The Cathedral Builders Part 24

The cusping of the round arch came up from the south; it was suggested to the Comacines by the Saracenic architecture, as a variety on their usual twin archlets under a round arch, and was used some time before they adopted the pointed arch.

The first real Italian step to the pointed Gothic began at a.s.sisi, in the hands of Jacopo il Tedesco, and his fellow-countryman, Fra Filippo di Campello, or Campiglione. Jacopo stands to Italian Gothic architecture in the same place as Niccol Pisano stands to Renaissance sculpture. In Italy, the land of cla.s.sic Rome, true Gothic never developed in the form in which we see it further north. Her finest buildings retained in parts the older forms, and with the humanism of the cla.s.sic revival of literature, a cla.s.sic revival of architecture also took place. The Gothic style in Italy was strangled in its infancy by Bramante and Michael Angelo. Even Milan, though a glorious Gothic building, was masked and disfigured by a Renaissance front, with its straight lines and geometric pediments.

The Germans and French, taking the germ from Italy, developed it magnificently; and it is fortunate that they had broken the bonds of the old Masonic brotherhood, and nationalized themselves and their art in time to keep their Gothic forms pure.

If we should attempt to particularize examples of Italian Gothic ornamentation, volumes would not be enough. We will be content with a few instances of sculpture by the Lombard guild at this epoch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RICCARDI PALACE, BUILT FOR LORENZO DEI MEDICI.

(_From a photograph by Giannini, Florence._) _See page 258._]

Some beautiful ill.u.s.trations of their allegorical style are to be seen in studying the capitals of the colonnade of the Ducal Palace at Venice, some of which were by Bartolommeo Buono, son of the fifteenth-century Zambono or Giovanni Buono. We give an ill.u.s.tration of one with allegorical representations of the cla.s.sical G.o.ddesses, Venus, Minerva, and Juno, throned in acanthus leaves. Minerva looks like a mediaeval school-mistress as she teaches Hebe and the Loves, from a ponderous tome. The famous Adam and Eve capital, of which Ruskin writes so eloquently, was probably by the same hand.

Bartolommeo's best carving was in his "Porta della Carta," the door of the Grand Ducal Palace, next San Marco, which is rich in the extreme, and is signed on the architrave "Opus Bartolommei."

Bartolommeo's father, Giovanni Buono, was the head architect of the beautiful "Ca' d'oro," and here the richness of decorative sculpture under florid Gothic forms reaches its height.

The family Buono came from Campione, and I think it probable that this was the same Bartolommeo da Campione whose name is on several of the Gothic capitals of Milan cathedral. We give an ill.u.s.tration of one of them, which is extremely rich in statues and pinnacles.

The rapid march from the early pointed towards florid Gothic sculpture, is evidenced in a remarkable manner by the tombs of the Scaligers in Verona. The monument to Mastino II., who died in 1351, by Magister Porino or Perino, is only a quarter of a century previous to that of Can Grande, who died in 1375, which was by Bonino da Campione.[196] Yet between the two there lies an immense development of style. In Perino's work there are the seeds of all the forms in Bonino's, but in one the Gothic style is undeveloped, in the other it is in full flower.

Perino has his columns; his cusped pointed arches with high gables above them; his tabernacles, pinnacles, and pyramidal roof, with an equestrian statue on the summit; but his lines are simple, direct, and unbroken, though enriched here and there with reliefs and figures. In Bonino's the columns are richly carved, the arches lavishly cusped, the tympanum filled with sculptured medallions. The tabernacles are richer and more emphatically Gothic in their lengthened lines and multiplied pinnacles. The figures even have grown into more true proportions, and are elongated into gracefulness. Every inch of the whole design is foliated and rich to a degree--as beautiful a bit of Gothic sculpture as any German or English cathedral can show, but yet the work of pure Italians, and men of the Comacine Guild.

The sepulchral monument of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the Certosa of Pavia is of an entirely different style to those of the Scaligers. It is princ.i.p.ally the work of Gio. Antonio Amedeo, and has the same ornate Renaissance style as the facade of the Certosa in which he a.s.sisted. An arched base contains the sarcophagus, on which rests the beautiful and dignified figure of the Duke, guarded at head and foot by cla.s.sic angels. Above this is a statue of the Virgin and Child in a central niche, flanked by reliefs of scenes from the life of the Duke.

The whole surface of the marble is covered with sculpture, but of a style removed as far as the poles from the work of the Comacine Guild, 800 years back. There all was life and _navete_, here all is cla.s.sical decorum and convention. Pilasters covered with armour and coats of mail like a Roman trophy, friezes of set garlands and shields like a Roman pediment, vases with conventional plants rising stiffly out of them. The severe architectural lines are straight and unbroken; here are no Gothic pinnacles and graceful shrines, no ornamental gables or pyramids, only the plain arch and pediment cla.s.sically set and correct. The Italians had revived the Roman; and the Renaissance style was the result. Comacine art began with true Roman, and ended with a return to a false cla.s.sicism, that with rule and line crushed out the life of the rich Gothic floriation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOMB OF MASTINO II. DEGLI SCALIGERI, AT VERONA.

SCULPTURED BY MAGISTER PERINO, OF THE MILAN LODGE.

_See page 253._]

FOOTNOTES:

[192] Symonds, _The Renaissance, etc. Fine Arts_, chap. iii. p. 77.

[193] Ciampi, _Notizie inedite della Sagrestia Pistojese_. Firenze.

[194] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. I. chap. v. p. 177.

[195] Ruskin, _Val d'Arno_, p. 17.

[196] This must have been another scion of the Buoni family, probably a small man, and therefore called "Little Buono."

CHAPTER V

CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE ERA

The Comacines were always fine fortress builders from the early times, when they fortified not only their own island and city against the Goths, and against their civil foes at Milan, etc., but also other cities which had foes to keep off. Their towers and forts were so solid and strong that their builders were taken by Justinian to the East to build castles there, with the strong battlemented walls which aroused Procopius's admiration, and which he confesses were called _Castelli_, because that was the Italian name for them.

After the eleventh century, when the Communes were formed, the building of the fortress was less frequent, and the Communal Palace took its place. The guild was always gradual in its adoption of new styles, and the palace of the Podesta or the "Signoria" differed only in form, and not in style, from the older castle. There is the same solid masonry--either _opus Gallic.u.m_ of smoothly-hewn stones fitted with nicety, or _opus Romanum_ of flat wide bricks welded together with cement till they are strong as a Roman wall. There are the same battlements and cornice of arches supported on brackets; and wherever a window is needed, high enough to be safe without an iron grating, it is invariably of the old Lombard form, with its two round arches enclosed in a larger one. There was the same pillared courtyard with its flight of steps to the upper floor. Jacopo Tedesco's Bargello at Florence, his Castle at Poppi, and his Palazzo Pubblico at Arezzo are the most beautiful examples of this style.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPITAL OF A COLUMN IN THE DUCAL PALACE, VENICE.

_See page 253._]

Arnolfo's Palazzo Vecchio, the Palazzo of the Commune at Siena, and the Palazzo Pubblico at Pistoja show the next step towards a less military style. There still remains much of the fortress, in the solidity and rigidity of the masonry below, and the battlemented lines above, but the tower is no longer a solid weapon of war; it becomes an airy ornamental shrine for a peaceful civic bell, that rings for the joys and sorrows of the people.

These buildings may stand as the fair examples of the work of the Masonic Guild for the thirteenth century; in the fourteenth and fifteenth the style changed gradually towards less rigid lines. The windows were widened and cusped, and the arches over the archlets of the windows became pointed; a gable with crockets placed above the windows still further lightened the effect, and emphasized the new Gothic influence. The ancient Palace of the Priors and Palazzo del Popolo, which stand close together at Todi, of which we give an ill.u.s.tration, show this progress in a very marked degree. There is just the difference between the two buildings that there lies between the palace of King Desiderius at S. Gemignano, and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. The Palazzo Pubblico, at Perugia, with its n.o.ble Ringhiera and Loggia, might be taken as the culminating point of Romanesque civil building. Its princ.i.p.al doorway is a masterpiece of Comacine work. The Masters have set their sign of the lion beneath the column, but both lion and pillar are secularized; instead of the ecclesiastic column, here is a square pilaster with niches containing graceful figures of the civic virtues--justice, mercy, fort.i.tude, charity, etc. In the tympanum of the arch stand three bishops, and over the architrave two other lions on brackets mark the spring of the arch. The door is surrounded with course upon course of beautiful mouldings, arabesques, and spirals rich in the extreme. Though exceptionally beautiful, yet if one compares this Palazzo Pubblico of Perugia with other public edifices of its time in Italy, the similarities are such that one cannot deny that a single influence must have dominated them all.

In the Palazzo Pubblico at Udine, which was later, being built in the fifteenth century by Giovanni Fontana of Melide (Master of Palladio) and Matteo his son, we get the link between these Romanesque civil buildings and the Venetian Gothic. The upper windows have still the Lombard columns, but the little arches are more ornately cusped and gothicized. The colonnade forming the Ringhiera is formed of decidedly pointed arches. There is in this a marked affinity to the Venetian architecture, and its origin accounts for it. The Fontanas were much employed at Venice, and worked with the Lombardi, to whom Venice is indebted for so much of her beautiful Gothic civil architecture. In _cinquecento_ times there was a great call on the Masonic Guild for palaces. The republics had begun to fade into princ.i.p.alities, wealth and aristocracy again got the upper hand. The great churches were already built, and so to employ the many great Masters of architecture and sculpture whose families had for generations beautified Italian cities, the dominant families in them vied with each other in palace building.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOORWAY OF THE MUNIc.i.p.aL PALACE AT PERUGIA (1340).

_See page 257._]

In Florence the Medici led the way, the Strozzi following them close.

Then all the other old families, Guicciardini, Rinuccini, Antinori, Borghini, etc., also called in the masters of the Florentine Guild to make them palaces. Cronaca, Sangallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, all names whose ancestors were well known at either Siena, Orvieto, or in Lombardy, made the plans and directed the works. And one who compares these palaces one with another, cannot but confess that different as were the hands that fashioned them, one type and one style shows through them all, which is to say that the architects were all brethren of the same guild, and had received the same training. The Florentine palace bore on its face the imprint of its race; you can trace it gradually from the Brolio of Lombard times, through the mediaeval fortress, and the republican public palace. Here in the Riccardi and Strozzi, the Pitti and Guadagni Palaces, is the same solidity of architecture; but instead of the smooth hewn blocks, the huge stones are left rough, _alla rustica_.[197] Here are the same shaped windows, enlarged and beautified with tracery and mullion in place of the ancient column, but directly derived from the older form. Here is the ancient crown of Lombard archlets diminished into a rich cornice; it is only in the older buildings that the battlements are seen above, as in the Palazzo Ferroni.

In the interior the cortile, with its arched and pillared _loggie_ around it, holds its own in the centre of the building. There is little change of form between the Court of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299 and the Riccardi, Strozzi, and a score of other private palaces of the fifteenth century. The _loggia_, which was such an important feature in the private house of the Republic, is now either relegated to the garden front or the upper storey, where it is a delight to the family itself, and is no longer the public meeting-place. This is a difference entirely depending on a changed state of society.

As in Florence, so it was in Milan, Venice, and other cities where Masonic lodges were established in the great church-building era. The n.o.bles employed the builders whose hands were craving for work. And what palaces they built, and what a wealth of rich Gothic decoration they lavished on them! We are indebted for most of the Venetian Gothic palaces to the Buoni and Lombardi families, whose course we have traced in the chapter on Venice. The Renaissance buildings belong chiefly to the members of the Florentine Lodge, such as Sansovino and San Michele, who went to Venice in the sixteenth century.

At Rome, where the Pope's rule was absolute, there was less palace-building, but the Lombard Guild was employed greatly in their old branch of fortress and bridge building. The Masters Bartolommeo and Bertrando of Como were engaged by Pope Pius II. to strengthen the fortifications of S. Angelo. Maestro Antonio of Como built the Ponte Lucano, Maestro Antonio da Castiglione the Ponte Mammolo and Ponte Molle. Maestro Manfredo da Como was commissioned by Pius II. to build a new fortress on the heights of Tivoli to defend the valley of the Anio from incursions on the Abruzzi side. The following entries from the registers prove Maestro Manfredo's employment there--

"1461. August 12. Twenty-five ducats given to the treasurer by command of his Holiness, to be paid to Maestro Manfred the Lombard, to begin the castle of Tivoli (_roccha di Tiboli_)."

"1462. May 14. To Maestro Manfredino, builder, 200 gold florins on account of the works at the fortress of Tivoli."

"1462. October 6. 400 _ducats di camera_ to Master Manfredino the Lombard, who works at the castle of Tivoli."[198]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALAZZO PUBBLICO AT PERUGIA.

_See page 257._]

Master Manfred with Paolo da Campagnano, both Comacines, built the Ponte Sisto, which has been erroneously attributed to Baccio Pontelli.

Pope Sixtus IV. employed Giovanni di Dolci to build the citadel of Civita Vecchia, which Baccio Pontelli finished after Giovanni's death.

Antonio di Giovanni da Can.o.bbio built the fort at Zolfanella in the same reign, while Francesco di Pietro da Triviago, Francesco da Como, and Giorgio Lombardo were joint architects of the castle at Santa Marmella. So we see that nearly all the papal forts were the work of Lombards connected with the Roman Lodge. In their own native hills the Lombards were doing similar works.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COURT OF THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE. BUILT BY JACOPO "TEDESCO."

_See page 257._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOWER OF PALAZZO VECCHIO AT FLORENCE. DESIGNED BY MAGISTER ARNOLFO.

_See page 257._]

In A.D. 1500 Maestro Jacopo Dagurro da Bissone, who was a most able engineer, constructed a splendid viaduct, forty-eight metres long, over the Natisone, among the rocks and beetling cliffs of Civitale in Friuli.

FOOTNOTES:

[197] This rustic style is carried to an eccentric excess in some buildings of the seventeenth century, such as the Parliament House (Palazzo Monte Citorio) at Rome, and Zucchari's house in Florence. In Monte Citorio the window-sills are hewn and shaped smoothly for half their length, the other half being left in the rough. Zucchari has done the same with his door-lintels and window-panels. The effect is an incongruity, not pleasing to the eye.