“And now farewell to Italy—perhapsFor ever! Yet, methinks, I could not go,I could not leave it, were it mine to say‘Farewell for ever!’”Rogers.
“And now farewell to Italy—perhapsFor ever! Yet, methinks, I could not go,I could not leave it, were it mine to say‘Farewell for ever!’”Rogers.
“And now farewell to Italy—perhapsFor ever! Yet, methinks, I could not go,I could not leave it, were it mine to say‘Farewell for ever!’”Rogers.
Departure from Como—Varese—Lake of Varese—Italian Boatmen—Intra—Laveno—Lago Maggiore—Magadino—Road to Hospenthal—The Dazio Grande—Airolo—Hospenthal—Ascent of the Furca—Valley of the Reuss—Lake of Luzern—Luzern—The Unter Hauenstein—Strasburg.
Departure from Como—Varese—Lake of Varese—Italian Boatmen—Intra—Laveno—Lago Maggiore—Magadino—Road to Hospenthal—The Dazio Grande—Airolo—Hospenthal—Ascent of the Furca—Valley of the Reuss—Lake of Luzern—Luzern—The Unter Hauenstein—Strasburg.
THEREwas great delay in leaving Como; the passport officer was asleep, and no one dared to awaken him for our convenience; at last we determined to start, and went off to the passport office, and, after waiting nearly half an hour, the dilatory clerk arrived, and our passport having been stamped with the “Buon per partire,” so uncivilly glad to get rid of you as it seems to be, I mounted the carriage, and we were soon on our way.
All Como was astir, and bedecking the houses and churches, and building triumphal arches across the roads, for some religious fête whose nature we did not discover; but we soon left its streets and hills behind, and began to look out anxiously for our first view of Monte Rosa and its attendant Alps; but, alas! the weather, instead of clearing, rapidly became more and more cloudy, and ere long we felt that we must give up all hope of getting even the mostdistant glimpse of the monarch of this portion of the Alpine chain.
Without this view, from which we had promised ourselves so much pleasure, the road is tame and uninteresting all the way to Varese, where we changed our horses and carriage. It is an uninteresting town, with a good many villas and gardens, belonging, I believe, to inhabitants of Milan, who come out here for the mountain air. None of their houses are free from that general look of dreariness and lack of care which seem to afflict most Italian villas. Passing through Varese, we soon saw on our right a very famous pilgrimage church crowning the summit of a considerable hill, and approached by a succession of chapels, somewhat as in the still more famous pilgrimage church of Varallo, and so popular that round it there seems to have grown up a small town for the accommodation of the pilgrims.
Farther on we passed the lake of Varese, and from one point in the road had a view of no less than about five different lakes, one of which was Lago Maggiore. The Lago di Varese is a tame, uninteresting sheet of water, surrounded by low flat woody country, except at one point on the north, but even there the hills do not rise immediately from the lake.
The only approach to old buildings that we saw were one or two brick campanili of early date, and the remains of a castle, near Varese, finished at the top with the favourite forked battlement.
We had much ado to make our driver understand our desire to reach Lago Maggiore without delay, and, to say the truth, there was something too much like cruelty in the attempt to compel our poor steeds to any such feat of speed and strength as the performance of some six miles an hour really appeared to be. As we neared the lake the sceneryimproved; and woody hills, with here and there a dashing streamlet finding its way down the hill-side, and a glimpse now and then of the blue water of the lake, made the way pleasant. At last we reached the outskirts of the village of Laveno, and were immediately chased by all the male population of the place, who explained their eager pursuit when at last we stopped on the beach, by vying with one another for the privilege of conveying us across the lake to Intra, where we had to join the steamer. I asked their charge, and they rather astonished me by demanding twelve francs and a buono-mano; of course I blandly offered them five francs, much to their disgust, and with shrugs of their shoulders and grand looks of contempt they turned away. However, I was determined not to submit to so palpable an imposition, so, when I was having my passportvisé, I asked the courteous passport-officer what the fair charge might be? “Four and a half lire,” was the answer. “But how am I to compel the rascals to take me?”—“Oh! bring them up to me,” he replied; so down I went to where all the boatmen were discussing together the atrocity of my offer, and, taking two of them by the arm, I quietly walked them up to the friendly officer; the rest followed, and then commenced one of the most amusing scenes I ever witnessed. The passport-officer told them to take me for the four and a half lire, upon which, they all, standing with their right arms extended towards him, answered with a furious volley of Italian ejaculations, quite unintelligible to me, but sufficiently absurd when contrasted with the quiescent state of their antagonist. Their eloquence was, however, all in vain; for, after a short attempt to reason them into submission, my friend sent them off, and threatened to send a soldier with us if they did not start at once. Before I could reach the beach again the luggage was all in the boat, and in another minute we were afloat, propelled by three sturdyfellows, who, after having tried in vain to make me pay fourteen lire and a buono-mano, were really not apparently much annoyed when I paid them the legal fare, being about one-fourth less than at a guess I had first of all offered! They were evidently true philosophers.
I fear that my experience of travelling in Italy obliged me to look upon the proceedings of these men as by no means unusual or peculiar to boatmen; wherever you go it is the same, and, unless you wish to pay much more than the rest of the world ever thinks of paying, you must make a point of disputing hotel accounts, shop charges, and voiturier’s charges; the result always is, that you pay about twenty per cent less than you otherwise would, and are evidently looked up to with infinitely more respect.
About half an hour sufficed to take us to Intra, the Sardinian port opposite to Laveno, just a glimpse being obtained of the famous Isola Bella as we crossed. A Sardinian soldier welcomed us to his liberal Majesty’s dominions, and, as we told him that we were going on by the steamer, allowed us to go into the town without shewing our passports. There was, however, nothing to see, except the pretty view of the opposite hills—they are scarcely mountains—and of the long sheet of water stretching up and down for many a mile, and commanded almost more completely hence than from any other place in its whole extent.
We dined at a very miserable inn, with a pretty lookout, and, as it happened to be ajour maigre, could get nothing fit to eat; the landlord took, however, a convenient view of the matter, and, assuring us that he never made any difference on this account, charged us as though we had eaten all the delicacies of the season. Here, again, as I had time on my hands, I amused myself with lowering my host’s demands, and finally paid him a fair valuation for a verymaigredinner.
This business was no sooner satisfactorily finished, a sketch of the opposite coast having been secured during the argument, than the steamer arrived, and in a few minutes we were ploughing our way along the fair expanse of water, leaving the not very honest people of Laveno and Intra behind us and forgotten, all our attention being devoted to the gradually developing beauties of the upper end of the lake.
We were amused at Laveno by the warlike demonstrations of the Austrians, who had there a very smart little war-steamer for the protection of their interests on the lake, besides a small fort. They had, in fact, less territory on the lake than either Sardinia or Switzerland; luckily, however, for the peace of the water, these two last states seemed not to think it necessary to keep up a rival force, and so the little war-steamer at Laveno remained, untouched and uncared for, and her officers passed their lives in smoking cigars and longing for some change of place and duty, which was provided for them at last by the abrupt conclusion of Austrian rule in these parts a few years after the time of this visit.
Our steamer kept very much to the Sardinian shore of the lake, and, as there are two or three great bends in its course, a view of one small portion only of the lake is obtained, until, upon reaching a promontory, and rounding it, as it were a new lake and new scenery are disclosed; and happily, as the water is ascended towards Magadino, each turn brings more beautiful scenery than the last, until, as the head of the lake is neared, the view is very grand—not equal, certainly, to the head of Lake Como—but still exceedingly beautiful. The sun was just setting as we reached Locarno, and then our steamer, skirting along the sedgy shores of the lake—where the Ticino, at its entry, brings down a continually increasing deposit of mountain refuse—brought us in a few minutes to Magadino.
Our principal companions on the steamer were a large party of English, whose travelling-carriage and horses blocked up half the boat, and a very pleasant old Italian woman, whose elaborately neat hair and magnificent array of pins, each filigreed at the end, and all radiating like arrows from a central knot of hair, through which two larger and more magnificent pins were passed horizontally, forced upon our notice—but not more strongly than it had been forced before—this wonderful smartness and elaborate treatment and get-up of the hair, so common among the middle and lower classes in the North of Italy, and so unlike the customs of a similar class in England: I am bound to say, though, that the result of the elaborate straining and dressing of the hair seems generally to be, that, by the time women are fifty, they have no hair at all, or, at best, some two or three stray locks, which are then brought carefully together, and tied up, with a bold disregard of effect, in a knot at the top of the head.
When we landed at Magadino we found a diligence waiting, and, securing thecoupé, jumped in, and were soon trotting off rapidly on the road to Bellinzona; in little more than an hour we passed through its gateway without having our passports demanded (how pleasant a change after Italy!), and were soon comfortably ensconced at the very respectable Albergo dell’ Angelo.
We started from Bellinzona very early the next morning, determined, if possible, to surmount the worst part of the road and to sleep at Hospenthal, on the northern side of the pass. The view of Bellinzona on leaving it is very striking; three old castles perched on crags above give it an air of picturesque antiquity, and these, with the mountains rising grandly on either side of the Ticino, and sloping down in the distance to the bosom of Lago Maggiore, make a most beautiful picture. The situation is not, however, to be comparedto that of Chiavenna, whose wall of mountains, clothed with Italian luxuriance of foliage, is pierced here and there with a chasm only, for the passage of some headlong river dashing down into the broad valley below the town; here the valley continues to be of considerable width for some miles above the town, whilst there one scarcely sees in what way any road is to escape across the mountains.
The first portion of the road is not very interesting. The pass of the Bernardino soon turns off to the right up a valley which allows a partial view, and from this point the S. Gothard road is sole possessor of the valley. Our first change of horses was at Bodio; and from thence the road gradually became much more beautiful. Many churches are seen scattered here and there on the summits of the inaccessible-looking mountains on either side of the valley, all of them whitewashed and generally distinguished by their tall campanili, and sometimes by the small cluster of houses and the patches of cultivated ground around them, betokening man’s labour as well as man’s religious love, on the summit of these forbidding-looking steeps. And whilst the distant prospect was so fair, the scenery close to the road was embellished by vineyards and magnificent chestnuts, growing in some places among great rocks shivered from the mountain-side above, and, in others, in groves on either side of some beautiful stream descending in a silver fall over the grey precipices which overhang the road.
The villages through which we passed were pretty and picturesque, and the villagers all very busy in the fields bringing in their hay, and gathering their grapes, which are always trained here over rocks and roofs in the most picturesquely irregular way; and altogether the valley, rife with so many signs of industry and activity, bore thoroughly the appearance rather of a Swiss than of an Italian district. The upper slopes of the mountains, on either side, wereclustered with fir-trees, and the deep blue water of the Ticino, here gently murmuring, there hastily dashing over some rocky impediment, made grateful music in our ears and imparted additional beauty to the way.
At Biasca and Giornico there are ancient churches, the exteriors of which are, however, of no interest; though the interior of the latter, with its crypt and curious paintings, well deserves a passing visit; but besides these all seemed new, and the houses as well as the people and the scenery soon began to remind us of Switzerland. There were those particularly large well-to-do looking inns in every village, with white walls and windows resplendent with green wooden shutter-blinds which are so common throughout this country; and here and there were to be seen houses with a display of well-carved or craftily-framed woodwork, which gave proof of our rapid approach to the landpar excellenceof carpentry.
But it was not till Faido had been passed, and the increasing barrenness of the hills, the entire absence of vineyards, and the only occasional appearance of some grand old chestnut-tree, weatherbeaten and rugged from conflict with many a storm, or, may be, some frightful inundation such as the Ticino loves at times to indulge in, shewed how rapidly we were rising into mountain regions, that the scenery became really striking. Then the road seems suddenly to arrive at the end of the valley, but presently as we advance, a narrow gorge in the mountain is perceived, and we enter this, the most magnificent portion of the Val Levantina, called Dazio Grande. The road is admirably engineered, carried through two or three short tunnels, and in excavations in the rocks above the torrent; the dark blue water leaps from rock to rock, and here and there dashes down in a fine waterfall; and the scenery is altogether so striking that, on the whole, I am much inclined to give thepreference to this portion of the valley—that is to say, from the commencement of Dazio Grande to within a short distance of Airolo—over any portion of similar length in the whole course of the Splügen. The first narrow defile passed, the valley opens out again, and, with occasional glimpses all the way of the old road winding below near the margin of the stream, and destroyed some years since in a storm, ere very long we reach another defile as beautiful as the last, but much shorter; for here, after crossing the stream and mounting a short distance, a projecting rock is pierced, the river finds its outlet beneath through a chasm not twenty feet in width, and then, the valley opening out again, Airolo is seen just before us, and beyond the little cluster of houses which marks the village rise the mountains, so grandly and abruptly closing in the head of the Val Bedretto, up which our course now lies, whilst every here and there on their rugged sides or summits some snowy peak or glacier edge tells not uncertainly of their grand elevation.
We arrived at Airolo by about two o’clock, and here we had a rest of an hour and a half for dinner, followed by a ransacking of a collection of Swiss woodwork, ending—as such an operation always does—much to the advantage of its proprietor.
With fresh horses we were soon on the road again, and now the weather, which had been unpromising and occasionally wet, seemed inclined to improve, and we commenced the real ascent of the mountain under rather more promising circumstances than we had at first anticipated. The road soon leaves the river, and, turning to the right, winds and twists about in the serpentine fashion known only to Alpine roads, and quite incomprehensible until one has seen them, keeping the church and village of Airolo in view, first on the right, then on the left, for hours. Here and there a straight bit of road gives hopes that the zig-zagging is over, but thethought is no sooner expressed than it is contradicted by another ascent worse than before, and one begins to envy the electric telegraph carried here in straight lines from point to point, where one would have thought it impossible to gain footing for its supports, and giving fair idea of the directness and speed of the communications of which it is the channel. The head of the Val Tremola, as the valley along which the road finds its way is called, is nearly reached, and the last glimpse of the mountains, at the head of Val Bedretto, is caught, when a stream is crossed and the last flight of zig-zags is commenced; these are both numerous and intricate, and as one looks down upon them from above, their interlacings produce a most singular effect. At last, however, these are surmounted, greatcoats and plaids are in requisition, and we all begin to feel uncomfortably cold. The cold grey colour of the wild mountains of granite, great blocks from whose sides strew the ground thickly on either side, seems to harmonize well with the scene, and when presently we pass the Capuchin hospice our driver tells us that we are at the summit. Two or three dark deep-looking pools or tarns stand close to the hospice, and reminded me in their gloomy and cold aspect of the tarn which gives so much character to the hospice of the Grimsel. The same kind of scenery accompanied us on the now rapid descent; the sun went down, and the stars were soon out shining brilliantly upon the mountain road, when at last a sudden turn brought us in sight of lights, and then, descending a few zig-zags, we saw below us the roofs of the houses of Hospenthal, and, in less time than it takes to describe, were standing on the steps of one of the best inns even in Switzerland, the Goldner Löwe, and superintending the unpacking of our goods.
In such an inn as this everything proves forcibly that one is in Switzerland; the rooms are all very clean and verysmall, and there is a certain homely air about everybody and everything which is the especial charm of the better class of Swiss country inns, and in which they excel, perhaps, all but the very best English inns of the same kind.[79]
We spent an amusing evening, having for companions a Frenchman with his wife and two daughters, all very lively and exceedingly loquacious: the walls of the modestsalle à mangerrang with hearty laughter until after the time at which early travellers generally go to bed, and so we paved the way doubtless for a hearty night’s rest.
The first thing to be done in the morning, after the discussion of the excellent trout and honey put before us, was to take a stroll up to the old castle which lends so much picturesque character to the village. The weather was glorious; the perfectly blue sky overhead, the bright green of the valley, the luxuriance of the lower slopes of the mountains, and the view up the pass of the Furca closed in with a white line of snow, combined together to make us all regret our determination to push on rapidly for Luzern; and no sooner was the regret felt than—like idle school-children enjoying themselves while they may—we made up our minds to ascend the Furca, sleep on the summit of the pass, and return early the next morning. No sooner said than done; our horses were taken out of the carriage, and in half an hour, with a guide and horses for the ladies, we were on our way for a mountain excursion, full of that elastic feeling which the treading of a Swiss mountain-path always gives, and bent upon enjoying ourselves to the full.
The contrast with the flat dusty roads and the sultry weather to which you are so often forced to submit in Italy made the walk especially pleasant; and though, compared tomany other mountain excursions, it was of slight interest, under the circumstances it presented more than common attraction to us. The path was one of those pleasant ways so common in Switzerland—a paved narrow road between banks of fields or low walls, gradually rising and falling, now crossing the dry bed of some glacier torrent, and now bridging the stream which descends the valley to feed the Reuss. The fields were rich in colour, and bright with various and lovely flowers, and the lower slopes of the mountain were tinted a rich purple with the bloom of herbs, cropped gratefully here and there by small and melancholy looking sheep.
The small village of Realp is soon reached, and then the ascent begins; this is rather stiff, and it has taken us, when we reach the summit, just four hours and a half of hard walking from Hospenthal. We found dinner going on at the little hostelry at the top, and, after partaking of it, started again to ascend the Furca-Horn, a mountain rising above the summit of the pass, and, as we had been told, quite worth the trouble of the ascent. There was no kind of path, and in places the mountain-side was so steep that I began to think it was no place for ladies to scramble up; however, they thought otherwise, and after divers tumbles in the snow, and surmounting rather formidable-looking obstacles, we reached the summit at last, and, sitting down on the edge of a great rock, spent a long time in enjoying the glorious view.
Just under us was the vast glacier of the Rhone, and then beyond it we looked down the long valley of the same river until its shape was obscured by mist, and traced the path by which we had walked in a previous journey up the steep Meyenwand to the Grimsel. Immediately in front of us were the vast peaked mass of the Schreckhorn, the whole course of the glaciers of the Aar, and the peaks of theFinster-Aarhorn, the Jungfrau, and the Mönch; above our heads rose the Galenstock, and opposite us the Mutthorn and Monte Fiudo; whilst the summit of Monte Rosa, discerned with difficulty among a marvellous array of distant peaks, completed one of the finest views of snow-covered mountains which it has ever been my good fortune to behold.
Long time did we keep our elevated seats, scanning again and again the glorious panorama, and at last, most unwillingly, commenced the descent; this was more difficult, though much more speedy, than the ascent, as the side of the mountain was both steep and slippery. We reached the summit of the pass, itself about eight thousand three hundred feet above the sea, in little more than an hour, the ascent to the Horn having occupied about two hours and a half; and here we found our French friends of the previous evening, who had in vain endeavoured to follow us in our ascent, but had been one and all obliged to give up the attempt.
Late at night we all went out again to look at the most glorious moonlight effect it is possible to imagine; the peaks of the mountains and the vast fields of snow or glacier lighted up by the bright light of the moon had a charm about them peculiarly fascinating.
Very early the next morning we started again on our way back to Hospenthal, and got down to the inn in good time, had breakfast, and then, mounting our carriage, we were soon off again down the valley of the Reuss. The Devil’s Bridge was ere long reached, and the glorious scenery with which it is surrounded amply redeemed the expectations I had always formed of its extreme beauty; indeed for grandeur, combined with luxuriant cultivation of the lower slopes of the mountains, and for the wild beauty of the course of the river itself, nothing even in Switzerland surpassesthe narrow valley through which the turbulent Reuss finds its way from Andermatt to Amsteg.
Here the valley widens considerably, and orchards full of fruit-trees, covered with bright-looking apples, spread half over the valley, on each side of which the mountains are very grand in their outline. Before long Altdorf is reached, and all the scenes so dear to Swiss freemen are rapidly passed, until at last our carriage sets us down on the very edge of the lovely Lake of Luzern, where the half-hour which we have to wait for the departure of the steamer is spent in attempting a sketch of the rocks which descend so precipitously into the deep recesses of the lake.
Much harm is done by overpraising beautiful scenery, and even the Lake of the Four Cantons suffers from this; for so much has been said and written about its unmatched loveliness and grandeur, that the result is perhaps a slight disappointment with the reality. One great beauty, no doubt, is the succession of entirely distinct views which different portions of the lake afford, though at the same time the irregular outline of the water very much diminishes its apparent scale; I doubt, too, whether there is any one view so grand as that at the head of Lake Como, though otherwise I know no lake which can be preferred to it.
On the voyage down the lake, Tell’s Chapel and the famous Grütli were of course seen; a distant view was caught of the old cradle of Switzerland, the little town of Schwytz, with the grand peaks of the Mythenberg rising proudly behind it; the Righi, and the black-looking Pilatus, were each in turn passed; and as evening drew on, the flat shores of the lower part of the lake were neared, and presently the spires and turrets of Luzern came in sight. In a few minutes the bustle of landing being over, the immense Schweizer Hof received us within its capacious walls, just intime for one of those accommodating late tables-d’hôte so acceptable after a long day’s travel.
Three or four hours spent the next morning in strolling about served only to convince us that there was not very much of architectural interest in the city itself. A line of old wall, broken at short intervals by picturesque and irregular towers, and a very long covered bridge across the lake just where the Reuss runs out of it, are the only noticeable features. The bridge is ornamented with an immense number of oil-paintings—two to each principal rafter—illustrative of the history of the place and country, not valuable as works of art, but curious in themselves, and giving much additional interest to the structure.
The principal church has two western towers and spires; the latter are of metal and managed in the way so common in this part of the world, though never, so far as I know, attempted in England,[80]with the angles of the spire over the centre of the cardinal sides of the tower. The whole of the rest of the church is modernized; and there is a singular modern cloister, which nearly surrounds the churchyard, and contains an immense array of graves and grave-crosses.
We left Luzern at eleven for Basel, in the diligence, and had a very pleasant ride over often-travelled ground, of which, therefore, the less said perhaps the better. The rich luxuriance of the crops, the careful farming, the vast barns, and the great loads of produce which are constantly met upon the road, remind the traveller more of England than any other portion of the Continent ever does. The Lake of Sempach was soon passed on our right, and at last a pause was made in the good old-fashioned way, for a very comfortable dinner at the little old town of Zofingen. At Aarbergthe dashing Aar was crossed, and soon the ascent of the Unter Hauenstein range was commenced; and here we enjoyed the most extensive of all the day’s views of the Alps—the last and grandest. Gradually as the summit is reached peak after peak is seen rising up above the mist which shrouds the lower slopes of the mountains, their white outlines tenderly relieved against the blue sky: we recognized one after the other almost the entire range of the grandest mountains in Europe, seen before nearer but not in fairer guise, but wherever seen leaving the same lasting impression upon the mind. Suddenly we overpassed the summit, and began rapidly to descend the northern slope of the hills; but the last link that bound us to the land in which we had been voyaging, as we hope, not for the last time, is never to be remembered but with affectionate regard, touched, as every one must be, in viewing such a panorama, with the extreme glory of the scene.
We had now done with mountains and with mountain scenery, though the road was still interesting and very pretty, and at last late in the evening we reached Basel. The moon was shining brightly on the Rhine as we went to our beds for the last time, in this journey at least, in Switzerland.
We were amused, on our way to Strasburg, by the comparative insignificance in our minds of the chain of the Vosges, which, on our outward journey, had impressed us as really very striking in their outline. So much for the effect of a recent acquaintance with grander mountains!
Strasburg Cathedral was visited, not for the first time and with a consequent increase of pleasure. Such magnificent architecture as that of its most exquisite nave is truly refreshing after Italian work, and, small as its scale is compared to that of Milan, it in no way lost its effect upon my mind. I was particularly struck by the vast difference between the delicate art shewn in the design of the traceries,in the softly rounded contour and dark recesses of the mouldings, and in the vigour and beauty of the carving of all the capitals, heightened as they are by the flood of coloured light let into the interior by its immense windows filled with some of the noblest stained glass in Europe, compared with that shewn in the rude traceries, heavy carving, and plainness or absence of moulding, which characterize almost all Italian Gothic work. No more strong or decided example need be desired of nearly all the points of contrast between the best work, north and south of the Alps, than this, the first great northern Gothic church seen on the homeward way, presents, when compared with all the work which has nevertheless been studied with so much pleasure and advantage on the southern side of the Alps.
It is only fair to say that the first impression produced by the west front of Strasburg was one—felt, indeed, before, but much more strongly now—of the smallness of scale and narrowness of the whole. I have not at any time had any especial love for this front, but, just after seeing the simple unbroken façades of Italian churches, with their grand porches and their simple breadth of effect, there is something so entirely destructive to all repose in a front covered as this is with lines of tracery, panelling, niches, and canopies in every direction, that it leaves, I confess, a painful feeling upon the mind, of the restless nature of its designer’s thoughts. But this is true only of the west front, for, on entering by the door into the nave, all such thoughts are banished on the instant, and you stand awestruck at the beauty and solemnity of the art in which hitherto Northern architects alone have ever approached at all nearly to perfection, and convinced at the same time that, with such a work to refer to, we need never doubt, between the comparative merits of Gothic architecture north and south of the Alps.
“Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,That daily court you and caress,How few the happy secret findOf your calm loveliness!”Christian Year.
“Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,That daily court you and caress,How few the happy secret findOf your calm loveliness!”Christian Year.
“Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,That daily court you and caress,How few the happy secret findOf your calm loveliness!”Christian Year.
Concluding Summary—Classic and Gothic Architecture—Italian Gothic—Shafts—Cornices—Monuments—Cloisters—Windows—Brickwork—Colour in Construction—Truth in Architectural Design and Construction.
Concluding Summary—Classic and Gothic Architecture—Italian Gothic—Shafts—Cornices—Monuments—Cloisters—Windows—Brickwork—Colour in Construction—Truth in Architectural Design and Construction.
IPROPOSEin this chapter to sum up, as shortly as I can, the information which I have gathered in the course of my tours in the North of Italy, on the subject of mediæval art. In doing this I shall have to remark, not only on the beauties, but also on the failings of Italian Gothic architecture, and to give expression to the thoughts which arise in examining its remains as to developments which are possible to us in the same direction, as well as to suggest some of the lessons which may be learnt from them.
I think it may be gathered, from what has been already said, that it will be useless to look for anything like the completeness in the development of the style in Italy which our ancestors attained to in England; and this is easily accounted for. In England there were no Classic buildings to find here and there an admirer, or perhaps a cluster of disciples, as in Italy; and men worked, therefore, when theGothic style was thoroughly established, freely, and in their own way, and apparently quite untrammelled with a suspicion even that there had ever been another style brought to perfection by people above most others civilized and refined in their habits and tastes, and one moreover which was distinguished by certain broad and strongly marked lines of separation from the style which they inherited from their fathers, and practised and brought, as nearly as they could, to perfection. In England, therefore, in the Middle Ages, we may look in vain for any evidence of active sympathy with a more ancient and venerable style than that which was then in the fulness of vigour, life, and constant development; and consequently, if it be likely that any infusion of the art practised by the ancients could have aided the Northern architects in their work, we must not expect to find here any trace of such assistance or such advantages. But in Italy the case was far different: the love for the remains of earlier ages was never dead, but only slept, ever and anon to break forth in some new appropriation of ancient materials, or some imitation and reproduction of an ancient form or idea. So in Venice, in the thirteenth century, whilst pointed arches were being reared by some to support the walls, not only of the churches, but of the houses also, other hands were busy with the task of raising aloft those two Classic shafts, with their antique capitals and detail, which, even to the present day, stand peculiar and well-remembered features of the Piazzetta of S. Mark; standing proofs, if such are indeed wanted, that there had been artists in earlier days whose art was noble and well worthy of the emulation of men in all ages.
And this Classic seed fell into not ungrateful soil; for though there, as elsewhere throughout Europe, the value of the pointed arch as a feature in construction—independently, that is, of its intrinsic beauty—must have been well known,and was boldly recognized where it could not be avoided, there were nevertheless in a hundred ways proofs that men still remembered the lessons and traditions of the past, and used it with a certain degree of caution and unwillingness, and associated with features which, rightly or wrongly, were at the time eschewed by all Northern architects, either as being contrary to its spirit, or through ignorance of their existence. This fact would seem, therefore, to place the Italian works of the Middle Ages in the ranks of hybrid and mixed styles, and to debar them from competition with the more pure contemporary works of Northern Europe.
There will, however, always be much profit in the careful examination of such works as these in Italy, because their authors stood in the same position that we do now, and, conversant to some extent with the beauties of the best Gothic architecture of the North and the best Classic examples of Italy, took what they deemed best from each, and endeavoured to unite the perfections of both.
Classic architecture is that of the lintel and impost, involving the idea of rest: Gothic is that of the arch and the flying buttress, involving the idea of life and motion. The two ideas are absolutely opposed to each other. Classic architecture, directly it admits the arch, ceases to be true to itself in any real artistic sense; yet if it refuses to use, and to exhibit the use of the arch, it denies itself wilfully the use of the best known mode of construction. Gothic architects may still, on the other hand, as they always have done, gain much from the teachings of Classic buildings. And if sometimes there is too great liveliness and want of repose in their works, they may usefully study those of their predecessors who undoubtedly obtained more breadth and repose in them by some knowledge of Classic examples, than they would have had if they had not known them.
Gothic architecture was essentially the work of scientificmen; the most consummate skill being displayed in arranging thousands of small blocks of stones, any one of which might be carried upon a strong man’s shoulders, into walls rising far in height above anything ever dreamt of by the Greek, bridging great openings, and providing by the exactest counterpoise of various parts for the perfect security of works whose airiness and life would seem to have lifted them out of the region of constructive skill; and yet all these wonderful works were executed in materials as ponderous in their nature as those which the Greek had handled so rudely in construction, and so delicately in ornamentation.
The natural result of this excess of science was, perhaps, that less delicacy and beauty of detail became necessary; for when the plain rough walls, without carving and without ornament, were nevertheless of necessity so beautiful in their intricacy of outline and delicacy of structure; and when, too, so little (comparatively) plain surface remained to be looked at or dwelt upon, men cared less for the choicest examples of the sculptor’s art, and were less obliged to satisfy the eye with them. Much, therefore, as Art gained in most ways by the invention of the arch, she at the same time lost something which had been until then possessed, and which, too, was essential in the highest order of work.
This was the case, speaking generally; but, as need hardly, I suppose, be said, there are examples scattered here and there throughout the North of Europe, and particularly in France and England, which shew distinctly enough that their artists had grasped this necessity in its very fullest extent; and were in no degree satisfied with anything less than the greatest perfection in the sculpture, and other decorations with which they adorned their works.
Italian architects stood, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in a position in many respects verydifferent from that held by their Northern contemporaries, and the marks of this difference are everywhere to be seen. It was natural to them to reconcile in their works, so far as they could, the principles of two styles which we are too prone to deem irreconcilable; and where they have achieved a real success, it ought to be a lesson that the course which they pursued is still open to us, though with larger opportunities and greater knowledge. At the same time they committed faults which we ought especially to beware of imitating in any respect.
They ignored, as much as possible, the clear exhibition of the pointed arch, and, even when they did use it, not unfrequently introduced it in such a way as to shew their contempt for it as a feature of construction; employing it often only for ornament, and never hesitating to construct it in so faulty a manner that it required to be held together with iron rods from the very first day of its erection. This fault they often found it absolutely necessary to commit, because they scarcely ever brought themselves to allow the use of the buttress; and this reluctance was a remarkable proof of their Classic sympathies. Classic architecture was as distinctly symbolic of rest as Gothic was of life; the column and lintel of the one were as still and symbolical of perfect repose, as the arch of the other, sustained by the strong arm of the flying buttress, was of life, vigour, and motion. Italian Gothic architects then, in never resorting to the buttress, avowed their feeling that a state of perfect rest was the only allowable state for a perfect building, and they preferred almost always to use the arch for its beauty only, and avowedly not for its constructional value, which they evidenced by tying it together with iron bars at its base, which there was no intention of disguising, and therefore no shamefacedness in the use of. From this, I believe, at least one beauty arose. It is obvious that the pointed arch,descending upon the capital of a shaft without any visible stay or buttress to retain it in its place, would look weak and thin; and it was soon perceived that, in order to overcome this difficulty, the only course was to add to its substance by cusping it on the under side. Thence came the trefoiled arches so frequent in Italy, and always so very lovely. As so much depended upon them, no pains were spared in bringing their outline into the very purest form. To this we owe the absolute perfection which characterizes some of the trefoiled arches in early Italian work; of this we have an example (to take one instance among many) in the tombs of the Scaligers, at Verona, in which the mass of the trefoil descending from the arch conveys to the eye the impression of a firmness which, in part, it certainly gives, but which would nevertheless be insufficient in reality for the stability of the work, without the aid of the connecting rod of iron below.
In northern Gothic architecture, arches invariably tell their own story, and do their own work, avowedly and without any disguise; in Italy this is the exception, not the rule, and the commonest exception is seen in the arcades dividing the aisles from the naves of churches, and in the large open arches forming the arcades upon which public and private buildings so often stand, though even these are sometimes (as in the second stage of the Ducal Palace at Venice) formed of continuous traceries in place of arches, and are dependent for their stability, like the single arches of tombs and monuments, upon the assistance of iron ties.
Another proof of the reverence for ancient tradition in art is furnished by the extent to which, throughout the time of the prevalence of pointed architecture in Italy, the round arch was also used. Examples of this are very frequent, and of the most capricious kind. At Cremona, e.g., the south transept has semicircular arches throughout, and the north transept pointed arches; the date of both being, however, asnearly as possible the same. At Verona, in the old house given in plate 14, some of the bearing arches are pointed, some round; and again, in some buildings the main arches are round, and the ornamental pointed. Again, one of the most common cornices in all the mediæval brickwork of Italy is a continuous arcade of round arches intersecting one another, and forming at their intersections pointed arches; and in the Ca’ d’Oro, one of the most elaborately ornate late Gothic buildings in Venice, some of the entrance arches are pointed and some round. It needs not, however, that examples should be multiplied, for almost every building exhibits some trace of this kind of confusion.
The Venetian love for the ogee arch, which spread thence to Verona, Vicenza, and Ferrara, has been already mentioned; no doubt we must look to the East for the very early introduction of this feature in Venice, and I only incidentally refer to it here as proving, from the way in which it was perpetually used, that its adopters had no peculiar love for the form of the pure pointed arch, of which it is certainly a most vitiated perversion.
With this, by way of preface, let us now go on to look at the features of these Italian works in detail. We shall find that we have two influences brought out, even more strongly than in most mediæval works, in Italian buildings. These are, first, local, and next, personal influences. The Venetian, the Bolognese, and the Veronese, for instance, are all distinctly local styles, in which early traditions were preserved, to some extent, from first to last; and to these might be added the Florentine, the Genoese, and the Pisan. On the other hand it is impossible not to notice the very great personal influence exercized over their descendants, as well as over their contemporaries, by some of the greater Italian architects, of whom I may adduce Nicola Pisano as the most eminent example.
There is a third influence which must not be overlooked—that of foreign architects. Milan Cathedral, designed by a German, is very unlike any other Italian building in style; San Francesco at Assisi was also the work of a foreigner; and the western front of Genoa Cathedral owes much of its peculiar and extremely beautiful character to contact with, and knowledge of, French art; whilst Vercelli is another instance, as far as its interior is concerned, which may be included in this list. Generally speaking, however, the influence of the foreigner seems to have been confined pretty much to the particular church designed by him.
In the Middle Ages the Italians led a life more akin to our own, at the present day, than other people. The country was populous, the cities numerous and rich, and the people full of emulation and individuality. This was precisely the condition of things that would lead, most certainly, to the employment of artists from a distance, and to the establishment of a professional practice of the art earlier than elsewhere. It led to the employment of the family of the Pisani, of the Campione clan, the sculptors of Como, the Cosmati in Rome, and many others. In England and in France it is much more difficult to point to any facts proving the employment of the same architects in various parts of the country, and there is, at first sight, therefore, less of what is obviously personal in their art in the Middle Ages.
The history of our old architects in England and France is very peculiar; they were, as a rule, each confined to a certain district, in which they wrought in what was in fact a merely local variety of their national style. In point of artistic talent, they were very equally matched, so that it is difficult to assign the pre-eminence to any one over the rest, though in England we may point to our Yorkshire abbeys, and in France to the buildings in the Isle de France as being on the whole the finest examples. We have had no Nicola Pisanohere; our old architects’ work is singularly equal in its character in each period; and whether it was displayed in the little village church lying concealed on the banks of a rippling stream, or in the vast abbey of some sequestered valley, or in the cathedral church of the busy city, there seems to be matter for equal admiration in all. In Italy, on the other hand, we see a number of individual architects exercizing each his peculiar influence, varying very much in their skill and power, and having, moreover, the doubtful advantage of a constant recollection of the works of a different style of art, from whose traditions they never escaped. Placed, in short, very much in the position that we are at the present day, they never wrought with the same absolute and joyous freedom that marks their contemporaries’ work in France and England; and thus, though their architecture may be inferior, it is of very special value to us; for we may, perhaps, see better the cause of some of our own shortcomings, when we investigate theirs, and so we may hope to excel the works which they executed under conditions so similar to those under which we labour, even if we cannot quite rival the complete perfection of the greater mediæval architects of the North. And, seeing that all the faults of Italian Gothic artists arose from their incomplete devotion to the new art, and their lingering fondness for the old Classic forms, we shall be led probably to recognize the paramount importance of throwing ourselves heartily and entirely into the study and practice of the one great and national division of our art, and then, not venturing to attempt to design in some base imitation of Classic one day, or in a pretended Gothic the next, as is only too much the custom, we shall make our sense of art so completely a portion of our inmost selves, as never to do anything new in any but our own one special style. We shall, in short, recognize, as the greatest danger to the progress of real art, that eclectic spiritwhich the Italians never escaped from, and which, in our own day, leads men to design their work in the style which they or their clients fancy for the moment, and not in that which is the truest result of previous experience, and most fitted to the country in which it is to be executed.
In examining the features of any national school of architecture, it is worthy of notice how distinctly some of its peculiarities and prejudices are marked from the very first, even in the ground-plans of the buildings it produced. This is notably the case in the ecclesiastical edifices of France, England, and Germany. Each country, after the art had become settled and, so to speak, acclimatized, had its special arrangement of plan, which was seldom departed from and was handed on from age to age as a precious heirloom. And, going to Italy, we shall find that the same feature strikes us there in almost all the buildings of the pointed style, and that the buildings from which they were directly derived are the same as those from which we indirectly derived our own. Their plans are all derived from two ancient types, both of which are of venerable antiquity. It was from the basilica, converted into a church, with its nave and aisles terminated at the end, by an apsidal projection from a sort of transept, that all of one class of the Italian Gothic churches with transepts were copied. Indeed, if we look at the ground-plan of S. Paul without the walls, at Rome, and compare it with the fully developed church of Sta. Anastasia, at Verona, we shall see that absolutely the only difference is the addition of small chapels on the east side of the transept; so that in place of the one apse, which marks the former, we have the central apse and subsidiary chapels on each side of it. The church of San Clemente, at Rome, with its three aisles ended with parallel apses at the east end, is a variety of this type, followed in such churches as the Cathedral of Torcello, and indeed in all later ItalianGothic churches without transepts. And even when, as in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Italian architects endeavoured to secure an immensely wide unbroken area of nave, they still looked back fondly to these old precedents, and finished them at the east, with three parallel apsidal chapels.
The other model was the Byzantine plan of S. Mark’s at Venice, itself imported from the East, which was copied closely in the south-west of France, and produced no slight effect in modifying the simple Romanesque plan, until it assumed all the characteristics of the complete Lombard style, and from the North of Italy sent out vigorous off-shoots, of which the most important were those which we trace all along the valley of the Rhine, and throughout the centre of France.
Thus, the ground-plans of Italian Gothic buildings were simply a natural development from those of earlier date, and adhering, as they always did, very closely to the older plan and arrangements, afford us scarcely an example of those later developments of prolonged choirs, of which our English cathedrals and abbeys afford perhaps the most magnificent examples, or of the splendid Frenchchevetwith its surrounding aisle and chapels. The traces of Classic influence on the plan are indeed so many and so clear, that it is hardly speaking too strongly to say that Gothic planning was never developed by Italian architects, so shackled were they by the ever-present influence of buildings in another style. Hence, the more we study their peculiarities, the more we see how curious a mixture there is in them of the character of Classic and Gothic buildings, and how essentially clumsy all their planning is when compared with the scientific work of the more thoroughly Gothic architects of the North. If we compare an ordinary Italian groined church with a French or English example, we shall find one very marked difference in them. In the former eachbay of the nave is square, and hence each bay of the narrower side aisles is oblong, with the greatest width towards the nave; in the latter, on the contrary, the aisle compartment is square, and that of the nave oblong, with its narrowest side towards the aisle. Hence, in the former, the points of support are farther apart, and the plan loses much of its intricacy, and at the same time, no doubt, the whole building loses much of its apparent scale. The enormous church of San Petronio at Bologna, for instance, has but six bays in the length of its vast nave, and the eye refuses to be convinced by the practical measurement of the foot of the real dimensions of the building. The object of the Italian architect always was to obtain as few points of support as possible in a given area; but there is little if any real gain in this. The points of support in the Italian churches were larger, and the cost in the end was probably much greater than in the apparently more intricate and complex plans of the French and English architects. The science displayed in their planning was therefore of a superficial and mistaken description, and not really equal to that which marks the work of their Northern competitors.[81]
The same absence of subdivision is seen in the elevation of each bay of an Italian church, where in place of the triple division in height of our great Northern churches, with their well-accentuated proportions and beautiful variety of detail, we have a singularly meagre design perpetually repeated, and consisting generally of simple broad arches, with a small circular clerestory window above them, and no other kind of decoration, save where the painter has come with his ever-readyart to the rescue of the apparently incompetent architect.
How this plainness and severity was corrected we have already seen in the interior of Sta. Anastasia, at Verona—a church which, though it is simple and unadorned in its construction almost beyond any large church with which I am acquainted, has been made remarkable, owing to the skill of its decorator, for being more than usually ornate and magnificent.
The invariable simplicity of Italian groining has been often noticed in these pages, and need only be referred to here as illustrating the love of simplicity upon which I have dwelt. No one feature gains so much by it as this, and I can fancy the horror with which an Italian, or indeed any other architect, in the thirteenth century, would have viewed such fine works in their way, as our own examples of complicated fan-traceried groinings. The painting of this simple groining at Verona, at Lodi, and still more at Assisi, proves how it ought always to be treated; and happily in England we have still more than one example of the same kind, as, for instance, two chapels in the Cathedral at Winchester.
So far for the plan. When we look at single features of the building we shall find another peculiarity meeting us at every turn, and of the good effect of which it is impossible to speak too warmly. This is the constant use of the detached shaft or column. This is the one great and lasting beauty which was derived from Classic examples. The Italians, finding it used with luxurious profusion in their Classic and Byzantine buildings, persevered in its use throughout the whole Gothic period. It is true that, as time wore on, there was a somewhat less free use of it than at first, but it was never altogether ignored. We cannot say as much for our own ancestors: so long as the influence of Lombard and Romanesque art is visible in French, German, and English Gothic, so long the detached shaft wasused, and just in proportion as in course of time that influence decreased, so did the frequency of its use decrease. Our fourteenth and fifteenth century buildings present nothing in its place but combinations of mouldings, in themselves very beautiful, but by no means so beautiful as to reconcile us to the loss of that which they so entirely supplanted. One consequence of their introduction, to the exclusion of the detached shaft, was, that the art of sculpture deteriorated just in proportion as the art of moulding was developed. There is no place in which architectural sculpture can be more fittingly displayed than in the capital of a column. It is the most convenient, and at the same time the most conspicuous, position for it. It is, too, the most important feature in every design in which the detached column is used. The gathering together of all the arch mouldings into one above the capital, in order that their forces may be collected before being transmitted to the ground, leads naturally to the laying of a special emphasis on this point above all others; and it is one of the strongest among the many reasons in favour of earliest Gothic, and against the later varieties of the style, that in the former the use of shafts involved the use of forcible and elaborately-cut capitals, so that this point might be most distinctly marked, whilst in the latter, by the disuse of the shaft and the constant practice of carrying the mouldings of the arch down to the ground without any interruption, it was made as little of as was possible.
In this respect, therefore, above all others, Italian Gothic artists—having given way to change less than their contemporaries—are worthy of our highest admiration. The love of variety, which is characteristic of all good Gothic art, is conspicuous in the Italian treatment of the shaft just as much as in the northern Gothic variation of mouldings. When they are plain cylinders, and not banded (and the band occurs but seldom in Italian work), they often taperslightly, and with very beautiful effect. This was distinctly a relic of the Classic entasis, and the examples given in a note will suffice to shew the extent to which the shaft is reduced in proportion to its height.[82]Wherever, however, the shaft is spiral or decorated with carving, or when the occurrence of a band destroys the idea of its continuity from base to capital, its monolithic character needs not to be marked, and the shaft is then always made of the same diameter throughout. The ornamentation is of various kinds. Circular shafts are inlaid, carved, diapered, or made of marbles selected for their beauty of colour. Lucca Cathedral affords, perhaps, the best examples of decoration by inlaying: there the shafts are of white marble inlaid with dark green; some have a diaper, others are girt with a succession of simple chevrons, others with spiral lines, others with crosses, flowers, fleurs-de-lis, or foliated circles; and one, at least, with a succession of imitations of arcades one over the other; but I remember no example of the same kind in the buildings described in these pages. At Lucca these inlaid shafts are frequently alternated with sculptured shafts, of which examples are common all over Italy. They are deeply cut with spiral lines of mouldings, occasionally adorned with sculpture of flowers, as in the doorways at Bergamo and Modena, and are often also inlaid richly with mosaic.
The best examples of the richer kinds of shafts are seen frequently in Italian Gothic buildings and monuments south of the Apennines. Such, for instance, as those which, with rich iron work between them, form the screen round the altarunder the “crossing” of Sta. Chiara at Assisi, or in the monument of Pope Benedict X. at Perugia, where the shafts are of white marble, the spiral lines formed with a bead and fillets, and at the base and neck of the shaft the beads are all connected together with small arches, in the spandrels of which vine leaves are delicately carved; whilst to add to the extraordinary richness of the work, small figures are carved in the marble creeping round the shaft in the hollow formed by the spiral construction, and the spaces between the mouldings are filled in with glass mosaic patterns in red, green, and blue on a gold ground. The shafts of Orcagna’s shrine in Or’ San Michele, Florence, are of the same character, but these extraordinary decorations occur generally only in the best and richest internal work, executed under the direct influence of Florentine, Neapolitan, or Roman artists.[83]
The arrangement of spiral shafts was generally, but not always, symmetrical. In the Campanile of Florence, where they occur in pairs on each side of a window, they are always arranged with the spiral lines curving in opposite directions. In the porch of Sta. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, the three shafts in each jamb are all different: the first spiral and carved, but not moulded; the second moulded with chevrons; the third spiral and moulded only, and the central shaft is red whilst the others are all white. In the spirally designed string-courses of the Venetian palaces the spiral lines are always worked in opposite directions right and left of the centre.
Another bold variety is seen in the beautiful coupled shafts at the entrance to the crypt of San Zenone, Verona, where both the shafts are quatrefoil in section, but entirely different in character, one of them being quite straight, theother slightly, but yet conspicuously, spiral. In a monument in the south aisle of the same church, four shafts are cut out of one block of marble; and in order that this may be realized they are knotted together in the centre; and a similar example exists in the porch, of which I have given a view, at Trent, and in one of the windows of the Broletto at Como. The shafts round the lower basin of Nicola Pisano’s beautiful fountain at Perugia are in clusters of three, chevroned, spiral, and fluted in the greatest possible variety; and in later works, in which we find that the error of continuing arch mouldings to the ground, instead of stopping them on the capital, was occasionally committed—as, e.g., in the archway to the baptistery in the church of the Frari, at Venice—we see an instance of a moulded imitation of such a cluster of shafts as these of Nicola Pisano’s, chevroned and spiral, forming jamb and arch alike. In the later doorways, such as those of the western front of the cathedral of Como, and many of those at Monza, Pavia, and in most of the Venetian churches and buildings, the jambs and arches are identical in section; but even in these cases there is always a capital interposed, and I hardly remember an example of a continuous moulding without an impost, which at least marked—if often in an incomplete manner—the line of the springing of the arch.
I must not forget that which is, after all, the most charming of all arrangements of shafts, viz. the use of them in couples, set generally one behind the other, so that, in elevation, extreme delicacy is secured, whilst, in perspective, there is beautiful light and shade, and ample effect of strength. This is a favourite arrangement in cloisters and in belfries; and, wherever it occurs, one regrets, as one looks at it, that though in old days French, Spanish, German, and even Irish[84]architects gladly followed the Italianexample, it was so seldom that an Englishman condescended to do the same.[85]
In the treatment of mouldings the Italian Gothic work is quite peculiar. An Italian architect would have been surprized, could he have seen the dark and piquant recesses of the mouldings in which his Northern brethren in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries so much delighted. He rarely, if ever, indulged in a deep hollow, but made a point rather of shewing the hard sharp outline of the square edges of his stones or bricks, relieved only by the interposition of simple round members, alternated with flat hollows; his mouldings, even when designed for such grand works as the Ducal Palace, being bald and crude in design, though they conduced no doubt to that breadth of effect to which he always desired that everything should be sacrificed. There is but little skill shewn in the way in which their contours are drawn, and the carelessness with which they are fitted to the size of the capital that carries them is a constant source of disgust to any one who has been trained by the study of the exquisite English mouldings of the same period. The architectural carving was designed with the same idea; for when it was introduced elsewhere than in the capitals of columns, it was always very flat and delicate, severe in outline, and not much relieved, and often very decided in its direct imitation of nature. This, however, is mainly seen in the earliest examples, for I am bound to say that later Italians never rivalled the Byzantine capitals of S. Mark’s, or some of those in the early church of San Zenone, Verona. Indeed, as time wore on, the carving in Italian buildings became steadily worse and worse. Most of the later Venetian capitals are bad in their outline, confused and purposelessin all their lines, and shew no sense of that vigorous petrifaction of the elements of natural growth and form, which was so sensitively felt and expressed by French and English artists.
CORNICE—SAN FRANCESCO, BRESCIA.CORNICE—SAN FRANCESCO, BRESCIA.
And, next, we come to the cornice, the feature which above all others must most startle men who, for the first time, make acquaintance with Italian work, and which most recalls in its idea its Classic prototype; for, though its treatment in detail is as unlike that of the ancients as it can well be, it is, nevertheless, so decidedly marked and so prominent a feature (crowning not only the summits of walls, but even running up the gables, and returning round buttresses), that it is impossible not to regard it as another evidence of admiration for, and imitation of, earlier work.
The ordinary northern parapet is never used, the eaves almost always finishing with the common Italian tiles projecting slightly over the deep cornice of the walls. We have nothing at all parallel to these cornices in England, and I remember but few examples of anything of the same kind in the North of Europe, save in the transept of Lübeck Cathedral, and such churches as those of Bamberg and the Rhine country; which last seem to be derived from the Lombard churches of Pavia, and to have nothing in common with later pointed work, and to have exerted little, if any, influence on its development.
I have said enough, I hope, to explain the grounds for my opinion that, with the single exception of their use of shafts, we never find the same kind of perfection in Italian Gothic buildings as in French or English works of the same date; but I am not slow to allow, nevertheless, that they do contain features of extreme beauty and purity; and many of them peculiar to themselves. There is perhaps no country in the world which excels Italy in the buildings which were erected for civic and domestic purposes. The Doge’s Palace, and many of the other palaces at Venice, the Broletto of Como, the other houses or palaces of which I have given illustrations throughout this volume, are some only among many which might be enumerated, any one of which would have not only an advantage over very many of our own buildings, as a model of good architecture, but at the same time the merit of fitness for the purposes for which our domestic buildings in towns are at the present day required. Then again, there are, as I have shewn, the exquisite porches; the peculiar, and generally noble, campanili; the many-shafted cloisters; the perfect monuments; the use of brickwork of the best kind; and, finally, that in which Italian architecture of the Middle Ages teaches us more than any other architecture since the commencement of the world—the introduction ofcolour in construction—which is managed generally with such consummate beauty, refinement, and modesty, that oven where it accompanies faulty construction and unworthily sham expedients, it is impossible to avoid giving oneself up altogether to admiration of the result.
It will be seen that I am not by any means a blind enthusiast about Italian architecture. Who, indeed, that has studied on the spot, as I have done, not only a vast number of buildings in England, but also nearly all of the best examples in France, Spain, and Germany, could do otherwise than profess his truest allegiance to be due to the truthful beauties of his own national variety of the style? I should think that most students would agree with me, if they found themselves able to institute such a comparison.
The first view of an Italian Gothic church, whatever its date, is startlingly and, I think, disagreeably unlike anything that we are accustomed to in our own old buildings. You may go to a great English cathedral and find that from every point of view, inside and outside, every feature is well proportioned to its place, and beautiful in itself, whilst thetout ensembleis also perfect in proportion and mass. This can never be said of Italian work. It never produced anything perfect both in detail and in mass; and one always finds it necessary to make excuses for even the best works, such as one never finds necessary, or allows oneself to think of making, for English works. There is something really absurd in comparing even the best of the Italian churches with such cathedrals as those of Canterbury or Lincoln, so superior are the latter from almost every point of view. The Italian church is usually a long, broad, rather low building, lighted with but few windows, having but a small, if any, clerestory, and with scarcely any irregularity in shape or plan; it has scarcely ever more than one tower, and this is never combined with the rest of the designin the manner common to us in England or France. There is no approach, therefore, to such combinations of steeples as are familiar to us at Canterbury, Wells, Laon, Reims, or Rouen, and undoubtedly there is very much less external grandeur. The steeple, when it does occur, is often detached; and when it is engaged, it does not open into the church, but is placed in some irregular and abnormal position, where it is at once felt that it is purposely not intended to be looked at in conjunction with the main façade of the building. There is no attempt even to secure a tolerable sky-line. The only relief to the monotonous outline of the main building is at the crossing, where something in the way of a low, mean dome is occasionally introduced, but this is always of but slight elevation, and not intended to produce any good external effect, such as was aimed at in our own central steeples. So also if we look at their façades, we have a feature on which, in common with ourselves, they often lavished considerable expense, and probably the greatest pains. The treatment is very similar in its idea throughout the whole period during which the style prevailed; and the effect produced is undoubtedly oftener very disappointing than attractive. The commonest type of façade is one in which the cornice, which is generally of slight projection, but deep and marked in character, is carried up the flat gable of the building, whilst the whole front, divided by vertical pilasters into three or five divisions in width, is lighted either by a series of circular windows, or by one large and important rose in the centre. This class of front is common to most of the Gothic churches in Lombardy.
At Ferrara, we see another and very different design in the grand front to the cathedral, which, save that it is entirely and shamelessly a sham front, might vie even with that of a Northern cathedral in beauty, intricacy, and richness of character; but this design is not really veryItalian in style, and is a solitary example. When an Englishman sees the tympanum of the principal doorway of such a church filled with a sculpture of S. George and the Dragon, he may be pardoned for recollecting that our royal family have sprung from the same stock as the D’Estes, once Lords of Ferrara, the front of whose cathedral is almost the finest in Italy.
Other portions of Italian churches are even less satisfactory than their façades. I have already explained that the clerestory is rarely lighted by anything more elaborate than a succession of circular windows of small size. The church of Sta. Anastasia, Verona, gives us the best example of these, the windows there being of brick, filled in with very good early plate tracery in stone. The east end is often more picturesque than the west; and that of the church of San Fermo Maggiore, Verona, affords a good example. The east ends of the churches of the Frari and SS. Giovanni e Paolo, at Venice, are perhaps the two finest examples of this portion of the building to be seen in Italy, and are worthy of very high praise.