The Cathedral Builders Part 23

[188] Marchese Ricci, _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, Vol. I. cap. ii.

p. 485, note 40.

[189] The name of this councillor of the _Opera_ still exists in Lucca, where are more than one family of Pagni.

[190] Tolomei, _Guida di Pistoja per gli amanti delle belle arti_, 1821.--Pistoja, p. 38 (note).

[191] S. Paolo was destroyed by fire in 1896, only the outer walls having escaped.

CHAPTER IV

ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ORNAMENTATION

When the romantic style of building, which the Comacine Masters had imbibed in Sicily, came in, their serious set-by-rule building went out. The first use they made of their new ideas was to increase the richness of decoration, and this they did by the almost childish expedient of multiplying their old ornaments. Instead of one little pillared gallery on the top of a facade, they now put whole rows of galleries, or covered the fronts all over with them, as in Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo. There is a very early instance of this in the church of Santa Maria at Ancona, of which we give an ill.u.s.tration. Here the network of arches are not real galleries, but only sculpturesque simulations; each arch is simply placed on the top of the other, without architrave or frieze. The doorway has the usual Comacine interlaced knots and no lions, so the facade may stand as an early sample of the transition into Romanesque, dating about the eleventh century.

The style shows a much further advance in Magister Marchionni's facade to the church of Santa Maria della Pieve at Arezzo, which is a fine sample of Romanesque. It was done in 1216. The facade has four rows of arches, one on the other, "growing small by degrees and beautifully less" as they ascend. Of all the hundred columns which support them, no two are alike. They are round, square, octagonal, s.e.xagonal, pentagonal, multi-angular, fluted, twisted, grotesque, crooked, Byzantine, Corinthian, Ionic, Doric, Gothic, Egyptian, Babylonian, caryatid, black, green, white, striped, or inlaid. Some have single bases, a round on a square, or _vice versa_, and so on _ad infinitum_.

Yet with all this variety there is a certain unity of design, which bespeaks a mult.i.tude of Masters, each one using his own fancy in his particular part of the work, but one chief to whose general design the masters of the parts are subservient. Ruskin realized the beauty of this variety of idea, though he had not perceived that it came from a mult.i.tude of minds working together, when he said--"The more conspicuous the irregularities are, the greater the chance of its being a good style." And again--"The traceries, capitals, and other ornaments must be of perpetually varied designs."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF S. MARIA, ANCONA.

_See page 242._]

The very same style and variety, showing a multiplex manufacture, is displayed by the cathedral, and the church of San Michele at Lucca, and the old church of San Michele in Borgo at Pisa. The two Lucca ones are extremely enriched by friezes of the symbolic animals above each row of arches. The cathedral and tower of Pisa show greater unity of conception.

The next great change was, that after the eleventh century, the interlaced work, or Solomon's knot, was no longer the secret sign of the Comacine work. They probably found that there was a limit even to the combinations of the interlaced line, or that it did not give enough relief. Certain it is, that on the rise of Romanesque architecture, the _intreccio_ faded away into mere mouldings, or got changed into foliaged scrolls for architraves; but the mystic knot with neither beginning nor end was no more used with special significance. The rounded sculpture of figures was everywhere replacing low relief, and the Comacine sign and seal of this epoch, was the Lion of Judah. From this time forward for the 400 years that Romanesque and Gothic architecture lasted, there is, I believe, scarcely a church built by the great Masonic Guild in which the Lion of Judah was not prominent.

My own observations have led me to the opinion that in Romanesque or Transition architecture, _i.e._ between A.D. 1000 and 1200, the lion is to be found between the columns and the arch--the arch resting upon it. In Italian Gothic, _i.e._ from A.D. 1200 to 1500, it is placed beneath the column. In either position its significance is evident. In the first, it points to Christ as the door of the Church. In the second, to Christ the pillar of faith springing from the tribe of Judah. Thus at Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo, where the guild worked in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the lion is always above the column.

In Verona, Como, Modena, and where Italian Gothic porches were added in the thirteenth century, and in Florence, Siena, Orvieto, where the cathedrals date from the fourteenth century, you find the lion beneath the column. And in minor works of sculpture there is the same difference. In the pulpit of Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, the lions are beneath the spring of the arches; in the pulpits of Niccol Pisano at Siena and Guido di Como (thirteenth century) at Pistoja, they are beneath the column.

A most beautiful instance of the transition between Lombard and Romanesque is in the door of the church of San Giusto at Lucca, dating from the twelfth century. The architrave is a grand _intreccio_ of oak branches while the pilasters, which form the door-jambs, have richly-carved capitals of mixed acanthus leaves and Ionic volutes, with a mystic beast clinging to each. The arch superimposed on the architrave has a rich scroll of cherubs and foliage, and it rests on two huge lions. It is altogether a perfect Comacine design.

The next change in the sculpture of the Comacine Masters was the humanization of their sculpture. The rude old carvings of symbolical beasts no longer satisfied them. Christianity had now endured a thousand years and was understood, so that it was no longer needful to use parables and mystic signs. They still made the fronts of their churches Bibles in stone, as they had done before; only the Bible was in a language all could read, _i.e._ the sculptured story. From Adam and Eve to Christ and the Virgin, and even the least of the Saints, the Comacine put all Scripture upon his church. His Bible lay open that all might read.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOOR OF S. GIUSTO AT LUCCA, 12TH CENTURY.

_See page 244._]

The representation of the human figure was at first heavy and disproportionate, but as the centuries pa.s.sed on, it grew in grace; and sculptors were able to express their conceptions more completely.

The animal symbolism did not, however, entirely disappear. It is seen in every quaint fancy of the Gothic artist of the north, in every nave bit of church ornamentation in the south; but it is no longer the object and end of design. It had become subservient; the human figure now took the first place.

In the earlier transition stage, even this actual representation was more or less allegorical. As an interesting instance of the allegorical nature of Comacine sculpture, we may take the relief of the Crucifixion in the cathedral at Parma (third chapel on the right), carved by Benedetto da Antelamo in 1178. In this almost mediaeval relief, the artist has managed to put a symbolical history of the greatest events of his own times--the defeat of Barbarossa, the fall of Victor Antipope, the triumph of Pope Alexander III., the cessation of schism, and the gleams of coming peace on Italy. Around the cross where Christ hangs, he represents the Church as a symbolic personage waving the flag of victory; and the schismatic enemy with his banner broken. Every figure in the composition has its meaning, and the whole displays a thinking mind, even though the hand be still a little heavy and mediaeval. That this is a veritable Comacine work the sculptor himself has chronicled. On the top of the relief is written in the Lombard Gothic characters--

"Anno milleno centeno septuageno Octavo scultor patravit M?se secundo Antelami dictus scultor fuit, hic Benedictus."

An old chronicler of the sixteenth century tells us that this relief once ornamented an ambone or pulpit supported on four columns, which was destroyed in 1566.

Another very interesting work is the font for immersion in S. Frediano at Lucca, sculptured by Maestro Roberto in the twelfth century. The figures which surround it are as usual full of meaning but grotesque in proportion; though one can see in the draperies a foreshadowing of that return to cla.s.sicality which Niccol Pisano afterwards advanced towards perfection. We have here a queer representation of Adam and Eve, both clad in cla.s.sical garments and standing by a conventional fig tree, out of which looks the head of the Eternal Father in a cloud like a medallion. Eve is clutching the tail of a monstrous serpent. In the next compartment the four Evangelists carry their emblems on their shoulders. St. Mark, with his lion, sits in a curule chair, and looks like a Roman Prefect, mediaevalized. St. John has his eagle standing on a Roman altar beside him, while St. Matthew carries the child on his shoulder like a St. Christopher. As the work of a forerunner of Niccol Pisano in the same brotherhood, the font is intensely interesting.

The cathedral at Beneventum (one of the Lombard dukedoms) has some beautiful Comacine arabesques on the pilasters of the great door. We give an ill.u.s.tration from one of them. The interlaced maze is formed by a conventional vine, in the branches of which are symbolical animals. Here is the Lamb of G.o.d, signed as divine and eternal by numberless circles all over it. The eagle, symbol of faith, is strangling sin in the form of a serpent; above, is a calf, emblem of the Christian, overcoming evil in the form of a bird of prey. In meaning, the intention is the same as the old sculptures on San Michele, executed six centuries previously; but speaking technically, sculpture as an art has advanced greatly. There is rich and clear relief, and intelligibility of design in this work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PILASTER OF THE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BENEVENTUM, 12TH CENTURY.

_See page 246._]

Symonds,[192] speaking of this stage of art, says--"The so-called Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood (it was a childhood which grew and developed into virility, however), fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrevocable past. It is true indeed that unknown mediaeval carvers had shown an instinct for the beautiful, as well as great fertility of grotesque invention. The facades of Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and sometimes forcibly dramatic groups of animals and men in contest; and contemporaneously with Niccol Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the north were adorning the facades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of loveliness. Yet the founder of a line of progressive artists had not arisen, and except in Italy the conditions were still wanting under which alone the plastic arts could attain independence." Here Symonds goes on to speak of Niccol Pisano, as the fountain-head of sculpture.

And now we can no longer evade the knotty question of who and what Niccol was, where did he arise from, and where was he trained in art?

There are always those conflicting doc.u.ments which Milanesi found to be reconciled. The first, in the archives of the Opera di S. Jacopo at Pistoja, dated July 11, 1272, which runs--_Magister Nichola pisa.n.u.s, filius Petri de_--(here is an illegible word which Ciampi reads as _Senis_[193]). He chose this reading because another doc.u.ment dated November 13, 1272, styles "Niccol" Magister Nichola, quondam Petri de (Senis) Ser Blasii pisa ... (_hiatus_).

Milanesi, however, who found at Siena the contract for Niccol's pulpit there, dated October 5, 1266, says the word _Senis_ should be read _Sancti_, for in the Sienese contract the words are plainly--_Magister Niccolus de parroccia ecclesie sancti Blasii de ponte de Pisis, etc. etc._ In another doc.u.ment also at Siena, in which Niccol is commanded to send for his pupil Arnolfo to work with him, we get _Magistrum Nicholam de Apulia_. In two others of the next year, _Magister Niccholus olim Petri lapidum de Pisis_. Now all this is very puzzling, and yet being doc.u.mentary it must all be true. We will put Siena entirely out of the question, the word proving to be a misreading of _Sancti_, so that instead of the second doc.u.ment meaning Niccol son of the late Peter son of Ser Blasius or Biagio of Siena, it must read Niccol son of Peter of the parish of St. Blasius at Pisa. We have then the two different nationalities of his father Pietro--Pisa and Apulia--to account for. Milanesi suggests that Apulia means a little place near Lucca called Puglia.

The further light we have found thrown on the peregrinations of _Magistri_ of the guild may a.s.sist us to reconcile the conflicting statements. It is certain, as we said before, that Niccol Pisano was a _Magister_ of the guild, and being a man of genius he became one of its most important members. His membership was moreover hereditary; his father had been also a _Magister lapidum_. Now the Comacines had a lodge in Apulia, from the time of the Longobards, and traces of it still remained after 1100, in a small colony in the valley of aeterno, which preserved as a kind of monopoly the art of building.[194]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAPTISMAL FONT IN CHURCH OF S. FREDIANO, LUCCA. BY MAGISTER ROBERTO, 12TH CENTURY.

_See page 246._]

The church of S. Sofia at Beneventum, A.D. 788, and the monastery of S. Pietro were built by them, as well as the later cathedrals of Trani, Bari, and Ruvo. The latter still retains its ancient Lombard facade covered with figures of animals, the portal being flanked by columns surmounted by a fine rose window. When the Normans succeeded the Longobards and Saracens in Apulia, the Masonic Guild was still more busy there, and it was very probable that Pietro the sculptor worked in Apulia under the Norman dynasty, with many of his brethren. I am told that there is in Bari cathedral a pulpit of the same form as that by Niccol, but of an earlier date. This is a significant proof of Niccol's early training in Apulia, probably under his own father, as was the custom of the guild. It would also account for the Saracenic touch in his arches and ornamentation. The lions under the columns were used by the Masonic Guild a century before Niccol's time, so it is evident they were not, as Ruskin and others suppose, borrowed from the Saracens by Niccol. There is a most interesting pulpit of the older square form at Groppoli near Pistoja, dated 1194, with lions beneath the pillars. It offers one of the very early specimens of the sculptured scriptural story. The panels represent the "Nativity of Christ" and the "Flight into Egypt," both most navely designed. The square pulpit of Guido da Como in S.

Bartolommeo at Pistoja is dated A.D. 1250, and shows the immense improvement art had made in those sixty years. In some ways Guido da Como quite equals Niccol. He does not strain after the cla.s.sic, but there is great and simple dignity, and even grace in his figures, some of which are almost worthy of Fra Angelico. It was ten years after Guido's lion-pillared pulpit was finished, that we find Niccol--who had for some years been working at Pisa, where he was then domiciled--sculpturing his famous pulpit there, and though altering the form from square to octagon, using the same symbolism, and in many ways the same treatment of his subject, as Guido had done before him.

It would be a suggestive proof of the same influence in training, to compare the panels representing the Nativity, in the three pulpits.

The Lombard one at Groppoli, Guido da Como's at Pistoja, and Niccol's at Pisa, and one might add a fourth, _i.e._ Giovanni Pisano's pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja, which is in some respects an advance on his father's design, although it is evidently not only inspired, but almost copied from it. There are in all four, the same kind of _lectis_ for bed, the same cows, out of perspective, high up in the background, and in the two last the same treatment of drapery. In some ways, however, Niccol has pa.s.sed far beyond Guido. While Guido followed his forefathers' traditions, Niccol had been first revelling in the richness of Saracenic types in Apulia, and then living among the cla.s.sic spoils of Pisa, where Diotisalvi had worked before him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULPIT IN THE CHURCH OF GROPPOLI NEAR PISTOJA. A.D.

1194.

_See page 249._]

His school at Pisa inaugurated a revival which was to change art for all the world. Yet it was only a step and not a sudden leap. He was no ancestorless genius springing from darkness and chaos, but a link in the chain of art from which in him a new strand departed, leading towards Donatello and Ghiberti. He took the forms of his sect, but improved and freed them; he held to the traditional symbolism of his guild, but cla.s.sicized and enriched it. His greatest advance was in the modelling of the human figure, and here his cla.s.sic models helped him. One suspects that he depended much on those models, for where he had no antique to copy from, he degenerated into the mediaevalism of his fraternity. The mixture of the two styles is very apparent in the different panels of his pulpit, some of which look as if they had come from Antonine's column, while others are heavier and less graceful by far than Guido da Como's simple natural figures. The fact was, that in his time the whole guild was developing under the freer conditions of art, and Niccol was one of its leading masters, and endowed with especial talent.

With him the Romanesque period closes, and the Italian Gothic begins.

Led by him the Comacines in Tuscany left the rude, distorted images and meaningless monsters behind, and marched on towards the perfection of sculpture of the human form as shown by Donatello and Michael Angelo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULPIT IN SIENA CATHEDRAL. BY NICCOL PISANO. A.D.

1266.

_See page 250._]

Among the Comacines in Lombardy the same change was in progress.

Jacopo Porrata, working at nearly the same time, carved the life-like prophets and bas-relief on the facade of the cathedral of Cremona, which bears the legend, "Magister Jacobus Porrata de c.u.mis fecit hanc rotam MCCLXXIIII."

Antonio de Frix of Como, working in concert with Meo di Checco, carved the beautiful roof of the Duomo at Ferrara, while other Masters were sculpturing sacred stories on pulpits and doorways, vestibules and decorations in many a church which their forerunners had built.

With the development of the Gothic, the guild again changed the style of their ornamentation.

The pointed gable over the circular arch was one of the first signs of this change. You see it in Siena, Orvieto, Florence, and the fourteenth-century porches in Lombardy.

The gable gave an opening for statuary, floriated crockets, and ornate pinnacles; the pointed arch opened a way to beautiful tracery; the upward shaft and pilaster afforded s.p.a.ce for the ornate tabernacle or saint-filled niche; for the sculptor-architect never let an inch go plain which could be effectively sculptured.

Between the solid Lombard round arch and the pointed traceried one stands the cusping of the circular arch. Ruskin credits Niccol Pisano also with this; saying grandiloquently that "in the five cusped arches of Niccol's pulpit you see the first Gothic Christian architecture ... the change, in a word, for all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens cathedral. For Italy it means the rise of her Gothic dynasty--it means the Duomo of Milan instead of the Temple of Paestum."[195] This is very poetic, but it will not bear a.n.a.lysis.

The cusps of Niccol's arches were by no means the first to be seen in Italy; we find them in several churches of the twelfth century; and as for Amiens cathedral, that was nearly completed when Niccol's pulpit was carved.