PLAN—SANT’ANTONINO.PLAN—SANT’ANTONINO.
The large brick church of San Francesco is of the fourteenth century; it is very simple, but not striking in effect. The east end has been planned irregularly—to suit the site, no doubt—with an apse and aisle round it, and irregularly shaped chapels beyond the apse. The effect is bad, owing to the unskilful way in which the work has been done. The west front has the favourite sham gable adorned with circular windows, some of which are absolutely above the roofs of the aisles! San Giovanni in Canale is another church which has nothing of interest, save a few remnants of old brickwork.
Sant’Antonino is a remarkable church, hopelessly modernized with plaster enrichments. Like the cathedral, it has a lantern in the centre crossing, carried on eight columns from the ground, which produce internally a very new and really striking effect. The lantern is finished above the roof with three stages, each of which is lighted with a two-light window in each face. There is a fine early marble doorway to the north transept, with men and monsters supporting the shafts, and some delicate carving. In front of this, at the end of the fourteenth century, was built a lofty porchwith a great open archway to the north. It is finished with brick pinnacles and cornices, and is higher than the transept. The hinges on the west door here are very good, and the windows in the aisles—lancets with seven cusps in the head—are quite worth notice. Piacenza struck me, both in its churches and Palazzo Publico, as a town which had possessed a very distinctly developed school of architecture of its own. The churches are peculiar, not to say eccentric, in their planning, and the Palazzo Publico is quite unique in its design and general treatment.
SECTION—SANT’ANTONINO, PIACENZA.SECTION—SANT’ANTONINO, PIACENZA.
The only other old work I noticed here was a house in the Strada San Marco. This is all of brick, and has arches of slightly horse-shoe shape. The bricks are all axed on the face, and are of large size—11¼ inches long by about 2¾ inches high.
Not very far to the east of Piacenza is Asti, a dull city, distinguished, however, by some remarkable features in its churches. The most important of these are the Cathedral and San Secondo. They are extremely similar in general design: they have naves with short choirs, transepts, low octagonal vaulted lanterns over the crossing, and apsidal chapels in front of the transept gables, and at San Secondo to the several bays of the aisle. Their towers are on the east side of the transepts. The peculiar feature of their detail is the very elaborate way in which brick and stone are counterchanged in the jambs and arches of windows and doorways. The moulded members of a jamb are alternately of brick and stone, and in each course stone comes above the brick of the courses below. San Secondo cannot, I think, be earlier than circa 1400, but at first sight looks like a building of 1200. The cathedral is probably somewhat though not very much earlier. Its plan was evidently derived from that of the cathedral at Piacenza. Its proportions are bad, and it is only redeemed by the picturesqueness of some of its details. Another church has an octagonal campanile; and another, one of sixteen sides. This is of brick, except the upper stage, which is coursed in brick and stone. Its sixteen sides have alternately a window and a shaft running up to the cornice, and in the stage below it there are eight windows below the shafted sides of the belfry. The composition of this tower is certainly very good. Another fine lofty tower with bold cornice and Ghibelline parapet recalls the Veronese towers to mind, and there are besides not a few remains of mediæval domestic work, so that a day may be well spent at Asti by an architect.
“Launce! by mine honesty, welcome to Milan.”Two Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. sc. 5.
“Launce! by mine honesty, welcome to Milan.”Two Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. sc. 5.
“Launce! by mine honesty, welcome to Milan.”Two Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. sc. 5.
Milan: the Cathedral—Sant’Ambrogio—Sant’Eustorgio—Sta. Maria delle Grazie—Certosa of Chiaravalle—Novara—Vercelli—Monza: the Cathedral—The Broletto—Sta. Maria in Strada—Como: the Broletto—The Cathedral.
Milan: the Cathedral—Sant’Ambrogio—Sant’Eustorgio—Sta. Maria delle Grazie—Certosa of Chiaravalle—Novara—Vercelli—Monza: the Cathedral—The Broletto—Sta. Maria in Strada—Como: the Broletto—The Cathedral.
MILANis better known to the generality of English travellers than, perhaps, any other city south of the Alps; and its older portions afford a fair idea of some of the most salient points of Italian manners and customs, whilst its new and much-vaunted arcades and streets seem to be not only so cosmopolitan as to be un-Italian, but so bald and poor in design as to be repulsive wherever they are! Its narrow busy streets, though they are wanting indeed in the arcading so characteristic of very many other towns we had passed through, have that peculiar charm which life and bustle always give to strange places; the crowds of foot-passengers threading the narrow ways, with no protection from the omnibuses and carts which jostle against them, are full of animation, and lively and picturesque in their costumes. Elbowing our way between them, we soon found ourselves in a piazza, with the Duomo rising before us in all the magnificence of its white marble walls. If it be indeed truethat it was designed by a German,[71]there is on the outside even more cause for astonishment at his work than if it had been the work of an Italian. The west front is quite modern, but the rest of the exterior, all in its original state, is as little German in its character as any building I have ever seen, and—shall I add it?—as little really grand as a work of art. I had just caught a glimpse of its general outline and effect by the bright moonlight, on the evening of my arrival, with the music of an Austrian band sounding pleasantly in my ears, and, thus seen, there was certainly something wild and striking in its effect. I saw the brilliantly light colour of the white marble in the full brightness of the moon, and little of the poverty of moulding, or the heaviness of traceries, or the preposterous tenuity of pinnacles, which daylight revealed, to the destruction of any belief I might still have in its beauty; and the more I examined it in detail the less satisfactory did it appear; for neither in its general mass, nor in its detail, does it bear examination. Its walls are panelled all over, the panelling having a peculiarly painful kind of pendulous, unsupported, and unconstructional character, and the string-courses are marked by a continuous trefoil arcading on their under side, which recalls the frequent Italian string-courses
GROUND-PLAN—MILAN CATHEDRAL.GROUND-PLAN—MILAN CATHEDRAL.
in brick. The buttresses are bold in their formation and scale, but poor and weak-looking in their design, and finish at the top with pinnacles, whose thin outline, seen against the deep blue sky, is painfully bad and unsatisfying. Thepanelling of the walls is continued up to their whole height without any decided line of parapet or cornice, and finishes in a rough serrated line of small gables, which is particularly restless and wanting in repose. Great flying buttresses span the aisles, and then in the clerestory is repeated exactly what we have already seen below, the same panelling, the same parapet, and the same light pinnacles; the windows, however, are here very small and insignificant, whilst those in the aisles are remarkable for their large size and for the singular traceries with which they are filled. All the lower windows are transomed with a line of tracery, surmounted in each light by a crocketed canopy running up into the light above. In the apse this tracery fills the four outer lights only on each side of the two centre lights, the others being continued without interruption to the sill; and in these windows it is remarkable that each light is subdivided with a small monial below this band of tracery.
Altogether, an effect of a prodigious number and repetition of vertical lines is produced, and yet, notwithstanding this, the effect of the entire building is decidedly rather horizontal and depressing than the contrary; this is not more owing to the absence of all visible roofing than to the way in which the parapets, with their irregular gabled outline, attract the eye to a markedly horizontal feature.
Upon the whole, therefore, the exterior is in no respect more Italian than it is German in its style; it belongs to no school, and has no fellows: from the beginning it has been an exotic, and to the end of time will probably remain so, without a follower or an imitator in the singular development of which it is the only example; and there does appear, if we consider the matter, to be some intrinsic probability that such a building must have been designed by a foreigner rather than by a native. It has, in fact, allthe appearance of having been the work of a stranger who was but imperfectly acquainted with the wants or customs of Italian architecture, working to some extent with the traditions of his national school before him, but, at the same time, impressed with a strong sense of the necessity under which he lay, of doing something quite unlike what he had been taught to consider necessary for buildings in his native land. It will be found upon examination that there is absolutely hardly one point in which this vast building follows the traditions of Italian pointed work. Its plan has not any Italian characteristics in its arrangement or proportions. Its windows have moulded monials instead of shafts; its walls are buttressed instead of being marked with pilasters here and there; its pinnacles are Northern in their idea, for strength rather than (as Italian pinnacles were) only for ornament; its walls have no cornices, and there are no sham fronts or attempts at concealing the necessary features of construction; the walls are panelled instead of being arcaded, and there is a constant endeavour to break up plain surfaces of wall, unlike the predilection for smooth broad surfaces so usual in thoroughly Italian work, and destructive of the kind of breadth and dignity which this last generally has; finally, if rest and life may be taken—as by some they are—to be respectively the distinguishing features of Italian and Northern pointed work, then, assuredly, the lack of repose in Milan Cathedral—caused mainly by the degree to which the system of panelling is carried over the whole building, and the extent to which the use of the simple horizontal line is carefully excluded—goes far to consign its exterior to some school of life and restlessness of the most unsatisfactory character. The one point in which an Italian model has been at all followed is the section, where the proportions of the aisles to the nave and the pitch of their roofs certainly shew a knowledge of SanPetronio, Bologna. But its architect appears to me to have been shocked at the necessity under which he lay of sacrificing the steep lines of roof so dear to him in his native land, and to have striven with all his might to provide a substitute for their effect by the vertical lines of his panelled buttresses and walls, by the gabled outline of his parapets, and by the removal even of such a slight horizontal mark as the commencement of the traceries of his windows on one line. And his work is a most remarkable standing proof of the failure of such an attempt; for, despite all these precautions, and I incline to believe in consequence of them, the general effect is, after all, entirely horizontal. Extremes meet, and so the attempt to avoid absolute horizontal lines has completely failed, because in their place we have a succession of vertical members placed side by side in such endless numbers that we really think more of the horizontal arrangement of these members, slight though they are, than we should of the simplest defined horizontal line.
And the same consequence followed the same kind of work in England. I know no building in which the horizontal line is more painfully predominant than in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster, where, nevertheless, it is broken endlessly by vertical lines of pinnacles, and where the walls are covered in all parts with perpendicular lines of panelling.
Indeed, I should have but little respect for such a building as this exterior of Milan were it not for its rare material (used though it is in a prodigal manner, and without particular reference to its nature) and its immense size—though this is far less in appearance than in reality. But my detraction and harsh criticisms must end here; for if, having first made the circuit of the entire church, the flight of steps which leads up to the west door is last of all mounted, the first feeling must be one of perfect amazementand delight—amazement that the same mind which conceived the exterior should have been able also to achieve anything so diverse from it as is the interior, and delight that anything so magnificent and so perfect should ever have been reared on the southern slope of the Alps, to exhibit, to the eyes as it were of enemies, the full majesty and power of the pointed architecture of the North. And mark, upon consideration, how very natural this was. Its architect had been tied down in his exterior by the wants, or supposed wants, of a climate unlike his own, and a material to which he was unused; his genius had thus been fettered and kept under; but here all shackles were undone, and he was free to carry out to its very greatest perfection what he had learnt or dreamt of in his Northern home. And what a result has he not achieved!—absolutely and without doubt one of the grandest interiors in the world is, I do believe, this noble work of his; its grandeur amazes one at first, and delights all the more afterwards as one becomes on more intimate terms with it, and can look at it with less emotion than at first. And how shall I describe it?—for to say that it has so many bays in length or in width is not sufficient; all this, and even the detail of its design, were familiar enough to me before I saw it, but still the reality was so very far beyond any description, that I felt, and feel still, averse from attempting it.
A few only of the most noticeable points, therefore, shall be touched; and, as it seems to me to teach less of Italian art or architecture than of Northern, I shall feel myself acquitted of neglect, inasmuch as the main, if not the sole, object of my Italian notes is as to the development of really Italian work. I was struck at first by the prodigious width and height of the building. The nave is enormously wide, and has two aisles on either side, those next to it being also of great size and height, and having clerestoriesin their outer walls. The outer aisles are lighted with large traceried windows, filled with stained glass, which gives the church a character very unlike that of the generality of Italian Gothic churches, in which coloured glass is so rarely seen in large masses.
There is, therefore, a regular gradation in the heights of the five main divisions of the church, which are well proportioned to their respective widths; and, resting as these divisions do upon four rows of clustered columns of immense size and height, a more magnificent internal effect is produced than I can recollect even any approach to in any other church; for not even in Köln or in Amiens is there any effect so magnificent as that of this forest of prodigious piers. They are finished at the top with capitals peculiar to this building, and quite unlike anything I have before seen—I suppose at least twelve feet deep, with a kind of arcade of tracery surmounted by a crocketed gable on each side, and finished above and below with courses of foliage, and with figures standing in the niche-like panels of the arcade.
Such a contrivance would be clumsy and absurd if attempted on a small scale, but here, at the summit of these immense columns, it is thoroughly successful, and, I believe, the only contrivance which could have been successfully adopted. The capitals vary very much in detail and in merit; but one of the finest is seen close to the west entrance, and recalls forcibly the best Northern pointed work, having indeed, neither in detail nor in design, one single trace of an Italian influence.
So grand are the columns that the excessive poverty and lightness of the arches which divide the nave from the aisles, which is perhaps the greatest defect of the interior of the church, is not for a long time noticed; they have, however, but little apparent work to do, and so their lightness may perhaps be a virtue.
Throughout the interior there is a very remarkable love shewn everywhere for a moulding which was never used by Italians, but was so much used among ourselves—the wave-mould. Then, again, all the shafts are filleted, and the fillet turning off gradually into the round line of the shaft, produces the same moulding; a fulness and richness are consequently very noticeable in all the interior, very different indeed from anything else that I saw in Italy. The solitary blot upon this otherwise noble work is one for which its architect is in no way responsible—the cells of the groining are all filled in with painted imitations of elaborate traceries in brown colour, an abominable device, which never ceases to offend and annoy the eye more and more every time it is observed.[72]The window tracery throughout is meagre, confused, and unmeaning, and the traceries introduced at mid-height most unsatisfactory; but the glass with which it is filled, though poor and late in its character, contains much rich colour, and gives the entire building a very grand and warm tone.
Compared with other foreign churches, there is in this—the largest of them all—a singular absence of side altars. There are indeed some three or four; but so great is the prominence given to the high altar in the choir, that one scarcely thinks of the possibility of the existence of any others, and has to look about a good deal before discovering where they are to be found.
In common with so many of the Italian churches the pavements here are very fine, and impart no small degree of additional magnificence to the interior.
Many are the works which might be catalogued in thisgreat church, but I must content myself with noticing one only—the great bronze candelabrum. This is, I suppose, the most precious work of its kind in Europe. It was placed in the cathedral in 1557, a date too late for its execution by some three hundred years. The supports are four winged dragons, heads downwards, and with tails intertwined. The shaft has bosses in the centre, and branches out above into a profusion of branches full of exquisite leafage. This is all conventional in character, and entirely like thirteenth-century work. In spaces formed for the purpose and on the bosses are various figures and subjects all wrought with singular skill, and a lavish profusion of ingenuity which cannot be too much admired. Among these are the Temptation and the Expulsion from Paradise, the signs of the zodiac, figures illustrating architecture and music, and a variety of others.
After I had seen the cathedral I had, by way of enjoying the pleasures of a contrast, to devote myself patiently to all the troubles attendant upon personally procuring my passport. At Milan personal application was absolutely enforced; and there, in a small room crowded by vetturini and other Italians of the lower order, relieved by one or two unfortunate travellers like myself, I had for nearly two hours to endure heat, noise, and all the other annoyances of such a work, before I succeeded in getting my passportvisé, with permission to abide three days only within the walls. This system is certainly most vexatious to an Englishman; but at the same time, if people will make a point of keeping the rulers of a city constantly on thequi vivewith plots, or rumours of plots, I do not see what other resource their rulers can have. Some idea of the state of the population may be drawn from the way in which the soldiers patrol the streets, in companies of three or four, during the whole day, giving an impression of a place where men keeping guard singly would be in danger; and then again the great number ofthe troops at the gates and elsewhere throughout the city certainly presents very much the impression of a place whose normal condition is one perpetual state of siege.[73]
Next to the cathedral the great architectural attraction of Milan is the famous church of Sant’Ambrogio, which has equally as great claims upon the antiquary and upon the ecclesiologist as upon the architect.
Entering from the west, it presented a most striking and, to me, most novel effect. In advance of the church is an open atrium, surrounded by a cloister of Lombard-Romanesque character, the columns having quaintly and stiffly carved capitals of stone, and the wall and arches being built of mixed bricks and stone.[74]Three arches, open from the atrium to the west end of the church, and above them three other arches of similar plan, and arranged in triplet fashion, that in the centre being the highest and widest, nearly fill up the great flat pediment of the church, on either side of which rise towers—that on the north divided into stages by means of arcaded strings, like most Lombard belfries; that on the south perfectly plain and rude, and perhaps therefore of the very early date at which some antiquaries appear to place the building of the main structure of this portion of the existing church.[75]
This arrangement, borrowed though it may be from heathen days and civil buildings, is nevertheless uncommonly satisfactory; it serves to prepare the mind for the entrance to the church itself, and, instead of the abrupt transition commonly made from the world to the holy places, here the intermediate atrium gives time and space to throw off all worldly thoughts, and to enter entirely into the religious feelings proper in such a place.
The entrance by the west doorway is of great interest, for in its very ancient doors are inserted some still more ancient fragments, said by tradition—and there is every reason to believe it to be true—to be portions of the gates which S. Ambrose shut against the Emperor Theodosius.
The interior has suffered much at various times, either by repairs or alterations; and as most of the groining is of pointed character, the first impression is that of a very low, simple, and solemn-looking pointed church of early date. Upon more close examination, however, it is found that the main walls throughout are Romanesque, and that this groining was subsequently inserted, and again in later times strengthened and supported by great piers and arches of Classic character.
The plan, after passing the atrium, is a nave of three bays, each subdivided into two by arches into the aisles, a lantern over the altar, and three eastern apses. There are no transepts. The most striking object in the interior is the magnificent Romanesque baldachin above the high altar. This is supported on four marble shafts, and has a semicircular arch on each face, with figures and foliage in the four flat pediments or gables which finish it above. Three flights of five steps lead up to the altar from the north, south, and west, and the whole is protected both on the east and the west by high metal screens. Here is a splendid shrine for the relics of the tutelar saint, of the same age as the early church, which is however so jealously concealed that I have never seen it.[76]The front of the altar itself is very magnificent, executed entirely in metal, and containing subjects from the life of Our Blessed Lord and from that of S. Ambrose. A modernized dome rises above the baldachin; and behind this an apse decorated in mosaic upon a gold ground very grandly finishes the interior of this interesting church.
58. BALDACHIN. S. AMBROGIO. MILAN. p. 326.58. BALDACHIN. S. AMBROGIO. MILAN.p. 326.
On the north side of the nave is a very curious pulpit, coeval with the church and remarkable for its carvings, and for a Roman sarcophagus which occupies the space between the columns which support it.
From Sant’Ambrogio I made my way under a burning sun to what I expected to find a very interesting church, that of Sant’Eustorgio. I was, however, very much disappointed; the interior is abominably modernized, though still retaining enough of its old Romanesque features to be intelligible if carefully studied, and remarkable for many ancient monuments on its walls. It has nave, aisles, and chapels beyond the aisles, the whole groined, and there is a prodigious ascent to the choir, which is raised upon a crypt.
That for which it ought to be visited is the exquisite monument to S. Peter Martyr, executed by G. Balduccio da Pisa, in 1339. It consists of a sarcophagus supported on pilasters, in front of which are statues representing virtues. Few works of the kind have ever been executed, in which the skill of the sculptor has been more happily united with that of the architect than in this. It deserves all praise.
Sta. Maria delle Grazie, which I next visited, is a church known generally as that in the refectory attached to which is to be seen all that remains of L. da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. I know not how much this may have suffered within the last few years, but really, when I read the kind of remarks which I so frequently see about it, I cannot help fancying, rather strongly, that they have perhaps been written before instead of after seeing the veritable picture. It is in fact in the last stage of decay, with scarcely any of its colouring or drawing intelligible; and has probably been entirely repainted since Leonardo’s death. Visitors who go to admire and do admire the Leonardo, might do worse than in examining and admiring the extremely fine and fairly well-preserved earlier fresco or distemper painting by Montorfanowhich covers the opposite wall of the refectory, and contains a good and busy painting of the Crucifixion, painted in 1495. The church is of very late pointed date, entirely of brick, with a large and ugly dome added by Bramante. The nave arcades are pretty good—pointed arches springing from the square Classical-looking capitals of equally Classical-looking columns; very much as in the church of San Francesco at Venice. Elaborate brick cornices and the usual sham front leave the same kind of impression on my mind in respect to this church that it has of all late Italian pointed work in brick—one of a tasteless, unreal, and unsatisfactory school of art.
South of the cathedral there is a fine late brick campanile attached to the church of San Gottardo, which rises from behind some of the great public buildings in which the city abounds. This is a very elaborate work, octagonal in plan and covered with arcades one above the other, and finished with a low spire. It is a fourteenth-century building at the earliest, but in spite of this most of its arches are semicircular. It is certainly a rich and picturesque tower, and well deserves inspection.
The remaining churches in Milan seemed to be all Classical, of different grades of merit and size. There were indeed some very late examples of brickwork of some value, but really, save the cathedral, there is not much architectural art to be studied or dwelt upon in Milan. The cathedral, too, teaches little; its main office is, rather, to prove the consummate beauty and magnificence attainable by the pointed style, carried out severely and simply on the very grandest scale, and this its interior does triumphantly beyond all cavil.
A visit to Milan had always been looked forward to by me with great interest: first, from curiosity as to the real effect and merits of the Duomo; and, secondly, from a longing
59. PIAZZA DEI MERCANTI. MILAN p. 329.59. PIAZZA DEI MERCANTI. MILANp. 329.
to see the magnificent Sposalizio of Raffaelle, which is the gem of the collection in the Brera; and this famous gallery was therefore one of the first objects of my curiosity. The careful examination of the pictures which adorn its walls was, however, when we were there, much hindered by an exhibition of modern Italian pictures, hung in the same rooms as, and in most cases in front of, the old works. We were able, fortunately, to get a fair view of what I believe to be not far from the greatest work of one of the greatest painters in the world—the Sposalizio being in a room unoccupied by other pictures and unmolested by the modern exhibitors. The man who could so paint at the age of twenty-one must, assuredly, have been almost matchless, for never have I seen a painting more thoroughly noble and delightful, in every way recalling to mind, it is true, in every figure the manner of his master, the great Perugino, but not the less enjoyable on that account.
The modern pictures were almost invariably worthless, and shewed no sign of any revival parallel to that which I trust I am not too sanguine in believing that one sees at the present day in England.
In the Piazza dei Mercanti is a much-altered building of the thirteenth century (its date is said to be 1228), which looks in its arrangements like a Palazzo Publico, and which in its original state must have been very charming. On the lower stage are five open arches, which have been modernized, I believe; above this a line of square panels, inclosing shields, forms a bold string-course, the central portion being brought forward on corbels for a Ringhiera. Thepiano nobileconsists of five pointed arches carried on delicate shafts, and above was a deeply sunk line of arcading, each division garnished with a statue. There was once evidently a canopy over the Ringhiera. The materials of this front are black and white stone, but they are used with such moderation that there is nothing at all bizarre in the general effect of the façade.
In addition to these buildings there is still to be described another very grand brick domestic building of late date—the Ospidale Maggiore—which contains a great deal of very rich detail, half Renaissance and half Gothic in its character, though the general scheme of the building is wholly Renaissance. This building has been much extolled, but I think those who have praised it so much have mistaken clever manipulation of detail for good architectural design. The terra-cotta enrichments with which it is so richly set are hardly surpassed in their way by any of the same period in Italy, but I cannot admire the building as a whole.
With this building my architectural notes in Milan must end, but I should advise all students of architecture to include in their visits one of about half an hour’s drive to the Certosa of Chiaravalle just outside Milan. The church here has been much modernized, but over the centre of the crossing still rises a brick lantern and steeple of singular interest. My engraving will explain what the character of this work is, better than any words. The construction is singular. Behind the base of the second stage of the great octagon a spire is constructed which carries the upper steeple, and the whole of the walls pierced with the second, third, and fourth series of windows are really only screen-walls or parapets in front of the spire. The height of the whole lantern from the ridge to the base of the spire is about ninety feet, and the effect of the complicated brickwork is not bad. It is somewhat difficult to say exactly when it was built. The Certosa itself was founded in 1135, and consecrated in 1228, but my impression is decidedly that though the whole steeple is built with round arches, it is not really a work of earlier date than aboutA.D.1370 to 1400. The steeple of San Gottardo in Milan, which also has round arches everywhere, and is in some other
60. CERTOSA OF CHIARAVALLE. p. 330.60. CERTOSA OF CHIARAVALLE.p. 330.
respects somewhat similar in detail to this, dates from 1339, and it would be a great mistake to argue for an earlier date in either case from the mere use of the round arch. If I recollect right, the low third stage in height at Chiaravalle is modern.
Milan was on the whole rather disappointing to me in my architectural capacity, though pleasant enough in every other; and after I had lounged and driven about, first in one direction and then in another, and had really enjoyed my last great Italian city very much, finding that little more was to be done but to eat ices, look at smart carriages on the Corso, and long for more chance of a clear view of the Alps than the hazy sultry weather afforded, I made up my mind to leave earlier than I had originally intended.
No architectural student should turn his feet homeward from Milan without having first of all visited Vercelli. It is easily reached by railway, passing on the road Novara, where there was only a few years back a fine Lombard cathedral, which has unfortunately been lately supplanted by a modern Italian fabric, even more than usually vapid and uninteresting, and where there is still an old baptistery so plastered and painted as to have lost almost all its old interest. The traveller has therefore to content himself with the views—which become better as he proceeds—of the snow-capped Alps (including their noblest peak, Monte Rosa) to the north of the railway, which, in clear weather, are most glorious in their effect.
The cathedral at Vercelli is modernized, and I believe not worth visiting; I confined myself to the remarkable church of Sant’Andrea, which is fortunately close to the railway station, and of unusual beauty and interest. The interest is historical as well as architectural. The church was built by Cardinal Guala de’ Bicchieri, who had been in England as legate from the Pope at the very beginning of the thirteenthcentury, and is said to have brought back with him to Vercelli a French or English architect. The evidence of the building itself is in favour of a French rather than an English influence, but neither is felt anywhere save in the interior, and the outside views shew to my eyes no trace of any but an Italian hand. It is the square-ended choir probably which has made some writers say that it was designed by an English architect. This choir is short, and on the east side of each transept are two chapels, which are apsidal. The whole church is groined; the columns between the nave and aisles are well clustered, and all the mouldings and details are well and skilfully drawn. The church is well designed to suit the climate, all the windows being small except at the east end, where there is a fine triplet, with a circular window filled with well-designed tracery above. Over the crossing of nave and transepts is a raised lantern, groined, and lighted by very small windows high up. The angles under it have extremely well-designed pendentives with carvings of the Evangelistic emblems in the centre. Brick is used for the main portion of the work, counterchanged in many parts with stone, and the proportions and details of the interior are so good that I found myself in the rare state of mind (in an Italian church) of admiring without grumbling! The dimensions are good without being imposing, the total length being a little over two hundred feet, and the width across the transepts about a hundred and twenty feet.
The exterior has a great bald west front with three round arched doorways, and a false gable between two small but lofty flanking towers. The walls are arcaded under the eaves, and over the crossing rises an octagonal lantern, which is gathered in after a rather ungainly manner above the lowest stage. This steeple is finished with a low circular brick spire adorned in the most curious fashion with small
61. SANT’ANDREA. VERCELLI. p. 332.61. SANT’ANDREA. VERCELLI.p. 332.
circular brick pinnacles—one over each side of the tower—which look extremely like a collection of chimneys.
Detached from the church, and standing at an angle to it, is a simple campanile of later date (1399), and of four stages in height. The combination of this eccentrically placed tower with the rest of the church is very remarkable, and appears to have been simply a caprice. Its effect certainly does not warrant the sort of admiration which should lead any modern architect engaged in studying the church to recommend the copying of the relative positions of it and its bell-tower. I ought not to forget one feature—the buttress—which is treated here in quite the French or English fashion, with bold projection and good steep sloped weatherings instead of in the usual Italian fashion as a mere pilaster.
North of the nave of the church is a good cloister, on the east side of which is a fine square chapter-house, divided by groining piers into nine bays. The original triple entrance to the chapter-house—a door with window on each side—still remains, and there is a communication also through a groined sacristy with the north transept. I know few churches which shew more just sense of the best treatment of a good Gothic interior than this does. In its original state, when the brickwork was exposed in its natural colour, the effect was of course much better than it is now; but the effect is still so good that I may safely assert that, were the exterior equal to the interior, there would be few more beautiful churches in Northern Italy.[77]
There is an interesting monument in the south-east chapel, corbelled out from the wall and decorated with sculpture and painting. In the gable is the Coronation of the BlessedVirgin, below a figure kneeling before her, and said to represent the architect of the church, who died in 1246, being Abbat as well as architect. Immediately opposite the church is a hospital founded by the same cardinal. It has been much altered, but there are still some ancient portions, which I could not get leave to see.
From Vercelli we retraced our steps to Milan, and halted no longer than was necessary before going on to Monza on our way to Como. Here we were well rewarded and most agreeably surprized. We found a very curious and good Broletto, a cathedral of fine and elaborate brickwork with a great west front of marble, and another brick church of most elaborate detail. The west front of the Duomo is a very fine example of Italian Gothic in marble; it is divided into five divisions in width, those in the centre and at the sides being the widest, and is constructed in yellow and dark grey marbles in alternate courses, the former very deep, the latter generally shallow, but varying without much rule.
All the roofs are flat, but finish at the west at different levels, and not in one continuous slope. The eaves have heavy cornices, and under these, all the way up, is an arcade resting upon shafts supported on corbels. The windows are all filled with traceries which are certainly not at all equal to English tracery, as they are very flat in their effect, and have no proper subordination of parts. There is a large rose window in the centre division treated in a better manner than is usual, and set within a square line of moulding, with small circles in the spandrels, and a line of square panels on each side continued in the most unpleasing way above; five other smaller circular windows are similarly treated. In some parts of the wall the courses of black marble are continuations of the black arch-stones of the windows, which, though not uncommon in Italian pointed work, is never satisfactory in its effect. In the upper part of the front this is not the case.
CATHEDRAL—MONZA.CATHEDRAL—MONZA.
The central division has a porch resting upon detached shafts, and with a semicircular arch, which is, however, richly cusped; and throughout the front semicircular and pointed arches seem to have been used quite indiscriminately. The buttresses which divide the front were originally finished with pinnacles, of which one only now remains; this is certainly very beautiful, of precisely the same type as the pinnacles on some of the tombs of the Scaligers at Verona, standing on detached shafts, with gables on either side, supported on trefoiled arches, and with small pinnacles between the gables, all of which are crocketed; the mouldings arevery flat, but in the pure white marble seen against the deep blue sky of Italy this flatness is as much a virtue and a beauty as its counterpart executed in stone in chilly England would be poverty-stricken and tame. All the remainder of the exterior of the Duomo is of red brick, with some particularly good detail. I give one window from the south side of the choir as an example.
There is a large low cloister on the north side, and from this the central tower is best seen; it is an octagon of two stages in brick and stone, a good deal arcaded, and has a pyramidal tiled roof, with a square turret in the centre. This forms a dome internally, which is however (as is the whole of the church) miserably modernized.
The cornices under the eaves here are of brick of good detail, but of the common arcaded character. I noticed an inscription on the east end, referring to the erection of the church in 1390, a date which tallies very well with the character of most of the external detail. Internally there is a rather remarkable pulpit or ambon on the north side of the nave. It is a gallery measuring some twenty feet east and west, supported on detached shafts with a projection in the centre, and of combined Gothic and Renaissance detail; so large a pulpit certainly suggests rambling discourses.
On the whole, such a church as this is very interesting, and to some extent striking; but, much as I admired the conjunction of the two marbles, and the more than usually Gothic character of some of the details, there was yet enough in the ungainly outline of the sham front, and in the capricious use of round and pointed arches indifferently, to damp my pleasure, and make me cease to admire the work very decidedly. There is a difference in construction which ought to be noted between this marble front and the marble work at Venice; for, whilst the latter is not at
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all constructional, this is entirely so, the marbles not being veneered on to the wall, but forming a portion of its substance. I need not say that in this respect, when we wish to use marble in England, the paucity of our supplies will probably always compel us to imitate the Venetians rather than the architects of Monza, Como, or Milan.
The sacristy here is worth visiting. Among other relics are two fifteenth-century chalices of unusually good workmanship. They appeared to me to be by a German rather than an Italian hand.
BROLETTO—MONZA.BROLETTO—MONZA.
The Broletto, which stands near the cathedral in the centre of the city, is very interesting. It is raised upon open arches of stone, two at either end and five at the sides. In my sketch of it the southern end is shewn with the projecting Ringhiera in the second stage; the northern end is very singular, the tower rising out of one side, with the steep-pitched roof of the other half abutting against it. The detail of the windows is very good, the arch-stones in some of them increasing in depth towards the centre, with an effect of very great strength. All the windows are shafted. The dimensions of this building areforty-two feet from east to west, and sixty-four feet from north to south.
The only other ancient building which I could find was the church of Sta. Maria in Strada; the most elaborate example of late work in brick and terra-cotta that I have anywhere seen. The effect is not satisfactory; for when, as here, carvings are imitated and repeated in terra-cotta, and traceries entirely executed in it, one begins, I confess, to long much for a little of the fire and spirit which some mark of the individual artist might have given such an amount of elaborate decoration in stone. The west front is the only part of the church of any interest, the interior having been thoroughly modernized, and retaining no traces of its original character.
The door and windows in the lower stage have been interpolated, and besides this there is a strangely ugly window above them, about which—as this is the last of its class we shall see—I wish to say a word. In starting on a continental journey, between London and Croydon on the South-Eastern Railway you used to pass under several great semi-circular arched bridges. When first built, the engineer chose, in order to gratify some odd fancy, to prop these up by two piers of brickwork, dividing the arch into three, and putting the whole in great jeopardy. It is curious that this singularly supported and divided arch finds a counterpart in almost every large church in the North of Italy. It was the one great idea of the Renaissance builders, and, until they had taken out one of the old windows and inserted in its place one of these hideous contrivances, they were never satisfied. In Venice every church, even the noble church of the Frari, has them, and I believe scarcely a large church in the North of Italy is without at least this one evidence of the delicacy of taste which characterizes the Renaissance age!
The skill which is shewn in making and fitting togetherbrickwork such as that in the front of this church is very great indeed, but, after all, I fear, rather mistaken, for the effect is most unsatisfactory, and every one must see that throughout the façade there is an evident attempt to satisfy the eye by the exceedingly elaborate character of the detail, rather than by the fitness of the thing itself, or by the beauty of the proportions. The insufficiency of the windows for the extent of wall is an obvious fault, and not less so is the fact which I am almost tired of referring to, that the whole front is sham and designed without any reference whatever to the wants of the building, to which it forms the street-front.
In the evening we left Monza for Camerlata, a village within about a mile of Como, availing ourselves again of the Milan and Como railway.
The Camerlata station was soon reached, and after some little delay we found ourselves ensconced in one of those long omnibuses so fashionable in Italy, and driving down a long hill, planted on either side with trees, towards Como. Above us, to the right and to the left, we could see, by the bright moonlight, the shapes of the mountains which hem in this arm of the fairest of lakes; whilst just above us, proudly perched upon a crag, were the ruins of a castle, which lent, when we saw it by daylight, an additional charm to the otherwise beautiful view.
Soon we were in the outskirts of the town; but it was long before we reached the borders of the lake, after following the windings of an almost interminable street, passing the guardhouse, and, to our sorrow, parting again for the last time with our passports, then crossing the piazza in which stand the Duomo and the Broletto side by side—for me the main attraction of the place—until at last we were fairly discharged at an hotel on the very edge of the water.
We had heard an Austrian band as we rolled across thepiazza, and so without delay thither we returned in time to hear the last of Austrian music, and to revel by moonlight in the beauty of the many-coloured marble front of the fair Broletto. We stood listening to the music for about a quarter of an hour, when suddenly a word of command was given, the men who held the lanterns marched to the front, the band formed behind them four abreast, the lights were extinguished, and, suddenly breaking into a lively march, the band disappeared, and the crowd soon left us in quiet possession of the piazza, whose old houses still rang with the wild and clamorous echoes of the beautiful music.
We returned to our inn, and had infinite trouble in the attempt to find a voiturier to take us to the Lago Maggiore in time for the steamer on the morrow. The route by which I had fully intended to return was to go by the lake to Menaggio, thence to cross to Porlezza and by the Lake of Lugano, and then from Lugano across the Monte Cenere to Bellinzona; to my great annoyance I found, however, at Milan that, owing to the long-standing quarrel between the Emperor and the Confederation, no travellers were allowed to pass immediately from the Austrian into the Ticinese territory, orvice versâ, and we were obliged, therefore, to defer seeing the beautiful Lake of Lugano, to go instead to Laveno, and thence to Bellinzona, by the Lago Maggiore; and our difficulty at Como was to find any true account of the time that it would take us to reach Laveno, or of the time at which we were likely to find the steamer to Magadino. In the end it was decided that we should start at seven the next morning, and accordingly soon after five I was out in the piazza taking notes and sketches of my last Italian building, the Broletto of Como.
In general character this is somewhat similar to the Broletto at Bergamo, but in real beauty it is scarcely inferior to any one building I have seen in Italy. Towards the
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piazza it has four arches on the ground story, which is divided from the next stage by an arcaded string-course. This second stage has three windows only over the four arches below; and another very noticeable irregularity is, that one of these windows, and that not the central, has a pedimental canopy above its arch, and has more shafts than the others. The central window has been modernized to some extent, but this was the Ringhiera, and the balcony still remains, though looking more modern than the rest of the front. Some of the arches of these windows are very noticeable; for though they are semicircular, the back of the stones which form them is cut with a different sweep, so as to produce an outer pointed line, and thus to leave an impression on the eye of absolutely pointed windows. Another arcaded corbel-table finishes the façade, or rather ought to finish it, for above this some barbarian has added another stage, nearly to the destruction of the effect of the building.[78]North of this façade a great plain tower of rough stone recalls to recollection those of Bergamo and Brescia; it boasts of an immense clock and some faint traces of painting, and is left unfinished at the top. The whole of this façade (with the exception of the campanile) is built of red, white, and dark grey marbles, which are very carefully and effectively contrasted in their arrangement; the courses are very irregular in their widths, and apparently arranged upon no systematic rule. The opposite (east) side of the Broletto is very similar, but one of its windows is remarkable for the way in which the shafts are knotted together in the centre. This is not at all an uncommon feature in Italian pointed, and I have often wondered how it is that the eye is not at once disgusted with it, instead of being, as it usually is, pleased. I take it to be a justifiabledevice on some such ground as this: it takes much labour and skill to cut several shafts out of one block of marble, but all this labour and skill is unthought of, if they are entirely separated, or held together by a band which might perchance be made of some other material; this knot therefore is devised as the only means of explaining to us that the shafts so carved have really been accomplished with a very great expenditure of time and patience and skill, and do not depend upon any artificial band for the firmness with which they are all united in one. The capitals of all the columns in this Broletto are very well carved.
By the side of the Broletto stands the Duomo, the bad character of whose west front, even though it is of late Gothic, hardly tempted me to go in to see the effect of the interior. I did so, however, and found a large but uninteresting church, with groining of pointed section, which gives considerable character to an otherwise insipid work. The west front has doorways of Lombard character, and above them a large rose window; but every part of the exterior and interior seems to have been so much altered that little remains of the original work.
Internally works of restoration were going on, and these permitted me to see that the whole church had a great deal of colour introduced on the walls and over the groining, though I was unable to ascertain anything satisfactorily as to its age or character.
About ten minutes’ walk from the cathedral is the fine Lombard church of Sta. Maria. This has unfortunately been much modernized, but its east end with an apse arcaded outside, and finished with a fine eaves-cornice rich in shadow, is still extremely striking and almost unaltered. It is built of black and white stone. Here, alas! I remember that I thought at the time of my first visit, ends my hurried study of Gothic architecture in Italy. But if at that day it was
64. STA. MARIA, COMO. p. 342.64. STA. MARIA, COMO.p. 342.
somewhat sad to leave Como after an all too rapid journey, it has been my happiness to revisit the quaint old town again and again since, and each time with increased pleasure. Italian scenery, Italian art, Italian travel, afford some of the happiest recollections of well-spent days of travel, which, if they have never been able to exceed in pleasure or to approach in profit the remembrances of travels in my own and other lands, undertaken for the same purpose, are nevertheless full to overflowing with lessons in art which no true architect could afford to despise or wish to forget.