“In the elder days of art,Builders wrought with greatest careEach minute and unseen part,For the gods are everywhere.”Longfellow.
“In the elder days of art,Builders wrought with greatest careEach minute and unseen part,For the gods are everywhere.”Longfellow.
“In the elder days of art,Builders wrought with greatest careEach minute and unseen part,For the gods are everywhere.”Longfellow.
Drive from Padua to Ferrara—Monselice—Rovigo—Ferrara: Cathedral—Castle—Gallery—Road to Bologna—Altedo—Bologna: Cathedral—San Petronio—San Domenico—San Giacomo—Sta. Maria Maggiore—San Francesco—San Stefano—Leaning Towers—Casa dei Mercanti—Domestic Remains—Academy—Modena: Cathedral—Parma: Cathedral—Correggio—The Baptistery—Piacenza: The Palazzo Publico—Cathedral—San Francesco—Sant’Antonino—San Giovanni in Canale—Asti: Cathedral—San Secondo—Campanili.
Drive from Padua to Ferrara—Monselice—Rovigo—Ferrara: Cathedral—Castle—Gallery—Road to Bologna—Altedo—Bologna: Cathedral—San Petronio—San Domenico—San Giacomo—Sta. Maria Maggiore—San Francesco—San Stefano—Leaning Towers—Casa dei Mercanti—Domestic Remains—Academy—Modena: Cathedral—Parma: Cathedral—Correggio—The Baptistery—Piacenza: The Palazzo Publico—Cathedral—San Francesco—Sant’Antonino—San Giovanni in Canale—Asti: Cathedral—San Secondo—Campanili.
ANYone who has followed the route from Venice to Milan described in the last chapter will do well, instead of following it on a subsequent visit, to make adétourfrom Padua to Ferrara and Bologna and thence by Parma, Modena, and Piacenza to Milan. I shall give some notes of such a journey in this chapter, the towns visited on the road completing the subject which I have set before me in this volume, and leaving no important city north of the Apennines, save Ravenna, undescribed. This exception is serious; but the omission will be remedied naturally when, as I hope I soon shall, I ask my readers to go with me to the towns on the east coast of Italy.
The journey from Padua to Bologna is now, and I suppose always was, extremely uninteresting. The only objects on the road which possess much attraction for the artist are thetowns I have mentioned, and these certainly much more repay a visit than do those on the parallel line of road which we have just travelled. Scenery there is none to speak of, and fortunately a railway makes the journey a quick one now; but when I first travelled it I retained no recollection at the end of the route save of long straight and dusty roads lined on either side with tall poplars, and wearisome to the last degree. At Monselice we found a picturesque town domineered over by the ruins of a large castle, whose walls climb the steep sides of the hill on which it stands. Here I saw a good and little altered Romanesque church, with pilasters in place of buttresses, and walls crowned with the usual eaves-arcade. At Rovigo, further on, there is one of the tall brick towers so common here, with its Ghibelline battlement perfect. Just before reaching Ferrara we crossed the Po—here a large, unbridged, and dreary-looking river, flowing rapidly between high artificial banks to the sea. Its bed is, I suppose, now quite above the level of the plain, and year by year the question becomes more urgent and yet more difficult of answer, what is to be done with it? Certainly there are rivers and rivers; and this great stream left none but painful and disagreeable impressions on my mind. At length, after ten hours and a half of the slowest of drivers and worst of vehicles, we reached Ferrara—atrajetnow performed by railway in about an hour and a half, with advantage to every one’s time and temper, and no counter-balancing loss.
The entrance to the city through a dirty suburb of tumble-down houses was not prepossessing. I knew nothing of what I had to see, and my delight was therefore all the greater when we drove into the piazza in front of the Duomo, and I found myself gazing at a building which at first sight looked as though it had been brought straight from the North of Europe, and planted here in the thirteenth century as awarning against Italian fashions! Further examination proved that I was not far wrong in my first estimate of the west front; but it revealed also, I am sorry to say, that this and part of the south side were the only parts of the old cathedral which had been spared, when in the seventeenth century the whole of the church was gutted and converted into about as bad a Renaissance building as one could wish not to see.
The west front is a great screen, and does not and never did follow the line of the roofs. It has three gables of about equal height covered with arcading, which increases in depth and richness of moulding and shadow to the top, where there are very fine open arched galleries, stepped up to suit the raking lines of the gables. I know no Italian work which imitates so closely as this does the extreme richness which some of the Norman and English churches of the same period exhibit. The arches of the arcades are carried upon clusters of columns which are set with extraordinary profusion one behind the other. The centre of the three divisions of the west front is almost wholly filled with a very fine porch of three stages in height, and finished with gables on its front and sides. The lower stage of this porch, as indeed of the whole church, is round-arched, and belongs probably to the church consecrated here in 1135. The knotted shafts which carry the front wall rest on figures sitting on lions. The doorway is deeply recessed, and has figures of saints with scrolls.[67]The tympanum of the arch has a sculpture of S. George and the Dragon, and the lintel below it eight subjects, beginning with the Salutation, and ending with the Baptism, of Our Lord. At the top of this stage is an inscription which contains the date given above.
52. DUOMO. FERRARA. p. 288.52. DUOMO. FERRARA.p. 288.
The next stage is later, and has three arches with traceries carried upon chevroned and twisted shafts, with a statue of the Virgin and Child in the centre. This stage forms a sort of balcony. The upper stages are covered with sculpture. In the gable is Our Lord as Judge in a vesica-shaped aureole; around and above Him are saints and angels, and below a group of angels dividing the good from the bad. The subject is continued on to the wall on each side of the porch, where on one side are represented the souls of the just in the lap of God, and on the other the descent of the wicked into the jaws of Hell. The whole scheme is a picturesque and unusually disposed treatment of the Last Judgment. There is, however, not much merit in the sculpture as a work of art, though as an enrichment of the buildings it is most effective. The statue in the centre is said to be by Nicola Pisano. The south front of the cathedral has a long range of arcading carried on engaged columns, each arch inclosing a small arcade of three divisions. Above this, below the eaves, is a very fine arcade of later date all carried on groups of shafts, and treated in the Venetian manner with ogee-arched labels above round arches. This stage is built of red marble; the lower part of the wall, of brick and stone.
A large font of white marble is the only relic of the original church which is still to be seen inside.
There is not much more to see here. The castle is remarkable as standing surrounded by its moat in the very midst of the city. The old portions of it are much like the castle at Mantua, and present the same boldly battered base, and the same heavy machicoulis and battlements. I saw also two or three old churches here, but of no interest; they were of the latest phase of Gothic—bordering on Renaissance—and very poor in their detail.
The picture-gallery is in a rather magnificent palace of the D’Este family. Garofalo—the best of Ferrarese painters—isrepresented by a fine Adoration of the Magi, and other works. But the collection generally is not interesting. There are also in the churches a great number of works of other Ferrarese painters, and most travellers go also to see the house of Ariosto and the prison of Tasso. But on the whole the attractions of the city are not great. The streets are grass-grown and deserted, lined with palaces of coarse and bold but uninteresting design, and I was in no way sorry to leave it for Bologna, expecting to find there much more to interest and occupy me.
The drive from one city to the other was very wearisome. The land was rich with vines, mulberry-trees, and rice-fields. The grapes were being gathered, and everywhere along the road we met vast casks borne in grand waggons drawn by white oxen, carrying home the grapes to the wine-press. These waggons have an elaborately carved tree from back to front, and the wheels and casks are also similarly adorned. They are really very handsome, and quite carry one back to those old times when even in utilitarian England the adornment of a carriage was not thought beneath the notice of an artist.
On the road we changed horses at Altedo, where I sketched the good brick campanile of the church, which has windows much like the example figured at page 262.
Bologna is, I fear, only known to many Englishmen at the present day as the one station in Italy at which you may always depend on getting some food, and not less as a station which seems to be on the road to and from every part of the peninsula. There is no excuse, therefore, for not visiting it; and if the general feeling is not one of enthusiasm for what one sees, there is still very much that is worth seeing, and in San Petronio a fragment of a church which, had it been completed on the scale intended, would have been one of the finest and, I suppose, almost the largest in Italy.
53. SAN PETRONIO. BOLOGNA. p. 291.53. SAN PETRONIO. BOLOGNA.p. 291.
The streets are not of the best. They are very narrow, and often arcaded with pointed arches supported on circular columns, but contain few houses of any interest, whilst the churches have been a good deal altered and damaged in modern times.
The cathedral is a recent building of no beauty. Two lions which once supported the columns of a Lombard doorway now carry the holy-water stoups; and in a passage near the sacristy is a carved, painted, and gilded rood of the twelfth century—a piece of furniture which is rarely found remaining in Italian churches. The grandest church in Bologna is undoubtedly San Petronio, which is well placed on one side of the Piazza Maggiore. It was not commenced until 1390, so that we must not be surprized to find the faults in detail which mark the period. But the general scheme of the church is so magnificent that these faults do not strike the eye at all offensively. As it stands even now, with only its nave and aisles finished, it gives a vast idea of size and space, though this is hardly appreciated at first, owing to the enormous dimensions, the fewness of the parts, and the extreme simplicity of all the details. The west front is of immense size and width, but its only finished parts are the plinth and doorways, the whole of the rest being left in rough brick. The detail of this finished part is of poor character, and later than the fabric. It is rather richly carved with figures, which are sometimes much praised, but which seemed to me (with the exception of a Pietà over the south-west doorway) to be of poor style and character. Going round to the side of the building, the design is of earlier date and much more interesting. The aisle-windows are noble designs of four-lights in each bay, separated by buttresses and surmounted by steep-pitched gables. The detail is an extremely good combination of brick and stone, whilst a magnificent plinth of stone andmarble gives great force to the work. The transept was never built; but at the point where it was intended to be connected with the aisle, there is a curious conceit—a window at a projecting corner with half its arch and tracery facing south, and the other half facing west. It is, so far as I remember, a unique example in a church, but is just a little like the angle-windows in some of the Venetian palaces, though these never indulge in such an absurdity as is the construction of two halves of pointed arches over such an opening.
PLAN—SAN PETRONIO, BOLOGNA.PLAN—SAN PETRONIO, BOLOGNA.
SECTION—SAN PETRONIO, BOLOGNA.SECTION—SAN PETRONIO, BOLOGNA.
The interior is very magnificent. The columns, arches, and walls generally are of brick, now coloured and whitewashed (but originally intended to be seen, as is evident from parts of the incomplete work where the internal brickwork is still exposed and is executed with the greatest care), the capitals and bases being all of stone. The columns of the nave are bold clusters; they are about sixty feet from centre to centre, rather short in proportion to the height of their capitals, which are carved with stiff foliage. Above these is a large pier running up to carry the groining, and there are pointed arches opening to the aisles of very lofty pitch, but which, owing to their great size, certainly look very attenuated. Two chapels open into each bay of the aisles:these are lighted by the large four-light windows already mentioned, whilst both nave and aisles have no windows except cusped circular ones of no great size, placed as near as possible to the groining, which is very simple throughout the church. There is scarcely a horizontal string-course or a label to be seen, and the mouldings are few and simple; yet, nevertheless, the effect is grand. Such a church may well trouble the mind of the English student who thinks that no building is complete which has not its arcade, its triforium, and its clerestory. One of our puny churches would stand—nave, aisles, chancel, tower, and spire and all—within one of the bays of the nave and aisles here; and there is a grand sense of restraint and simplicity about this work which impresses me more each time I see it. At the same time the interest is of this grand kind—there is a sense of the immense and infinite, but no condescension to the love of detail and delight in dainty variety which undoubtedly strikes us in most good Gothic works, and makes them so enjoyable.
The church which inspired the design of this was, no doubt, the cathedral at Florence. But of the two the design of San Petronio seems to me to be the more beautiful. The addition of chapels beyond the aisles and the traceries in their windows make the design a little less bald and insipid, and also give a somewhat truer impression of the real scale than one has at Florence. But at the best such work does not create enthusiasm. The principal effort of the architect was to build something very big, and he succeeded; unfortunately he so contrived as very nearly to prevent one from quite realizing how vast his work is, and I hardly know a more serious charge that can be made against an architect than this.[68]
54. SAN PETRONIO. BOLOGNA. p. 294.54. SAN PETRONIO. BOLOGNA.p. 294.
From this church I went to San Domenico, famous for a very elaborate tomb or shrine of the saint by Nicola Pisano. This is not a work that entirely pleases me. It is a high coped tomb covered with sculpture on the sides, erected behind the altar. The history of its erection by Nicola Pisano in 1265 gives it value as a dated work by a great artist. He seems to have been a good deal assisted by his scholar, Fra Guglielmo Agnelli, whose work is by no means equal to his master’s. The tomb alone is the work of these artists, the rest of the work about the altar having been frequently added to and altered in later days, and each sculptor employed having done his best to glorify his own skill and dexterity instead of thinking, as Nicola Pisano evidently did, simply of telling his story in the most straightforward way.
The stories represented in the bas-reliefs had more than common value for a sculptor of original power. In the centre is the Madonna; on one side the resuscitation by S. Dominic of a youth who had been thrown from his horse, and on the other the saint disputing with heretics and burning their books. At the angles are the four Doctors, and at the back two more subjects from the Life of S. Dominic, probably designed but certainly not executed by Nicola Pisano.
The church which contains this tomb has been ruthlessly modernized; but in the open piazza on the north side of it are two monuments of much interest. One of these has a square basement of brick, supporting detached shafts, above which are round arches, the whole being finished with a brick pyramid. Under the canopy thus formed is placed the sarcophagus, marked with a cross at the end, and finished at the top with a steep gabled covering. The detail of this is all of late Romanesque style. The other monument is of later date and much finer design, though keeping to the same general outline. In place of the brick basement of the firstthis has three rows of three shafts, which support a large slab. On this are arcades of pointed arches, three at the sides and two at the ends, carried on coupled shafts, and within this upper arcade is seen the stone coffin carved at the top, and with a stiff effigy of the deceased carved as if lying on one of the perpendicular sides. This monument is also finished with a brick pyramid. The whole design is certainly striking; it has none of the exquisite skill that marks the best Veronese monuments, but it is a very good example of the considerable success which may be achieved by an architectural design without any help from the sculptor, without the use of any costly materials, and with only moderate dimensions. The upper tier of arches is kept in position by an iron tie, and, in spite of its slender look, still stands after five hundred years’ exposure, in perfect condition.
San Giacomo is another example of a modernized church, which has, however, some interesting features. On the exterior there is a rather good treatment of the polygonal apse, with steep gables and pinnacles over the windows on each side. This is somewhat like the apse of San Fermo, at Verona. The campanile on the south-east of the nave is a very lofty late Gothic erection, finished with an incomplete Renaissance belfry-stage. The old portion is divided into a succession of stages of equal height, and is mainly striking on account of its good colour—being all of red brick—and simple outline. The west front is, as is usual here, a great gable divided into three parts by pilasters and half columns; the doorway is of the thirteenth century, and its columns rest on lions’ backs. The detail of the windows at the ends of the aisles is extremely good, and seemed to me to be of the same date. The windows are of two-lights, with shafts for monials, and a broad transome of plate tracery; the tympanum of the arch at the top is similarly filled: here, though the jambs are of brick, the whole of the rest of the
55. MONUMENT. BOLOGNA. p. 296.55. MONUMENT. BOLOGNA.p. 296.
design is executed in stone, and the likeness to some of the later Venetian church windows in the Madonna dell’Orto and SS. Giovanni e Paolo is too great not to be observed. The cornices here are very good. I noticed not only bricks of unusual shapes, very well arranged for effect, but also disks of earthenware, set with the convex side in view, and of brilliant glazed colour, generally blue or green. Their effect is extremely good.
The church of Sta. Maria Maggiore is less altered internally than the rest. It is of great length, groined throughout, and in general effect and proportions seemed to me to have a somewhat less Italian air than the other churches. The apse has an aisle and chapels round it of which the brick detail externally is effective. Here there are large tiles cut to a trefoil shape placed flat against the wall-face as an ornament. They are good-looking, but have not stood well.
In front of this church there is a court or atrium, surrounded with a perfectly open arcade, which is continued all along the north side of the church next the road and over the public footpath. The columns are very slender and of marble; and though the arches which they carry are segments of circles (not an agreeable form), the whole effect is extremely light and graceful.
San Francescowasone of the finest churches in the city. It is now so shabby and decayed outside, and so covered with painters’ and decorators’ work inside, that all its good effect is ruined. Its interior was the victim of what was, I daresay, a very well-meant restoration some years ago, and little of it has been left in its original condition. It has a chevet with aisles and chapels, and externally the rare feature (in Italy) of flying buttresses to support the choir vault. They were built by men who had never seen one before, I suppose, and are as crude and misshapen as they well could be.
Two campanili close to each other, south of the choir,
CLOISTER—SAN STEFANO, BOLOGNA.CLOISTER—SAN STEFANO, BOLOGNA.
group strangely with it in the perspective view. They are unlike in size and design, and illustrate the perfect indifference with which all mediæval architects viewed the gravest departures from laws of symmetry. The larger of the two has rather rich Gothic details, the belfry-stage having traceried windows of three lights with spiral shafts for monials. The gables in this church have large white marble crosses let into them; these are rounded at the ends, and each end has a bright green tile disk inserted. The west front is of the usual description—a great sham front ofhideous outline. Most of its windows are lancets, new, but probably copied from old examples, and the doorway under a canopy is of good character.
I have left to the last what, I suppose, is in fact the oldest of the Bolognese churches—San Stefano. It is a collection of seven churches, rather than one church, and, in spite of modernization without end, it is still a most curious and interesting jumble of old buildings. The churches are dedicated to—1, San Stefano; 2, San Lorenzo; 3, San Sepolcro (a circular church); 4, The Corte di Pilato (a cloister); 5, Sta. Trinità; 6, SS. Pietro e Paolo (with three Romanesque apses); and 7, San Giovanni. No. 3 has an aisle round the circular portion, and was probably a baptistery, and there is still an old ambon in it. One gets fairly puzzled in this nest of queer little churches or parts of churches, and I found but little of architectural—as distinguished from antiquarian—interest in them. The brickwork in the cloister and in some of the external walls is extremely good. Some of the latter are diapered or reticulated on the face with square yellow tiles with dividing lines of red brick, and the cornices are of the same two colours also. In the cloister the columns and inner order of the arches are of stone, the rest of the walls and cornices being of red and yellow bricks, and in one part there is a course of red, green, and yellow tiles alternated. The effect of this work is extremely pretty.
Probably travellers remember Bologna more by its two leaning towers than by any other feature. One comes here however, from either side, after rather a surfeit of this sort of thing. On the one side is Pisa, with its leaning tower, and on the other we may see them at Rovigo, Ferrara, and elsewhere. The soil here is generally bad for foundations, I suppose, and these plain brick towers without any projection at the base are the most ill-contrived constructions for suchfoundations that one can conceive. In this case it is possible to get views of the two towers which shew an apparently impossible amount of overhanging on the part of the smaller one, and I confess to a strong preference for walking to what one may call the windward side of such an erection! There is no beauty in these towers, their only features being the vast array of putlog holes in their walls, and the machicolated battlement of the higher of the two.
Of domestic buildings of the Middle Ages there are not many remains. The Casa dei Mercanti, though it dates from the end of the fourteenth century, is not pleasing. The front has two lofty pointed arches on the ground story, and a canopied Ringhiera of very poor design above. But as the whole front has been restored, the bricks painted bright red, and the stonework cleaned and repaired, I am disposed to believe very little in the antiquity of any of the details. Certainly I found it not worth sketching, which was the more disappointing as I had heard of it always as a fine building. The Pepoli Palace has some old brickwork and a Ghibelline battlement of unusually picturesque outline. The Piazza Maggiore in front of San Petronio is certainly the best feature in this not very striking city. As always in Italian towns, it must be visited early in the day if it is to be seen to advantage. In the morning it is crowded with fruit and vegetable dealers, sitting under bright-coloured umbrellas; in the afternoon it istristeand deserted, save by the cabmen, who pursue the stranger with their importunities. One side of this piazza is occupied by the Palazzo Publico—a large pile of building altogether Gothic in its inclosing walls, I fancy, but they have been so much altered from time to time that not much detail remains. It seems, however, to have been much like the Castle at Mantua in its character, with bold machicoulis at the top of the walls, and a well battered-out base to the whole building. In a tower here there is awindow which I engrave, because it shews well how good an effect may be produced by the skilful use of the very simplest materials. The combination of stone with brick adds much to the effect; and though this is in itself a very small and unimportant work, it appears to me to be exceedingly suggestive.
BRICK WINDOW—PALAZZO PUBLICO, BOLOGNA.BRICK WINDOW—PALAZZO PUBLICO, BOLOGNA.
The Academy of the Fine Arts will be visited by every one who cares for Francia, and by many who fancy they care for the Caracci. As one of the former class, I recommend it very heartily. It contains a large collection, gathered in papal times from convents and churches, and mainly by painters of the Bolognese school. This school has the redeeming virtue of counting Francia on its list of painters, which may atone for much. He is seen here to advantage; and one trio, consisting of two of his pictures on either side of one of Perugino’s, forms the noblest group in the gallery. Here onesees how much in common the two men had in spite of Francia’s more forcible character. The same love of pure and rich colour, the same well-defined grouping, the same religious feeling mark them both. And never, I think, has the Madonna—pensive, lowly, and simple—been more beautifully represented than here by Francia. It is a face that one hopes to remember. Here, too, is Raffaelle’s S. Cecilia, no doubt a very great work, but not great quite in the sense one wishes to understand the word at his hand. S. Cecilia and S. John are very fine, but S. Paul is a sort of burly ruffian. The heavenly choir is very mundane, and the whole work somewhat academical in its design and treatment. The earlier pictures here are very disappointing. The early Bolognese painters seem to have painted coarsely and heavily, and to have drawn badly, and there is no comparison for a moment between their work and that of the early Sienese and Florentine painters on the one hand, and those of Padua and Verona on the other. One has indeed in their works a sort of foretaste of what one has from their followers—the Caracci, Domenichino, Bagna-Cavallo, and to some extent Guido. Dismal colour, great striving after chiaroscuro, violent and distorted attitudes, and a purely conventional and academical style, are not great recommendations of any school, but they are things which must be accepted if one is to enjoy these works at all heartily.
A very short railway journey takes one from Bologna to Modena. The one object of interest here is the cathedral, but this is a building of extreme historical and architectural value, and has fortunately been left with so few alterations that we can make out its history with fair certainty. At Bologna everything was built of brick—here at a short distance we find our eyes rejoicing again in the sight of stone and marble.
The ground-plan of the cathedral consists of a nave withaisles terminated at the east end by three semicircular apses. There are a sacristy on the north of the choir-aisle, and a tower to the north of this. There are two doorways on the south side, three at the west end, and one on the north side. A grand crypt with arches on slender shafts occupies the whole space under the eastern part of the church. The access to the choir from the nave is by stairs against the aisle walls in the same position as at San Zenone, Verona. Here the stairs and their handrails are not later than the thirteenth century, and the choir is divided from the aisles by screens of the same age; solid below, and with a continuous cornice carried on coupled shafts above. The cathedral is said to have been founded in 1099, but an inscription on the south wall gives the date of the consecration of the building by Pope Lucius III. in July 1184. I believe that the former date represents the age of the plan, and of most of the interior columns and arches still remaining, but that before the later date the whole exterior of the cathedral had been modified, and the groining added inside. The work of both periods is extremely good and characteristic. The columns of the nave are alternately great piers and smaller circular columns of red marble. The great piers carry cross arches between the groining bays, and each of these in the nave is equal to two of those in the aisles. The capitals here are very close imitations of Classical work, with the abaci frequently concave on plan. The main arches and the triforium openings of three lights above them are seen both in the nave and aisle, the vaulting of the latter being unusually raised. There is also a plain clerestory, and the vaults are now everywhere quadripartite. The outside elevation of the side walls is very interesting. Here we seem to have the old aisle wall with its eaves-arcade added to and raised in the twelfth century, and adorned with a fine deep arcade in each bay, inclosed under round arches,which are carried on half columns in front of the buttresses or pilasters. These arches shew exactly what the original intention was at Ferrara, where it will be recollected they still in part remain. Certainly they would have made the side walls very rich in their effect, even if there had not also been two porches, a projecting pulpit, and various bas-reliefs inserted in them.
All the doorways deserve special mention. The eastern of the two on the south side, with the porch of two stages in front of it, is remarkable for the extreme skill and delicacy of its enrichment. The shafts are of white marble, and the mouldings which separate them of red, while the former are all carved in the most delicate manner. The porch is mainly built of red marble, and is carried on detached shafts, cut out of one block knotted together and resting on lions. The whole of this work is evidently an addition to the aisle, and dates from aboutA.D.1180. The other doorway on the same side may probably be a work of the original foundation in 1099. It has the twelve Apostles on the jambs, and rude shafts carrying a canopy in front of it. The west doorway has also a porch, and sculptures of the twelve months on its jambs. It is covered with carving of foliage and figures executed by the same Wiligelmus who was employed on the western doorway of San Zenone, Verona. Among other figures are those of King Arthur and his knights, inscribed with his name,[69]“Artus de Bretania,” above his head. The west front is very remarkable. The ends of the aisles have two arches inclosing small arcades similar to those in the bays of the side walls, and the end of the nave has the same arcade on each side of a porch of two stages in height, the lower of which is carried on detached
56. DUOMO. MODENA. p. 304.56. DUOMO. MODENA.p. 304.
shafts resting on lions’ backs. The upper part of the porch was altered in order that a great wheel window might be inserted, sometime in the fourteenth century.
This rose window fills the whole upper part of the western gable, and is, like many Italian examples, very unskilful in its design. The vast number of divisions or spokes, and the very slight prominence of the arcuated part of the filling-in, make it look in very truth a wheel window and nothing better. Above it are an insignificant figure of Our Lord and the Emblems of the four Evangelists sculptured in low relief. The lower portion of the walls is covered in the most promiscuous manner with bas-reliefs, and a medley of mural tablets, the number of which would delight the eyes of an English parish clerk; but nevertheless the rich character given to the work by the fine shadows of the arcades in the lower half of the front, is worthy of special notice and recollection. The tower and spire are very lofty. The former has six stages of nearly equal height, all round-arched, and on the top of this two octagonal stages crowned with a modern spire. The lower stage of the octagon is old, and was finished in 1317 by Enrico da Campione, one of the family of architects of whom I have before spoken. The tower has pilasters at the angles, and two intermediate on each face, so that there is a triple division in elevation, and all the horizontal string-courses are marked by arched corbel-tables. The repetition of these very simple features, and the absence of all openings in the lower part of the steeple, shew how simple the elements of a good work may be.
I found nothing else of any interest in Modena, and made my way from thence to Parma, impatient to see not only the cathedral and the baptistery, but also Correggio’s treatment of the decoration of the former. In spite of the great fame of these works, I fear I must at once confess that they took away most of the pleasure which I had anticipatedfrom my visit to the cathedral at Parma. This is a grand Lombard church, fairly perfect in its architectural details and arrangements, but entirely ruined in its architectural effect by the frescoes with which most of its walls and roof have been covered. These have been painted without the slightest thought of the requirements of the building, and as a matter of course they have entirely ruined its effect. The frescoes in the dome are by Correggio, and are amongst his most celebrated works. Like all the rest of the paintings here, they present, when regarded from below without the assistance of a glass, a confused mass of distorted figures and limbs, not at all relieved by the dark and dismal colouring in which they are executed, and which doubtless is not what it once was. It is true that when examined in detail, and still more when examined in Toschi’s careful engravings, they are full of beautiful drawing and skilful chiaroscuro, but the impression they have left on my mind is mainly one of the extreme risk of attempting to decorate a building without previous training in and knowledge of the requirements of architecture. As an example of Lombard architecture the cathedral at Parma is almost ruined, whilst it would be difficult to conceive a worse-fitted building for the display of Correggio’s fancy and skill. The ill-assorted union, in itself ruinous to both, has been aggravated by the bad state of repair which has damaged and no doubt altered the colour of the frescoes; and the impression now produced is that of simply the gloomiest interior in Italy.
The church is cruciform, with a central cupola and apses to the three eastern arms of the cross. The nave and aisles of seven bays are vaulted, and there is a large and striking crypt under the whole eastern part of the church which goes far to redeem its otherwise barren character. The effect here is remarkable, owing to the complex perspective and great number of single slender marble shafts carrying the vaultedroofs, and in part also to its unusual height. The capitals are all carved—frequently with coarse volutes; the church was founded in 1058, and no doubt this crypt is of about that age.
Very near to the cathedral on the south-west is the now much more interesting baptistery. This is on the exterior a large and lofty octangular building, adorned in a succession of stages by small detached shafts carrying the cornices and strings which divide the elevation. Internally the scheme is very different. The eight-sided interior is subdivided, so that sixteen shallow apses are set around the inside face of the walls. These are separated by columns, and above them on each side are two stages in height, each subdivided into three divisions, which are again subdivided by smaller columns. A great vault or cupola covers the whole, and from its height gives an air of solemnity to the interior. It seems never to have been treated as a real dome, being covered with a flat roof, resting on the external walls, which are carried up far above the vault. The paintings with which the walls are covered are arranged without any order or general scheme of design. They seem to have been given by various donors, and each gave what best pleased his fancy; but owing to the early date of most of the work, there is in parts—especially in the vault—a fine effect of colour.
PLAN OF BAPTISTERY.PLAN OF BAPTISTERY.
SECTION OF BAPTISTERY.SECTION OF BAPTISTERY.
This baptistery is said to have been commenced by the architect Benedetto di Antelamo inA.D.1196,[70]who is also credited with many other works here, and specially with much of the early sculpture in the Duomo and baptistery; it was not completed until 1260.
There are three great doors to the baptistery. On the northern is sculptured the Tree of Life, and over this twelve prophets carrying medallions with half figures of the Apostles. Below are subjects from the lives of Our Lord and S. John Baptist. The western door has a sculpture of the Last Judgment, and the southern a not very intelligible, though no doubt symbolical, figure of a man seated in a tree and gathering honey. Inside there are various sculptures, and among them a series of illustrations of the labours of the months.
My day in Parma was pleasantly concluded with a visit to the Gallery, and then, finding no more mediæval remains, I pushed on to Piacenza.
This is a city of no small interest, and remarkable above everything else in the possession of a Palazzo Publico of unusual and striking design—a building of special value and interest to me, since it is a capital example of the use of brick and marble together. Before looking at any of the churches I devoted myself to this building with the more satisfaction when I found that it was really, in some respects, one of the very best works of the sort that I had ever seen.
An inscription carved under a banner on a square stone, in the front, records the commencement of the work in 1281, and I think we may assume that no part of it is of much later date than this. It consists, as do most of these buildings, of a lofty open ground story, and a principal story
57. PALAZZO PUBLICO. PIACENZA. p. 308.57. PALAZZO PUBLICO. PIACENZA.p. 308.
above this. The façade is very dignified in effect. On the ground level are five lofty arches, very slightly moulded, and resting on square piers just rounded at the corners. The material of this stage is marble, mainly white, but with just a line of red and another of grey near the string-course which divides this from the next stage. From this point up almost the whole work is executed in brickwork of very elaborate and delicate detail. The two stages have no kind of uniformity or connection with each other, six windows being arranged above the five arches. In the centre of the first floor is the old doorway to the Ringhiera (which was altered in the seventeenth century); the windows on each side are of three lights, inclosed under a round arch with a deep archivolt very slightly recessed—all the enrichments being on very nearly the same face as the wall. These windows agree in size, but vary very much in all their details. Some of the subordinate arches are pointed, some round, and the tympana are everywhere filled with fine brick diapers. Above this stage the walls finish with a good marble cornice of intersecting arches, and then with a forked battlement. At the four angles of this are raised turrets, and the ends are finished with battlemented gables, very quaint and picturesque, as will be seen by the illustration which I give. The niches between the two arches in the principal story seem to have been intended for paintings. The marbles used here are red and white. Red is used for the arcades under the cornices, for the middle order of the rose window, and the inner order of the main arches. Elsewhere the marble is white, except the one grey course below the principal string. The whole of the lower stage is open below on all sides and groined—in brick, I think—though it is now plastered; indeed, save the parts already described as being of marble in the principal fronts, the whole of this building is built of red brick. Behind theopen ground story there remains a portion of an internal quadrangle, which, incomplete as it is, shews, nevertheless, the same delicate attention to detail which is conspicuous on the façades. I know hardly any detail of Italian brickwork which is so refined and good as that in the arches and some cusped circles between them in this quadrangle.
BRICKWORK—PALAZZO PUBLICO, PIACENZA.BRICKWORK—PALAZZO PUBLICO, PIACENZA.
I have seen this building, full as it is of eccentric departures from ordinary rules and customs—piers being placed over openings, and round and pointed arches used indifferently—quoted for our benefit as a remarkable example of a public building erected in the Middle Ages in the most regular and formal fashion! It is, on the contrary, if the plain truth is to be spoken, an example of a very bold disregard of such fashions indulged in without any detrimental effect.
Piacenza cannot boast of any very fine churches. They have been much ruined internally by modern alterations, andexternally they do not seem ever to have been very attractive. The cathedral is a Lombard church of fine size, and with some good points. There are three western porches of two stages in height, according to the usual Lombard fashion. The doors are rudely sculptured; that in the centre with the signs of the Zodiac, and the northern door with the Annunciation, Salutation, and other subjects on its lintel. The columns rest on monsters, griffins, and men. The whole front is now finished with one large low-pitched gable, which has an arcade stepped up to suit its cornice. This is, however, a fourteenth-century alteration of the older church, as is also a rose window in the centre. A brick tower of late date rises at the north-west angle of the church, and is finished with a circular spire built of round-ended bricks. The external walls of the Lombard church were all built of stone or marble with shallow buttresses; the windows were very simple, and the effect was mainly due to the fine open arcade below the eaves, carried now on shafts, now on figures. The north-east view is very picturesque, owing to the number of angles and apsidal terminations which are seen together. These are produced by a plan of most unusual character, the transepts as well as the choir being finished with three apses, and an octagonal brick lantern rising out of the centre. Internally the cathedral, in spite of alterations, is still very interesting. The nave opens with eight arches to the aisles and transepts; but the three arches which open to the latter are much loftier than the five western arches, so as to allow of the transepts opening to the nave to nearly its full height. The groining of the nave is divided into three bays of sexpartite vaults—each bay being equal to two bays of the aisles, and there is a lantern over the two eastern bays. The transepts and aisles have quadripartite vaulting.
Under the choir is a crypt of great interest and beauty,owing to the vast number of delicate columns which carry the vault. It is planned on a cruciform arrangement, with the principal altar in an octagonal central compartment. Here the priest celebrates on the eastern side with his back to the choir stalls in the apse, and his face toward the west. The access to this crypt is by two staircases at its south-west and north-west angles.