It is a round-arched church of the usual large smooth square-cut blocks of stone, and is externally adorned by pilasters with capitals of varied form and sculpture. Biduinus' facade has five round arches with a simple double-light window above. The capitals and architraves are all carved with the mystic beasts and hippogriffs belonging to the religion of the day. The architraves show the resurrection of Lazarus, and Christ's entry into Jerusalem. On one of the doors is the inscription in Gothic letters--"_Hoc opus quod cernis. Biduinus docte peregit_"; the other bears the date 1180. The whole style of the church is similar to the Pistoja buildings of that epoch, and recalls the school of Gruamonte. It is certain that Biduinus as well as Gruamont worked in Lucca, for the relief of the architrave of S. Salvatore at Lucca is signed "BIDUVINO ME FECIT HOC OPUS."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULPIT IN THE CHURCH OF S. GIOVANNI FUORCIVITAS, PISTOJA. BY MAGISTER GUGLIELMO D'AGNELLO, 13TH CENTURY.

_See page 223._]

The next great names are Niccol and Giovanni Pisani, the glory not only of their own lodge, but of the universal Guild. Until the time when his famous pulpit was sculptured, Niccol seems to have worked little in Pisa, though he endowed it with one of his most original designs--the bell-tower of S. Niccol. From the evidence of southern influence in his style, it is probable that his father Pietro was one of the artists whom Frederic called to South Italy, and that Niccol pa.s.sed his novitiate with him there. In any case, by the time he wrote _Magister_ before his name he had already attained a high rank as sculptor and architect, and was chosen for most important works out of Pisa, such as the Arca di S. Domenico at Bologna, and the building of the church and convent near it. Niccol Pisano's work in Florence was almost exclusively architectural; he also designed the cathedral churches of Arezzo and Cortona. His pupil, Fra Guglielmo, a relative of the Doge dell' Agnello of Pisa who was Niccol's a.s.sistant in the Arca di S. Domenico at Bologna in 1272, worked in 1293 at the reliefs in the facade of Orvieto, and in 1304 put the Romanesque front to S. Michele in Borgo, in Pisa. The Virgin and Child over the door of the latter is a copy of Niccol's famous statue. Some authors give him the credit of being the _Tedesco_ who Vasari says sculptured the fine pulpit in S. Gio. Fuorcivitas at Pistoja, and who a.s.sisted Bonanno in the tower of Pisa.

A sculptor named Bonaiuto must, I think, have belonged to Niccol's school. Two interesting sculptured doorways by him still exist in what was once the Palazzo Sclafani at Palermo (now the barracks of S.

Trinita). The doorway is carved in _tufo_, and above it is a kind of gable supported by two small pilasters, enclosing the arms of the family, a pair of cranes; surmounting the gable is a carved eagle, with a hare in its claws, standing on a kind of capital, which is unmistakably Comacine; beneath this is a bracket inscribed, "_Bonaiuto me fe-cit de Pisa_." Sig. Centofanti, in a private letter to Professor Clemente Lupi, who wrote to ask for information about Bonaiuto, says that a register of expenses of the Opera del Duomo of Pisa contains several mentions of the name. In one dated 1315 _Bonaiutus magister lapidum_ is noted as working at the Duomo, and receiving two soldi a day, his companions receiving four or five, and the _capo maestro_ eight. Here it would seem he is still in the lower ranks of the brotherhood. In 1318 he is noted as Boniautus Michaelis, and receives four soldi a day. In 1344 he has become full _capo maestro_ of the Duomo, and is paid nine soldi a day.[174]

From his school also sprang Arnolfo, the first of a long line of sculptor-builders of the Florentine Lodge. From it, too, through his son Giovanni, came the best builders of the Siena cathedral, and their followers who worked at Orvieto.

Thus Niccol and Giovanni are proved to be links in the old chain that came from cla.s.sic Rome through the Lombard Comacines to the Renaissance. All the famous names that ever were, may be traced in this universal Guild from father to son, from master to pupil. After Giovanni Pisano went to Siena, Andrea di Pisa, his scholar, carried on his school in Pisa. In 1299 we first hear of Andrea, the son of a notary at Pontedera, as _famulus magistri Johannes_.[175] His first authentic works were the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery, proving that he had been trained in the many-branched fraternity at Pisa, where metal-working ranked so high. As instances of his sculptures in marble, we may take many of the statues which were on the Duomo at Florence, and the second line of reliefs on Giotto's campanile. But like all the _Magistri_, he was, above all, an architect, and in that branch we find him as Grand Master at Orvieto in 1347. His son Nino succeeded him in the onerous office. His other son Tommaso was also in the guild, but did not rise to eminence in it.

He designed a palace, and painted two caskets for the Doge dell'

Agnello of Pisa.

Nino's sculptures show a greater fidelity to nature than those of his artistic ancestors. A Madonna and two angels over the door of the canonry of the Duomo at Florence are very charming, as are his statues in the church of the "Spina" at Pisa. We next find Nino's son Andrea receiving payment for a sepulchre for the Doge dell' Agnello, which Nino did not live long enough to finish.

One among Andrea's pupils who were not his relatives rose to special and wide-spread eminence in the guild, _i.e._ Magister Giovanni Balducci di Pisa, whose artistic career was mostly in Milan, where the Visconti patronized him. He sculptured several tombs, among them the beautiful Arca of St. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio in 1336. The figures of the Christian Virtues are very sweet and naturalistic. On a sculptured pulpit at S. Casciano near Florence, of the same shape and style as that by Guido di Como at Pistoja, but infinitely more advanced in art, he has signed, "Hoc opus fecit Johs Balducci Magister de Pisis." The only architectural work that is mentioned as signed by him is the door of S. Maria in Brera at Milan.

II.--LUCCA AND PISTOJA

THE BUONI FAMILY AT PISTOJA

------+------+-----------------------------+----------------------------_ 1. 1152 Magister Buono Employed at Ravenna and at Naples, where he built Castel dell' Uovo and Castel Capuano. At Arezzo the palace of the Signory.