18. ITALIAN BRICKWORK: 1. 2. Windows at Verona. 3. Cornice S. Ambrogio, Milan. 4. Cornice Broletto Brescia. 5. Windows in Broletto, Monza. 6. Wall Arcade S. Fermo Maggiore.18. ITALIAN BRICKWORK:1. 2. Windows at Verona.4. Cornice Broletto Brescia.3. Cornice S. Ambrogio, Milan.5. Windows in Broletto, Monza.6. Wall Arcade S. Fermo Maggiore.
there which I did not succeed in reaching,[23]and there is one dedicated in honour of S. Thomas of Canterbury, which is not, however, otherwise of any interest; it has a very late Gothic west front, of poor character.
It is impossible to walk about Verona without meeting at every turn with windows whose design is similar to those so often seen in Venice, but the execution and arrangement are generally so inferior here to what they are there, that I shall defer saying much about them until I am describing the palaces and ancient buildings of Venice. They are almost always finished with ogeed trefoils at the top, and are arranged singly, or in couples or more together, and one above the other, the same in each story of the house; their mouldings are thin and reedy, and the carving of their finials, when they have any, is very poor. Examples of these windows will be seen by most travellers in the rooms of the Albergo delle Due Torre.
DOMESTIC WINDOW—VERONA.DOMESTIC WINDOW—VERONA.
The views from the bridges across the Adige are very striking. The main part of the city is on the right bank, and the river describes nearly a semi-circle round it. The opposite bank is only partially built over, and has a largish suburb, upon rather rapidly rising ground; beyond this the walls of the city are seen with occasional towers, and markedall the way by their serrated battlements climbing the irregular outline of the hills in the boldest fashion. Then crossing over to the other side and turning round, you see the thickly-built city full of towers and churches rising far above the turmoil of the crowd below into the pure sky, and, by their number and size, making Verona one of the most striking old cities I know.
Of course no one goes to Verona without thinking of Romeo and Juliet. I fear, however, that when I was shown the Casa de’ Cappelletti, a small inn in a narrow street, and asked to connect it in any way for the future with the creation of Shakespeare’s brain, my fancy refused to be sufficiently lively to perform the required feat. The simple fact is that, real relics not existing, the good people of Verona have wisely met the demand which Shakespeare has created, and have discovered a tomb for Juliet, and other reminiscences of the fair Veronese, which I dare say satisfy very well the majority of travellers.
At Verona, as in the other towns through which we passed in Italy, we were quite astonished at the number of misshapen dwarfs that we saw; we could not account for this at first, but I suppose it is because children, until they can walk, are tied up in rolls of linen so stiffly as to deprive them of all power of motion. The only wonder is how any of these unfortunate children ever manage to walk at all.
In the courts of the houses at Verona there are generally wells, with ingeniously contrived arrangements for enabling the occupants of the various surrounding houses and balconies to let down their buckets for water without themselves going down to the wells. There are guide-ropes to the well from each angle of the courts round which the houses are usually built, along which the buckets run, suspended by rings and held by ropes from the balconies, until they reachthe iron-work over the well, and then fall perpendicularly down to the water.
I have visited Verona many times, and each visit seems to me to give greater pleasure than the last. I fear I have given but a faint idea of the indescribable charm which it has to all who are fond of early art. There is little which one can compare with the situation and surroundings of such cities as Venice and Florence, and yet I suppose most travellers would agree with me in reckoning the interest of these three towns as not far from equal, and greater in very many ways than that of any other Italian cities.
On this first journey we were driven away by bad weather which, when it sets in, generally continues for several days, and we left, inwardly resolving that no long time should elapse before we returned—a resolution which has been abundantly and often fulfilled—and as the waiter at our hotel honestly told us that we should be very likely to find fine weather at Padua, whither we were next to journey, we took his advice, and then, getting into an omnibus contrived to hold thirty persons, and I should say at least twenty feet long, with four horses harnessed with long drawn-out traces to increase the already prodigious length, we were soon at the terminus of the Verona and Venice railway.
“‘And whither journeying?—‘To the holy shrineOf Saint Antonio in the city of Padua.’”Rogers.
“‘And whither journeying?—‘To the holy shrineOf Saint Antonio in the city of Padua.’”Rogers.
“‘And whither journeying?—‘To the holy shrineOf Saint Antonio in the city of Padua.’”Rogers.
Neighbourhood of Verona—Vicenza: Cathedral—San Lorenzo—Santa Corona—Pallazzo della Ragione—Gothic Palaces—Palladio’s works—Teatro Olympico—Padua: Giotto’s Chapel—The Eremitani—Sant’Antonio—The Duomo.
Neighbourhood of Verona—Vicenza: Cathedral—San Lorenzo—Santa Corona—Pallazzo della Ragione—Gothic Palaces—Palladio’s works—Teatro Olympico—Padua: Giotto’s Chapel—The Eremitani—Sant’Antonio—The Duomo.
MANYof the villages near Verona are remarkable for the remains of castles of the middle ages. I have never, however, been able to find time for the examination of any of them, and, judging from hurried views which I have had of three or four castles south of Verona, I suspect that they would scarcely repay a longdétour; they seem generally to be more remarkable for their general contour, and their quaint forked battlements, than for any of that delicate detail and appliance to ordinary wants which it was especially my object to see and study.
The railroad from Verona to Vicenza and Padua is not interesting; the country is beautiful and luxuriant in detail, but rather tame, flat, and over-green in the general view. The Veronese mountains, however, are in view on the north, and as one approaches Vicenza the hills throw out their spurs into the flat country, covered with vineyards, orchards, and fruit trees; village follows close upon village, each with its white church and white campanile, contrasting strangelywith the rich colour above and around, and at last the towers and roofs of Vicenza are descried on our left.
And is it possible, my readers will exclaim, that you, an architect, can have dared to pass within sight of Vicenza without making long sojourn there to drink in the lessons which the works of your great master Palladio are there to instil! Even so, reader; for in this world there are unhappily two views of art, two schools of artists—armies of men fighting against each other; the one numerous, working with the traditions and rules of their masters in the art, exclusive in their views, narrow in their practice, and conventional in all their proceedings, to the most painful forgetfulness of reality either in construction or in ornament; the other young and earnest, fighting for truth, small in numbers, disciples of nature, revivers of an art to all appearance but now all but defunct, yet already rising gloriously above the traditional rules of three centuries. The one class representing no new idea, breathing no new thought, faithful to no religious rule; the other rapidly endeavouring to strike out paths for themselves as yet untrodden, gathering thoughts from nature, life from an intense desire for reality and practical character, faithful moreover to a religious belief, whose propagation will be for ever the great touchstone of their work. The one class, the disciples of Palladio, journeying towards Vicenza with a shew of reverence to learn how he built palaces of compo with cornices of lath and plaster, already in two short centuries falling to decay, wretched and ruinous! the other stopping long at Verona, dreaming over the everlasting art of the monuments of the Scaligers, and of the nave of Sta. Anastasia, still, though five centuries have passed with all their storms about their heads, fresh and beautiful as ever, fit objects of veneration for the artist in all ages!
A disciple, therefore, of the last of these two schools,I stayed not longer at Vicenza than was necessary to satisfy myself of the truth of the charges against Palladio’s work there, and to note the few, but interesting, mediæval remains. The situation of the city is beautiful. Near it to the north are mountain ranges, and where these descend into the plains there are smaller hills covered everywhere with luxurious vegetation. The first view of it is also very fine. In front is the old brick tower at the Porta di Castello, with its deep brick machicoulis sloping boldly outwards, and finished with a square battlement under a flat roof. Beyond this are seen the steeples of the city, and highest among them the Torre dell’ Orologio, a tall slender brick tower in the Piazza dei Signori, in the centre of the town. The most important Gothic churches are the Cathedral, San Lorenzo, and Santa Corona. They seem all to be in very much the same style—one derived no doubt from Venice, as we shall see when we arrive there. The plans usually are of this kind. The bays of the nave are square in plan, those of the aisles oblong in the direction of the length of the church, the choirs apsidal, and the chapels on each side of them also apsidal, but with an equal number of sides so that there is an angle in the centre. The transepts are square-ended, the sacristy at the end of one of them, and the tower at the side of the chancel aisles. The Cathedral departs from the type of plan just mentioned, but is, I think, the only exception to the rule. It has a very wide nave without aisles some 55 or 60 feet in the clear, but it has been so much repaired and altered that it is now very uninteresting. Good effect is obtained by the very great elevation of the altar which is raised above a crypt, the entrance to which is by flights of steps on each side of the steps which lead up to the choir. The exterior is mainly of brick save at the west end, which has an arcade of stone with a doorway in the centre division.
19. PORTA DI CASTELLO. VICENZA. p. 128.19. PORTA DI CASTELLO. VICENZA.p. 128.
This kind of west front is repeated in the more interesting church of San Lorenzo, which is finished with one vast gable in front of nave and aisles, and has for its lower stage an arcade of seven divisions, with a fine pointed doorway occupying the three central arches. This part of the front is mainly of stone, with enriched members round the arches in brick, and it is divided from the upper stage by a corbel-table. The gable is of brick with a large stone circular window in the centre, and five smaller circular windows following the line of the flat gable which crowns the whole. I was not much impressed by this design, the only virtue of which is a certain amount of simplicity and breadth.
The interior of San Lorenzo is lofty and spacious. The nave and aisles alone measure about 150 feet by 90, and there are spacious transepts, choir, and chapels. The columns are circular, and have capitals so badly carved that it is somewhat difficult to say whether they have shells or tufts of foliage for enrichment. Very small circular windows in the clerestory, and a groined roof, complete the design. The best portion of the exterior is, I think, the elevation of the bays of the nave aisles. Here there are two simple trefoiled lancets with a shallow buttress between them, and a circular window above in each bay. This design is refreshingly pure and simple. The steeple is on the east side of the north transept. It is of six stages in height, the stages being marked by slightly sunk panels, and corbel-tables under string-courses, which are formed by a pattern in the bricks, not by any projecting moulding, so that the straight outline of the steeple is not broken. The result is not particularly good.
Santa Corona has, like the other churches, a single gable in front of the nave and aisles, with a western doorway and a large circular window above. I have a recollection of it as of one of the most ungainly of fronts. The campanilehere is much like that of San Lorenzo, but has a low octagonal belfry-stage finished with a small circular brick spire.
Santa Corona may well be more visited, for a picture by John Bellini than for its own merits. This is a picture over one of the altars in the north aisle representing the Baptism of Our Lord—one so quiet and beautiful in colour, so dignified and solemn in its design, that it is impossible to admire it too much. Behind the group of angels who hold Our Lord’s garments, is a mountain landscape such as one sees from Vicenza. It is a sublime work. The marble reredos is coeval with the picture: it is furnished with two low screen walls right and left of the altar, a common and proper arrangement for its protection when, as here, the altar stands in the aisle itself and not in a chapel.
I did not find any other church worth noticing, and soon made my way to the Palazzo della Ragione. The great feature of this building is the enormous hall, no less than 72 feet wide inside, and covered with a great arched timber roof boarded on the under side, and divided into vertical panels by bold ribs painted black and white. This roof is held together by two tiers of iron ties, and being arched and boarded at the end as well as at the sides, has somewhat the look of the inverted hull of a great ship. The effect is imposing, though at the same time it is somewhat gloomy, owing to the absence of all high light.
This great hall was Gothic inside and out until Palladio cased the front with open arcades, standing out from the walls and entirely concealing from below the old windows. These were large single lights with moulded jambs, but not of very good style. The original staircase remains with good marble shafted balustrades. The old work here is said to have been done before the year 1444, the hall having been burnt in 1389. This date is of some importance, as the walls of the upper portion are faced like the upper stage
20. CONTRADA PORTO. VICENZA. p. 13120. CONTRADA PORTO. VICENZA.p. 131
of the Ducal Palace at Venice, with marble arranged in a diaper.
The slender and lofty tower of brick which rises at one end of the building, the two Venetian columns (Vicenza became subject to Venice in 1404), and the Palazzo itself, in spite of its small architectural merit, combine to make a charming picture, rendered more beautiful when I saw it, by the animated crowd of peasants who filled the Piazza. The streets here are very picturesque, rather in spite of Palladio and Scamozzi than in consequence of what they did. Some of them are arcaded, and the Gothic houses are still very numerous. They are all, however, of late date—at least I saw none earlier than about 1350. They are of the same design as some of the well-known Venetian palaces, only here they rise out of narrow streets, instead of as they do there from the water. The usual arrangement is to have on the ground floor a single doorway, not necessarily central, and on thepiano nobilea fine traceried window with balconies in the centre, single windows also with balconies near the angles, and intermediate windows of the same design but without balconies. These are always treated in the same way with small shafts, and with animals seated on their angles, and are supported on bold corbels. All the carving that I saw was weak and confused in outline, and poor in detail, and the capitals are generally too large for the arch mouldings which rest on them—a common fault in Italian Gothic work.
I give a view in the Contrada Porto which illustrates two of the best of these houses. Almost the whole of this street happens to consist of houses of the same age, and one of them has on one side of its internal courtyard open arcades on each story, the upper one having its balustrades remaining between the columns, similar in design to those in window-balconies.
In their original state most of these houses seem to have been left in red brick, the windows being of stone, with thin white marble slabs fitted into the spandrels above the arches. Projecting balls of marble are often fixed in front of this marble lining. Some houses seem, however, to have been plastered almost from the first with a view to painting, and I can hardly say a word against such a plan, with the recollection of the glowing—in spite of their being faded—tints which one still sees at Brescia, Genoa, and elsewhere in Italy. But where the house has architectural features, which are at all good of their kind, the painter is very apt to ignore them entirely in his work, so that what was meant to be a good piece of architectural work, becomes in the end a badly cut-up ground for a painting. Where there is no architectural detail to be spoilt, any amount of painting may be lavished on an external wall; and I know few examples which better show with how much good effect it may be done than the great house of the Fugger family in Augsburg, which many Italian tourists now-a-days may see and admire on their way to or from Italy. The other objection to external painting is its evanescent character; but good colour is beautiful even in its decay, and I suppose the best artist will paint what will do most good to his own generation, and trust to his successors for doing as much for their own times!
One of the most fanciful houses in Vicenza is the Casa Rigafetta, below the Palazzo Pubblico. The ornaments are not pure, and there is too much straining to make the most of an opportunity by putting everything possible into a small space, but still the whole is decidedly pretty. The balconies here are in plan half a quatrefoil. Near this house is one with carved angle-shafts, a feature which I do not remember to have seen in Venice.
Palladio’s works are supposed now to be the glory ofVicenza. I cannot forgive the artist who did not care to give solidity to his work, and the power of executing a vast amount of enrichment in the cheapest way, and with the commonest materials, is about the greatest snare into which an architect can allow himself to fall. I am well aware that Palladio was not the inventor of trumpery modes of construction. His admirers might quote the architects of Pompeii fifteen hundred years before him, as offenders in the same way, and the curious preservation of their works as the justification of their offence; but Palladio followed after men of his own kind and craft who for centuries had studiously endeavoured to do their work honestly, and he deserves, therefore, all the hostile criticism of those who object to a revival of bad practices which in our own day and country have done more real damage to architecture than anything else that can be named.
One only of Palladio’s works interested me, and this rather as a curious experiment than as a work of art. This is the Teatro Olimpico, a famous open-air theatre. There is first of all a semi-circular auditorium open to the sky, and only remarkable for a mean arrangement of pilasters at the back. The great object of interest is the stage, on which a permanent scene has been constructed by Palladio. In order to make this look much larger than it really is, the streets, palaces, and temples which are represented are built in perspective. To accomplish this the stage rises very rapidly, the buildings are squeezed up, and built in sharp perspective, so that in the end a triumphal arch, which is really forty feet from the front, looks as if it were four hundred. Should an actor by any chance so far forget himself as to walk into what looks like a practicable street, in a minute he would find himself able to shake hands with the statue on the top of the arch, the illusion would be entirely destroyed, and the scenery would all look likea collection of dolls’ houses. As an ingenious deception from one point of view, and under certain conditions, the scheme is successful, and probably this is as much as Palladio himself would have claimed for it.
We had now seen all that we cared to see in Vicenza, and gladly found ourselves againen route. There was nothing to see on the road, and we were not sorry when our engine gave token by its whistle of our approach to Padua. The omnibus discharged us in a few minutes at the hospitable doors of the Stella d’Oro, and we were soon out again with the view of making the most of our time.
Padua, when I first saw it, seemed to me to be a most melancholy city; grass grew in the streets, the footways were all formed under dark and dismal arcades, and not only the externals of the half-occupied palaces, but those even of all the houses, looked squalid, dirty, and miserable; nor was there any relief when one got into the more open spaces, for the large piazze on either side of the Palazzo della Ragione, or townhall, looked as squalid and uncared-for, as dirty and unprepossessing, as they well could; nor was this universal squalor rendered at all less remarkable by the fact that Padua rejoices in a caffè, which is said to surpass any other even in Italy, for its smartness; and the array of well-dressed gentlemen who frequented it, certainly made the neighbourhood look more wretched by contrast than it otherwise would.
The Caffè Pedrocchi was however soon passed, and our first object was the Palazzo della Ragione, whose vast and singular hall, about two hundred and fifty feet long by ninety feet wide, is one of the greatest architectural curiosities in the city. Its exterior has been modernized, so that now it is only remarkable for its long expanse of roof, but the interior is still in its original state. The access to the Hall, which in this and other respects much resembles that at Vicenza, is from external arcades on the first floor, to whichfour staircases lead from below. The walls are low, and covered with paintings arranged in arcaded panels; some of these are said to be by Giotto, and the whole of them, I believe, were at any rate painted in his time, but have probably been repaired and retouched extensively long since. The windows are small, low down in the walls, and admit scarcely more than sufficient light for the lower part of the hall. The roof shews in section a vast pointed arch of timber, boarded and divided into panels by a succession of heavy vertical ribs scarcely at all moulded. The construction is obviously so weak as, from the very first, to have made the iron ties which hold it all together absolutely necessary. A curious feature in the design is, that instead of having gable walls the roof is hipped, and shews therefore at the end just the same section as at the sides. What little light finds its way into the dark obscurity of the roof is admitted through some small dormers high up in its framework. The effect of the hall is gloomy, and, compared to our own great halls, certainly shows some lack of knowledge of construction on the part of its architect, and its bald heaviness makes it absurd to compare it to our own noble Westminster hall, though their very similar dimensions might naturally tempt us to do so. It dates from about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the story runs that it was designed by a certain Frate Giovanni, who, travelling in India, saw the roof of a great palace the construction of which so pleased him that he brought back drawings of it with him, and erected its fellow here in Padua. How much truth there is in this tradition I cannot say, but this much seems clear, that in some way Padua has, if not a very beautiful, at any rate a very remarkable Sala, and one which is quite unlike any other room in Europe, with the single exception of the corresponding room at Vicenza, which no doubt copied from it.
It has been burnt and damaged in one way and another repeatedly since it was first built, and in the course of the restorations the paintings on the walls have been excessively damaged, in many parts repainted, and in some obliterated altogether. The work was commenced at any rate, if not completed, just at the time that Dante and Giotto were together in this part of Italy. The walls are all divided into four panels in height by borders, with painted pilasters for vertical divisions, and the panels are generally arched and cusped. The paintings include the apostles, the signs of the zodiac, representations of the months, the planets, and the constellations. The whole scheme is far too complex to be intelligible without a key. This fortunately is accessible in the very careful and complete account of all the subjects of the paintings on the walls which was prepared in 1858 by Mr. W. Burges, and printed in the ‘Annales Archéologiques.’ With infinite pains he made out the meaning of the whole of the figures—no light task, as the walls being divided by painted borders and arcades into several stages in height and an almost interminable number in length, spaces are provided for some four hundred subjects.[24]
At one end of the hall was the chapel of San Prodoscimo, formed I presume by screens. The judges sat round the hall, forming so many courts in one room. At the opposite end was a cage or prison, so that here, under one roof, with walls covered with illustrations, sat all the courts of Padua, without any of those ingenious divisions and subdivisions which are now necessary for the administration of the very smallest sort of justice, and it may be hoped with as much honesty as there certainly was simplicity.
Now-a-days the hall is quite unused save as a receptacle for lumber, of which the most remarkable example is theremnant of a gigantic horse made by Donatello to travel on rollers in some old Paduan pageant.
From the Palazzo della Ragione, we found our way to what must, so long as it lasts, be the great glory, as it is the chief charm, of Padua—Giotto’s Chapel, founded in 1303.
ARENA CHAPEL—PADUA.ARENA CHAPEL—PADUA.
This stands in private grounds and on one side of a desolate green walk which leads up to a private house to which it now forms an appendage. From the first it was a little private chapel, and in no respect remarkable for size or costliness of material or design. The plan is a simple oblong nave with an apsidal chancel, and a sacristy on the north side, and nothing can be simpler than the exterior. The walls are of brick, divided into bays by narrow pilasters. The west door is round arched, as are also the windows. The interior is even more simple; the whole nave has not a moulding, thewalls are continued on into the semicircular ceiling without any cornice, and all the ornament is added in colour.
The windows all have a deep splay outside, very simple stone traceries, and glass fitted to wooden frames placed inside against the stonework. There seem also to have been shutters outside, for which the hooks still remain. A sort of penthouse, or perhaps a cloister-roof was carried along in front of the chapel, but of this nought remains but the corbels which carried it. There is no more to be said about the exterior than that it is simple and good of its kind—the kind being very humble.
Let us go inside, and we shall pass a very different verdict. Giotto is to many of us not only a person singularly gifted in a great age, but in some sort the embodiment of an idea. The idea is that of an artist, pure, simple, and direct in his work, who should excel equally in all the arts, and show—even though his work be an exception to all rules—the consummate success of such a course. The man was fortunate in his day and in his friends. Here, where we stand to admire, he painted, whilst probably Dante looked on. For merely human and artistic interest there is, therefore, no room which more rightly deserves to be the object of endless pilgrimages; and there is none in which one will find the artist more faithful to his calling, more full of recollection and self-restraint than in this.
I know, therefore, no one building, of such very small size and cost, which can claim the same degree of interest as this small Chapel of the Arena. It is, indeed, one of the glories of art that the works of its great masters cannot diminish in value, or even be competed with by subsequent masters: when once done, they are done for ever; and so the Pietà of Giotto, in this little chapel at Padua, is now—as it was when first painted in the commencement of the fourteenth century, and as it will continue to be so long asthe neglect with which it is now treated allows it to exist—one of the great paintings of the world, one of those fountains from which school after school and age after age of artists may drink instruction and knowledge, and never fail to gain more, the more they study its many excellences, and its intensity of feeling and conception.
SIDE WINDOW—ARENA CHAPEL.SIDE WINDOW—ARENA CHAPEL.
The architectural portion of the interior may be first of all described. The apse is simply a sanctuary, and the chancel is formed by marble screens on each side of the nave, leaving a broad entrance-way between them, and enclosing about one-third of its length. Against the west side of these screens are altars, each with a small carved marble reredos; whilst on the east of them are steps leading to the two ambons; that on the north being a book-rest, carved in marble, and fixed with its face to the east; that on the south of iron, and turning upon a pivot. Between these screens and the sanctuary arch are modern stalls on each side. The sanctuary has seats all round the apse (except in the eastern bay), each with a delicate white marble canopy. The sacristy is groined, and has a thirteenth-century press of wood of a design rather curious than beautiful, but very rich in its detail. In the nave, as I have already said, walls have neither cornices nor string-courses to break their even surfaces, and their face is continued on in semicircular waggon vault. There are six lancet windows on the south, none at all on the north, and a three-lightwindow very high up in the gable at the west end above the doorway.
The architectural merit of the building is simply, I think, that it performs satisfactorily the office of giving ample unbroken surfaces of wall for paintings.
The arrangement of these is very regular. The vault is divided into two parts by wide coloured borders, the space between which is painted blue, powdered with gilt stars, and in each bay there are five small medallions with figures on a gold ground. The side walls are divided by borders into three divisions in height; the upper division containing subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin; the central, those illustrative of the life of Our Blessed Lord; whilst those nearest to the ground are representations of the Virtues and Vices opposed to each other; the last division tinted only in one colour, the others richly painted in bright colours upon a field of blue.
The borders which divide the paintings are very well designed, their patterns being always very clearly defined with white leading lines, and a line of red on either side always accompanying each line of white. The paintings themselves are very wonderful; there is an earnestness of purpose and expression about them such as one rarely meets with; each subject is treated with a severe conscientiousness, not always conventionally where a departure from strict rule is for any reason necessary, but still, generally speaking, in accordance no doubt with the ancient traditional treatment. This, illuminated as it is by the thought and love and earnest intensity of feeling which Giotto lavished on all that he did, makes his work here the most perfect example of a series of religious paintings that I have ever seen. Of course in such a large series of subjects there must be great variety of excellence, and I am content to agree with the rest of the world in awarding the palm ofexcellence to the Pietà, in which the expression of intense feeling in the face of the mourners over the body of Our Lord is certainly beyond anything of the kind that I know.
The series is very complete, and, beginning with the history of Joachim before the birth of the Blessed Virgin (the seventh subject), is continued down through the leading acts of Our Lord’s life to the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost;[25]whilst the west wall is occupied by a Last Judgment; and throughout the subjects Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the apostles are always represented in vestments of the same colour.
Most of these paintings are in very perfect condition, and thetout ensembleis nearly as charming as it was when first painted. I was sorry, however, to notice some of the paintings lined all over by a recent copyist, and much damage has been done by damp, especially in the Last Judgment on the west wall. I do not care very much for the painting on the lower part of the walls. The figures of Virtues and Vices are very finely designed, but the imitations of marbles and mouldings painted in perspective were, I hope—being the last work to be finished—done after Giotto had completed his work.
Close to Giotto’s Chapel stands the great, and to an English eye, singular church of the Eremitani. It has a very broad nave of immense length, unbroken by aisles, and roofed withone of the cusped roofs already noticed at Verona, in which the real construction is (with the exception of the tie-beams) entirely concealed by boarding on the under side; this boarding being generally arranged in a succession of large cusps or curves; the effect here is, I think, very heavy and unsatisfactory, but we must bear in mind that the span is prodigious, and the pitch of the roof very flat. The chancel and an aisle on either side of it open into the east end of the nave with three arches, and look so small as to be more like mere recesses than important integral parts of the plan. There are in this church a great many frescoes and paintings of much interest—among which are some by Mantegna in a chapel on the south side of the nave which are worthy of careful study as being, probably beyond almost any other wall paintings which exist, an evidence of the fact that interest in treatment of subject, drawing and design of consummate excellence, perspective and decorative colouring of the walls, may all be included in a fresco without interference with the wall surface, or indulgence in tricks of chiaroscuro, without which no painter now seems willing to do his work. Yet if Mantegna cheerfully accepted such rules for his wall-painting, would it be beneath modern painters to do the same for theirs, and could they ask for a better teacher or guide than this consummate artist?
Less interesting to the artist than these works of Mantegna are the paintings in the apse executed by Guarienti in the middle of the fourteenth century. Here are figures of the planets: the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter, each with allegorical figures, male and female, of the Seven Ages of Man influenced by the planets.[26]
At the west end of the nave is a great painted Rood, oneof those curiously shaped crosses meant to receive a painting of the Crucifixion instead of a carved figure, and cut round with quaintly carved and crisped indentations, of which so many examples remain, though they are generally found now in picture galleries. This no doubt stood originally on a Rood beam, where one sees such a Rood represented in one of the wall paintings in the upper church of S. Francis at Assisi.
When I was last at Padua the west front of this church was being repaired—a very dangerous and terrible operation in Italy, where, so far as I have seen, there is less feeling for, or knowledge of, Gothic architecture than in any other part of Europe. The interior, too, has been ruined by the way in which the old ceiling has been painted, in blue and shaded white. In a building whose characteristic feature is a certain grand simplicity and austerity, it is especially disgusting to see light and tawdry colouring introduced, seeing how completely out of harmony with the whole idea of the church it is.
At the west end are some fine monuments of stone and marble boldly corbelled out from the wall, adorned with good carving of foliage, and angels looking out from circles.
The east end is less altered than any part of the exterior of the building. The immense gable of the nave is divided into four parts, the outer of which have lancet windows, whilst in the centre is an insignificant apse, which is almost exactly repeated on the east side of the south transept. The large sacristy on the north side, and a campanile of not much interest on the same side redeem to some extent what would otherwise have been a most uninteresting elevation. The windows here have a wide external splay, semi-circular arches, and stone trefoil heads inserted rather clumsily under the arches.
What a grand idea it was on the part of the preaching orders to build these enormous naves for their congregations!Here, when enthusiasm for preaching was new born and general, a congregation, numbered rather by thousands than by hundreds, may have gathered round the preacher, all within sight of him, and, with the aid, probably, of an awning stretched across the church over the pulpit, all within sound of his voice.
From the Eremitani we found our way with some difficulty through miserable streets to the church of Sant’ Antonio, probably the most remarkable architectural work in many respects in this part of Italy.
It seems that aboutA.D.1231 it was determined to erect a great church in honour of S. Antony, the patron of Padua, and Nicola Pisano, then one of the most eminent men of his day, was sent for to undertake the work.[27]The view of the exterior which I give, will best serve to shew in how singular and original a manner he accomplished his work. S. Mark’s at Venice must have been in his eye when he designed his church, and the crowd of cupolas which form its roof remind one forcibly of its most distinguishing feature.
On first sight Sant’Antonio certainly does not prepossess the beholder in favour of such a bold departure from every-day rules of art. It is built almost entirely of a light red brick, not much better than the common London brick in colour—a poor material wherewith to attempt the construction of a noble church. Stone is used very sparingly in the voussoirs of the arches and elsewhere. The cupolas are heavy in their effect, but relieved by that over the intersection of the nave and transepts, which rises higher than the others, and is certainly striking in its design and outline, which is, for the main portion of its height, that of a simple cone.
GROUND PLAN—SANT’ANTONIO, PADUA.GROUND PLAN—SANT’ANTONIO, PADUA.
Round and pointed arches are used indiscriminately, and the walls are divided everywhere by pilasters, and surmounted by arcaded corbel-tables, in all these respects giving the building the appearance of being much earlier than it is. The west front is very peculiar, and recalls the fronts of the churches in Vicenza which I have described, and is entirely unlike any of the churches of Pisa, which would hardly have been the case had it really been designed by Nicola Pisano. One great flat gable with an arcaded eaves-cornice finishes the whole, and out of its apex rises a tall polygonal turret, almost as high as the dome in front of which it stands. The lower part of the west front has a central entrance of mean character, and on either side two unequal arches ofconstruction, the walls within which are pierced with windows. Above these, and just beneath the great pediment-like gable, is a long arcade of simple pointed arches, behind which are a passage and three windows opening into the church. This front is a sham front, and not excusable on account of its grandeur or its beauty. Indeed, had it followed the outline of the fabric, it would have been neither ungainly nor heavy, both of which it most assuredly is now.
The interior is striking from its height, but cold in the extreme in effect; the domes are all whitewashed in the brightest and freshest manner. The plan gives three domes to the nave, one and an apse of seven bays to the choir, and one to the transept. The aisles open into the nave with pointed arches—two to each dome. The choir aisle is continued all round the choir, and a chapel is thrown out to the east of this, which is again crowned with a dome.
The north transept contains the chapel of the patron saint, full of gorgeous ornaments of all kinds, but not very ancient. Opposite it, in the south transept, is a curious groined chapel, divided from the church by five pointed and trefoiled arches of yellow marble, resting upon Classical-looking columns, and all very richly painted and inlaid. Above the arches are five statues in niches, and the intermediate wall-surface is inlaid with white and red marble in a regular pattern, such as we have seen in the pavement of Sta. Anastasia at Verona, with very good effect.
The cloister on the south side of the church is very large and good, and some fine arches occur in it, composed of black and yellow marble with bricks of varied colour introduced. On its east side three open arches, filled in with a double iron grille, open into what was, no doubt, the chapter-house. Going from this into a second cloister to the east of it, no one can fail to be struck by the extreme picturesqueness and novelty of the view. In the foreground is the simple
21. SANT’ANTONIO, PADUA. p. 147.21. SANT’ANTONIO, PADUA.p. 147.
pointed-arched and open arcade of the cloister; above this rise the gable of the south transept and the eastern apse with its surrounding aisle, and two lofty octagonal brick turrets, on each side of the apse, which look like minarets from Cairo, and combined with the collections of domes on the roof give a completely Eastern effect to the whole view. If, however, the detail of this striking building is examined, one can hardly be satisfied. There is throughout, as there so often is in Italy, a sad want of skill and neatness in the adjustment of details as compared to what is common in northern Gothic buildings. This indeed is a feature of all the works of the Pisani, and gives them the character—so common and so fatal in modern works—of being to a great extent the work of assistants and not of the master. Nothing can be much more clumsy than the provision for the steps leading to the turrets, nor weaker than the rectangular tracery inserted in the circular window of the transept. This, however, is a work of the middle of the fourteenth century, and Nicola Pisano, even if he were the first architect of the church, would not be responsible for it. I cannot say that I was at all satisfied either with the internal or external effect of the church—though it must be confessed that, when seen from a distance, there is excessive grandeur in the grouping of the multitude of domes, with the steep cone rising in the centre, and giving point and emphasis to the whole.[28]The arrangement of the windows and arches round the apse, for instance, is confused and weak to a degree; and I do not feel that Nicola Pisano has fairly settled the question of the adaptation of the dome to pointed buildings by his treatment of the domes here. The question is still, I think, an open one; and though it may be doubted whether withour present opportunities it will soon be satisfactorily answered, I still feel that it would not be difficult to answer it far more successfully than has been done here.
In the evening we heard some very fine music of ancient character in Sant’Antonio, after which there was a sermon; and though it was a week-day, there was a large congregation, very attentive and quiet.
The Duomo is a cold, unattractive church—said, however, to have been designed by Michael Angelo—and rather bold in the treatment of the pendentives under its dome. By its side stands a Lombard baptistery, the interior of which I did not succeed in getting a sight of; and I believe that I missed some valuable examples of fresco-painting with which its walls and domed roof are covered.
We wandered about the melancholy streets of Padua, searching in vain for objects of any interest to our antiquarian eyes. It is true that the columns and arcades which support the houses are, many of them, ancient; but they are of a character very common throughout the north of Italy, and were not sufficiently novel or striking to draw off our attention from the melancholy and dilapidated look of the houses and shops which they half concealed and half supported. We saw also one or two old monuments at the corners of streets—one of them called the tomb of Antenor—similar in their idea to those which are so frequent in Verona.
The next morning, therefore, saw us making our way to the railway station for Venice, sad only in leaving Padua that we could not spend more time there for the study, more quietly and carefully, of the lovely little Arena Chapel and the paintings of Giotto.