STA. ANASTASIA—VERONA.STA. ANASTASIA—VERONA.
The arrangement of the plan is in several respects unlike that of northern Gothic buildings, and as most complete Gothic churches in Italy are very much of the same type, it is as well here to point out the peculiarity. The most marked features are first the shortness of the choir, and next, the fact that whereas in northern Europe it is usually the aisle vaulting bay which is square, whilst the nave bay is oblong from north to south, here the nave groining bay is square, and the bays of the aisle oblong in the direction of east and west. The difference of effect is great, simple as the statement seems. In these Italian churches there is much greater space between the columns of the nave arcades, the groining is consequently divided into much larger bays, and the whole interior has a largeness of treatment which is not common in the North. On the other hand there is much less of the complexity and intricacy which are so charming inour interiors, and you see at a glance the whole of the church.
In Sta. Anastasia the apses on each side of the choir have an even number of sides, as has also the sacristy, which is a room on a magnificent scale, to the north of the church. This is a peculiar feature, producing as it does an angle in the centre of the apse, which we shall see again at Venice and Vicenza, and which is seldom seen out of Italy.[13]
The whole is so simple in design and construction that it depends for its rich effect on the painting which covers almost every part of it, and which harmonizes well with the architectural lines. The decorations appear to have been done, or at any rate commenced, within a short period of the completion of the church, and are therefore very valuable. The ground of the painting is white, many of the patterns of borders being very elaborate compositions of flowers and foliage. The main arches are painted to represent voussoirs of red brick and stone, but I am inclined to think that they are really entirely of brick; their soffeits, which are very broad and flat, are all painted with large scroll patterns of foliage. In the groining the diagonal ribs are painted at the intersection with stripes of colour alternating with white, and on each side of all the ribs a wide border of foliage is painted, whilst in the centre of each groining-cell some large device is painted in a medallion, some of these being merely ornamental, others having figures. The detail of much of the painting is cinquecento in its character, and not valuable as an example to be literally copied,[14]but its general effect is certainly very beautiful, and it is worthy of all praise in respect of the strictness with which it is kept subservient to the architecture, and in some respects, indeed,
12. SANTA ANASTASIA. VERONA. Pavements. Page 89.12. SANTA ANASTASIA. VERONA.Pavements.Page 89.
even serves to atone for its deficiencies, as, e.g., in the broad painted horizontal borders, which take the place, very successfully, of brick or stone string-courses, which in the construction are entirely omitted.
It surprised me, I confess, very much, to find a church painted throughout without any use of gold, and yet with good result; so it is, however; the effect is most solemn and religious, and there is a very rich effect of colour; the fact is, that the white ground answers the same purpose in a degree, though of course not to the full extent, that gold would.
But if the walls are beautiful in their colour, not less so is the pavement, which, from one end of the church to the other, remains to this day to all appearance just as it was on the day that the church was finished. The nave and transepts are all in one pattern; the spaces between the columns in a variety of beautiful designs, and divided from the nave and aisle pavements by a strip of white marble on each side; and the aisles again are on the same scheme throughout. The colours of the marble used are white, red, and bluish grey, and the patterns very simple and generally geometrical in outline, and there is a quiet richness of effect in their arrangement which is exceedingly beautiful. Such a pavement must unhappily be for ever Italian, and we in England can scarce hope ever to attain to anything so exquisite; but we do not well to forget that by the mixture of a small quantity only of marble with our encaustic tiles we should attain to much greater beauty of effect than we can by the use of tiles alone, and there are many towns—as, e.g., Plymouth—the very pavement of whose streets is of a material which might most advantageously be introduced, more often than it has yet been, inside the walls of our sanctuaries, as well as under the feet of every passer along the streets.
There are some monuments and paintings here quite worth looking at. The Pellegrini Chapel, next to the choir, has two fine trefoil-headed monuments in red marble with the background painted with subjects of about the same age (circa 1392); and in the Cavalli Chapel there is an admirably painted wall, against which has been put a monument which, though somewhat rude and coarse in its sculpture, nevertheless produces a very fine effect of colour and architecture combined.[15]
AISLE WINDOW—STA. ANASTASIA, VERONA.AISLE WINDOW—STA. ANASTASIA, VERONA.
The window tracery of Sta. Anastasia is rather singular plate tracery, consisting of mere piercings through the stone with very little moulding; most of the windows are of two very lofty trefoiled lights with circles and trefoilspierced above, very simple and severe, and remarkable for the quaint way in which the cusping is arranged, not with some reference to vertical lines, as is ordinarily the case with us, but just as fancy or chance seems to have dictated. The clerestory windows are circular openings cusped.
There is a curious but not very happily treated arrangement inside—a step all round the inside walls, projecting some three or four feet from them, and panelled all round against the riser with a small trefoil arcading—the whole in red marble.
Externally the church is almost entirely built in red brick with rich cornices and rather ungainly buttresses and pinnacles of brick; the windows have brick jambs with stone tracery, and on the north side of the choir is a fine lofty campanile, finished at the top with a low, very plain, and octangular capping, and unpierced with openings, except in the belfry-stage. Of the west front only the doorway has been completed; this is in courses of red, grey, and white marble, and most effective; the rest of the front is left in brick, finished exceedingly roughly, with a view to leaving a key for the marbles with which, no doubt, it was intended to veneer the entire front. The wooden framework of this door, of which I give a detail, is very curious; it is of deal, coëval with the doorway, and the framework is external, not internal.
The west front of the church stands in a small piazza, on the north side of which is the little church of San Pietro Martire, between the east end of which and Sta. Anastasia is a wall dividing a small burial-ground from the Piazzetta; on the top of this wall, and supported upon corbels, is one of those monuments peculiarly associated with Verona, because so numerous there, though they are often met with elsewhere in Italy; they are either large pyramidal
DOOR-FRAME—STA. ANASTASIA.DOOR-FRAME—STA. ANASTASIA.
canopies supported upon trefoiled arches resting on four marble shafts, with a kind of sarcophagus or an effigy beneath; or else, when attached to a wall, they have two detached shafts supporting the same kind of trefoiled arch and surmounted by a flattish pediment. Their effect is almost invariably beautiful in the extreme, and their only defect is, that they all require to be held together by rods of iron connecting the capitals of the columns. This, however, is soon forgotten when one feels that there is no pretence ever or anywhere at its concealment; and notwithstanding this slight defect, one cannot help loving and admiring them; for there is a grace and beauty about the form and proportion of the Veronese trefoiled arch, such as is never seen, I think, elsewhere, and the very flatness of the carving and the absence of deep moulding seem all adopted in order that nothing may interfere with the simple beauty of the outline of the arch. In this case the monument is supported on a large slab of stone corbelled forward and balanced upon the top of a thin wall over the archwaywhich leads into the churchyard of San Pietro. Four shafts with sculptured capitals, resting on the angles of this slab, support four trefoiled arches, (those at the ends narrower than the others), which are almost destitute of moulding save that the outer line of the arch has a broad band of delicate sculpture all round it. The arch terminates in a small cross, and above on each side is a very flat pediment, moulded and finished on the under side with one of the favourite Italian arcaded corbel-tables; the finish is a heavy pyramidal mass of stone rising from behind the pediments. The four bearing-shafts are of white marble, all the rest of the monument of red. Within the four supporting shafts stands a sarcophagus, supported on the backs of couchant lions, very plain, but ornamented at the angles in very Classic fashion, and bearing a recumbent effigy.
The church of San Pietro has three or four smaller monuments enclosed within its small courtyard; two of them are on the ground and have round arches on detached shafts with an Agnus Dei carved in the centre. The third is corbelled out from the wall, and the face of the monument is covered with sculpture, that of the figures being very inferior in style to that of the foliage enrichments. This little group of monuments, varying in date from 1283 to 1392, is well worth study, and I found it more than usually interesting owing to its entire unlikeness to any English work. The church against which these monuments are built is small but deserves notice; it is of brick with a stone canopy on shafts corbelled out above the west door; the buttresses are mere pilasters, and run up without any weathering till they finish in an arcaded corbel-table at the eaves; the windows have wide brick splays outside, and trefoil heads of stone without any chamfer or moulding; on the south side, the church—in point of size a mere chapel—is divided intofour bays, one of which has a monument corbelled out by the side of the window. It is built entirely of red brick, not relieved in any way, except that the window arches are in alternate voussoirs of brick and stone. The wooden framework of the west door deserves notice as being very unlike the English mode of door-framing, and very good in its effect. The accompanying sketch will best explain it: and it must be understood that, instead of being internal, as such framing would usually be in England, in this example it is external, just as in the somewhat similar door of Sta. Anastasia, of which I have already made mention.
DOOR-FRAME—SAN PIETRO MARTIRE.DOOR-FRAME—SAN PIETRO MARTIRE.
Turning back from the Piazzetta of Sta. Anastasia, and traversing again the narrow and gratefully shady street by which we reached it, we soon found ourselves at the end of the Piazza dell’ Erbe, the most picturesque square in the city, and at an early hour in the morning quite a sight to be seen. The whole open space was as full as it could be of dealers in vegetables and fruits, all of them protecting themselves and their stores from the intense glare of the sun under the shade of prodigious umbrellas, at least five timesas large as any of ordinary size, and certainly five times as bright in their colours, the prevailing colour being a very bright red. Altogether it was a thoroughly foreign scene. The houses, some ancient, but all picturesque and irregular, surrounding the irregularly-shaped Piazza, the magnificent campanile of the Scaligeri Palace rising proudly behind the houses on the left, the fountain in the centre, and the great column of red Veronese marble rising close to us, which at one time bore the winged lion—mark of the dominion of the Venetians—all combined to produce a very striking picture. An hour or two later in the day when we passed, the people, the umbrellas, and the fruit were all gone, and somewhat of the charm of the place was gone with them.
From the Piazza dell’ Erbe we went to the cathedral, anxious to see and hear somewhat of a service which we found was to take place. There was a great throng of people, and we had some difficulty in finding even standing room among them; we were not at all sorry, however, to have gone, for we came in for a sermon most energetically preached, and enforcing in very powerful language the necessity of repentance. The pulpit was very large, and as the preacher delivered his sermon he walked from side to side, and often repeated again to those on his left the substance of what he had already said to those on his right. The people, who crowded every available place within hearing, were exceedingly silent and attentive; and at intervals the preacher stopped for a minute to cough and use his handkerchief, which was a signal for an immediate general blowing of noses and coughing all over the church. The “Ebben infelici!” with which he commenced his sermon, was a good index to its whole tone, and makes me remember with pleasure the vast crowd listening to Christian doctrine in the grand nave of the Duomo. Would that we could see any prospect of the day when in Englandour larger churches may be used in this way, when, with pews and all their concomitant evils swept away, we may see a vast crowd standing and sitting, leaving no passage-way and no waste room, anxious only that they may, by pressing near, join in the services at the altar, and hear every word of warning and of advice! The nave of Westminster, so thronged, would soon show how great has been our mistake in leaving our large churches so long unused.[16]
The Duomo is a really fine church, Romanesque in its shell, but altered completely internally in the fourteenth century. It has only five bays in length, but the dimensions are so large that the nave and aisles alone measure about 225 feet × 97 feet inside. There are slightly recessed Romanesque apses in the side walls, and a great tomb or shrine of S. Agatha, which is worth looking at. The columns in the interior are very lofty, of red marble, and, instead of being plain and cylindrical, as at Sta. Anastasia, are moulded with very good effect. Their capitals are, however, heavy, and the carving of the foliage on them not at all satisfactory. The whole interior is very solemn, and specially beautiful on this bright September day, with almost all the light excluded by thick curtains—here and there a stray gleam of the most intensely bright light finding its way through some chink, lighting up with sudden brilliancy the deep cool shade, and—reflected from the bright surface of some great marble shaft—suggesting the grandeur which can hardly really be seen.
The choir is divided from the nave by a screen of marble, consisting of detached columns with Ionic capitals and a continuous cornice, the whole screen semi-circular in plan, and coming forward into the nave. This, the work ofSanmichele, is certainly about the most effective work of this kind and age that I have seen.
The west front of the Duomo is still in the main in its original state. It has a rich porch supported on shafts (whose bases rest on the backs of lions), and of two stages in height, a flat pediment surmounting the upper stage. Another flat pedimental cornice is carried over the whole front at the same level; but out of this a wall rises above the central portion the width of the nave and height of the clerestory, which is again surmounted by a third flat pediment—a confused and not very graceful arrangement, which found an imitator in Palladio, when he built that ugliest of fronts, the west end of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice.
The windows at the ends of the aisles are very Italian in their character. They are insertions in the wall of two narrow lights within an enclosing arch, which is again surrounded by a square line of moulding. The effect of this not uncommon Italian arrangement is exceedingly unsatisfactory, as it appears to make the window with its arch and tracery quite independent, constructively, of the wall in which it is placed; it appears in fact to be merely veneered on to the face of the wall.
On the north side of the cathedral is a cloister of good detail, which was originally of two stages in height, but is now considerably altered in parts. It is exceedingly similar to the cloister of San Zenone, which we shall see presently, consisting of a long arcade of pointed arches carried on marble shafts; it is now in a very ruinous condition.
The Baptistery—San Giovanni in Fonte—is a detached church near the east end of the cathedral, which does not look as if it had been at first intended for its present use. It is a building of the twelfth century, with nave and aisles ending in three apses, lighted by a small clerestory, and with some columns which are probably Roman. The font, which standsin the centre, is of enormous size, and is sculptured with eight subjects beginning with the Annunciation and finishing with the Baptism of Our Lord. These sculptures are very rude. The bason of the font is almost seven feet in diameter, and in its centre is another smaller bason of graceful shape. I do not happen to have seen an explanation of these inner basons in the fonts in Italian baptisteries. They look as if they were meant for the priest to stand in whilst he immersed the catechumens around him.
And now that we have visited two of the great churches, we must no longer delay our visit to the church of Sta. Maria l’Antica, whose small burial-ground is fenced from the busy thoroughfares, which on two sides bound it, by an iron railing of most exquisite design, divided at intervals by piers of stone on whose summits stand gazing upward as in prayer, or downwards as in warning to those who pass below, a beautiful series of saintly figures. Within, a glorious assemblage of monuments meets the eye—one over the entrance doorway, the others either towering up in picturesque confusion above the railing which has been their guardian from all damage for so many centuries, or meekly hiding their humility behind the larger masses of their companions.
The monuments are all to the members of one family—the Scaligeri—who rose to power in the thirteenth century, and held sway in Verona until almost the end of the fourteenth. In this space of time it was, therefore, that these monuments were erected, and they are consequently of singular interest, not only for the excessive beauty of the group of marble and stone which, in the busiest highway of the city, among tall houses and crowds of people, has made this churchyard, for some five hundred years, the central point of architectural interest, but because they give us dated examples of the best pointed work during nearly thewhole time of its prevalence in Verona. In the monument of the first Duke we see the elements of that beauty which, after ascending to perfection in that of another, again descends surely and certainly in the monument of Can Signorio, the largest and most elaborate of all, and, therefore, I am afraid, the most commonly admired, but the one which shows most evidence of the rise of the Renaissance spirit, and the fall of true art. Nor is it, I think, to be forgotten, as an evidence of the kind of moral turpitude which so often precedes or accompanies the fall of art, that this Can Signorio first murdered his own brother Cangrande II. that he might obtain his inheritance, and then, before he died, erected his own monument, and adorned it with effigies of SS. Quirinus, Valentine, Martin, George, Sigismund, and Louis, together with allegorical figures of the Virtues with whom he of all men had least right to associate himself in death, when in life he had ever despised them. The inscription, which records the name of the architect on this monument, does but record the vanity of him who was content thus to pander to the wretched Can Signorio’s desire to excuse the memory of his atrocious life by the sight of an immense cenotaph.[17]
The tomb of Cangrande I. forms the portal of the church as well as the monument of the first and greatest of the family. It is perhaps altogether the finest of all; the shafts which bear the pyramidal canopy are supported on corbels; between them is a simple sarcophagus sculptured with a bas-relief, and upon it lies Cangrande with his arms crossed in token of his resignation and faith. At the top of the pyramidal covering is the figure of the brave knight riding forth to war on his gaily caparisoned steed.
Next to this monument in date, as in merit, is that of Mastino II., wanting perhaps in some of the severe simplicity of the other, but even more striking, as it stands at the angle of the cemetery. It is a thoroughly grand and noble erection of two stages in height, the lower unimportant, and only serving as a means of raising the monument sufficiently high to be well seen from the exterior; upon this stand four shafts, between which, and supported upon four much smaller shafts, is the sarcophagus on which lies the recumbent effigy, at whose head stand angels with expanded wings[18]guarding the deceased. The sarcophagus is adorned with bas-reliefs—that on the west side being the Crucifixion—and has engaged angle-shafts. The four main bearing-shafts at the angles of the monument have finely carved caps with square abaci from which rise simple trefoiled arches with steep pediments on each side filled with sculpture in relief, and between these are exquisitely simple niches, each a miniature reproduction of the entire monument, and containing between their delicate detached shafts figures of saints. The whole is finished with a heavy pyramidal capping, crocketed at the angles with crockets so abominable in their shape and carving that they go far to spoil the entire work, and surmounted by the figure of the Capitano del Popolo, spear in hand, riding on his war-horse; the horse and horseman riding with their faces towards the setting sun, as all in life must ever ride; the effigy below lying so that at the last day the beams of the day-star in the East may first meet its view, and awaken him that sleepeth here in peace.
This contrary position of the figure in life and in death, observed also in others of these monuments, is an evidence of the care and thoughtfulness with which every detail of these noble works was wrought out.
The monument of Can Signorio is not worthy of so long a description; it is octagonal in its plan, and in many respects below the idea shadowed out so beautifully in the others; the reduplication of niches and gables, far from improving, only perplexes the design: and when to this is added that the carving throughout, as well as the other details, show strong signs of a leaning towards Renaissance, one may see some reason why this, the most elaborate and complicated of all the monuments, is after all far from being the most successful.
Mastino II. died in the year 1351, and we may therefore, I think, look upon his monument as a fair enough example of Italian architecture just at the period at which in England it had reached its culminating point, and a careful examination of it cannot, therefore, be thrown away. In the first place, I must notice that the sculpture, which has the air of being rather sparingly used as too sacred a thing to be idly or profusely employed, is exceedingly good. The foliage is almost always very closely copied from natural forms, is very thin and delicate in its texture, and thus really present to the gazer that idealized petrifaction of nature which it ought always to be the sculptor’s effort to give, and not, as is, I fear, sometimes the case, even in good English work, so profusely scattered over the whole surface as to give one a sense of its lack of great value. The worst part of the carving is, as I have before said, that of the crockets, which are as bad as the worst modern Gothic could be. The sculpture of the human figure is throughout very good; remarkable for simple, bold, deep folds in the draperies, quite Gothic in spirit, and much more akin to our best fourteenth-century work than to any Classic examples.
As an example of the science of moulding this work is however valueless; there is absolutely no moulding uponit; and why should there be? Would it have been well that the lovely marble, whose brilliant white gloss was sure ere long to be stained with dark streaks of black by the beating of rain and the staining of age, whilst here and there the white would stand out more brilliantly than ever,—would it have been well, I say, that this should have been still further streaked with deep lines of many mouldings? Most assuredly not: the architect had to deal with a material which best takes its polish and exhibits its beauty and purity when used in flat surfaces and in shallow carving, and he did right therefore in not moulding it as he would have moulded stone.
There is a sharpness and hardness about the lines of the arches, however, which perhaps almost verges upon rudeness, and, though I can see that it may be fairly defended, I could yet wish that it might have been softened.
CREST OF METAL RAILING—VERONA.CREST OF METAL RAILING—VERONA.
But the points in which such work is a grand example to us are, first, the value which it shows that we ought to place upon the simple detached circular shaft, and, next, the beauty and strength of effect which the cusping of a large arch in a proper manner gives. In these two points this monument and most of its class teach us lessons which we ought not to be unwilling to learn, and which, if we at allwish to develope beyond the point at which our own ancestors ever arrived, we must not fail to attend to in our own work.
METAL RAILING—VERONA.METAL RAILING—VERONA.
And now I must bid farewell to this lovely spot, the most attractive certainly, to me, in Verona. The situation of the monuments, rather huddled together, with the old church behind them, the archway into the Piazza dei Signori on the other side, and the beautiful iron grille[19]which surrounds them, the number of saintly and warlike figures and the confused mass of pinnacle and shaft, half obscured by the railing, do, I verily believe, make the cemetery of Sta. Maria l’Antica one of the best spots in the world for the study of Christian art in perfection. What either Köln or Regensburg Cathedral, or the Wiesen-Kirche at Söest is to Germany, the Choir of Westminster Abbey or theChapter-House at Southwell to England, Amiens Cathedral or the Sainte Chapelle of Paris to France, such is the Cemetery of the Scaligeri in Verona to Italy—the spot where at a glance the whole essence of the system of a school of artists may be comprehended, lavished on a small but most stately effort of their genius.
Close to their burial-place stands also the Palace of the Scaligers. The old portion of this fronts towards the Piazza dei Signori, a small square used only by foot-passengers, and surrounded by elaborate Renaissance work. The buildings surround a quadrangle—the Mercato Vecchio—out of one angle of which rises the immense campanile which I have already noticed, and which is said to have been erected by Can Signorio aboutA.D.1368, though I should have thought that a rather earlier date would have tallied better with its style. Besides this the most striking feature is the external staircase in the courtyard, whose treatment, of a kind not uncommon in ancient Italian architecture, is very beautiful, though I fear very weak and unstable, if I may judge by the number of the iron bars by which it is held together. There are many windows here of very good detail, and an arcaded cornice all round the courtyard, and close by and also facing the Piazza dei Signori there is another fine lofty battlemented tower.
In a street close to the monuments of the Scaligers, whose name I have forgotten, but in a line with the Viccolo Cavaletto, I found a most valuable example of domestic work in a very fairly perfect state. As far as I could make it out, it consisted originally of three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth side towards the street being enclosed by a wall and arched gateway. The buildings all had arcades on the ground-level, forming a kind of cloister, and the staircase to the first floor was external, and built against the wall on the road side. A great many alterations have been made in the
13.—COURT-YARD OF THE PALAZZO SCALIGERI, VERONA. Page 104.13.—COURT-YARD OF THE PALAZZO SCALIGERI, VERONA.Page 104.
DOORWAY—OLD HOUSE, VERONA.DOORWAY—OLD HOUSE, VERONA.
house at various times, but in the sketch which I give I have shewn so much only of it as appeared to belong to the original foundation. In its construction pointed and round arches have been used quite indiscriminately, and in some of the arches the depth of the voussoirs increases towards the centre of the arch. This is a rather favourite Italian device, and I was always as much pleased as at the first with the effect of strength and good proportion which it produces. Most of the arches are built with alternate voussoirs of brick and stone, but beyond the outside line of the brick and stone arch there is invariably a line of very thin bricks laid all round the arch, delicately defining without pretending to strengthen the main arch, just as a label does with us. I noticed too, generally, that this thinbrick was of a deeper, better colour than the other bricks, which are seldom any better than the common English bricks, and are always built with very coarse joints. This house is finished at the top with the quaint forked or swallow-tailed Ghibelline battlement, so characteristic of Verona, and which, as we found afterwards, was in use at Mantua, Cremona, and for some distance south of Verona, but which I first met with in Verona.
WINDOWS—OLD HOUSE, VERONA.WINDOWS—OLD HOUSE, VERONA.
BRICK BATTLEMENT—VICCOLO CAVALETTO, VERONA.BRICK BATTLEMENT—VICCOLO CAVALETTO, VERONA.
I am not pretending to journalize regularly, but rather
14.—COURT-YARD OF OLD HOUSE, VERONA. Page 106.14.—COURT-YARD OF OLD HOUSE, VERONA.Page 106.
to note down the remarkable points of the various buildings as they occur to me, and, before I forget that it was Sunday when I was first looking at the Veronese churches, I must mention that in the evening we found our way to the great Piazza di Brà, surrounded by barracks and public buildings, and containing the vast Roman amphitheatre for which Verona is so celebrated. Its size is prodigious, and, except in the outer circuit of wall, it is nearly perfect; indeed, it is impossible to look upon such a vast structure without a great admiration for the men who ventured to conceive and carry it into execution.
It is difficult now to conceive how the audience could be found who would fill so vast a space; and certainly the modern efforts in this direction are mainly serviceable as shewing the immensity of the theatre. When I was last in Verona a theatre had been erected in the arena, and a performance was in progress. The audience might have been tolerably large in an enclosed theatre, but here it seemed to be the merest handful; and when we stood on the highest attainable part of the walls, we found ourselves so far from the stage as to be unable to hear a single word that was said. There is no need to describe here so well-known a building as this; suffice it to say, that though the detail of the architecture is poor, the general design and execution of the structural arrangements, and the magnificence of the whole scheme cannot fail to strike one with the same wonder that one feels in the presence of many of these great Roman works; and it is striking indeed, to see one of them so perfect as to be still capable of use, and really used.
All the Austrian portion of the inhabitants of Verona crowded the Piazza di Brà on Sunday evening to hear an Austrian military band, and we enjoyed not a little a stroll among a crowd of uniforms of all shapes, kinds, and colours. Verona more than most towns, even in AustrianLombardy, seems to be sacrificed entirely to Austrian soldiery. It is quite melancholy to walk along a street of palaces, some of them converted into old-furniture stores, others going to ruin; and when suddenly you do come upon a flourishing and smart palace, if you look in you are sure to see an Austrian sentinel, and find that it is an officer’s quarters; and equally when you meet a conveyance, if it is smart and dashing, with good horses and a stylish coachman, it is quite certain to be occupied by some dignified-looking military man. So, too, on the Monday evening, when we went to the French opera (a very pretty, tastefully got-up theatre by the way) there were absolutely none but Austrians in the house—in the boxes, officers and their wives, in the pit, subordinate officers and privates. Who can see this immense staff of foreigners in occupation of a city like Verona without feeling sadly for the people who live under such a rule, and for the ruler who is compelled to maintain such a force to keep his subjects in order?[20]
This, however, is a digression, and I must go on to describe the remaining architectural features of the old city.
On the way to San Zenone Maggiore, which is quite on the extreme western verge of the city, one passes the Castello Vecchio, a very grand pile of simple mediæval fortifications erected in the fourteenth century by Cangrande II. There are several towers and lofty walls, all topped with the forked Veronese battlement; and connected with it is the magnificent Ponte di Castel-Vecchio, a great bridge across the rushing Adige, built entirely of brick, the parapet of the regular Veronese type, and the piers between the arches rather large and angular, and finishing with battlementsrather above those of the bridge. The main arch is of great size—it is said to be not less than one hundred and sixty feet—and one of the most remarkable points in its appearance is, that, instead of being in the centre, it is on the side of the river next the castle, while the other two arches, descending rapidly to the north bank of the river, give the bridge an odd, irregular, and down-hill kind of look. The architectural features of this bridge are, however, not the only objects of interest on this spot; for just after passing the castle the road bends down to the side of the river, and presents an admirable view of the campanili, steeples, and spires, with the steep hills on the opposite bank of the stream, and the mountains in the distance, with the rapid, turgid, white-looking Adige flowing strongly at one’s feet.
A longish walk through squalid suburbs leads us to the open space in front of the noble basilica of San Zenone; it is a desolate waste-looking space, and the poor, old, uncared-for church looks now as though its day was well-nigh past; as if neglect and apathy were all that men could give now where once they were wont to lavish so much of their treasure, and love, and art.
The church, as it now stands, seems to have been entirely rebuilt in the course of the eleventh or twelfth century, and its proportions are so very grand, and its detail generally so perfect, that I think it may certainly be regarded as on the whole the noblest example of its class; indeed, except the very best Gothic work of the best period, I doubt whether any work of the Middle Ages so much commands respect and admiration as this Lombard work. There is a breadth and simplicity about it, and an expression of such deep thought in the arrangement of materials and in the delicate sculpture, which with a sparing hand is introduced, that one cannot sufficiently admire the men who planned and executed it. Beyond this, the constructive science was so excellentand so careful, that with ordinary care such a church as San Zenone would seem still likely to last for ages.
The view of the west front is certainly very striking. The whole church has been singularly little modernized. By its side to the north is a fine simple red brick tower, I suppose originally belonging to the city walls; behind and near the east end of the church, but visible here, the tall and much-arcaded campanile; and on the other side the little church of San Procolo with a fourteenth-century painting of Our Lord under a gabled canopy overhanging the doorway. The west front of San Zenone is simple but dignified. The nave and aisles are finished with cornices following the flat pitch of the roofs. The walls are divided by many vertical lines of pilasters which rise from the plinth to the eaves-cornice. The main part of this front is stone, but a good deal of marble is used, e.g., the rose window has tracery of red marble enclosed within an order of white marble; the doorway and sculpture are in white marble, once much enriched with colour, and the arcaded band all across the front is of red marble. Add to this that the stone used is all of an extremely warm yellow colour, and an idea may be formed of the effort that was made here in the principal front (as often in Italian churches) to shew that God’s house was the noblest that could be built.
The doorway well deserves a chapter to itself. Its lintel has illustrations of the labours of the twelve months, its jambs subjects on the right from the Old Testament, on the left from the New. In front of this door there are detached shafts standing on monsters and supporting a low canopy. An inscription on the façade “Salvet in eternum qui sculpsit ista Guglielmus,” gives the name of the sculptor, the same man probably who about the middle of the twelfth century sculptured the western doorway of the cathedral at Modena.
15. SAN ZENONE. VERONA.15. SAN ZENONE. VERONA.
No less worthy of study are the bronze doors of this doorway. Here, as is so often the case in mediæval Italian works, we have the names of the artists employed—Guglielmo and Nicola da Figarola—with the pious expression of hope that he who sculptured the work might be saved eternally. The subjects are very rude in their detail; they illustrate subjects from the Old Testament, and are executed in thin plates of bronze nailed on to the wooden doors. A row of small windows, one in each of the many divisions of the front, extends all across near the top of the porch; whilst above is a large circular window, filled in with wheel tracery, and treated as was not uncommon as an illustration of the Wheel of Fortune. Round this window is an inscription explaining its symbolism.
We went first into the cloister on the north side of the nave. The arches are very small, and of brick, supported on coupled shafts of red Veronese marble, which have marble caps and bases, and rest on a dwarf wall of stone capped with a thin course of marble. The arch bricks are of a rich red colour, and contrast well with the brickwork of the ordinary kind above them; they are used without any kind of moulding or ornament—and yet I doubt whether I have ever seen a more lovely cloister than this. The arcades on the north and south sides have round arches; those on the east and west are pointed; and on the north is a projecting arcade of the same detail, which once formed the lavatory. The whole of this cloister is in a very sad state of filth, neglected and unused, and will, I fear, ere long become ruinous.[21]
From the cloister you enter by a side door into the north aisle of the choir; much better, however, would it always be to enter from the west, for it is there, whenstanding at the top of the flight of ten or twelve steps which leads down from the door to the floor of the nave, looking down the great length of the church, scanning its singular perspective of timber roofing, the great height and simplicity of its walls, and the mysterious view down into the crypt under the choir through the recently opened arches, that one feels most deeply the great and religious effect of the church. To an eye used to northern Gothic there is something very new in such a building. Its shape, its material, its arrangement, are all unlike what an English eye is used to, but I cannot say that I paused for an instant in doubt as to whether I might really admire or not; for I felt at once how very good the work was, not only in its general effect, but as much in the treatment of the details, in its colour, and in its arrangement.
The general plan is very simple—a great parallelogram, divided into a nave of vast width with northern and southern aisles; the aisles terminated with square east ends, the choir with an apse of five bays, which is, however, of later date than the rest of the church. The chief singularity in the design is the division of the piers of the main arcades into primary and secondary—the first being large heavy piers supporting great arches spanning the nave and aisles, which are finished in a line with the top of the walls; and the latter more delicate circular marble columns of very Classical character, with finely carved capitals, and looking almost too slight to support the vast height of clerestory wall which towers up above the arcade which they carry. The timber roof, or ceiling, is curious; the framing is all concealed, with the exception of the collar-beams, which connect the points of the trefoil which forms the internal line of ceiling. This trefoil outline is all boarded, divided into panels, and painted. The effect of this great length of panelled roofing, partly concealed by the great arches which
16. SAN ZENONE. VERONA. p. 112.16. SAN ZENONE. VERONA.p. 112.
cross the nave, is certainly fine. The wooden roofs of the aisles, too, are original, and their beams are painted very much like the Austrian sentry-boxes, in zigzag lines of black and buff. Much of this painting, however, did not appear to me to be old.
At about two-thirds of the length of the church between the west door and the apse it is cut in two, so to speak, by that which perhaps is now the greatest charm of the interior—the crypt. When I first visited San Zenone this crypt existed, but its existence was not realized from the nave. The only access to it was from the aisles, and even here the arches were partially blocked up. A flight of steps across the whole east end of the nave led up to the choir and concealed the old entrance to it. This, it has lately been found, was originally formed by three open arches from the nave with a flight of steps descending under them to the level of the crypt, whilst two arches on either side of these gave access to it from the aisles. This is the old scheme, and the only possible approach to the raised choir must originally have been that which has now been restored, viz., two narrow flights of steps against the side walls, so contrived as not to interfere with or conceal any part of the sculpture or other decorations on the western face of the arches to the crypt. The church as now restored yields to few with which I am acquainted in the solemn effect which is the result of mysterious light and shade, multiplied vistas of columns and arches, and picturesque originality of design. It is evidently rather a result of growth than of first intentions. The crypt—like our own remarkable example at Wimborne—seems to be an insertion. The columns and piers of the choir pass on into the crypt, whose piers and vaults are built against them. There is an obvious difference too in the style of the church and of the crypt, showing that at least a hundred years must have elapsed between the erection ofthe former and the insertion of the latter. The choir now occupies the three eastern arches of the old constructional nave, and beyond this has a square bay and a five sided apse, the two last divisions being groined and decorated with a good deal of colour. The apse is of the fourteenth century, but all its windows have been modernized. The crypt follows exactly the dimensions of the choir, but is divided into no less than nine bays in width, and six bays in length, exclusive of the apse. The red marble columns which support its groined roof are all monoliths, delicate in their proportions, and many of them probably antique. The vaulting is quadripartite, and there are considerable remains of wall paintings, which appear to be nearly coëval with the crypt. In the centre of this crypt is the shrine of San Zeno, half concealed by the gloomy but effective lighting, and surrounded by a metal railing made of quatrefoils, buckled or tied together, very much in the same style as the railings round the Scaligeri monuments. The altar in this crypt is worth notice on account of its sculptured front. This has in the centre a small crucifix with SS. Mary and John, and on either side, under arches, figures of the Evangelists. The face towards the nave of the seven arches which form the western part of the crypt is decorated with extreme care and finish. They are admirable examples of the really polished work of the Italian artists of the end of the twelfth century. The arches from the north aisle deserve special notice. They are carried on coupled shafts which, as well as their capital, are of red Veronese marble, the archivolt being of stone. The section of both shafts is circular, but one of them is delicately twisted to a spiral curve on its upward course. The refinement of this treatment of shafts is very characteristic of the best Italian work, and this coupled shaft, simple as its treatment is, and common as are the elements of its design, is so beautiful that it makes a realsunshine in a shady place. Not less are the arches above it worthy of admiration. The sculpture here, of a trailing branch of foliage, is very slightly relieved, but its outline is so graceful, its imitation of nature so close without being merely realistic, and its fitness for its position so complete, that I think I have never seen anything in its way more satisfactory, and certainly never anything really ornamental in the best sense, the elements of which were more severely simple.[22]
The colour of the whole interior is, to my mind, charming. It was first of all built in alternate and very irregularly divided courses of brick and stone. On this warm-coloured ground, one pious man after another came and painted what seemed to him best—a Madonna, a crucifixion, a saint, or a group of figures—with not much thought beyond that of making the particular work in which he was interested tell its own story well and produce its own effect. So little did he think of other men’s previous work that the same subjects are not unfrequently repeated. The result is that the walls were here sober and there gorgeous, but everywhere coloured, and everywhere more or less interesting. Yet the materials of which they are built are just those which we see every day of our lives, and it was the skill of the workman, not the richness of his materials, which made his work so worthy of our admiration.
Only one portion of the church is decorated upon a regular system; this is the eastern part of the choir and the apse, which has part of its walls and its groining very elaborately painted, though with but little gold; the groining ribs are richly coloured, and on each side of them is a wide border, generally subdivided into regular geometrical figures, and the spaces between these borders are painted blue and powdered with gold stars. In the south aisle is analtar under a baldachin, supported at the angles by four clustered shafts knotted together in mid height—a capricious custom of which Italians seem to have been especially fond, and the only excuse for which, so far as I can see, is that it proves that all the shafts were cut out of one block, and therefore of more value than four plain detached shafts cut out of separate blocks could be. There is perhaps, also, a relief to the mind, after looking at a long series of similar shafts, to come at last upon some one or two marked by capricious singularity such as this. Be this, however, as it may, the eye certainly always feels inclined to admire them, though the reason is never quite satisfied; and perhaps some better excuse does exist for their use than I have as yet been able to discover. It is probable that these columns belonged originally to the baldachin over the high altar. The canopy which they now support is not old.
The vestry on the north side of the choir is worth a visit, if only for the sake of its prettily panelled and painted ceiling. Here the panels are very small, and left in the natural colour of the pine, and the ribs are decorated with white, red, and black. There is also in this room a very good fourteenth-century marble cistern and lavatory under an arch in the wall; and lastly, in the wardrobes, among many things not worth seeing, a finely embroidered bishop’s mitre of the twelfth century, wrought in gold on linen. In front is a figure of Our Lord, at the back one of the Blessed Virgin, with emblems of two Evangelists on each, and a band below with figures of the Apostles, the stoles also being adorned with figures.
The arrangement of the choir shows the common Italian plan of stalls round the apse behind the altar. They are of early Renaissance character, with some relic of Gothic feeling in the traceries of the backs and elbows. There is also agood example of a square choir lectern, with a large base to contain books, and a revolving gabled desk.
Until the beginning of this century, there were only two altars in this church, one in the choir the other in the crypt. The verger told me that his father remembered the other altars being brought from a suppressed church, and erected here.
The campanile is well seen from the cloister, where it composes finely with the coursed walls of the church, and the many-shafted arcades of the cloister. It is a lofty square tower of several stages, with small pinnacles, and a low circular brick spire crowning it.
I must not leave San Zenone without mentioning the construction of the exterior, which—with the exception of the west end, which is of stone and marble—is entirely of red brick and very warm-coloured stone. The courses of stone are, as a general rule, of about the same height, whilst those of brick are very varied, some only of one course, others of four or five. The cornices at the tops of the walls, too, are very good, supported upon corbel-tables with round arches resting upon corbels, and much improved in their effect by the judicious introduction of thin deep-red bricks between the courses of carved stone, which are thus thrown out forcibly. It is in this use of red brick, and in the bold and successful way in which brick and stone are shown in the interior, that this church is so full of instruction to an English eye; and I could not see such a work without regretting bitterly the insane prejudice which some people indulge against anything but the cold, walls, chilling respectability of our English plastered walls, which to me seems to be fit only for occupation by savages.
Every time I visit this noble church, I leave it with greater regret; its exceeding grandeur appears to deserve abetter fate than the spare use to which it seems now to be abandoned. To see all these painted or coloured walls, all these marble piers, and all this vast expanse of wall and roof waste and desolate, apparently not half used and never filled with a throng of worshippers, reminds me too strongly of the sad and similar fate of some of our own English churches not to awaken a sigh as I look at it. To some men it is a comfort to find that their neighbours are no better than themselves in these matters, but I confess that to my mind a great church disused is a subject only for mournful recollection, just as a noble church much used and filled with crowds of worshippers is an object for emulation and admiration. Here, in good truth, I know not where the worshippers are to come from, so decayed and forlorn is the neighbourhood.
On the way back from San Zenone into the city a small church is passed—the oratory of the same Saint—where his body is said to have rested for a time before it was taken to the Basilica. The only architectural features are of a long subsequent period, a very good circular window in the west gable, and a doorway with a pointed canopy supported on shafts above it, under which of old no doubt there was a painting.
Beside San Zenone I think the only very grand church as yet unmentioned is that of San Fermo Maggiore—a vast Romanesque basilica without aisles, but with small transepts, and a chancel and north and south chancel-aisles opening into the nave by three arches, which exactly correspond with its vast width; a not very beautiful arrangement, which we shall meet with again in the church of the Eremitani at Padua, and in others of the great churches of the preaching orders of monks.
The fabric of the east end, and the eastern half of the nave appears to be of very early date—I should be disposedto say the end of the tenth, or beginning of the eleventh century. A lofty crypt is constructed under the whole of this part, all the columns of which are square; some of them mere masses of masonry, others slender monoliths. The mouldings here are rather Roman in character than Lombard. The groining is all of brick, and very extensive remains of paintings are still to be seen throughout, the large columns having single figures painted on them, one on each face. Access to the crypt is obtained (by the clergy) from the cloister, south of the church, and by the people through a very spacious staircase entered from the outside by a door just west of the north porch. So good indeed are the means of access, that no doubt the crypt was once extensively used by the laity, for whom these stairs were specially intended. It is now not used at all—just as is the case with old crypts all over Europe—but then it is fair to say that the church is no longer served by the Regular Clergy by whom it was built, and that their conventual buildings were when first I saw them occupied by Austrian soldiers, and are now still turned, I believe, to some equally secular use. I think we may fairly assume that in 1313, when the church was restored and in part reconstructed, the old crypt was retained partly on account of its associations, and partly because of its convenience for those who might at first not quite sympathize with the novel arrangements of the church above, a great unbroken area built and contrived for the use and convenience of an order of preachers, and not for receiving a number of altars.
A monument close to the entrance of the crypt is worth notice. It represents a professor with his pupils sitting each at a desk. The books have inscriptions on them. The professor’s has “Vita brevis;” a pupil, “Ars longā;” another, “judicium difficile;” and another, “tēpus fugit.”
In the interior of the nave we have, as has been observed,a work which has been so much altered that it is in fact, as we now see it, a work of the fourteenth century. It is about fifty feet in width, and covered with a timber roof, constructed so as to form a ceiling of a number of cusps boarded and panelled on the under side, and tied with iron ties in place of collar-beams. Two vertical divisions of the panelling are arcaded, and filled with paintings of saints, and the whole roof is darkly stained, and richly painted. Beyond this the only very striking feature is the pulpit, which is corbelled out from the south wall about midway in its length. It is old and picturesque, and is surmounted by a delicately carved and lofty canopy—the whole in marble. It is surrounded by wall paintings of about the same age, and presents a fairly unchanged example of what such combined works of the painter and the architect were in the palmy days of the fourteenth century. These paintings are of much interest. Behind the pulpit are the four doctors and the four Evangelists seated, the ascent of Elisha in a chariot of fire, and twelve prophets with scrolls. Under the canopy is the Crucifixion.
Going to the exterior one finds on the north side two transepts, and north of the chancel a tower. East of the eastern transept and of the tower are small apsidal projections of Romanesque character, both of them in ruins and unused. The masonry here is different from that of the later work, being of alternate courses of single brick, and of stone.
The exterior of the principal apse is very remarkable, and belongs to the fourteenth century. Each side has a steep gable with elaborate cornices, mouldings, and pinnacles, partly of stone and partly of brick. The gables are built with circular bricks, and there is a cusped circular window in each gable. Seen from the bridge which crosses the Adige close to the church, this picturesque east end is one
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of the most picturesque things in Verona. Unfortunately the campanile does not equal in importance the church to which it belongs.
The west end will be best understood by the accompanying sketch. It is constructed entirely in red brick and warm-coloured stone, and I confess that it impressed me most pleasantly, as having in its four delicate lancet windows some sort of affinity to our own English work. The north porch is very fine of its kind, and the jambs of its doorway are constructed of black, white, and red marble, used alternately. The arcading against the walls is noticeable as shewing the use of thin courses of red brick for the purpose of defining the lines of the stonework.
The monuments on each side of the west door are good simple examples of a favourite Italian type. They are, as we shall see, of all dates, and even when developed to a great size, are still corbelled in the same way out of the walls. In the North of Europe, we have no analogous treatment of monumental memorials, and this rather enhances their value. The arch to the monument on the left of the west doorway is painted in a charmingly simple Giottesque style, and there is a painting also behind a modern statue in the door-arch, of Our Lord surrounded by angels. In the arcades above the monuments there were figures of saints painted, with imitations of mosaic. All these details are worth mentioning in order to give some idea to those who have not seen Verona, of the extent to which everywhere the eye is feasted with remains of early art. Indeed, one feasts uninterruptedly there on all that can delight the eye in form and in colour!
With the mention of one more church I believe I may bring my notes in Verona to an end, and this is a small chapel which stands just opposite the south side of the Duomo, and whose name I could not learn. It is much likeSan Pietro Martire in its general arrangement, but remarkable for the exquisite beauty of its windows, the arrangement of the bricks and stonework in which is beyond all praise. These windows are constructed with trefoiled heads of stone, enclosed within an arch of mixed stone and brick, round whose outer edge runs a band of delicate terra-cotta ornament. The spandrels of the trefoils are filled in with refined sculpture, instead of being pierced with the dark eye usually found in northern Gothic. There is, too, an entire absence of mouldings, yet, notwithstanding this, the general effect is one of combined delicacy and richness of no common kind, so much does carefully-arranged and contrasted colour do for architecture. A third window is entirely of brick, save the trefoil head of the opening. The side elevation of this little chapel is very singular in its whole arrangement; there are three bays divided by pilasters, which finish at the top in an arcaded cornice of brick; in each of the two western bays is a lancet window, and the centre bay has in addition a doorway, and a corbelled out monument above it; in the eastern bay the window looks just like one of those curious English low side windows, as to the use of which we have had so many ingenious theories; the east end has no trace of any window, and is finished with a flat-pitched roof, and a brick corbel-table running up the pediment. There is no stone used except in the window-heads and arches.
There are many other churches in Verona on both sides of the river, and into several of them we went, but without finding any of equal merit to those which I have already noticed. Santa Eufemia has a fair west front, of late pointed, and we found one or two good cloisters just like those mentioned at Brescia. Other churches have fronts built, and interiors remodelled, by Sanmichele and his successors, in a style which by no means approved itself to me; others