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Cornell University Library 
 NA5611.B88C6 
 
 The cathedrals and churches of northern 
 
 3 1924 015 423 985 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924015423985 
 
THE CATHEDRALS 
 AND CHURCHES OF 
 NORTHERN ITALY 
 
VENICE.— ST. MARK'S. 
 
 FROM A PAINriNG BY F. L. GRIGGS, 
 
THE CATHEDRALS 
 AND CHURCHES OF 
 NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 By 
 
 T. FRANCIS BUMPUS 
 
 Author of "The Cathedrals of England fif Wales," "The Glories of Northern France," 
 
 "The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine and 
 
 North Germany," etc. 
 
 With Eighty-One Illustrations 
 (Nine of which are in Colour) 
 
 T. WERNER LAURIE 
 
 CLIFFORD'S INN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 EC 
 
A; 4 
 
 so 
 
FRANCIS 'AUGUSTUS BEVAN, E^Q- 
 TRENT PARK, ENFIELD 
 
 THIS WORK 
 IS 
 GRATEFULLT INSCRIBED 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 [^These are Colour Plates) 
 Venice, St Mark's, from a -painting by F. L. Griggs Frontis. 
 St Andrea, Vercelli, from the S.W. To face 4 
 
 Sta Agata, a Ravennese Basilica 22 
 
 The Apse, Sta Maria Maggiore, Bergamo 28 
 
 St Tomaso in Limine, near Bergamo 30 
 
 I-he Frari Church at Venice, from the S.E. 34 
 
 St Andrea, Vercelli, interior 38 
 
 St Pietro in Concava, at Asti 40 
 
 *The Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo 42 
 
 St Gaudenzio at Novara 44 
 
 Screen in the Certosa near Pavia 46 
 
 *Trent, the Cathedral from the S.E. 50 
 
 Trent, the Cathedral, interior looking E. 54 
 
 Verona, general view of the City from the North 60 
 
 Verona, West front of the Cathedral 64 
 
 Verona, the Cathedral, interior looking E. 70 
 
 Verona, the Cathedral, South porch 74 
 Verona, St Giovanni in Fonte ^Baptistery of the Cathedral) 78 
 
 Verona, Western doorway of St Fermo Maggiore 82 
 
 Verona, Sta Anastasia,. interior looking E. 86 
 
 Verona, West door of Sta Anastasia 88 
 
 Verona, St Zeno from the S.W. 90 
 
 Verona, interior of St Zeno, looking E. 92 
 
 Verona, the Crypt of St Zeno 94 
 
 Verona, interior of St Fermo Maggiore 98 
 
 I Vicenza, the Cathedral from the S.W. 106 
 
 -\J^icenza, St Lorenzo, interior looking E. 112 
 
 XX. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Padua, interior of the Arena Chapel looking W. ^ ^ 5 
 
 Padua, Baptistery of the Cathedral ^^° 
 
 Padua, interior of the Arena Chapel looking E. 1 22 
 
 *Padua, St Antonio from the South ^26 
 
 Padua, interior of St Antonio looking W. 1 3° 
 
 Padua, interior of Sta Giustina looking E. 134 
 
 Torcello, interior of the Cathedral looking E. 14° 
 
 Venice, interior of St Mark's looking E. I54 
 
 Venice, interior of the Frari Church looking E. 160 
 
 Bologna, SS. Pietro e Paolo 169 
 
 Ferrara, West front of the Cathedral 172 
 Ferrara Cathedral, details of sculpture on West front 174 
 
 Bologna, St Stefano from the West 178 
 
 Bologna, interior of St Sepolcro 180 
 
 Bologna, the shrine of St Dominic 184 
 
 * Bologna, St Francesco from the East 186, 
 Bologna, Altar-piece in StjFrancesco 188 
 Bologna, central Doorway of St Petronio 192 
 Bologna, interior of St Petronio 196 
 Ravenna, interior of the Orthodox Baptistery 212 
 Ravenna, Doorway of St Giovanni Evangelista 226 
 Ravenna, St Apollinaris Nuovo, looking across nave 240 
 Ravenna, interior of St Vitalis z^6 
 Ravenna, Sta Maria in Porto Fuori 248 
 
 * Ravenna, St Apollinaris in Classe from the North-East 250 
 Ravenna, St Apollinaris in Classe, interior looking East 254 
 *Cremona Cathedral, West front 256 
 
 '~Modena Cathedral, West front 260 
 
 Modena Cathedral, South side 264 
 
 Modena Cathedral, nave looking E. 268 
 
 Modena Cathedral, entrance to Crypt 270 
 
 Parma Cathedral, West front 272 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Parma Cathedral, nave looking E. 276 
 
 Parma, interior of the Baptistery 278 
 
 Piacenza Cathedral, nave looking E. 280 
 
 Piacenza Cathedral, from the N.E. 282 
 
 *Cremona Cathedral, from the E. 284 
 
 Cremona Cathedral, nave looking E. 286 
 
 *Certosa, near Pavia, Western facade 288 
 
 Certosa, near Pavia, interior view across Transept 290 
 
 Pavia, West front of St Michele 294 
 
 I Pavia, West door of St Michele 296 
 
 Pavia, Shrine of St Augustine 300 
 
 Pavia, interior of the Cathedral looking S.E. 302 
 
 Monza, West front of the Cathedral 305 
 
 Milan, Atrium of St Ambrose 308 
 
 Milan, interior of St Ambrose looking E. 312 
 
 Milan, Altar frontal in St Ambrose 318 
 
 Milan Cathedral from the S.W. 324 
 
 Milan Cathedral, view across Choir 330 
 
 Milan Cathedral, view across Transept 338 
 
 Padua, Shrine of St Antonio 346 
 
 Venice, Sta Maria Assunta 350 
 
 Novara, the Cathedral from the N.W- 362 
 
 XL 
 
The Cathedrals and Churches 
 of Northern Italy 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IntroduSiory Sketch of. Italian Church <iArchiteSlure 
 
 LITTLE did I imagine, as I penned the chapters on 
 Lichfield, Gloucester and St Albans in the third 
 volume of The Cathedrals of England and Wales during 
 the gloomy days of a London November, when the winds 
 were rustling through the denuded boughs and stray leaves 
 were tapping on the panes as they fell, that I should be 
 revising the proofs beneath the sunny skies of an Italian 
 June, while sauntering through the avenues which encircle 
 Modena and Pavia, Vercelli and Novara. But it is the un- 
 expeifled that happens. 
 
 Calling one day in the spring of last year upon my pub- 
 lisher, he proposed that I should undertake the volume on 
 Northern Italy for his "Cathedral Series." 
 
 It may surprise some of my readers when they learn 
 that I did not perform that extraordinary mental gymnastic 
 feat known as jumping at an offer. At first I shrank from 
 the task, under the conviction that it had been accom- 
 plished long ago and by far abler pens; indeed, it was only 
 upon reflecting that one's true, fresh and vivid impressions 
 are worthy of some respeft, and that a sincere and reveren- 
 tial love of beauty gives one an instrudlive appreciation of 
 the spirit of the higher forms of art, however deficient the 
 judgement may be in matters of execution and detail, that 
 
 I 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 I could prevail upon myself to embark on so serious an 
 undertaking. With a very limited understanding of causes 
 it is possible to feel efFefts in architefture and the arts ancil- 
 lary to it. Much had to be learnt, as hitherto my only 
 acquaintance with transalpine church architefture had been 
 derived from books and hearsay. 
 
 Now, I was to greet what even then seemed like old 
 friends face to face. I was to shake hands with the red and 
 yellow brick of Verona, the white marble of Milan, the 
 mosaics of Ravenna, Venice and Torcello, and the colon- 
 nades and domes of Bologna and Padua. 
 
 I was to tread the solemn courts of St Michele at Pavia, 
 Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, and of the cathedrals at Trent, 
 Modena,Parma andPiacenza,andtomake acquaintance with 
 some of the Renaissance masterpieces of Palladio, Sanmi- 
 chele, Bramante, Domenico Tibaldi and Girolamo da Brescia. 
 
 The want of a congenial companion to induce and 
 reciprocate remarks would, as on former occasions, have 
 been much felt, had the prescribed seven weeks' touring 
 been a seven weeks of wandering or of desultory excur- 
 sionizing in any sort of vague or experimental manner. 
 Fortunately, systematic employment, whose enjoyableness 
 was to be that which comes from incessant activity, and 
 by no means the delight of doing nothing, was to be the 
 order of the day; the route, Bavaria and the Tyrol and 
 home through Dauphin^, the Lyonnais, Burgundy, Cham- 
 pagne and French Flanders, was all sketched out before- 
 hand, and this or that place planned to be reached or left 
 behind on such and such a day. 
 
 It must, however, be confessed that when, with no im- 
 pedimenta beyond a knapsack and a portfolio, I entrained 
 on Monday evening, May 21, for Harwich, the Hook of 
 
 2 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Holland and Cologne, I could not shake off the feeling 
 that the first plunge into that cold bath of a new life of 
 seven weeks' entire independence and self-reliance which 
 lay before me had been taken. 
 
 The temptation to linger at Cologne, where I found my- 
 self at noon on the following day, was too great to be re- 
 sisted; so, abandoning the idea of proceeding direftly to 
 Frankfort, I gave myself up to the enjoyment of the mani- 
 fold ecclesiological treasures of the "Rome of the North." 
 With renewed delight I visited the noble basilicas of St 
 Mary in the Capitol, and the Holy Apostles — lately en- 
 riched with mosaics in a style thoroughly consonant with its 
 architediure; attended the afternoon Offices in the Cathe- 
 dral; assisted at the "May devotions" in sundry churches, 
 hearing Pepys-like "a bit here and a bit there"; peeped 
 through the metal grilles at the interiors of St Cunibert's 
 and St Martin's, both looking profoundly awful in the fast 
 gathering darkness; paid my respeds to the shrine of Eng- 
 land's protomartyr in the jejune rococo church of St Mary 
 in the Schnurgasse; thought the western fa9ades of St 
 Andrew's and St Mary's of the Lys two of the most charm- 
 ing specimens of thirteenth-century Rhenish architedbure 
 of my acquaintance; and next morning reached Frankfort, 
 after a rapid but enjoyable railway ride through old Rhine- 
 side towns and villages all embosomed in thick May leaves. 
 The evening of the same day found me at Wtlrzburg, 
 where the greater part of Holy Thursday was spent. Charm- 
 ing was the procession which I encountered on my way to 
 High Mass, making the circuit of the vast Romanesque 
 Cathedral to the familiar strains of " Hursley." * Brightly 
 
 *A melody from the Bavarian chorale books, wedded by the compilers 
 of the first edition oi Hymns jincient and Modem to Sun of my Soul. 
 
 3 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 did the sun shine on the processional crosses and banners, 
 the curling incense, the rich vestments of the clergy and 
 the glittering Monstrance, borne by the Bishop beneath a 
 silken canopy. 
 
 Perhaps the climax of pidluresqueness was reached when, 
 the procession having emerged into the broad square in 
 front of the Cathedral, it ascended the steps leading to the 
 great west entrance, through whose widely flung valves 
 could be seen the thronged interior with the brilliantly 
 lighted high altar in the dim distance. The great bells now 
 added their voices, and from within came the solemn tones 
 of the organ, which increased in volume as the procession 
 advanced up the nave, presently, when all were in their 
 places, merging into the familiar Ascension Day introit, 
 "Viri Galilaei, quid admiramini adspicientes in coelum?" 
 so that I felt as much at home here as in my own church 
 in London. The hearty devotion of the numerous wor- 
 shippers; the thoroughly church-like charafter lof the mu- 
 sic; the vast, but sadly classicized pile in which we were 
 assembled; and especially the grand colossal upright figures 
 of prince bishops — relics of a purer age of architedlure — 
 affixed to the nave piers combined to render the scene very 
 religious and solemn. 
 
 Divine service concluded, and visits having been paid 
 to several churches, notably the pidluresque one of St Bur- 
 chardus on the opposite side of the Maine, I resumed the 
 journey, reaching Bamberg in time to assist at a very hearty 
 and well attended evening service in the majestically situ- 
 ated Cathedral, remarkable for its quartette of spires, each 
 pair of which flanks an apse or choir — the St George's 
 Choir, rich late Romanesque, at the east, and the St Peter's 
 Choir in pure early Pointed Gothic at the west end. Very 
 
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ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 peaceful and soothing were the precindls of this Dom at 
 Bamberg as I pervaded them in the freshness of early morn- 
 ing on the subsequent day, while the bells were sending 
 forth their sonorous voices for the Chapter Mass, which 
 was rendered with much ritual dignity and appropriate 
 musical accompaniment. 
 
 A great treat was the singing of the Dies Ira at a sub- 
 sequent "Black Mass," a couple of trombones imparting 
 great force and charader to such verses as "Tuba mirum 
 spargens sonum" and "Rex tremendae majestatis." 
 
 I may remind my readers how Sir "Walter Scott recurred 
 to this truly inspired composition of Thomas of Celano on 
 his death-bed, and how it gave rise to one of the finest 
 scenes in Goethe's Faust. 
 
 The metre, indeed, is unique. The triple hammer-strokes 
 of the triple rhyme, the wonderful simplicity of the words, 
 the fearful sublimity of the ideas, the telling eiFed of every 
 word, make this, one of the few great sequences that escaped 
 removal from the Roman Gradual in the sixteenth century, 
 stand alone in its unapproachable glory. 
 
 Of the manifold architedural treasures of Nuremberg I 
 dare not trust myself to speak, neither may I dilate upon 
 those of Ratisbon, where I spent a rapturous " Sunday after 
 Ascension Day." My visit to this most majestic of Danu- 
 bian cities was rendered notable by the Ordination which 
 the Bishop of the diocese was holding in the graceful, if 
 not vast, Complete-Gothic cathedral, so renowned for its 
 painted glass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 
 As early as half-past seven an immense congregation 
 began to assemble. At eight o'clock a glorious voluntary was 
 played upon the organ concealed behind the high altar, and 
 during the hour that elapsed before the commencement of 
 
 5 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 the ceremony, the celebrated choir, likewise hidden froni 
 view, sang a series of motets in the style of Orlando di 
 Lasso and Palestrina, and with so sublime an effeft that 
 I found myself constantly in tears. 
 
 During the Ordination itself the hymns Vent Creator and 
 Vent sanSie Spiritus were sung alternately, sometimes in their 
 original plain song, sometimes to a severe modern setting in 
 concerted parts. 
 
 At the conclusion of every piece a silence like that of death 
 fell upon the church, as if some celestial vision had passed 
 before the living eyes and hushed into stillness every pulse 
 of human feeling. The effeft of this invisible music was be- 
 yond anything I have ever heard or ever expeft to hear. 
 The air seemed stirred with the trembling of angelic wings, 
 or as if the gates of heaven had been opened and a wandering 
 breath from the songs of seraphs had been borne to earth. 
 A few sounds which, under ordinary circumstances, would 
 have been merely a passing luxury to the ear, heard on this 
 solemn occasion and beneath this noble vault, were like a 
 purifying wave, which, for an instant, swept over the soul, 
 bearing away with it all the soil and stains of earth, and 
 leaving it pure as infancy. There was, it is true, a refluent 
 tide; and the world, displaced by the solemn strain, came 
 back with the echo ; but, thoughiwe cannot keep the heights 
 we are competent to gain, we are the better for the too brief 
 exaltation. 
 
 Another treat awaited me in the afternoon, when Vespers 
 and Compline were sung to the ancient plain chant, accord- 
 ing to the use of Ratisbon, by sixty seminarists, who, in 
 cassocks, surplices and birettas, had walked in procession 
 from their college to the Cathedral. 
 
 Nor was the crowd, which in the evening filled the 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Romanesque Scotch Benediftine Church of St James to 
 overflowing, less impressive; the profound stillness and 
 reverent demeanour of the people contrasting forcibly with 
 the levity that I was to encounter a few days later. 
 
 Italy is so often the country of disenchantment that I was 
 hardly surprised at the slovenly irreverence with which many 
 of the Offices were performed even in some of the cathe- 
 drals. The nasal chanting, the disorder and flippancy every- 
 where, the scanty congregations and the general perfunc- 
 toriness of things, struck me very unpleasantly after the 
 dignity of the German church services. 
 
 However, I suppose we travel to little purpose if we 
 carry with us the standard which is formed in some country 
 of our own prediledlion, and expeft the religious sentiment 
 to manifest itself at all times and in all places in the same 
 manner. 
 
 At Venice, Verona and Milan I found a better state of 
 things, due at St Mark's, presumably, to the work of the 
 present Pope, and at Milan to the zeal of the clergy for 
 the proper dignity of the Ambrosian rite. 
 
 The Roman Church appears at its best in Holland and 
 Northern Germany, perhaps by readlion from the arid deso- 
 lation of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in those countries. 
 
 From Ratisbon I pursued the journey through Landshut, 
 Freising, Munich and Innsbruck, to Trent, where I arrived 
 at sunset on the Friday before Whitsuntide. Here I made 
 my first Italian meal outside the Albergo Fenezia, and in 
 full view of the Romanesque Cathedral, in which I seemed 
 to trace a line of demarcation between the architefture of 
 Northern and Southern Europe. By entering Italy this gra- 
 dual way, I found, long before I reached the frontier, forms 
 which prepared me for what was coming, forms which 
 
 7 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 served to indicate how deep was the artistic influence of 
 Rome in the land whose kings claimed to be her emperors. 
 And this influence made itself felt, tarrying as I did at 
 Warzburg, Bamberg and Ratisbon, where I felt that here 
 in the heart of Germany I had come within the direft influ- 
 ence of the art of Italy, classical and modern. 
 
 I must warn the reader that one of the most important 
 cautions which he should impose upon himself on visiting 
 Italy for the first time is to guard carefully against being 
 too much carried away by the readlion against former pre- 
 judice. I, in common with many another student of church 
 architedure, visited Italy too late, and under the impression 
 that it contained little that exadly coincided with my way of 
 thinking. Before studying the Anglo-Romanesque of Ely, 
 Norwich and Peterborough, the Norman of Caen and its vici- 
 nity, or the several varieties of the round arched style to be 
 met with in Germany, I should have made the acquain- 
 tance of their Roman, Ravennese and Lombard prototypes, 
 since a stream of Italian art can be traced, first spreading 
 down the Rhine, thence working to the south and south- 
 west of France, and so on in gradual and steady develop- 
 ment to the North. 
 
 That I found the cities which I visited absolutely filled 
 with objefts of the utmost novelty and interest it were idle 
 to deny; still I did not fly at once to the opposite extreme, 
 and become so much enamoured of these newly discovered 
 beauties as to think them superior to those on which my 
 former ideas and knowledge had been founded. 
 
 The Romanesque and Early Pointed of Lombardy 
 charmed me much, but I saw at once that her Complete 
 Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though 
 possessing much beauty, was, per se, vastly inferior as an 
 
 8 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 architectural style to the contemporary work of France and 
 England. 
 
 Not only are Its details mixed with reminiscences of clas- 
 sical antiquity, but its construftion falls so far short of carry- 
 ing out fully the great principles of Pointed architedlure 
 that it must ever be considered a far less perfedl develop- 
 ment of the style than those of Northern Europe. 
 
 In the early days of the English Gothic revival, Italian 
 Romanesque and Pointed received but scant attention,* 
 and it was not more than half a century ago, when the writ- 
 ings of Ruskin and the several competitions for eredting 
 churches on foreign soil sent the current of architeftural 
 taste rushing beyond the Alps, that theGothic of Italy began 
 to be seriously studied. 
 
 In 1 848, when Butterfield drew the designs for All Saints', 
 Margaret Street, it was not an easy thing to conceive of a 
 red-brick church of vast height and costly ornamentation 
 and the highest architedlural dignity. Those were the days 
 of timid copyism of ancient precedents. For the most part 
 design was little better than the compilation and recomposi- 
 tion of the disjeSia membra of medieval buildings. No one 
 remembered the noble brick architefture of Venice and 
 Verona, and, in default of the costly and almost unattain- 
 able hewn stone from Caen or Pordand, churches were built 
 of the rudest Kentish rag laid in random courses, and 
 pointed, probably, with black mortar. It was in All Saints' 
 that Butterfield made the first step forward in that bolder 
 style of design which was to open so hopeful a future for 
 English architedure, and it may be doubted whether the 
 
 * As an exception to this, Christ Church, Streatham Hill, should be 
 mentioned. It was built in 1841 from the designs of Wild, and as a speci- 
 men of Venetian Gothic elicited the admiration of Ruskin. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 chief excellences of this design, however often imitated, 
 have been equalled or approached. 
 
 All Saints', Margaret Street, and St James the Less in 
 Upper Garden Street, Westminster,* are churches in which 
 their respedive architefts, Butterfield and Street, stepped 
 beyond the mere repetition of English medieval forms to 
 produce buildings in which a free ecledic manipulation 
 of parts was grafted upon a system of polychromatic con- 
 struction, having its basis in the fadl that London is naturally 
 a brick town. Butterfield and Street represented very differ- 
 ent phases of what may be called the " i nventi ve " or "or iginal " 
 phase of the Gothic revival movement. At All Saints' we find 
 the adoption of construftive polychrome, but itsarchiteftural 
 detail shows that in the mass it is decidedly Northern and spe- 
 cially English. In St James the Less, Street, who a few years 
 before had uttered his love for Southern Pointed inhis Brick 
 and Marble of North Italy, rejeded the old Gothic of Eng- 
 land and gave us a building as Italian in the seleftion and 
 arrangement of its materials as it was in detail. "With the 
 greatest resped for the talents of these two leaders of the Re- 
 vival, I cannot believe in the infallibility of either, nor can 
 I pretend to strike the balance between their two systems. 
 Both architects had much to say for themselves, and each 
 had his weaker points, yet it is impossible not to perceive 
 in both these churches, which have long passed the gauntlet 
 of criticism, a bold and magnificent endeavour to shake 
 off the trammels of that antiquarian precedent which had 
 long fettered the progress of the Revival.^ Sir Gilbert 
 
 "All Saints' was completed in 1859 ; St James's in 1861. 
 
 t In All Saints', Clifton, and St Mary Magdalene's, Paddington, two 
 churches in which Street was permitted to carry out his ideas unhampered 
 by pecuniary considerations, we perceive some very graceful Italian im- 
 
 10 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Scott likewise introduced certain judicious features from 
 Italian Pointed into many of the churches which in his own 
 peculiar soft style he was sowing over the country about 
 this time, notably in St Mary's, Stoke Newington, one of 
 the most beautiful and elegant strudures that the movement 
 had up to the period of its completion (1858) produced. 
 Since that time Italian Pointed has been introduced into 
 England with no small advantage, and in the hands of ac- 
 complished praditioners has been found to supply a fund 
 of material which has been utilized to enrich and render 
 more copious and complete that which we derive from our 
 Northern examples, and which has been imported into our 
 own style without vitiating its nationality to any serious 
 extent. 
 
 On the other hand, unfortunately, when introduced by 
 clumsy imitators, it is no wonder that a revulsion against 
 this penchant for foreign forms should, in a short time, have 
 taken place, and that many of our best architedls should have 
 retraced their steps and become more insular in their tastes. 
 
 To return, however, from this digression. Italian Gothic 
 was never so thoroughly and independently worked out as 
 the Northern types, and therefore never reached their dig- 
 nity, consistency and perfection; but when the influence 
 to which the medieval builders in the South were subjeded 
 are considered, it is wonderful that the Gothic of that coun- 
 try was even so far developed as it is found. Rome, wedded 
 to her own habits, always regarded the Pointed styles with 
 disdain, and except in the case of Sta Maria sopra Miner- 
 va and the Chapel of the Santa Scala, never admitted them 
 in buildings of importance, except in the decorations of 
 
 portations. In the latter, details from the Cathedral at Udine between 
 Venice and Trieste seem to have been the favourite models. 
 
 II 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 distinft and subordinate parts, such as tabernacles, shrines 
 and tombs. 
 
 The paucity of monuments left by the Middle Ages in 
 Rome is one of the disappointing realities in the modern 
 conditions of that city, but easily to be accounted for by 
 reference to the historic circumstances of those times, so 
 troublous and continually agitated by the shocks of con- 
 tending parties, in a metropolis whose misfortune it was to 
 exist under a government never stridlly defined or guaranteed 
 from disorder, by a general and royal recognition of consti- 
 tuted authority. The senate and aristocracy on the one hand, 
 the popes and their ecclesiastical ministers on the other, 
 and at a distance the vague but powerfully supported claims 
 of the Emperors of the West, produced in the aggregate 
 a confusion contributing to render this city, perhaps, the most 
 unquiet centre for social life throughout that period under- 
 stood in the term "medieval." Whilst magnificent cathe- 
 drals were rising into grandeur of completeness at Pisa, 
 Siena, Florence and Milan, Rome produced nothing worthy 
 of an enduring place among the great monuments of Chris- 
 tian faith and genius; and during the period most eventful 
 to the study of revived art in Italy her pontiffs were spend- 
 ing their lives in inglorious exile at Avignon, leaving their 
 capital to its gloomy destinies, ruinous, depopulated and 
 torn by fadlions. 
 
 The classical taste can hardly ever be said to have been 
 quite extindt in Italy; her larchitedure, throughout the 
 whole period from the decline to the revival of the arts, 
 bears traces of it, and therefore we cannot wonder at seeing 
 it obtain an early and complete ascendancy, the cffeA of 
 which was felt by degrees at a distance. 
 
 In England, it is needless to remind my readers that, 
 
 12 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 roughly speaking, the history of Gothic architedure begins 
 with the Norman Conquest and ends with the Reformation. 
 During this period of about five hundred years it passed 
 through a certain career of continual movement. It never 
 rested. So it is with all human enterprises that are worth 
 anything, they never rest ; there is nothing peculiar in this 
 respeft about architedture. Not only so, but in different lo- 
 calities the "mode" came to be carried out with great 
 variety. 
 
 Under special influences also, as, for instance, those of 
 the irival religious organizations, there arose of necessity 
 certain corresponding schools of art. Then as now, no 
 doubt, every designer considered that to do a thing well 
 he must do it himself; and it was almost impossible to 
 find anyone so devoid of self-confidence as to fail to take 
 occasion to improve upon the work of everybody else. 
 
 The natural consequence of this is that, while the Gothic 
 cathedrals and churches of England, and to a great extent 
 those of France and Germany, are replete with variety, the 
 student can have little or no hesitation about assigning its 
 proper date to each. 
 
 The ecclesiastical architedure of Italy reverses this. Up 
 to a certain period the history of Gothic art in that country 
 can be said to have run parallel with that of the Northern 
 nations, but no one style held undisputed sway. The sub- 
 jedl is a vast one for several reasons. Chief among them 
 must be reckoned the foreign influences which introduced 
 strange novelties into a large part of Italy, particularly into 
 that of which this volume is designed to treat,* a fertile 
 
 * It lay mainly in what used to be the Veneto-Lombardic kingdom, 
 extending in one direflion from Trent to Bologna, and in another from 
 Ravenna to Genoa, the whole distrift being of all Italy north of the 
 Apennines the richest in typical examples. 
 
 13 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 and prosperous region which has since the decline of the 
 Roman Empire attradted invaders from all parts, many of 
 whom seized large tracts of territory, and each race bring- 
 ing with it its own peculiar style of architecture, of which 
 countless monuments still exist. Thus in Sicily we find the 
 Norman and Arabo-Norman ; in Ravenna, the Byzantine; 
 in the North, the Lombard; each of which styles has cha- 
 raderistics differing from the rest. Again, every petty State 
 affeded certain peculiarities, either in plan or detail, pro- 
 ducing the differences which distinguish the churches of 
 Pavia and Bergamo from those of Pisa and Lucca, Venice 
 and Verona. And if to these causes we add the wandering 
 companies of Freemasons who traversed the country, ap- 
 parently hailing from Germany, and who have bequeathed 
 at intervals specimens of their art far purer in style than the 
 produdions of native talent, it is easy to understand what 
 discernment is required in presenting a general scheme 
 of architedural classification which shall embrace all the 
 differing varieties of style, and to enable the student to 
 form a clear idea of the date of a church from its archi- 
 tefture. j 
 
 All that I propose attempting in this preparatoiy chapter 
 is to give some insight into the principles which guided the 
 progress of North Italian church art generally, and to en- 
 deavour to describe some of the most distinguishing marks 
 of the different schools, so that the reader may be able to 
 distinguish one style from another, and also be able to 
 decide which churches were built in a comparatively earlier 
 or later period according to the knowledge of construdlion 
 displayed in them. It is necessary, however, at starting to 
 warn the prospedkive visitor to Northern Italy that he must 
 be prepared for not a few bitter disappointments. In far too 
 
 14 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 many instances work of the Romanesque and Early Pointed 
 periods has been concealed by the restorations and addi- 
 tions to which the cathedrals and churches were subjedled 
 between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.* Still fre- 
 quently underthesuperimposedmass of baroque decoration, 
 a shaft, a moulding, or a piece of foliaged ornament can 
 be discerned, speaking of a period of primitive simplicity. 
 
 Some of the earliest buildings eredbed for the purposes 
 of worship are to be found in Rome, the native soil of 
 Christianity. I say some only, for under Constantine, in 
 whose reign the Christians first enjoyed peace, churches 
 were erefted simultaneously in Rome, Constantinople and 
 Jerusalem. These were, generally speaking, similar in plan 
 and arrangement. 
 
 During the first three centuries of the Christian era 
 churches can scarcely be said to have existed. The ordinary 
 places of worship of the early Christians were confined to 
 catacombs and other secret places. 
 
 During the same period the architefture of heathen Rome 
 had gradually deteriorated; and this followed so regular a 
 course that when the Emperor Constantine in the year 3^3 
 embraced the Christian faith Roman architedure was at its 
 worst.The numerous communities of Christians, when they 
 emerged from the catacombs and could worship in the light 
 of day, had to be provided at once with suitable places of wor- 
 ship. In some cities the temples were adapted to this purpose 
 by pulling down the cell walls and building other walls be- 
 
 * The interiors of the Cathedral at Ferrara and of the churches ot 
 Sta Maria Maggiore at Bergamo and San Lorenzo at Milan are parti- 
 cularly annoying examples of this treatment. In Southern Germany rich 
 and rampant chapters have thrown Pompadour masks over many a grand 
 Romanesque interior, notably Wflrzburg, Freising and several churches 
 in Ratisbon. 
 
 15 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 tween the columns, or, in the case of smaller temples, by 
 making the columns of the peristyle serve as those between 
 nave and aisles, while outer walls and an apse were added. 
 Several adaptations of this sort occur to the memory, no- 
 tably at Syracuse, at Vienne, which I visited on my return 
 home from this tour, and at Cora in the Volscian Moun- 
 tains, where the portico of the temple has been left stand- 
 ing, forming anciently a vestibule to the church. But as the 
 cella was often too small or the peristyle too large for this 
 purpose,and as the Christians preferred buildings of their own 
 to places defiled by the former presence of idols, they either 
 took possession of buildings of another class, or eredled 
 churches on the model of these edifices. 
 
 Thus it came about that few temples were ever adapted 
 for the purposes of Christian worship ; fewest of all in the 
 capital of the Christian world. With the exception of the 
 Pantheon we fail to discover any real example in Rome of 
 a temple which can be said to owe its preset^ation^ in the 
 proper sense of the term, to the Christian clergy. They had 
 then no thought of the kind — they took no pleasure in 
 such antiquities. Antiquaries with eager zeal have colledted 
 about ten examples in which this preservation is asserted. 
 
 Even in the cases which are least dubious, no further 
 merit can be claimed for the hierarchy than the accidental 
 preservation of a portico, a cella or a wall, an encumbrance 
 which it was troublesome to remove, or a fragment which 
 saved some expense, built up, concealed, marred or de- 
 formed by the new eredlion to which it was unwillingly con- 
 joined. It could not be otherwise. To the early Christians 
 any participation in our modern admiration of heathen art 
 would have been false and unnatural. AH the opinions, all 
 the reality, all the feeling, all the conscience of the early 
 
 1 6 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Christians strove against the preservation of the memorials 
 of heathenism. Neither beauty nor convenience, if they had 
 possessed the latter requisite, would, save in some few spe- 
 cial cases like that of the Pantheon, plead for the preser- 
 vation of the relics of classical antiquity. They considered 
 the idols as accursed. 
 
 Could the profession of Christianity find any congenial 
 edifices raised by the heathen but unpolluted, and wherein 
 the acknowledgement of faith could be made boldly and be- 
 fore the light of day? Such did exist. Amongst the struc- 
 tures by which Rome was adorned, the secular basilica 
 vied with the sacred temple in magnificence and glory. The 
 name of the Basilica was derived from the portico situated 
 in the Athenian Ceramicus immediately beneath the Pnyx. 
 It was here that the Archon, arrayed in the robes of royalty, 
 discharged the duties of judge in all matters connefted with 
 the sandtuary. Greatly modified by the Romans — whatever 
 the Romans borrowed they borrowed as conquerors — the 
 Basilica appeared at an early period of the Republic in the 
 Forum. 
 
 In shape the building was an oblong terminated by the 
 tribunal. In the midst of the semicircular apsis arose an 
 elevated platform upon which the seat of the praetor was 
 placed. This is the portion to which, as gabhatha or litho- 
 strotos (pavement), St John alludes in the nineteenth chapter 
 of his Gospel. On either side, but lower down, were the seats 
 of the centum viri, the officers, the scribes, and all others who 
 participated in the honours of the tribunal or the duties of 
 judgement, guarded from the intrusion of the inferior orders 
 by the cancelli or grated enclosures. StiU lower down was 
 the portion allotted to the notaries and advocates. 
 
 Three-quarters of the building composed a vast hall, 
 
 17 2 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 whilst a transverse aisle or transept, if I may so call it, 
 separated this hall from the apsis — the peculiar region of 
 dignity and awe. In all the basilicas the great hall was 
 divided by columns into portions similar to the nave and 
 aisles of a church, and these columns usually supported a 
 gallery above. The central nave generally received light 
 from windows in the upper wall. Sometimes the whole 
 building was roofed, sometimes only portions. This seems 
 to have been the case particularly in those basilicas in which 
 a section of the nave, being left open to the sky, constituted 
 an atrium within the aisles. 
 
 Such was the general type; but without any material de- 
 parture from the normal form, there was, nevertheless, a 
 considerable degree of variety in the arrangements, result- 
 ing from the greater or lesser convenience of site or mag- 
 nificence of building. 
 
 Besides their capaciousness, even their twofold arrange- 
 ments pointed out these basilicas as particularly suitable 
 for the service of the new religion. "What had been the dis- 
 tinguishing feature of the secular basilica became that of 
 the ecclesiastical one, namely, the tribune or spacious semi- 
 circular recess covered with a semi-dome. This, which was, as 
 already stated, the seat of the praetor and other magistrates, 
 was now appropriated to the bishop, who might thence, 
 like a true Episcopus, look down upon the congregation and 
 attending clergy; and in front of this was placed the altar, 
 in the centre of the hma or dais, which was raised several 
 steps above the pavement of the rest of the edifice; and 
 this division of the place was further marked by a larger 
 arch on columns (j>orta triumphalis) corresponding with that 
 of the tribune, and of which the idea is still retained in the 
 chancel arch of our Gothic churches. 
 
 i8 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The hall or forum with its colonnades was of course 
 assigned to the laity, nor could any arrangement have been 
 better devised for imparting a visibly august character to 
 the rites and solemnities of the Church than that which was 
 diredly supplied by the pagan basilica. 
 
 Forming part of the cancelli were two ambones or pul- 
 pits. From the loftier and more richly adorned one the 
 Gospel was read, and episcopal censures and injunftions 
 promulgated. From this pulpit also the "bidding prayers" 
 were read and the sermons preached, but the bishop preach- 
 ed sitting upon his faldistorium before the altar. A small 
 piUar before the Gospel pulpit supported the paschal candle. 
 Within the cancelli were stationed the singers by whom the 
 Offices were chanted. We apply the term chancel to the por- 
 tion of the church enclosed by the cancelli. 
 
 The Germans give the name Kanzell to the pulpit Stand- 
 ing on the cancelliy and aU the languages of Europe, the 
 the title of Chancellor or Cancellarius to the successor of 
 the officer who stood within these railings.* 
 
 In the Basilica Jovis on the Palatine a portion of the 
 cancelli can still be seen in the apse and the columns divi- 
 ding it into a nave and aisles. The basilica, thus modified 
 and adapted to Christian worship, contained the germ of 
 the ecclesiastical architecture of all Christendom, and can 
 be traced in every cathedral and parish church built at 
 home and abroad ever since. There are churches on the 
 basilican plan which are called the dromia because they are 
 long like a road. 
 
 * In later times, when altars, no longer insulated, did not permit the 
 bishops and clergy to be seen behind them, the presbytery was removed 
 from the apsis at the back to the chorus in front, though in many Italian 
 churches of cathedral and conventual rank the old arrangement is still ad- 
 hered to. 
 
 19 la 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 In the construdtion of these basilicas the columns, capitals 
 and other parts of ancient temples were employed; conse- 
 quently we find, as at St Lorenzo and Sta Agnese in 
 Rome, that these parts do not correspond with one another, 
 but that they are of various heights and sizes. 
 
 Rome has adhered to her early traditions of church 
 building, consequently we find but few variations in plan 
 and details. We have the division into a nave and aisles, 
 or in some instances with double aisles, of which the centre 
 is the widest; the apse adorned with mosaics; and the 
 episcopal chair * and the altar with its crowning baldachino. 
 
 As a specimen of the primitive Roman basilica I would 
 point to St Lorenzo, which is about half a mile outside the 
 gate of that name, or to St Clemente. The former has not 
 the apse, but with that exception the student will be able 
 to realize the form and proportions of the ancient basilica. 
 In St Clemente he will see the atrium or outer court per- 
 fect, a feature of which other but much later examples oc- 
 cur at St Ambrogio, Milan, and the Cathedral at Palermo. 
 One of these atria existed until comparatively recent times 
 at Novara, where it connefted the Cathedral with the Bap- 
 tistery, but it has been reproduced, since the reconstruction 
 of that cathedral about thirty years ago, in the shape of a 
 Corinthian colonnade which, although of graceful propor- 
 tions, but iU compensates for the loss of the ancient work. 
 Another style of Christian architecture, however, arose 
 almost simultaneously with the adoption of the basilica at 
 Rome. The Emperor Constantine having transferred the 
 seat of Empire to Byzantium, there immediately sprang 
 into existence a new form which to this day is prevalent in 
 the East. 
 
 * As at Torcello and at St Ambrose, Milan. 
 20 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The Eastern Christians seem to have taken the models 
 of their churches from the great domed halls of the public 
 baths. Instead of the long nave and presbytery of the 
 Roman basilica, four naves or pillared avenues were dis- 
 posed at right angles to each other, so as to form the figure 
 of a cross; a dome or cupola was raised in the centre on 
 four pier masses; and in the more sumptuous Byzantine 
 churches smaller cupolas were reared at the extremities of 
 the four arms of the cross. 
 
 Another peculiarity consisted in the squareness of their 
 buildings; they did not delight in vistas; the exteriors were 
 imposing only from the numerous domes which composed 
 the roofs and the multitude of curves and semicircular 
 arches in every direftion. The capitals and columns of 
 earlier buildings were oftentimes used with incongruous 
 eiFed; and where new capitals had to be restored, no at- 
 tempt was made to copy the classic examples. They be- 
 came little more than square blocks tapered down to the 
 shaft, and decorated with foliage in low relief, or with a 
 sort of basket work peculiar to the style. 
 
 The connexion which existed between Ravenna and the 
 East accounts for the introdudtion of the Byzantine style, 
 which is only to be seen there and at Venice. St Vitale, 
 which was eredted in the sixth century, is a pure Byzantine 
 church, odlagonal in jplan and adorned with eight splendid 
 mosaics. Most of the churches in Ravenna, which for the 
 purposes of study may be divided into several periods,* 
 have some Byzantine charader about them. One of the 
 
 *(i) Before the fall of the Empire of the West in 476; (2) from 476 
 to the death of Theodoric the Arian in 526; (3) from this time, through 
 the existence of the Exarchate, to the decline of art. 
 
 There is also one Pointed church, St Niccolo; and St Dominic, though 
 modernized, is probably Pointed in its shell. 
 
 21 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 distinguishing marks of this style is a large square block 
 between the capital and the arch, which replaces the ancient 
 abacus. This "dosseret" — to give it its correft title — occurs 
 in St Pietro, St Spirito or StTeodoro, St ApoUinaris Nuovo, 
 and St ApoUinaris in Classe, all churches built with Byzan- 
 tine modifications on the basilican plan. 
 
 The state of artistic design was undoubtedly at its lowest 
 when these basilicas began to be erefted as churches. Their 
 historical designs are rude and conventional. The old 
 Greek sense of beauty had died out in Rome. 
 
 Luxury and vulgarity had gradually destroyed the man- 
 liness of the race and such sense and love of beauty as 
 it had possessed in days of vigour and prosperity. Con- 
 stantine could find few competent artists either to sculp- 
 ture his triumphal arch or to decorate his new capital. 
 Still the Christian community had carried down with it 
 intoits subterranean oratories and chapels certain traditions 
 of former times. Historical representations, even some- 
 times under mythological types, as that of Orpheus, are 
 habitual to those interesting monuments. The classic tunic 
 and occasionally the nude figure continued to be repre- 
 sented in their paintings. 
 
 As basilica building and decoration progressed, a marked 
 difference made itself felt between the simplicity of acces- 
 ories of dress and ornament in the West, and the elabora- 
 tion of colour and detail in the East. 
 
 The basilicas of Justinian at Ravenna are interesting ex- 
 amples of this Byzantine spirit. They represent in more 
 than one instance the emperor and his court, and- the em- 
 press and hers, with details of costume carefully copied. But 
 though these designs were rude, they were not lacking in 
 grandeur. That nerve and vigour which luxury had eaten 
 
 22 
 
1 
 
 cQ 
 
 u 
 C 
 
 c 
 u 
 
 % 
 
 W) 
 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 out of the Italian charadter was beginning to grow anew from 
 fresh sources, and Christianity really inaugurated the revival 
 of the arts. And though, of course, it was centuries before 
 the refinement of art in representation ofthese objects could 
 be attained, still some influence of the kind is observable in 
 these early Christian representations, and, though rude, the 
 faces and forms possess a grandeur which no art, with all its 
 charms, has since surpassed, purpose, position and archi- 
 tectural charadter of the representations being taken into 
 account. 
 
 The dome is the feature which was chiefly affected by 
 the Eastern architedls, and it became the distinguishing 
 feature of their larger churches. 
 
 Consequently, St Vitale at Ravenna and St Mark's at 
 Venice, both built by Constantinopolitan architefts, have 
 fine domes. The plan of St Mark's is in the form of a 
 Greek cross with four equal arms within an inscribing 
 square ; that of Sta Sophia is the same, and that of a smaller 
 cognominous church at Salonica. 
 
 Except when favoured by peculiar political relations, it is 
 remarkable how little influence was exerted in Italy by By- 
 zantine art. Ravenna and Venice are about the only localities 
 where we may trace any decided imitation of the type of 
 Constantinople. 
 
 Indeed, there was little to be gained. Deduct mere bar- 
 baric splendour — barbaric perhaps in the truest meaning of 
 the word — ^and there is a spirit, a genius, an energy, in the 
 rudest churches of Latin Christendom wanting in the most 
 sumptuous edifices of the Greeks. The very building reflects 
 the character of their respective communities. 
 
 The knowledge of the art of building which travelled 
 from West to East, from Rome to Constantinople, was 
 
 23 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 destined to return in an improved form ; for the Arabs, who 
 were in the early period of Mohammedanism quick, intelli- 
 gent people, borrowed the dome from Byzantium, improved 
 the form of the arch from round to pointed, and brought 
 them back with them to Sicily in the ninth century. Speci- 
 mens of their handiwork can be seen in La Tiza at Palermo 
 and other buildings. Their successors, the Normans, who 
 were famed for their church-building talents, perceived the 
 beauties and refinement of Arab archite(5lure, and made use 
 of them in two buildings, which all who have seen will 
 allow are gemsof architedture and decoration. One of these 
 is the Maritana or Capella Reale at Palermo, built in 1 132 
 by Roger. The other is the Cathedral at Monreale, built by 
 William III in 11 76, which in all probability furnished 
 the model for St Antonio at Padua and the Westphalian 
 Cathedral of MOnster. 
 
 Of all the Italian districts none can possess more fasci- 
 nation for the student than that peopled by the Longobardi 
 or Longbeards. Extending from the Apennines to the Alps, 
 it abounds with fine cathedrals and churches in the Roman- 
 esque style, called from its inventors the Lombard, and to 
 its several peculiarities the greater part of my attention 
 during this tour was directed, more particularly after my 
 recent studies of their offspring in the Rhenish provinces. 
 
 During many centuries Lombardy was a fief of the Ger- 
 man Empire. On this account, therefore, and likewise 
 through the connexion of this part of Italy geographically 
 with the Brenner Pass, we are not surprised to find a great 
 resemblance existing in many particulars between the Lom- 
 bardic and Rhenish Romanesque churches. 
 
 Many details of Lombardic architedbure were formed out 
 of the Byzantine; for Constantinople had between the tenth 
 
 24 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and thirteenth centuries become the centre of the arts and 
 industry. The Greeks of that city were the arbitri elegan- 
 tiarum to the rest of the world, as the Athenians had been 
 before them. Greek artists were employed in Italy after 
 Ravenna became the capital of the Exarchate, and the Greek 
 style adopted, as in St Vitale at Ravenna, which dates from 
 c. 534, and in St Mark's, Venice, which was begun in 976. 
 
 Most of the larger Lombard churches are interesting 
 from the symbolical sculptures on their fa9ades, as well as 
 from the impressive grandeur of their interiors. The Lom- 
 bard style was never entirely suspended in Italy till the 
 Renaissance of the classical;* and, as I have already ob- 
 served, so many styles had a coeval existence in Italy, that 
 the data by which we judge of a building in France and 
 England lose much of their certainty when applied here. 
 
 The chief charaderistics of the Lombard School are 
 vaulted roofs in place of the wooden ones which cover the 
 more Southern churches; pilasters and columns in place 
 of flat buttresses; external arcades and corbel tables; the 
 odlagonal lantern with its low capping of tiles ; and parti- 
 cularly the fa9ades which, with their projefting porches 
 whose columns stand upon lions and other animals, repro- 
 duced themselves throughout Italy until the extinction of 
 Gothic before the close of the fifteenth century. 
 
 The class of front common to most of the Lombard 
 Gothic churches is one that is included beneath a low- 
 pitched gable, and screening the ends of the lean-to aisles. 
 The cornice, which is generally of slight projedtion but 
 deep and marked in charadler, is carried up the depressed 
 
 * In many of these Lombard churches a keen eye is required to deteA 
 how much is genuine Romanesque work, and how much is that later pro- 
 duflion of which one sees so many examples in Italy. 
 
 25 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 gable, whilst the whole front, divided by vertical pilasters 
 into three or five compartments, continued right up to 
 the cornice, cutting through whatever string-courses or 
 horizontal mouldings (if there were any) separated the 
 different stories or stages of the edifice. 
 
 Such buttress-like surfaces — for buttresses they cannot 
 properly be called — were occasionally more or less en- 
 riched, sometimes so much so as to produce vertical lines 
 of ornament continued to the entire height of the build- 
 ing, as at St Michele, Pavia, that city being considered the 
 cradle of Lombardic architecture.* The usual decoration 
 of the centre compartment is what is termed a "Wheel of 
 Fortune" window, so called from the figures which, illus- 
 trating the Zodiac, are introduced into its moulding. The 
 spokes of the wheel are generally pillarets radiating from 
 a circle or a quatrefoil. 
 
 — - As a rule the Lombard portals are rich and elaborate, 
 exhibiting a variety of mouldings and ornaments which 
 are unsurpassed in Northern work for the skill and deli- 
 cacy of their execution. Another feature is the open gal- 
 lery immediately below the cornice of the gable surmount- 
 ing the fa9ade. Usually this open gaUery is carried com- 
 pletely round the church above the clerestory, including the 
 apses which terminate the choir or open from the eastern 
 sides of the transepts, just as may be seen nearer home in 
 the Cologne and other Rhenish churches, not a few of 
 which exceed in grandeur of dimensions their Lombard 
 prototypes. 
 
 One of the truest types of a Lombardo-Romanesque fa- 
 cade is that of the Cathedral at Casale Monferrato, to which 
 
 * It is curious to observe how this type of fa9ade was employed, though 
 with varying details, from the earliest to the latest epochs of Italian Gothic. 
 
 26 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 I paid an early morning visit, between trains, on my way 
 from Asti to Vercelli. Behind this fa9ade, which extends the 
 whole breadth of the five-aisled church — so imposing from 
 its four ranges of tall columns supporting round arches — is 
 one of the most wonderful narthexes in Italy, of the richest 
 Romanesque architedbure, and presenting a system of groin- 
 ing to which no written description could do justice. 
 
 A small but very charaderistic and pleasing front is that 
 of St Francesco at Brescia. Then we have the richer and 
 more imposing ones of St Zeno at Verona; of the cathedrals 
 at Modena, Cremona and Piacenza, and, most graceful of all, 
 the lower part of that at Ferrara. The fafades of St Abbondio 
 at Como, and of St Donino, near Parma, are small but grace- 
 ful conceptions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 
 
 The round-arched Lombard style seems to have lasted 
 to the end of the twelfth century. At the beginning of the 
 thirteenth the pointed arch came to be used in conjundion 
 with it, but whether in its round-arched or pointed phase 
 the Lombard style has produced some of the most impos- 
 ing of transalpine interiors, particularly those of St Am- 
 brogio atMilan, St Michele at Pavia and St Zeno at Verona, 
 the exterior of the choir and transepts of Sta Maria Mag- 
 giore at Bergamo, and the mass of the cathedrals at Trent, 
 Modena, Parma and Piacenza, with their choirs grandly 
 raised upon crypts and all of the highest interest, while the 
 workmanship is, generally speaking, of the best. 
 
 Of all the Lombard cities, I know none more charming 
 than Bergamo. Quite distinct from the new city, it lies upon 
 the summit of a very steep hill, whence the most glorious 
 panoramic views of the surrounding country can be enjoyed. 
 
 Here, forming the nucleus of a congeries of streets is an 
 open place containing the Cathedral, an uninteresting speci- 
 
 27 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 men of the Italian baroque style; and the contiguous Sta 
 Maria Maggiore, a small but most graceful Romanesque 
 church externally, unfortunately quite modernized within, 
 though enshrining what is very rare in Italy, a tall open 
 rood-screen recalling the celebrated one put up by the 
 care of good Bishtip Beveridge in St Peter's, Cornhill. Here 
 too is a very charming pointed Gothic broletto or civic hall, 
 and in another part of the city we find the desecrated St 
 Agostino, the possessor of a fafade whose two windows, 
 with their reed-like recessed jamb shafts and delicate tracery, 
 to say nothing of the exquisite pale brown of their stone- 
 work, will alike enchant the archited and the artist. 
 
 Of the Tuscan school, which surpasses the round-arched 
 one of Lombardy in grace, it hardly comes within my pro- 
 vince to speak; but it is impossible to refrain from mention- 
 ing such gems as the Cathedral of Lucca and the church at 
 Toscanella, or that picturesque group of cathedral, baptis- 
 tery, leaning tower and Campo Santo, which, springing out 
 of the greensward in a deserted corner of the city of Pisa, 
 affords an example of the perfe6tion of Romanesque art. 
 
 If a salient interest were required of the effedt of geogra- 
 phical position and commercial relations upon architedture, 
 one could not point to any more striking than is displayed 
 by two towns, not much more than forty miles apart in 
 precisely the same degree of latitude, in the one of which 
 the architecture is essentially Northern Gothic in feeling— I 
 so far as Italy ever attained this feeling — while in the other, 
 despite Gothic forms of detail, the whole feeling and treat- 
 ment of the architefture breathes of Oriental fancy and 
 sumptuousness. Architecture, like some natural growth, 
 changes its colour, expands or contradts with the soil and 
 the circumstances by which it is influenced. The same grand 
 
 28 
 
Bergamo : Apse of 5ta. Maria Maggiore. 
 
 To/ace pagezS, 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 commercial site on the Adriatic which gave Venice the key 
 to the stores of the "exhaustless East," which brought her 
 into the great air of republican freedom and growth, gave 
 to her architefts also the opportunity and temptation to ex- 
 periment in forms of lavish and abnormal architectural splen- 
 dour, while her neighbour Verona, the pocket borough of 
 the Scaligeri, remained in the more respectable beaten paths 
 both politically and architedurally. Which city is, in the 
 latter point of view, of most value may be contested; it 
 may be correct to say that there is more for the Northern 
 architedl to learn from in Verona, more to admire and 
 wonder at In Venice. The architecture of Verona is stridlly 
 architectural, that of Venice is to a great extent more pic- 
 turesque than architectural. Verona affords admirable exem- 
 plification of the treatment of material, brick and marble 
 especially, on purely architectural principles, yet with suffi- 
 cient regard to efFecft and variety. 
 
 Of the result to be obtained from a simple and bold use 
 of building materials, almost without acftual "ornament," 
 the famous tower of the Scaliger Palace is a remarkable in- 
 stance; and, on the other hand, picturesqueness of detail is 
 seen in such things as the varied marble inlay pavements, 
 and the famous flexible iron grille before the Piazza dei Si- 
 gnori. Then the details of the brick architedlure of St Zeno 
 and St Fermo furnish, inter alia, examples of what one may 
 term the common sense of architectural design, and yet with 
 truly refined feelingandartisticefFecft. There isprobably more 
 here that is valuable for the architect to study than at 
 Venice, where the picturesque is the predominant aim and 
 the means whereby this is attained will not, in many cases, 
 bear too severe a critical examination. 
 
 In Northern countries, Gothic, and especially Pointed 
 
 29 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Gothic, was a favourite style, hallowed by religion, chivalry 
 and art; and the inroads of any principle at variance with 
 it could not work its overthrow without a severe struggle; 
 whence, particularly in France, we often see noble churches 
 of Gothic proportions almost entirely made up of Italian 
 details. St-Eustache and St-Etienne-du-Mont at Paris are 
 fine examples of this, as are the western facade of St Michael 
 at Dijon, and the Church of St-Pierre at Auxerre. Among 
 ourselves the innovation was more gradual. 
 
 In Italy the Complete Gothic style was always an impor- 
 tation from the North, and not introduced there until long 
 after it was established in England, France and Germany; 
 in consequence of which the details of Northern buildings 
 of different periods are often found mingled in the same 
 church. From Germany the Pointed style as it flowed west- 
 ward to France passed southward to Italy, of which the 
 nearest regions had so long acknowledged German sway; 
 and when it was adopted, its principles were but imperfeftly 
 comprehended, and buildings were produced which, while 
 abounding in much gracefulness and delicacy of detail, are 
 on the whole cold, unmeaning, inartistic productions, with 
 all the defers, and hardly one of the beauties, of the true 
 Pointed Gothic edifices. Only so long as the Lombards re- 
 tained their nationality were truly great and original build- 
 ings produced; and when their distinft character had died 
 out, and when the indigenous race resumed its sway, their 
 architefture deteriorated. 
 
 It seems strange that the period comprised between the 
 middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fourteenth cen- 
 turies, during which such strudlures as Rheims, Lincoln 
 and Strasburg Cathedrals were slowly growing up into their 
 present form, should, in Italy, have witnessed the produc- 
 
 30 
 
St. Tomaso in Limine, near Bergamo. 
 
 To f ice page 30. 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 tion of churches which, however much they may astonish 
 us by the grandeur of their dimensions, break down so 
 completely when we come to examine their construdtion 
 and details. I refer more particularly to such churches as St 
 Antonio at Padua — a remarkable, if not altogether a pleas- 
 ing, attempt of Niccola Pisano to adapt a Byzantine feature, 
 the dome, to the Pointed style; the cathedrals at Asti, Siena, 
 Orvieto and Florence, all in progress between 1250 and 
 and 1 350; SS. Giovanni e Paolo and the Church of the Frari 
 at Venice; St Lorenzo and La Santa Corona at Vicenza; 
 St Francesco, St Giovanni in Monti and St Petronio at 
 Bologna; the Cathedral at Milan and the Certosa at Pavia. 
 Of these the three last were only begun when the fourteenth 
 century was drawing to its close. That these great churches 
 are not without some beauties of their own it would be 
 idle to deny; but taken as a whole they are certainly infe- 
 rior, both in design and power of expression, to those of 
 the round-arched style which preceded them, and immea- 
 surably so in completeness and finish of arrangement and 
 detail to those of the Northern style which they so vainly 
 tried to imitate. It may be that in some respeds the short- 
 comings of these huge edifices are not chargeable to the 
 original design, as they depended much more for efFeft on 
 their sculpturesque and polychromatic decoration, in which 
 the Italians were always at home, and probably always sur- 
 passed the Northern nations. 
 
 In comparing Italian with Northern Gothic, we cannot 
 but notice the difference in the windows, not only as re- 
 gards their relative frequency and size but also their archi- 
 tedlural charader. In the great Northern churches the archi- 
 tects delighted in large and elaborate windows. In Italy they 
 were few and far between. The brightness of the sunny 
 
 3^ 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 South taught its builders to exclude light and glare, and 
 the use of coloured glass was discouraged. 
 
 It may be doubted, indeed, if such use would have been 
 consistent with the methods of internal decoration common 
 in Italy. Great spaces of wall covered with fresco painting 
 might not unreasonably be thought inimical to the adop- 
 tion of painted glass, through which a bright light would 
 cast hues of undisguised variety on the carefully studied 
 harmonies of the painter. 
 
 In England, and still more in France, the introdudlion of 
 stained glass affefted the churches to an enormous extent. 
 
 If we had not the wall polychromy of the Italians, our 
 architefts were no less fond of colour, and they found in 
 large traceried windows generally, and often exaggerated 
 clerestories in particular, a field for the application of co- 
 lour on a large scale. That with which the Italians covered 
 their walls, their Northern contemporaries placed in their 
 windows. 
 
 The same feeling appears in the tracery. In Italian chur- 
 ches there is generally little of it to be seen, and where it 
 exists it is far inferior to that to which we are accustomed 
 in this country. The tracery of Italy, with its heavy inter- 
 vals between the openings, seemed designed, as no doubt 
 it often was, to exclude the light, and thus the very reason 
 for the existence of the window was lost. The lack of an 
 adequate clerestory, partly from reasons of climate and 
 partly from the views adopted by Italian architefts, is, to 
 a Northern eye, a notable defedl: in their churches. The 
 pleasing gradation of height, from aisle to nave, to which 
 we are accustomed, is absent, and in its place there is heavi- 
 ness and want of variety. 
 
 But if to one who has grown up with a love for that 
 
 32 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 elegance of proportion and that beauty of well-considered 
 detail which almost everywhere satisfy the mind in contem- 
 plating the great churches of France and England — the ma- 
 jority of Italian Gothic ones appear cold and unmeaning be- 
 cause their authors were unable either to comprehend or 
 to imitate the true principles of Pointed architecture — there 
 exist churches, and portions of churches, which claim our 
 highest admiration. 
 
 Among these must be named : St Andrew's at Vercelli ; 
 the Duomo at Como; the chapel of Sta Maria della Spina 
 at Pisa; the west fronts of Monza, Orvieto and Siena Cathe- 
 drals, and the upper part of that at Ferrara; the forest of 
 gigantic statue-crowned columns of Milan; the west door 
 of Sta Anastasia, and the nave arcades of the Cathedral at 
 Verona; and the double church of St Francis at Assisi, 
 which, if of somewhat dubious parentage, is invaluable as 
 an example of to what extent colour may be profitably car- 
 ried, for this graceful building depends on this much more 
 than on its architedture for its magnificence and charafter. 
 
 Then there are the exquisite porches such as that at Ber- 
 gamo ; the peculiar and generally noble campanili ; the 
 many-shafted cloisters; the perfedl monuments; the use of 
 brickwork of the best kind; and lastly, that in which Italian 
 architedure of the Middle Ages teaches us more than any 
 other architeflure since the commencement of the world, 
 the introduction of colour in construction. With such con- 
 summate beauty, refinement and modesty is it managed 
 that even where it accompanies faulty construction and sham 
 expedients it is impossible to help devoting oneself alto- 
 gether to admiration of the result. 
 
 The two great Venetian churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo 
 ancj Sta Maria Gloriosa de' Frari, built by the Domini- 
 
 33 3 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 cans and Franciscans respedively, are entitled to more 
 than passing notice here. They are so nearly contemporary 
 that they may be advantageously compared. Neither dis- 
 plays any very striking evidence of the wealth or pride in 
 which Venice was rapidly rising to the height of glory, for, 
 although grandly dimensioned — each is nearly 300 feet 
 long by 1 50 broad, i.e., at the transepts — they are entirely 
 of brick, with the exception of their great circular columns, 
 which, compared with the graceful clusters of shafts that 
 were being employed by the English and French architefts, 
 appear somewhat clumsy; while both externally and inter- 
 nally they are almost devoid of ornament. Their plans, too, 
 are very similar, being cruciform with a short eastern limb, 
 terminating in an apse, and with the transepts projedting 
 boldly beyond the line of the nave aisles. The Frari Church 
 has three chapels opening out of either transept, St Gio- 
 vanni has two. In the former the seven apses are all built 
 with an angle on the axis, the great apse having six sides 
 and the transeptal ones two apiece; whereas in the latter 
 the choir apse has seven and those projefting from the 
 transepts five each. In the illustration of Sta Maria de' 
 Frari, the great, round columns, reminiscent of Low Coun- 
 try architefture, and the high close rood-screen, a rara avis 
 in Italian ecclesiology, form the most conspicuous and in- 
 teresting objedls. Externally its apse may be regarded as 
 one of the most successful specimens of thirteenth-century 
 transalpine Gothic, which is saying a great deal. 
 
 I alluded just now to Vercelli. Situated on the Sesia, at 
 its junction with the Cantuana, Vercelli forms a convenient 
 point de dipart for a group of North- Western cities which, 
 including Asti, Novara and Casale Monferrato, are too 
 frequently overlooked by the traveller from Milan to Turin 
 
 34 
 
Venice : 3pse of 5ta. Maria dei Frari. 
 
 To face page 34. 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 or vice versa. The walls of Vercelli, which on the northern 
 side of the city run close up to the railway, have been de- 
 molished, and their site is now occupied by shady boule- 
 vards, from which fine views of the Alps, including Monte 
 Rosa, can be obtained; while scattered about in the different 
 churches, examples may be seen of the work of Gaudenzio 
 Ferrari, one of the principal ornaments of the Vercelli 
 school of painting which flourished in the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries, and to which belonged also Giovenoni, 
 Defendenti Ferrari, Lanini and, we may almost add, Bazzi, 
 who was a Vercellese. 
 
 As the train enters the station, the eye is gladdened by 
 one of the most wonderful pieces of architeftural grouping 
 in Northern Italy — the Early Gothic church of St Andrew, 
 a pile which would hardly seem out of place on Teutonic 
 soil, for it is the possessor of three towers, besides a semi- 
 detached campanile of later date, whereas it is the rule in 
 Italy to find but one. 
 
 St Andrew's — which, by the way, enjoys a splendid situa- 
 tion close to the railway, enabling good general views to be 
 had from every point, a rarity in Italy — has a special claim 
 upon the interest of an Englishman from the fad that its 
 originator, the Legate Walo, or Gualo, was a prominent 
 figure in the late days of King John and the earlier ones of 
 Henry III. After the English King had demeaned himself 
 to become the man of the Pope, Walo figures everywhere 
 as the champion of his master's vassal, and the denouncer 
 of all who opposed him and his son, during whose minor- 
 ity he appears as one of those papal emissaries who went so 
 far as to become the adlual rulers of England. And, as be- 
 came a papal emissary, he appears also as a merciless plun- 
 derer of the English clergy and nation. 
 
 35 3« 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The fruit of it is seen in this church of St Andrew at 
 Vercelli, which, half English, half Italian inside, is distind:- 
 ly German out. The first view of it calls up recoUeftions ot 
 Gelnhausen, Laach and other great Rhenish basilicas, but, 
 although German in ensemble and grouping of parts, St 
 Andrew's reproduces none of the received types of German 
 churches: it has no western apse, no eastern apse with 
 flanking towers, but a square east end whose triplet of lan- 
 cets, surmounted by a rose, pleasantly recalls Durham and 
 Laon. 
 
 The style of St Andrew's at Vercelli externally is a ming- 
 ling of the round-arched and the Pointed. In plan it is cru- 
 ciform, with a central and western towers, and two apsidal 
 chapels opening out of either transept — an arrangement 
 found in English buildings at Buildwas, Kirkstall and other 
 churches of this class and size, only that with us they are 
 generally square. Of these chapels at Vercelli the inner one 
 is a little longer than the outer. In addition to the towers 
 above-mentioned, there is a very noble late fourteenth-cen- 
 tury campanile, surmounted by small angle turrets and a 
 well-proportioned, but not lofty, odlagonal spire. This cam- 
 panile is neither wholly attached to nor wholly detached 
 from the church, andis so placed as not to stand parallel with 
 any part of the building. This, however, is no detriment, 
 but rather lends an added charm to a group whose grandeur 
 would perhaps have been enhanced had greater bulk been 
 given to the western pair of towers, which, instead of being 
 engaged at the ends of the aisles, projedl beyond them as 
 at Wells and Rouen. The central steeple is composed of 
 a greater, surmounted by a lesser octagon, capped by a low 
 spire of the same shape. 
 
 Red brick is the material mainly employed, but in the 
 
 36 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 arcades surrounding the upper parts of the church, and in 
 the western facade, cut stone of a hard quality and bluish 
 hue combines with the other material to produce a very 
 pleasing harmony of natural colour. 
 
 Three deeply recessed doorways with round arches, one 
 rose window, and two rows of arcades, ornament the west 
 front, which, Lombard fashion, is divided into three por- 
 tions by shallow buttresses not reaching to the top of the 
 gable. This last is very plain, the two rows of arcades above 
 alluded to not following its line as is usually the case in 
 early buildings of this part of Italy. Along the north and 
 south sides solid and ponderous brick buttresses are carried 
 down the lean-to roofs of the aisles at the distance of each 
 bay. The aisle windows are simple blunt-headed lancets 
 placed high up in the walls; those of the clerestory, which 
 is low, being spanned by shallow arches. A graceful, con- 
 tinuous arcade, corresponding to the lower one of the fa9ade, 
 surmounts the clerestory, but it plays no part whatever in 
 the elevation of the interior, being introduced merely to 
 mask the walling of the space between the inner vault of 
 brick and the outer roof of tiles, which, as is usual in Italy, 
 is very low pitched. 
 
 Within, the church has all the charadteristics of a Nor- 
 thern Gothic building of the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century. Its six graceful nave arches of red brick, as well 
 as the variegated ones spanning the nave and aisles trans- 
 versely, or forming the ribs of the quadripartite vaulting, are 
 pointed and borne on slender shafts whose foliaged caps 
 hardly bespeak the hand of an Italian. We miss, however, 
 the string-courses and triforia, a blank wall-space alone inter- 
 vening between the tops of the nave arcades and the clere- 
 story windows, which are blunt-headed lancets placed high 
 
 37 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 up right under the vaulting cells. Such defedls wiU perhaps 
 only present themselves to the eyes of those who have 
 grown up with a love for the more perfedb elevations of an 
 English or a French church, and look as though St Andrew's 
 had caught the breath of Germany, where the absence of 
 a triforium in early Gothic buildings is of frequent occur- 
 rence. 
 
 Still on the whole this church at Vercelli must be con- 
 sidered as unrivalled in purity among transalpine buildings of 
 its period, so much so as to make us throw doubts upon 
 its being an Italian work at all, more especially when we 
 learn that its reputed architecft was one Brigwithe, whom 
 the Cardinal Gualo brought back with him to eredt a church 
 in this his native place. 
 
 It may not be uninteresting to remind my readers that 
 in his design for the Crimean Memorial Church at Con- 
 stantinople to which the judges in 1857 awarded the first 
 prize, William Burges kept in view our own Northern 
 Gothic while introducing such modifications as the diffe- 
 rence of climate may demand or justify, and, naturally re- 
 ferring to Italy for examples, judiciously seledled for study 
 this noble church of St Andrew at Vercelli, built by Eng- 
 lish workmen and English money in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury and thus under circumstances very nearly similar in 
 the middle of the nineteenth. 
 
 In Burges's design, as well as in its prototype, so many of 
 the English charaderistics were retained as were not in- 
 consistent with the climate ; but those which were so were 
 boldly changed. 
 
 At Novara, a bright, pleasant city about an hour's ride 
 from Vercelli, and situated on a hill rising 545 feet above 
 sea level, from a plain between the Sesia and the Po, the 
 
 38 
 
St. Andrea at Vercelli : Interior looking East 
 
 Ttjace page 38. 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Lombardo-Romatiesque cathedral disappeared during the 
 middle of the last century to give place to the present 
 church, a vast and lofty pile in the Italianized variety of 
 Corinthian, the detached baptistery alone being spared. It 
 is from the designs of Antonelli, to whom we likewise owe 
 that Pelion-on-Ossa-like central steeple which, quite ruin- 
 ing the efFeft of the elegant north-eastern campanile, now 
 surmounts the sixteenth-century Renaissance church of 
 St Gaudentio in the same city. Grand and imposing as is 
 the mterior of the present Novara Cathedral,* with its 
 truly noble nave arcade of tall fluted Corinthian columns, 
 it scarcely consoles us for the loss of the old Duomo, 
 which, to judge from the plans, sections and elevations 
 given by Osten in his Bauwerke in der Lombardei, must have 
 been of unusual interest, however greatly it may have suffered 
 from injudicious post-Gothic accretions which it only re- 
 quired a conservative hand to remove. The place of the old 
 atrium or forecourt has been usurped by an elegant but cold 
 Corinthian colonnade,t from whose western ambulatory we 
 pass into the happily-spared baptistery. A work in all pro- 
 bability of the pre-Carolingian period, it is chiefly re- 
 markable as containing the germ of those external galleries 
 under the eaves of the roof which latterly formed so beauti- 
 ful andcharafteristic a feature of the Lombardo-Romanesque 
 style. Unlike the Baptistery at Asti, where we find an oda- 
 gonal centre of modest dimensions surrounded by a very 
 
 *The breadth of the nave is fifty-two feet, that of either aisle twenty- 
 five feet. The choir, of the same width as the nave, has no aisles. 
 
 fThe eastern side of this quadrangle is formed by the imposing Corin- 
 thian portico of the Cathedral. On the other three sides a triple row of 
 columns divides the ambulatory into two avenues, the outer one on the 
 north being extended along that side of the nave with very pi£iuresque 
 eiFeft. (See Illustration p. 362.) 
 
 39 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 wide aisle describing a complete circle, that at Novara has 
 its dome supported on the external wall, and in a decora- 
 tive sense, upon eight columns placed in its angles. These 
 columns also support the arches by which the wall is pierced, 
 and which admit alternately to semicircular apses and qua- 
 drilateral chapels, several of which contain groups illustra- 
 ting scenes from the Passion of our Lord, whose terribly 
 realistic treatment is intensified by the gloomy solemnity 
 of this little building. 
 
 The Asti Baptistery attached to the Church of St Pietro 
 in Concava* is suggestive at first sight of our St Sepulchre's, 
 Northampton. Eight round-headed arches on stout, cylin- 
 drical columns of stone, regularly banded with brick, support 
 the drum of the octagon, which, as it is unpierced by win- 
 dows or arcades opening into a gallery, has a peculiarly 
 gloomy eifeft, while those in the broad circumscribing aisle 
 are so small that even in Italy the interior must always have 
 been in comparative darkness. This Baptistery at Asti 
 affords a very complete idea, on a small scale, of Lombard 
 architefture in the beginning ot the eleventh century, 
 when it had completely emancipated itself from the classic 
 influence, but had not yet begun to combine the newly 
 invented forms with that grace arid beauty which marks 
 such a finished example as the circular part of the church 
 of St Tomaso in Limine a few miles from Bergamo. 
 
 In this building, which for the propriety and elegance of 
 its design is perhaps unsurpassed, we find the addition of 
 an upper arcade or triforium of the same height as that 
 
 * From a board suspended in this wretched little modernized church I 
 copied the following table of Psalms and Hymns used every Sunday and 
 festival at Vespers throughout the year: Salmi ed inni per Vesperi nelle 
 dominkhe efestefra Panno: Dixit Dominus; Laudate Pueri; Latatus sum in 
 Ms; Nisi Dominus; Lauda Jerusalem; A'fe Maris Stella; Magnijicat. 
 
 40 
 
1/) 
 
 < 
 
 > 
 
 u 
 c 
 o 
 
 u 
 
 s 
 
 a 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 below, which with the dome and its little cupola raises the 
 whole height to about fifty feet. Eastwards, a small choir 
 projeds, terminating in a semicircular apse. As in Germany 
 and England the circular part of this church of St Tomaso 
 in Limine forms the nave, whereas in France it is always 
 the sattHum sanSlorum. (See Illustration p. 30.) 
 
 To these examples of round churches I would add Sta 
 Julia and the Duomo Vecchia at Brescia, the latter, to the 
 credit of the builders of the new cathedral hard by — a 
 strudure that takes no very high rank among works of the 
 Italian Renaissance — being left standing. Had the same 
 discretion been shown in other places, Italy would be able 
 to present a far greater number of monuments of early 
 times than she does at present, as, for instance, at Bergamo, 
 Bologna, Pavia, Ravenna and Vercelli, where medieval 
 churches have given place to uninteresting specimens of 
 Revived Classic. 
 
 To sum up conclusions as to the merits of Italian Gothic, 
 and as to the practical lessons which we may derive from 
 it. The palm may be given unhesitatingly to the Northern 
 developments of the style, and we may consider that a 
 lingering reminiscence of classical forms and beauties in- 
 capacitated the Italians from doing full justice to the new 
 architedure. To this cause we must attribute their simul- 
 taneous use of the round and pointed arch, and the indis- 
 position to avail themselves of the construdbive advantages 
 of the latter form, because they would never allow the full 
 use of the buttress. Their aim of preserving the repose of 
 their buildings prevented them from using the buttress, 
 which is thought by many to be symbolical of life, vigour 
 and adion. Hence their pointed arches were used more for 
 ornament than for construftive reasons, and so were de- 
 
 41 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 signed in proportions which required, even from the first, 
 the support of iron ties from impost to impost. To this 
 very weakness may not unreasonably be attributed the 
 beautiful trefoil-headed form of so many Italian arches. 
 The prevalence of the ogee form may have been derived 
 through Venice from the East. 
 
 In the frequent, and indeed almost exclusive, use of the 
 bearing shaft and square abacus, we find another trace of 
 classic influence, but a beauty which has been not unsuc- 
 cessfully grafted upon our English Gothic. The deep, ex- 
 ternal cornices, the plate-tracery of windows, the severity 
 of internal detail and the simplicity of groining are other 
 Italian charaderistics. Upon the whole we may learn much 
 from the Italian style as to simplicity and repose of effe<ft. 
 
 With such failures before their eyes as the Cathedrals of 
 Florence and Milan, and the Church of St Petronio at 
 Bologna, it is no wonder that, dissatisfied with their own 
 produdlions in Complete Gothic, the Italians should have 
 quickly abandoned a style which was not indigenous and 
 never fully naturalized, for one which was their own, in- 
 vented in their country, and suited to their charadter and 
 requirements; so much so, that whatever little inconveni- 
 ence might arise from its adoption was more than com- 
 pensated for by the memories which each detail evoked, 
 and the attempt to rehabilitate which, was the guiding idea 
 of all the aspirations of the age. This being so, it is easy to 
 see how soon after a brief intermixture of the Gothic and 
 Classic, as evidenced in such works as the Capella Colleoni 
 attached to Sta Maria Maggiore at Bergamo* and the western 
 
 •The front of this Colleoni Chapel, in the transition from the Lom- 
 bard to the Cinquecento .style, shews a splendid central rose in the 
 midst of the most extraordinary and crowded assemblage of small arches, 
 
 42 
 
BERGAMO. 
 
 THE COLLEONI CHAPEL (STA, MARIA MAGGIORE). 
 

ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 f a9ades of the Certosa, near Pavia, and Santa Zaccaria at 
 Venice, the ancient Roman architedlure superseded the 
 medieval, and at a time when the revival of Roman litera- 
 ture recalled the recolledion of the greatest nation that 
 Italy, and in some respedts the world, had ever seen. Sooner 
 or later it must have come to this, but pradbically the change 
 was introduced by two of the most remarkable men the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries produced, Filippo Bru- 
 nelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti. In Italy Pointed archi- 
 tefture had faded utterly thirty years before the conclusion 
 of our "Wars of the Roses, and more than half a century 
 before it had ceased to be the only form known or practised 
 among us. 
 
 Moreover, the Pointed had not been developed as in the 
 North, and there was a national sentiment to favour the 
 Renaissance or the revival of forms which were in some sort 
 identified with Roman greatness. 
 
 The two architeds above named were the pioneers of the 
 movement, and although they certainly worked more under 
 the influence of Gothic principles than their successors, still 
 in their works may be found germs of many architedlural 
 heresies. 
 
 Brunelleschi completed the dome of the Cathedral at 
 Florence that had been left unfinished by Arnolfo and 
 Giotto without even a drawing to shew how they intended 
 to complete it. 
 
 He also completed St Lorenzo at Florence and entirely 
 built St Spirito in the same city of his birth, and the little 
 octagonal church Degli Angeli. 
 
 columns, pilasters, balustrades and trellis work, all covered over with the 
 richest embroidery of sculpture spread on a ground inlaid in white, red 
 and black marble, the whole producing one of the most charming exhibi- 
 tions of external polychromatic ornamentation produced by natural means. 
 
 43 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Alberti's best known and most admired work is St Fran- 
 cesco at Rimini, whose facade, had it been completed, 
 would have been equal to anything of Palladio. 
 
 The not very happy church of St Andrea at Mantua, 
 also due to Alberti, may be accepted as the type of all those 
 churches which have been built in Italy from St Peter's at 
 Rome downwards during the last four centuries, and indeed 
 throughout Europe. 
 
 It was in St Andrea at Mantua that the coffered wagon 
 vault, of which a noble example may be seen in St Paul's 
 Cathedral at the jundion of the dome with the nave, choir 
 and transepts, made its reappearance. Then, coming down 
 to a later period, we find the Church of the Madonna di 
 Campagna built early in the sixteenth century from the 
 designs of Sanmichele at the village from which he derived 
 his name, near Verona; the Cathedral at Pavia, begun in 
 1488 on a grand scale from the designs of Cristoforo 
 Rocchi, a pupil of Bramante, but left in a sadly incomplete 
 state; Sta Giustina at Padua, a truly noble work commen- 
 ced in 1502 from the designs of Padre Girolamo da Brescia, 
 and completed half a century later under Andrea Morone; 
 Sta Maria in Porto at Ravenna, built in 1553 out of the 
 materials of the church of St Lorenzo in Cesarea; St 
 Gaudentio at Novara, rebuilt in 1577 on the site of a 
 much older church, by Pellegrini; the Madonna della 
 Steccata at Parma, begun about 1521 from the plans of 
 Francesco Zaccagni; Sta Maria della Salute at Venice by 
 Baldassare Longhena; and the choir of the Cathedral at 
 Bologna, by Domenico Tibaldi, both dating from the early 
 part of the seventeenth century. 
 
 AU these churches which I have selefted as being un- 
 usually fine examples of the revived classical styles, prove 
 
 44 
 
St. Oaudenzio at Novara. 
 
 To face page 44. 
 
ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 how completely their architeds had rejedled all Gothic 
 feeling, while adhering in most cases to the old cruciform 
 and apsidal Gothic plan, and how thoroughly they had 
 mastered that peculiar application of classical details to 
 modern purposes which formed the staple of architectural art 
 in Europe for the succeeding two centuries. 
 
 In Italy the revived Italian style was really revived. It 
 was not, in its earlier stages at least, a cold and formal 
 imitation of the antique, no tame aping of classicality, but 
 seizing upon its principles and animated by its spirit, those 
 concerned in its resuscitation took into account the exi- 
 gencies of the period, forming new combinations as required. 
 
 It should not, however, be forgotten that a great many 
 medieval churches were so transformed during the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries and so disfigured as to their ancient 
 details as to leave considerable doubt as to their antiquity. 
 
 Every Italian city presents, unhappily, numerous ex- 
 amples of this mischievous process. Time after time, after 
 surveying a graceful Pointed fa9ade or a Romanesque apse 
 and central lantern, did I enter to find myself confronted 
 with one of those vicious specimens of the later revived 
 classical school, which in the course of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury had covered, not Italy alone, but those parts of the 
 countries adjacent to it, with absurdities in the baroque 
 style, which from their constant occurrence became ab- 
 solutely wearisome.* 
 
 * Unfortunately, this mischievous process was not confined to Italy, 
 but spread in post-Tridentine times to Southern Germany and Austria, 
 where many a fine old Romanesque cathedral and church fell a vi£lim 
 to the mania for Italianizing everything. In Northern Germany Hildes- 
 heim and Fulda Cathedrals were completely metamorphosed internally, 
 while in France the mischief shewed itself chiefly in the demolition of 
 medieval jubes and the substitution of semi-pagan monstrosities. 
 
 Thanks, perhaps, in some measure to the Reformation, and to our in- 
 
 45 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 It was my intention to close this brief sketch of Christian 
 architecfture in Italy with a disseftion of her churches, 
 shewing how in their several parts they differ from those 
 of other European countries; but the difficulty of com- 
 pressing such details within prescribed limits has been 
 found so great, that wellnigh all reference to their develop- 
 ment, furniture and so forth must be deferred to the suc- 
 ceeding chapters, in which, by taking the reader to the build- 
 ings themselves, I shall endeavour to convey a clearer idea 
 of their charader by a description of their leading features. 
 
 I cannot hope that the present work, which like its com- 
 panion volumes on the Cathedrals of England, France and 
 Northern Germany, has been treated from an ecclesiolo- 
 gical standpoint,* will be found to meet, with any complete- 
 ness, the requirements which its perhaps too ambitious 
 title may suggest. A complete history and description of 
 the North Italian cathedrals and churches would fill at 
 least a dozen volumes, and would be the work of a lifetime, 
 and could only be written during a prolonged residence in 
 the country, and as the result of a personal examination 
 of all the important works and of the documents contained 
 in the archives of the many cities. 
 
 Those of my readers, therefore, who "know their Italy" 
 will doubtless discover many omissions, but it should be 
 remembered that one of the first lessons of a traveller is 
 renunciation — the stern resolve not to attempt to seize 
 more than can be grasped. 
 
 The mind, like a trunk, can only hold a certain quantity; 
 
 sular prejudice, the ancient ecclesiastical buildings of England escaped 
 the scourge. 
 
 * Ecclesiology devotes its energies not only to the architedlure of the 
 fabrics themselves but to the reverend serving and adorning of churches 
 in the best and fittest manner possible, while antiquarianism is in itself 
 a mere branch of secular learning. 
 
 46 
 

ITALIAN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and, as an overcrowded trunk cannot be shut, so an over- 
 crowded mind falls short of its natural capacity of reten- 
 tion. The things seen should be proportioned to the time 
 at command. Choose what seems most interesting, and let 
 the rest go. Hurry as you will, you cannot make one hour 
 do the work of two. 
 
 No other country combines so many attractions or speaks 
 with so many different voices of invitation as Italy. Not to 
 be drawn to Italy, not to be grateful for having seen it, not 
 to remember it with vivid interest, is to be indifferent to 
 everything that took place before we ourselves were born. 
 No other country has been so fruitful in great men; no one 
 has left so large a legacy to the mind of to-day ; no one has 
 passed through such historical changes; no one presents 
 such variety of interests. Ancient and medieval Italy toge- 
 ther combine all that is most marked and charafteristic in 
 the national life and intelle<5tual development of England 
 and Greece. The paths of the statesman, the scholar, the 
 Christian pilgrim, the artist, the architeft, the ecclesiologist, 
 all meet upon her soil as a focal point of attradlion. 
 
 We may encounter annoyance and discomfort in travel- 
 ling about Italy; our patience may ofttimes be tried, and 
 our religious susceptibilities shocked; but, when we take 
 leave of her, on our way home through France, or Switzer- 
 land, or Germany, none of these things rise up in judge- 
 ment against her. As, in recalling the dead, we think only 
 of their virtues, so, in looking back upon a country in which 
 we have found instruction and delight, we remember only 
 what we have learned and enjoyed. Any annoyances we may 
 have experienced only serve as shadows in a picfture to 
 bring out the lights in stronger contrast. We part in kind- 
 ness ; on the dial of memory only the hours of sunshine are 
 noted. 
 
 47 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Trent 
 
 EVERYBODY, of course, has heard of Trent, but most 
 persons, I fancy, conned the name far more with the 
 several Councils held there in the middle of the sixteenth 
 century than with its Cathedral of St Vigilius, which, not- 
 withstanding the fadt of its lying on a well-worn road, 
 may be classed among the unedited monuments of Europe, 
 but scant justice having been done to it by the savants and 
 book-makers of the last century. 
 
 Although lying on a weU-worn road, few churches of 
 equal interest are, I believe, so little visited as this, and I 
 can assure those who will pause on their journey from 
 Innsbruck to Venice or Verona that they will be rewarded 
 by one of the most charming and refined specimens of late 
 Romanesque architedure in the South of Europe. 
 
 Moreover, the interest of the building is enhanced by 
 the fa(5b that, with two exceptions, it has descended to our 
 own days unspoilt by Renaissance overlayings or accretions. 
 
 The Cathedral of Trent in its present condition was begun 
 between 1027 and 105 5, with the choir, by Bishop Udalric II 
 as a first instalment towards rebuilding an earlier church. 
 The crypt of this prelate survived until 1 740, when it was 
 destroyed to make room for the present high altar and its 
 towering baldachino. But of the church of this Prince 
 Bishop there is no reason to think that any trace remains. 
 Nothing is of an earlier date than the episcopate of Bishop 
 Altmann, who held the See from 1124 to 1149, and who 
 
 48 
 
TRENT 
 
 is recorded to have performed the ceremony of consecra- 
 tion. The nave arcade may be his work. The present cha- 
 rafter of the church was received from Bishop Frederick, 
 who ruled from 1207 to 12 18, and who between those 
 years rebuilt the choir, enriched the church, outside and in, 
 with marble and sculpture, and made some changes in the 
 palace adjoining the north transept. 
 
 At Trent we have, not as in the Rhenish distridl where 
 the round and pointed arch strive for the mastery, a dis- 
 tinct specimen of pure unadulterated Romanesque of a natu- 
 rally-developed round-arched style replete with gracefulness 
 and refinement, and flourishing unchecked on this deba- 
 table ground until nearly the middle of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Next to the Stifts-Kirche at Iniche the Cathedral of Trent 
 is the only Romanesque church preserved in what is known 
 as the Kronlande Tirol. Its cruciform plan is simple, and 
 what is styled parallel triapsidal, i.e., with an apse on the 
 eastern side of either transept in addition to the one ter- 
 minating the choir. At the junction of the four arms is a 
 rather tall oftagonal lantern, and flanking the western fa9ade 
 are towers of which the north-western one has alone been 
 carried up to any height. It is surmounted by one of those 
 bulbous domes that, together with the steeply gabled saddle- 
 back, had accompanied me all the way from Munich. 
 
 The central cupola and the open galleries under the eaves 
 are features familiarly German; the few and small windows, 
 deeply and richly moulded, and chiefly the porches with 
 their shafts resting on couchant lions,* are as distinctly 
 Italian. The material is a reddish white Tridentine marble 
 
 'Lions were chosen to support pillars as symbolical of the vigilance and 
 strength of the Church. 
 
 49 4 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 which has now assumed a sepia tint. Not only is it an ex- 
 cellent one for working purposes, but its durability has 
 enabled it to withstand the changeful temperature of this 
 part of Europe. 
 
 The view of the Cathedral from the south-east includes 
 most of the features which I have enumerated. 
 
 The central tower, at first square and then octagonal, rises 
 gracefully, with its tourelles on the oblique sides and its 
 low pyramidal capping, above the choir and south tran- 
 sept. The latter has an attached apse and a porch, the two 
 columns of whose outer arch are composed of four slender 
 shafts joined together and resting upon a lion's back, and 
 four similar shafts just separated from each other, but 
 united in the middle by a snake and supported on the 
 shoulders of four crouching figures — " altogether," as Street 
 has observed, '* about as strong an illustration of medieval 
 love of change and variety as could be found. It must have 
 been the work of a sculptor who was just a little savage 
 with the somewhat tame uniformity of the whole of the 
 architediural scheme of the Cathedral." 
 
 Then the aisleless choir, rendered additionally tall by the 
 crypt, with its gallery under the eaves, and its stately apse 
 of four stories is strikingly reminiscent of Bonn. AU this 
 contrasts with the adjoining buildings, once the episcopal 
 palace, where we see windows of the rude German type, and 
 an apse of clearly earlier date than that of the church. 
 
 Proceeding round the south side of the Cathedral, where 
 we find an excrescence in the shape of a wretched domed 
 chapel of 1682, we notice a wonderfully subdued character 
 compared with that observable on the north. The windows, 
 tall, narrow round-headed ones, are placed high up in the 
 wall and have their splays simply moulded, whereas those 
 
 50 
 
TRENT. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-EAST 
 
TRENT 
 
 on the north have three orders of shafts besides other 
 mouldings. The window on the north side of the tower flank- 
 ing the west front has the capitals of its shafts composed of 
 heads. Along the entire wall of either side above the win- 
 dows is a graceful continuous arcade, each arcade being 
 vaulted separately, and transversely to the axis of the church. 
 The pillarets supporting the arches of these arcades are 
 coupled, and being quite free from the wall give an unin- 
 terrupted passage way behind them. The aisle roofs are of 
 the lean-to type, and the clerestory windows, very small 
 circular ones, are arranged in bays marked out by flat shal- 
 low buttresses and surmounted by a corbel table. The fagade 
 of the north transept has one large wheel window; that of 
 the southern one two tall round-headed ones. The west front 
 is of a noble simplicity. It has a round-arched doorway with 
 five orders of shafts, some square, some round. The capitals 
 are of the ^ crochet type, and this carving being carried all 
 round the tops of the shafts without any break has a pe- 
 culiarly rich effect. In the tympanum are traces in fresco of 
 the Blessed Virgin and Child with Saints. Above is a large 
 circular window of sixteen divisions, its spokes radiating 
 from an inverted quatrefoil. The several orders of mould- 
 ings are of a rich and rope-like charafter, and at the top of 
 the rim is a seated figure of our Lord, while lower down, 
 also in the rim, are the evangelistic symbols. Over this is a 
 smaller circle, and following the line of the gable are arcades 
 in the Italian fashion. 
 
 Very noble is the doorway within the barrel-vaulted south- 
 eastern porch already alluded to, with its varied foliage in 
 the capitals of the columns. The lintel represents the vine, 
 and in the tympanum is a carved figure of St Vigilius. 
 
 The north-eastern apse and doorway are concealed on 
 
 51 4« 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 the exterior by a building forming part of the episcopal 
 palace, a pile of singular construdion, and dating from the 
 tenth to the sixteenth centuries. The Venetian pointed 
 upper story, with its forked battlements, was the work of 
 Falconetto, a Veronese architect. 
 
 With recoUedions from books and hearsay of the reck- 
 less treatment to which the interior of many a Romanesque 
 and Pointed Italian church has been subjeded by the Re- 
 naissance architect, it was with a trembling hand that I 
 drew aside the amber-coloured curtain which the evening 
 breeze was stirring gendy within the great western portal, 
 and passed into the nave of the great Duomo at Trent, 
 
 Great was my joy therefore to find before me one of the 
 grandest and most unspoilt Gothic interiors of the many 
 which I visited during this tour. Its gloom — doubly im- 
 pressive at the evening hour — and its low clerestory of 
 very small windows are quite Italian. 
 
 The absence of triforium is also Italian and sometimes 
 German. The piers, supported on quite attic bases and 
 compounded of a cruciform core, with slender shafts at the 
 ends of and in the angles formed by the arms, recall those 
 in the Westphalian minsters of Herford and Paderborn, 
 only at Trent the shaft supporting the transverse vaulting 
 ribs is carried up through the spandrels of the round-headed 
 arches to meet the string-course from which the groining im- 
 mediately springs. Carried up as they are to a height which 
 is rare in Romanesque work of any kind, the proportions 
 of these piers at Trent are really more like those of the 
 best thirteenth-century French Gothic such as we see at 
 Rouen and Coutances. 
 
 The nave has six bays, but a seventh is formed by that 
 opening into the space beneath the western towers. Here 
 
 52 
 
TRENT 
 
 the arch on either side is pointed, and the great pier from 
 which it springs being free from a vaulting shaft presents 
 an uninterrupted group of eight slender shafts which com- 
 bine to form the most pleasing spedbacle in the various views 
 across the nave. From the capitals of these piers rises an 
 arch uniform in height with those of the nave arcades, and 
 supporting the organ gallery which spans the west end to 
 the depth of the bay opening into the space beneath either 
 tower. To this gallery, which is vaulted below, and has a 
 balcony composed of a colonnade of red marble pillarets 
 with foliaged capitals, is an ascent of steps made in the 
 thickness of the aisle wall on either side commencing at 
 the fourth bay from the east. 
 
 The arcades opening on to these stone staircases — the 
 most graceful of the Cathedral's internal features — have 
 semicircular arches rising from graceful shafts. 
 
 In the aisles the transverse arch separating each vault- 
 ing compartment springs from a flat pilaster having a slen- 
 der shaft on either side of it. 
 
 The half piers to the arches supporting the north and 
 south-west towers are very noble and are identical in plan 
 with the great isolated ones of the arcades. Under the 
 west window, which is spanned by the organ loft and glazed 
 in vulgar patches of red and green, is a large frescoed 
 figure, seated and in the adl of blessing. 
 
 The western arch of the lantern does not rise to the full 
 height of the nave; consequently there is some waU space 
 left above it, against which a large crucifix is placed. The 
 whole of the church east of the nave is very German, and 
 strikingly reminiscent of such examples as St Quirinus at 
 Neuss and the minster at Werden, particularly as regards 
 the eastern limb with its apse and intermediate aisleless bay. 
 
 S3 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Imposing even now, this choir at Trent must have been 
 doubly so before the lowering of its floor in the eighteenth 
 century to give height to the baldachino over the high 
 altar. As a work of its age and class this ciborium is very 
 grand with its tall twisted Corinthian columns, and does 
 not seem so out of place amidst its Gothic surroundings 
 as one would be led to suppose. For in a continental church, 
 and more particularly in an Italian one, there is so much 
 that is reminiscent of Rome that one incongruity more or 
 less makes little difference. Habit causes each part to be 
 considered independently, and the relations between them 
 and the whole are generally disregarded. 
 
 The small apse opening from the eastern side of either 
 transept has a semi-domical vault with two rather large ribs. 
 Admirers of medieval frescoes will be gratified by the toler- 
 ably well-preserved ones on the eastern wall of the south 
 transept and on the northern wall of the opposite one, while 
 the student of ecclesiastical costume will find much to en- 
 gage his attention in the five grand upright figures of 
 bishops in alto-rilievo and similar to those in Mayence and 
 Wttrzburg Cathedrals, which are affixed, somewhat to the 
 detriment of the frescoes on the north wall. Above the cen- 
 tral effigy is a lovely little gallery with twisted shafts at the 
 angles, a charmingly sculptured cresting, and a front re- 
 lieved by two plain shields and a floriated cross within a 
 circle. Enclosing a small space of the pavement at the angle 
 formed by the north transept with the nave aisle is a grace- 
 fully wrought iron screen of rather large quatrefoils, which, 
 as they are not enclosed within circles, present some very 
 efFeflive combinations viewed at a little distance. The 
 bunches of leafage terminating the upright bars of this screen 
 are quite Italian, and in all probability have furnished the 
 
 54 
 
Trent : Interior of the Cathedral, looking East. 
 
 To [Me page 54. 
 
TRENT 
 
 model for certain works of the kind executed in modern 
 times among ourselves. 
 
 In the aisleless eastern limb are some good Renaissance 
 stalls continued in the manner almost universal in Italy round 
 the walls of the apse, whose semi-domical roof is enriched 
 with a grand, calm frescoed figure of St Vigilius on a gold 
 ground, terminating the vista in a very impressive manner. 
 
 Colour has also been applied to the bay between the lan- 
 tern and the apse, each cell of the quadripartite vault dis- 
 playing the emblem of an evangelist. 
 
 Altogether this duomo at Trent is a very noble building; 
 indeed, it fascinated me to such an extent that it was not 
 until the voice of the sacristan echoing through the distant 
 aisles with his oft-repeated cry, "Si chiude," that I could 
 prevail upon myself to let the curtain fall upon such a com- 
 bination of attradions. 
 
 When I re-entered, shortly after nine o'clock in the 
 morning of Whitsun Eve, the Office preparatory to the 
 benedidion of the font was being recited at the high altar 
 by three priests in violet chasubles. This comprised certain 
 portions of scripture called the Prophetia* interspersed 
 with prayers and the following " traces ": "Cantemus Do- 
 minojgloriose enim honorificatusest"(Exod.xv) — Moses's 
 
 * The twenty-second chapter of Genesis, recording the Sacrifice of 
 Isaac; the fourteenth chapter of Exodus in which (commencing at the 
 twenty-fourth verse) we read of the destruaion of Pharaoh's host in the 
 Red Sea; the thirty-first chapter of Deuteronomy (r. 22 to the end), con- 
 taining God's charge to Joshua, and a song to testify against the people ; 
 the fourth chapter of Isaiah, in which the prophet foretells that in the 
 extremity of evils Christ's Icingdom shall be a sandluary; the third chapter 
 of Baruch (v. 9 to end) ; and the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel as far 
 as v. 14. 
 
 The Trafts were sung to the ancient plain chant, which may be found 
 in the little Office for Holy Week {Officium Eebdomada Sanctte). 
 
 55 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 song of thanksgiving for the overthrow of the Egyptians 
 in the Red Sea; "Attende coelum et loquar, et audiat terra 
 verba ex ore meo" (Deut. xxxii) — the song of Moses set- 
 ting forth God's mercy and vengeance; and "Vinea fadta 
 est dilefto in cornu" (Isa. v), in which, under the parable 
 of a vineyard, God executes His severe judgement. 
 
 These being ended, the chief officiant having assumed a 
 violet cope, went in procession with attendant ministers — 
 the cross and candles being carried before them — to the 
 font, the cantors singing as they went a portion of the forty- 
 second Psalm, "Like as the hart desireth the water- 
 brooks." 
 
 Arrived at the font, which at Trent is situated at the 
 west end of the south aisle, the following prayer was recited: 
 " Omnipotens, sempiterne Deus, respice propitius ad devo- 
 tionem populi renascentis, qui, sicut cervus, aquarum tua- 
 rum expetit fontem: et concede propitius; ut fidei ipsius 
 sitis, baptismatis mysterio, animam corpusque sanftificet." 
 Then followed another prayer succeeded by versicles, the 
 Sursum corda, Gratias agamus and a long "Preface," at cer- 
 tain stages of which the priest divided the water in the form 
 of a cross, and poured some towards the four quarters of the 
 world. Then, dipping the end of a candle in the water, he 
 prayed in musical recitative that the power of the Holy 
 Ghost might descend into the font.* The candle being taken 
 out, he dipped it deeper, repeating the last petition in a 
 somewhat higher voice, and, plunging it in a third time, he 
 repeated the petition in a still higher voice. After which he 
 breathed upon the water in the form of the letter % and 
 poured some of the "oil of the catechumens" into the font 
 in the form of a cross, then some of the chrism, next some 
 
 •"Descendat in hanc plenitudinem fontis virtus Spiritus sanfti." 
 
 56 
 
TRENT 
 
 of both together, each being accompanied by suitable words 
 of prayer. 
 
 These ceremonies, of which I and two or three old crones 
 were the sole spectators, concluded, the procession returned 
 to the choir where the Litany was sung by two cantors in 
 violet copes, and when the suffrage "We sinners do beseech 
 Thee to hear us, O Lord God, and that it may please Thee 
 to rule and govern Thy Holy Church universal in the right 
 way," was reached, the priest and his assistant ministers rose 
 and repaired to the sacristy to put on their red vestments 
 for the first Solemn Mass of Pentecost, which began im- 
 mediately after the" Christe, audi nos ! Christe, exaudi nos ! " 
 of the Litany, with the Kyrie Eleison. The organ, situated in 
 the stone gallery at the west end, already alluded to, now 
 broke in with ravishing effed:. It was, however, only used for 
 the interlude which, as I subsequently found in all the Italian 
 cathedrals I visited at the time of service, is played between 
 every clause of the Gloria in Excelsis, Credo, etc., the plain chant 
 being unaccompanied. But when the Offertorium, Emilte 
 Spiritum tuum, et creabuntur had been sung, the instrument 
 was heard to great advantage in a short piece, but of so 
 solemn and church-like a charafter, that music and archi- 
 tedure seemed on this occasion at least to be thoroughly in 
 accord. 
 
 57 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Verona 
 
 ALTOGETHER the Cathedral at Trent was far finer 
 than books or common report had led me to expedb, 
 and it not was until it was more than fully time to catch the 
 midday train for Verona that I could allow myself to 
 lift the curtain veiling the western entrance, and to let it 
 fall upon such a combination of attraftions. 
 
 After winding through the defile for some time the train 
 suddenly emerged, and I found myself at last on the sunny 
 vine-clad plains of Lombardy. 
 
 Verona, which was reached at five o'clock on a lovely June 
 afternoon, a few fleecy clouds alone relieving the true Italian 
 blue of the sky, is partly situated on the Adige, partly on 
 the declivity of a hill, which forms the last swell of the Alps, 
 and partly on the skirts of an immense plain extending from 
 these mountains to the Apennines. The river, which divides 
 Verona into two equal parts, sweeps through it with rapid 
 current in a bold curve forming a peninsula, within which 
 the whole of the ancient and the greater part of the modern 
 city is enclosed.* The hills behind the city are rich in villas 
 and gardens where the graceful cypress and the tall poplar 
 predominate over the bushy ilex and spreading laurel. The 
 plains before the city are streaked with rows of mulberry trees, 
 
 •Verona Athesi circumflua — Verona by the encircling Adige bound. — 
 Silius Italictts. 
 
 This river has on many occasions brought woe to the city. During a 
 stroll along the Corso Cavour, I stopped to read such inscriptions as these on 
 the posts of doorways, "Hue usque aqua inundavit, i567;"ditto, III 0£t. 
 MDCXII ; ditto, 31 0&. MDCXVII ; ditto, Sept. 1767 ; ditto, 1865. 
 
 58 
 
VERONA 
 
 and shaded with vines climbing from branch to branch, and 
 spreading in garlands from tree to tree, just as they used to 
 do in Virgil's day : 
 
 Viminibus salices fecundae frondibus ulmi. 
 At myrtus validis hastilibus et bona bellb 
 Cornus ; Ituneos taxi torquentur in arcus. 
 
 Georg; Lib. ii. 
 
 I alighted at the Porta Vecchia station, and dispensing 
 with the services of the multifarious vehicles drawn up out- 
 side it, shouldered my knapsack and walked up into the 
 city, presently emerging upon the picturesque Piazza delle 
 Erbe. Here a restaurant of inviting appearance presenting 
 itself, I inquired whether a camera da letto was to be had,' 
 and being answered in the affirmative, desired to be shown 
 to it forthwith. Accordingly I was ushered upstairs to, and 
 provided for two liras a day with, as delightful a bed- 
 sitting-room as could be wished for, its windows com- 
 manding the picturesque market far down below where the 
 many-hued umbrellas composed quite a brilliant parterre, 
 and where a piano organ was playing La mia Letizia; so 
 that I felt now that I really was in Italy, and for the first 
 time too. Some ablutions having been performed, and the 
 dust of a long afternoon's travel brushed off, I hastened to 
 mingle with the busy throng below, and, for the evening 
 at least, to enjoy a stroll about the city in a vague and ex- 
 perimental manner, taking churches, palaces, gateways, 
 piazzas, public gardens and all the other delights of an 
 Italian city as they should present themselves; insomuch 
 that I retired to bed, after a very pleasurable reconnoitre, 
 completed by a cool ramble by the side of the Adige, to 
 dream of amber-coloured curtains waving in the evening 
 breeze at Giottoesque portals; of lamps and candles re- 
 
 59 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 fleeted in marble pavements; of graceful campanili whence 
 the melody of bells seemed to be ever floating over this 
 city of brick and marble; and of glimpses caught through 
 gateways of sleepy courtyards having stately palaces within, 
 as silent as tombs. 
 
 Three old cities, far apart across the whole breadth of a 
 continent, enable us to form a fair idea of what the whole 
 of Europe may have been in the palmy days of the Middle 
 Ages. They are Llibeck, Nuremberg and Verona. Each 
 tells its own tale; each is stamped with the influence of 
 national peculiarity ; and each is remarkable, inter alia, the 
 one as the city of brickwork, the second as that of stone, 
 and the last as that of marble. In Lobeck nothing but brick 
 was ever seen ; in Nuremberg stone was used with an ex- 
 cellence seldom rivalled, whilst in Verona, though brick 
 was most skilfully manipulated, the great aim of its archi- 
 tects was ever to introduce the marbles in which the 
 district was so rich, with the result that the natural poly- 
 chromatic treatment of her churches constitutes one of 
 their most enchanting features. 
 
 Of the materials in which the neighbourhood of Verona 
 is so rich may be named a fine limestone, a close-grained 
 cream-coloured and a rich, mottled red marble, all of 
 which are largely used, not only in Verona, but also in 
 Venice and other cities of the province. The same quarry 
 produces both kinds, and indeed the same block is some- 
 times half red and half white. Here are to be found grouped 
 several varieties of Italian Gothic — the Lombard, the 
 Florentine and the Venetian. To the first must be assigned 
 the noble basilica of St Zeno and a large part of the 
 Cathedral, both of which were mainly rebuilt in the twelfth 
 century. Each is a noble specimen of the Lombard style, 
 
 60 
 
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VERONA 
 
 with few single light windows and with the walls decorated 
 externally by a series of pilasters, and by alternating bands 
 of red and white in stone or brick. The arches of this 
 period are semicircular, and rest on round columns and 
 capitals richly carved with grotesque figures and foliage, as 
 may be seen in the illustration of the crypt at San Zeno,* 
 where the versatility shewn in the sculptured ornamenta- 
 tion is truly marvellous. Most of the external ornamentation 
 is usually concentrated on the western front, which here, 
 as well as in the later fa9ades of Parma, Piacenza, Cremona 
 and Modena, has often a lofty arched porch on marble 
 columns resting on griffins or lions devouring their prey. 
 To the Florentine period belong Sta Anastasia; the adjacent 
 elegant little chapel of St Pietro Martire, upon which 
 Ruskin has passed so high a eulogium; the porches of St 
 Fermo Maggiore and Sta Eufemia; several more or less 
 mutilated palaces; and the tombs of the Scaligers outside 
 the Church of Sta Maria Antica. 
 
 The Venetian period was one of little vigour or origin- 
 ality at Verona, the buildings of this date, 1400-1480, 
 being to a great extent tame copies of Venetian examples. 
 
 The Early Renaissance developed into very exceptional 
 beauty in Verona mainly through the genius of Fra Gio- 
 condo (143 5-1 5 14), a native, who was at first a friar in the 
 monastery of Sta Maria in Organo. He rose to great cele- 
 brity as an architect, and designed many graceful and richly 
 sculptured buildings in Venice, Rome, and even in France, 
 using classical forms with no little taste and skill, combining 
 them with much of the freedom of the older medieval 
 architects. In rich and delicate sculptured decorations, he 
 chiefly excelled. 
 
 * Page 94. 
 61 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The Roman Gateway of Gallienus supplied a special 
 form of window with a circular arch on pilasters sur- 
 mounted by a cornice. This was copied by Fra Giocondo, 
 and has been used by countless architects down to the 
 present day with little or no variation, a remarkable history 
 for a design. It was invented in the third century, revived 
 in the fifteenth and again copied in the nineteenth. 
 
 Another of the leading architects of the next stage of the 
 Renaissance was the Veronese Michele Sanmichele whose 
 works, little known in England, are the chief embellish- 
 ment of this ancient city. 
 
 Sanmichele was a great military engineer, and designer 
 of an immense number of fine palaces, not only in Verona, 
 but in other Venetian cities. In the city of his birth speci- 
 mens of Sanmichele's work may be seen in the Church of 
 St Giorgio and the marble screens which enclose the choirs 
 of the Cathedral and St Fermo. 
 
 Though stately and graceful in proportion, the works of 
 this architect shew a tendency towards that dull scholastic 
 classicism which, in the hands of Palladio at the neighbour- 
 ing city of Vicenza, put an end to all real life in the art. 
 
 Mr Street's book. The Brick and Marble of North Italy, 
 will be found very pleasant reading at Verona. 
 
 In its original form it probably stimulated the interest, 
 among English architects, in that combination of brick with 
 marble in veneered or particoloured design which has so 
 largely characterized the architecture of medieval Italy, 
 and the avowed interest in which gave rise in a great 
 measure to the fancy for that chequered and "stripy" 
 brickwork in England which critics have stigmatized by 
 various contemptuous epithets. It can hardly be said that 
 the influence of this form of Italian architecture on our 
 
 62 
 
VERONA 
 
 own modern practice was in the main for good. We imita- 
 ted mostly the less refined, certainly the less worthy, forms 
 of it; we got the brick ypttbout the marble for the most part. 
 That the process of marble veneer was not employed 
 here, at least not in that extensive and wholesale manner 
 in which it is found in Italy, is a matter for congratulation ; 
 it is not in the highest sense an architectural form of 
 treatment, it has more of the essence of cabinet work than 
 of architecture, and at best is only suited in expression to 
 a climate of mild weather and bright suns. 
 
 But the adoption of brick and marble in combination 
 might have been very well used here, but it has been 
 almost negleded, except in so far as the employment of 
 marble shafts goes. Part of the charm of brick and marble 
 combination consists in the contrasts of texture — the 
 smooth, hard marble with the rough brick — and in the 
 delicate tints obtainable from the former. We have a good 
 deal of this material within reach, but, as yet, it has hardly 
 been made the most of, even where expense was no obstacle 
 to any wish or fancy of the architedt. The Northern archi- 
 ted is like the refraftory sons of the bishop in Browning's 
 Men and Women, where the prelate orders his tomb in St 
 Praxed's Church: 
 
 There, leave me there! 
 For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude 
 To death — yt wish it — God, ye wish it! Stone — 
 Gridstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat — 
 As if the corpse they keep were oozing through — 
 And no more kpis to delight the world! 
 
 He refuses the marble and wiU give us only stone. 
 
 The campanile had been my constant companion all the 
 way from Trent, but it was not until Verona was reached 
 that I was enabled to make its closer acquaintance. Seen at 
 
 (>2 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 a distance, there is a monotony about this feature of Italian 
 church architedure which we never, or rarely, find about 
 the towers of Northern peoples; yet when we come to exa- 
 mine it more closely, we find that, notwithstanding a same- 
 ness in the general scheme, there is generally a very great 
 variety in its treatment, and when on our return home 
 we conjure up our recolledions of the Italian churches, 
 there is perhaps no feature which is remembered with grea- 
 ter pleasure than the campanile. Usually an Italian church, 
 whether of the Romahesque, Pointed or Renaissance periods, 
 has only a single campanile. It is extremely rare to find such 
 a group of towers as so frequently occurs in Germany. Had 
 the Italian architefts built churches with pairs of towers at- 
 tached to the fafades, and lantern towers on the crossings, 
 the distant view of many a Lombard, Veronese or Venetian 
 city would undoubtedly have been more striking than it is. 
 In its simplest form the campanile has a grandeur and a 
 unity of expression produdive of a very dignified efFed at 
 a very slight expenditure of ornamentation; what at once 
 distinguishes it from the tower which follows Northern 
 models being its height and absence of buttresses. The 
 usual mode of ascent is by a staircase in the thickness of 
 the wall, thus obviating the necessity of any such excrescence 
 as a turret; the outline therefore assumes a severely square 
 and simple charafter, and unlike as it is to that of most of 
 our steeples, is generally very striking. Not only is it from 
 the absence of buttresses, but from the presence of those 
 horizontal lines which seem to bind the building together, 
 that the height of an Italian campanile is increased. The 
 fault sometimes found with the beautiful Angel Tower at 
 Canterbury is the want of the latter feature. In the towers 
 of Italy such lines always more or less prevail, their archi- 
 
 64 
 
Verona: Vest front of the Cathedral. 
 
 7* Juce page 64. 
 
VERONA 
 
 tedls seeming never to have forgotten the marked horizon- 
 tal feeling of the classic orders, the examples of which were 
 constantly before their eyes. The tall, slender, unbuttressed 
 tower, with its mid-wall shafts in the belfry stage, with its 
 ornaments, if it has any, confined to flat pilasters and ar- 
 cades, is the tower common to all Western Europe up to 
 the eleventh century. We find it in England, in Southern 
 France, notably along the banks of the Saone, and all over 
 Germany, from the Falls of the Rhine to the mouth of the 
 Elbe. But Italy is its home, and it is in Italy alone that 
 we can study its origin and meaning. 
 
 As regards position, the campanile stands either placed 
 in contad with the exterior wall of the side aisle or at a 
 little distance from it, or else it surmounts one of the com- 
 partments of the aisles. But, wherever it is, it always seems 
 to have been planted wherever it happened to be most 
 convenient, and with but little reference to its effect upon 
 the remainder of the building. A fine example of the simple 
 grandeur to which the campanile sometimes attains is pre- 
 sented by that of St Giacomo di Rialto at Venice. Here 
 there are two very lofty stages, each arcaded with two sunk 
 arches on each face, and divided by a stone string-course. 
 The arches have a trefoiled cusping and labels moulded 
 with an enrichment of nail heads. The highest stage has a 
 large open arch on each face, under which it was no doubt 
 intended to place the bells in the Italian fashion by which they 
 can be seen as well as heard from below. In this example, as 
 in others I have observed, the great charm is the extreme 
 simplicity of the whole design. At the same time there is 
 nothing mean or paltry about it, the scale and the solidity 
 of workmanship being both very great. There are several 
 classes or schools of campanili, as, e.g., the Pisan, the Vene- 
 
 65 5 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 tain and Veronese, the Genoese and the Florentine. As it 
 is with the second of these classes that the present chapter 
 is most concerned, a few words on their respeftive peculi- 
 arities may not be out of place. 
 
 The Venetian and Veronese campanili are somewhat 
 different. The former have generally less subdivisions into 
 stages than those of the Pisan group, being arcaded with 
 very slightly recessed lofty arcades. 
 
 I have already mentioned one of the best examples of this 
 kind of tower — St Giacomo di Rialto — executed, as are 
 all the Venetian examples, in brick. The tower of St Zeno 
 at Verona is similar in idea, being entirely unpierced with 
 openings until near the summit, where it has two low stages, 
 each pierced with an arcade of three compartments. In all 
 these examples the pilasters at the angles are distinctly 
 marked, and their general finish is by a low spire, often, as 
 in the Veronese churches of Sta Anastasia, St Fermo, St 
 Lorenzo, Sta Maria Antica, and St Zeno, circular in plan 
 with angle pinnacles at the base, and construftedwith bricks 
 moulded with a circular end, treatment which imparts to 
 them a cone-like appearance. Sometimes we find an octa- 
 gonal termination to the campanili, as in the churches of the 
 Frari and Sta Fosca at Venice. At Padua the low pyramidal 
 capping is very frequent, occurring also in the noble Lom- 
 bardic Romanesque basilicas of St Ambrose at Milan, and 
 St Michele at Pavia. The campanili of Piacenza, Parma and 
 Pavia Cathedrals,and those of Modena and Cremona — called 
 respedlively La Ghirlandina and // Torrazzo — may be ac- 
 cepted as four of the finest and most imposing examples 
 of this feature in their various forms. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that each type of tower is 
 appropriate to its /of«/(?, and if transplanted loses the greater 
 
 66 
 
VERONA 
 
 part of its charm, for it was originally designed on common- 
 sense principles. It needed, however, a strong effort on the 
 part of an English archited during the foreign Gothic mania 
 of half a century ago to steer his barque clear of this danger- 
 ous rock, owing to the beauty of the surroundings which 
 tempted him to be heedless of risk. Let the portraiture of 
 the campanile be by all means transferred to the sketch- 
 book, but do not let the more substantial image of it be at- 
 tempted elsewhere in England than in a town. With what 
 success this has been achieved, those who know the early 
 pointed campanile of St James the Less in Upper Garden 
 Street and the neighbouring Byzantine one ot the Roman 
 Cathedral at Westminster are able to judge. 
 
 Bells for summoning to worship were scarcely known in 
 Europe till the close of the sixth century, and were then first 
 heard in monasteries. In primitive times the faithful used 
 to be apprised, from day to day, of the hours for religious 
 assembly by their ministers addressing congregations; or in 
 some cloisters by the sound of a trumpet breaking on the 
 silence of the cell at the hour of prayer. 
 
 We seem to perceive an allusion to this practice in the 
 seventh verse of the Sunday morning hymn, Omnes una 
 celebremus : 
 
 In eidem samitur 
 
 Tuba evangelii 
 
 Prsedicandi populo. 
 
 The Italian terms campana, campanile^ originate in a tra- 
 dition, not now admitted, that the first sacred bells were 
 heard at Nola in the Neapolitan province of Campania, 
 now Terra di Lavoro. Towers began to be built for the re- 
 ception of bells soon after their introduction in the sixth 
 century. The earliest known instance occurs about a. d. 560 
 
 67 5« 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 at Merida in Portugal; but the first belfry was not raised 
 in Rome till about the year 770. It was ordered by Pope 
 Stephen III and was raised beside the great basilica of St 
 Peter. It is probable that the campanili of the Ravenna 
 churches were not originally built for the reception of bells, 
 as they appear to be contemporary, or at any rate very little 
 subsequent to the basilicas whose positions they indicate. 
 The beautiful form of blessing, popularly called the bap- 
 tizing, of bells was inserted in the Pontifical in the course 
 of the eighth century; and as the religious use of these 
 instruments for exciting memories or devotion became mul- 
 tifarious, bells were introduced, first in the eleventh cen- 
 tury at the most solemn passages in rites, and in processions 
 at marriages and funerals; and were ordered in 1095 by 
 Urban II to be rung before sunrise and sunset, for inviting 
 all to pray by the chimes, called, from the first words in the 
 orison appointed, the Angelus and the Ave Maria. 
 
 It is Whit-Sunday, and an Italian summer morning. The 
 waking thought that it was to be kept at Verona was trans- 
 port! I do not think my eyes ever opened upon so lovely 
 a day. The sky was without a speck; and the air just 
 seemed to me to steep every nerve and fibre of the frame 
 with repose and pleasure. Now and then in England I 
 have felt a June morning that approached it, but never the 
 degree, the fullness, the sunny softness of this exquisite 
 clime. It tranquillized the mind as well as the body; it was 
 impossible not to feel content and genial. Early I was astir, 
 and after a ramble of three hours amid churches, and 
 many a shady loiotollo of white houses moodily frowning 
 at the other houses over the way, returned by the side ot 
 the turbulent Adige to an alfresco breakfast in the Piazza 
 delle Erbe — so fanciful, quaint and picturesque, formed 
 
 68 
 
VERONA 
 
 by an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, 
 and dominated by the campanile of the Piazza dei Signori, 
 a magnificent, simple and unbroken piece of brickwork 
 nearly three hundred feet high. 
 
 The meal concluded, I sought the Duomo* for High 
 Mass. The marble pavement of the nave was railed off 
 from the rood-screen to the west door, just inside which, 
 on the floor, the eye was caught by the text chosen by the 
 saintly Keble for the title page of his Christian Tear — "In 
 patienti^ vestr^ possldebitis animas vestras." 
 
 Inquiry as to why the centre of the nave was thus barri- 
 caded elicited the information that the Cardinal Bishop of 
 Verona would administer the Sacrament of Confirmation 
 at the conclusion of the morning offices. 
 
 At half-past nine Terce was sung by the canons in the 
 apse and by a choir of men and boys in the garb of every- 
 day life in the gallery, before the organ which, in accor- 
 dance with almost universal usage in Italy, is placed above 
 the stalls. At Verona, and indeed in many another great 
 Italian church, there are two organs thus situated, the cases 
 of which are truly magnificent, being flanked by two lofty 
 Corinthian columns, while the pipes are protefted by paint- 
 ed shutters, thrown back when the instrument is in use. 
 
 While Terce was in progress, the candles surmounting 
 Sanmichele's beautiful but not incongruous Ionic marble 
 screen, were lighted, their feeble rays being dimmed by 
 the great shafts of sunlight which streamed in through 
 the southern windows. 
 
 The psalms were most interesting, the verses being 
 
 * Duomo, the Italian equivalent for cathedral, is derived from the Latin 
 word Domus, which was usually applied to churches par excellence. The 
 cupola generally prevailing in old churches obtained the name of Dome. 
 
 69 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 sung alternately to the plain chant by the canons, and in 
 concerted parts by the choir in the gallery, not however, I 
 thought, with much feeling or delicacy. 
 
 Such a rendering was quite a novelty, as I had never 
 heard the psalms chanted in a continental church except 
 to the Gregorian tones, with, in France, the occasional ad- 
 dition of an embroidery in the shape of the faux bourdon. 
 Bernabei and other learned contrapuntists, with a full ap- 
 preciation of the grave simplicity of their style and a care- 
 ful adaptation of the four- and five-part harmony of the 
 medieval schools to the modes in which they are written, 
 have thus set the psalm tones; and Palestrina, Felice 
 Anerio, the two Nanini, Luca Viadana and a host of their 
 contemporaries have supplemented them with innumerable 
 faux bourdons intended to alternate with unison verses of 
 the simple chant. 
 
 A fine MS. coUedlion of these psalms was discovered in 
 Rome by Dr Burney, whose autograph copy of it is now 
 preserved in the Library of the British Museum under 
 the title of Studij de Palestrina; and many others are in exis- 
 tence both in MS. and in print. Proske has included four 
 of Nanini's psalms in the Musica Divina. 
 
 Giovanni Bernardino Nanini was born about the middle 
 of the sixteenth century at Vallerano, and died about 1620. 
 His elder brother, Giovanni Maria, is remembered chiefly 
 by his motet for six voices, Hodie nobis ccelorum Rex^ a 
 noble composition annually sung in the Sistine Chapel on 
 the morning of Christmas Day. His Hodie Christus natus 
 est, in which the characteristic "Noel, Noel" is introduced 
 with fine efFeft, will also be found in Proske's Musica 
 Divina. 
 
 Terce having concluded with the hymn Veni Creator 
 
 70 
 
Verona: Interior of the Cathedral, looking East. 
 
 To 'i£e page 70. 
 
VERONA 
 
 Spiritus * and the versicles and responses proper for Whit- 
 Sunday, a procession entered. 
 
 It was not large, but could hardly have been more pic- 
 turesque, comprising as it did the cross- and taper-bearers, 
 a few persons in cassocks and not very becoming surplices, 
 the Bishop of Verona in his robes as cardinal and his two 
 domestic attendants, remarkably handsome men in dark 
 blue coats, lace cravats, white silk knee-breeches, and 
 stockings set off by shoes from which gleamed silver 
 buckles. 
 
 The procession did not at once enter the choir but passed 
 across the Cathedral to a chapel in the south aisle, where 
 the Bishop offered up some preliminary devotions, the or- 
 ganist playing meanwhile (tell it not at St Paul's or West- 
 minster !) the slow movement from the overture to Zampa! 
 But then one does not feel surprised at anything he may 
 see or hear in an Italian place of worship. Mr Street in his 
 Brick and Marble alludes to the abominably light opera 
 music he heard in many a church, and which sounded, as 
 may readily be imagined, very discordant within their 
 solemn walls, adding that he had even heard a polka played 
 by the organist of St Mark's, Venice ; and a friend whose 
 veracity is not to be impugned informs me that one of 
 the organ pieces played during High Mass at Milan was 
 the Largo al factotum from Rossini's II Barbiere di Siyiglia! 
 
 The Bishop was to pontificate, and while he was being 
 
 * There seems little reason to doubt that this hymn was the composi- 
 tion of Charlemagne. That Emperor was almost as much renowned for 
 his scholarship as for his military achievements, and it is remarkable that 
 the frame and diflion of this ever-famous hymn quite fall back on the 
 older and correft models. As a slight corroborative piece of internal evi- 
 dence, it may be observed that Charlemagne was much interested in the 
 propagation of the Filiojue doflrine, and that the last verse but one goes 
 out of its way to introduce it. 
 
 71 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 vested in red chasuble, mitre, etc., the choir up in the organ 
 gallery sang the Introit: "The Spirit of the Lord fiUeth 
 the world. Alleluia! and that which containeth all things 
 hath knowledge of the voice"; not, however, to the ancient 
 plain chant with which I was so familiar, but to a setting 
 in concerted parts. This was disappointing, as was also the 
 sequence, Veni sanSle Spiritus, that sublime composition 
 which critics of all ages concur in regarding as one of the 
 masterpieces of Latin poetry. Clichtovaeus* speaks of its 
 "wonderful sweetness," of its "agreeable brevity along 
 with a profusion of ideas," and of the "elegant grace of its 
 strudture," and well believes that the author whoever he 
 was, when he composed this piece, "had his mind trans- 
 fused by a certain heavenly meekness, by which, the Holy 
 Spirit being its author, he uttered so much sweetness in 
 so few words," while Archbishop Trench alludes to it in 
 his Sacred Latin Poetry as "the loveliest of all the hymns 
 in the whole circle of Latin poetry," adding that it could 
 only have been composed " by one who had been acquainted 
 with many sorrows, and also with many consolations." 
 
 In medieval times the "Oeni sanSle Spiritus was styled The 
 Qolden Sequence. It is not distinguished by any very great 
 and absolute originality of idea, for in its leading thoughts 
 it was already influenced by earlier pieces, such as the SanSli 
 Spiritus adsit, the O Ignis Spiritus Parac/iti, the Veni Creator 
 Spiritus, and the Veni sanffe Spiritus, reple; but it combines 
 a stately grace and perfed rhythmic melody, and a faculty of 
 saying just the right thing in just the fitting words, in such 
 a measure as to disarm criticism, and at once to defy com- 
 parison with any other hymn in any other language, and 
 to make it almost impossible to present an adequate trans- 
 * Elucidatorium, Paris, 1516, f. 17. 
 72 
 
VERONA 
 
 lation.* It is in five stanzas consisting of six lines of seven- 
 syllable trochaic verse (trochaic dimeter cataleilic), and I 
 quote the first stanza, for the benefit of those not acquain- 
 ted with the original, to show its strudure: 
 
 Veni sanfle Spiritus, 
 Et emitte ccelitus 
 Lucis tux radium. 
 Veni pater pauperum, 
 Veni dator munerum, 
 Veni lumen cordium. 
 
 Happily this hymn was left unaltered when it was retained, 
 
 together with the three other greater sequences, ViSiima 
 
 Paschali, Lauda Siott and Dies Ira^ in the revised Roman 
 
 Missal of 1570. 
 
 "With respect to the sequence, it has been discovered, 
 
 from an ancient manuscript Troper of the reign of Ethel- 
 
 dred II, i.e., the end of the tenth century, in the Bodleian 
 
 Library, that it was then in general use, having been first 
 
 introduced by Alcuin and Pope Adrian II, as appears from 
 
 a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris. A rubric in the Troper 
 
 reads thus : 
 
 Hie Tibi cantori sunt cunfia Sequentia prsesto, 
 Quae circulo annorum modulantur ordine pulchro. 
 
 But the word Sequence up to the year 1020 or 1030 meant 
 simply the neuma or succession of notes sung to one syl- 
 lable at the end of the Alleluia which concluded the Gra- 
 dual — the Caudatum Alleluia , as it was sometimes called. 
 When Notker Balbulus,f or as some liturgiologists con- 
 
 * Perhaps the two best of countless translations are those given by Rew. 
 Edward Caswall in his Lyra Catholica, and John Mason Neale in The 
 Hymnal Noted. 
 
 tThe Abbey of St Gall, in Switzerland, the home of Notker Balbulus, 
 the inventor of sequences, was, of course, the headquarters of their science 
 and their praftice. Francis de Gasperg, abbot from 1504 to 1529, en- 
 
 73 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 tend, Alcuin, first introduced his rhythmical words instead 
 of the neutna or sequence^ they were at first called proses^ but 
 in process of time took the name of that which they sup- 
 planted, and were called sequences. Since i loo sequence and 
 prose have been usually convertible terms, though not al- 
 ways, for perhaps the Notkerian or syllabic kind are more 
 commonly called proses than sequences, and the Victorine, 
 orxhy thmical and rhyming, verses more commonly sequences 
 than proses; and the hymns, interspersed with Alleluias 
 (found in the Sarum Processional)^ which were sung in pro- 
 cessions in Christmas and Eastertide at Matins or at Ves- 
 pers bear the peculiar name of proses. The derivation of 
 the new from the old Sequence (in other words of the Prose 
 from the Tailed Alleluia) gives rise to the following Sarum 
 Rubric :"Deinde clerici incipiunt Alleluia, sine pneumate: 
 quod per totum annum observatur, quando dicitur sequentia 
 tantum." In other words, when they gave the substitute for 
 the neuma, they were not to give the neuma also: "Quando 
 vero non habetur Sequentia, tunc dicitur pneuma a toto 
 choro." In the Southern churches the priest sometimes 
 intoned the sequence, but this was not the case in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Sequences are distinguished from hymns (i) by their use 
 in the liturgy only, viz. between the Epistle and Gospel; 
 (2) by the greater freedom and inequality of their metre, 
 and by the frequent employment, when they rhyme at all, 
 of prolonged concatenations of double rhymes; (3) by their 
 
 trusted one ofhis monks, Joachim Brander, in 1 507 with the taskofcoUefting 
 and editing a complete colIe£lion of sequences and antiphons. Brander per- 
 formed his task with diligence, and the esteem in which the completed 
 work was held — it was finished in 1 5 1 o — is amply testified by the sump- 
 tuous manner in which a copy, now lost, is said to have been illuminated 
 and adorned by the Abbot. 
 
 74 
 
'"O"-*- "^t3«ij 
 
 S^'faS.:: 
 
 Verona: South Porch of the Cathedral. 
 
 Tv face page 1^. 
 
VERONA 
 much greater length; (4) by the difFerence of their melody, 
 which, instead of recurring regularly, recurs partially and 
 irregularly. 
 
 The Northern churches, as England, Sweden, Branden- 
 burg, Cologne and Utrecht, and more particularly Iceland, 
 were much more partial to the sequence than Italy and 
 Spain ; many missals, as our own, employed them as regu- 
 larly as CoUedt, Epistle and Gospel, till at length there was 
 a perfed mania for composing them. In German missals ot 
 the fifteenth century there are frequently eight or ten for 
 choice for one festival; but in 1 536 the Council of Cologne 
 allowed their omission; and that of Trent half a century 
 later ordered it — only four being, as I have already stated, 
 retained in the present Roman missal, to the great loss of 
 ritual. 
 
 In the ninth and tenth centuries St Gall was the principal 
 seminaryand shelter for Church song, even more than Rome 
 itself, during that stormy epoch in which war and desola- 
 tion and barbaric invasions almost extinguished art and 
 science in Europe, and incessantly assailed the Roman pon- 
 tiflfs. Whilst, however, the clash of weapons, sedition and 
 rebellion created a perpetual warfare without, sacred song 
 and solemn choral worship found refuge and peace in the 
 great abbeys, especially in St Gall. As early as the year 
 790, Romanus, who, sent as ambassador by the Pope to the 
 Emperor Charlemagne, fell sick by the way, and remained 
 at St Gall, had here introduced choir song in its most ex- 
 cellent and perfed form. It was carefully kept up for a long 
 period, and here was formed a school of church music which, 
 in a short time, attained a high degree of excellence and 
 renown; and not only so, but educated and sent forth many 
 masters of the art to other and distant regions. At Rome 
 
 75 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 itself war and civil dissension caused all learning to fade. 
 The fratricidal strife of the Caroline race of kings, and the 
 incursions of the Normans, had almost obliterated the 
 efforts of Charlemagne to advance learning and church music. 
 Germany was a prey to war; but in the quiet and sacred 
 precindls of St GaU flourished many talented men, who 
 were not only professors and teachers of this sacred art, but 
 also were original composers, and theoretically and prafti- 
 cally purified, augmented and widely diffused it. 
 
 It is these worthy originators of Church song, hidden in- 
 deed from the world, whose names we scarcely knew before, 
 but who thus dedicated their lives to God's honour, who 
 have come before us in detailed and speaking sketches in a 
 work by Schttbiger, Die Sdngerschulen '))on St Gal/en vom 8 
 bis zum 12 Jahrhundert — "the Singing Schools of St Gall 
 from the eighth to the twelfth century" — published just 
 fifty years ago. We become more acquainted with the ac- 
 complished Italian, the above-named Romanus, whom Ger- 
 bert scarcely mentions, with his companion and friend Peter, 
 who founded a school of the same kind at Metz. After 
 Romanus we hear of Werembert, Marcellus, Iso, Salaman, 
 Notker Balbulus, Titulo, Ratpertus, Waltram, Hartmann, 
 three Ekkehards and two other Notkers, Hermann Con- 
 traftus, Berno and many others, who are brought forward 
 by that author in their proper persons, and in their works, 
 as the way-marks of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries in the domain of choir song and sacred plain 
 chant; until at the end of that period — partly from the de- 
 cay of the Benediftine foundations, partly from the liking 
 for new harmonized music — the old choir music drew near 
 its fall. 
 
 The congregation at the beginning of High Mass was 
 
 76 
 
VERONA 
 
 a very scanty one, but as the office proceeded it was aug- 
 mented by the arrival of the confirmees with their parents 
 and guardians, who, after a good deal of struggling, push- 
 ing and trafficking in chairs,* were arranged in order be- 
 hind the barriers, which, as already stated, lined the nave 
 on either side from the choir screen to the west door. None 
 of the children could have been over ten years of age. 
 
 The dresses of the girls were, many of them, strikingly 
 pretty, so that when something like order had been estab- 
 lished among as fidgety a congregation of little people as 
 ever I remember, the scene was remarkably pidluresque. 
 One drawback was the absence of hymn singing, and 
 indeed of music of any kind, a serious omission which I 
 remarked at Ratisbon, where during the preceding week 
 I had witnessed the administration of the rite. In the South 
 German Cathedral the children were sent up to the high 
 altar to be confirmed; but at the Italian one the bishop, now 
 vested in white cope and mitre, and attended by a priest 
 bearing the chrism with which the forehead of each child 
 was anointed after the laying on of hands, proceeded down 
 the nave and confirmed the children as they stood. The 
 addresses before and after the ceremony were very brief, so 
 that the whole funftion lasted little more than an hour, 
 whereas at Ratisbon it was a very tedious affair, extending 
 from eight o'clock till long past noon. There were no 
 afternoon offices in the Cathedral, the nave, as is usual 
 throughout Northern Italy, being given up to the Dottrina 
 Cristiana or Sunday school, one of those admirable pradbices 
 
 * The naves of Italian cathedrals and churches are not seated per- 
 manently like those of France. The chairs are kept in side chapels and 
 elsewhere, and only brought out when wanted, an arrangement occasion- 
 ing much confusion and unrest. 
 
 77 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 so beneficial and so edifying that were instituted by St Charles 
 Borromeo in the sixteenth century. It was both novel and 
 affeding to behold on this Sunday afternoon the vast area 
 of the nave of Verona Cathedral filled with children, form- 
 ing two divisions of boys and girls ranged opposite each 
 other, and these again subdivided into classes, according 
 to their age and capacities, drawn up between the pillars, 
 while two or more instruftors attended each class, and di- 
 refted their questions and explanations to every little indi- 
 vidual without distindlion. An ecclesiastic attended each 
 class, accompanied by one or more laymen for the boys, and 
 for the girls by as many matrons. Tables were placed in 
 different recesses for writing. 
 
 The pious originator of this weekly praftice extended it 
 to every part of his immense diocese ; and it is observed, I 
 believe, not only in all the parochial churches of the Mi- 
 lanese, but of the neighbouring dioceses, whether suffragan 
 to Milan or not. Threading my way among the numerous 
 groups of little people, I passed out into the spirit-sooth- 
 ing cloistral appendages on the south side of the Cathedral, 
 where I made a leisurely inspeftion of the little church of 
 St Giovanni in Fonte, and the mosaic pavement discovered 
 twenty-two years ago by the Most Rev. M. Parlo Vignola, 
 archdeacon and manager to the canons of Verona. A 
 very beautiful fragment of an ancient Roman bath with 
 divers colours and designs, usually concealed by sawdust, 
 which was removed for my inspedlion, it is 400 feet long 
 and 152 feet wide. The cloister was built on the mosaic 
 without damaging it. It begins at the Cathedral library at 
 the west end of the southern ambulatory and ends at the 
 Baptistery or Church of St Giovanni in Fonte, avery charm- 
 ing little basilica in a simple but graceful Romanesque style. 
 
 78 
 
Verona: St. Giovanni in Fonte. 
 
 (Baptistery of the Cathedral.) 
 
 To /ace page 78. 
 
VERONA 
 
 The font of yellow Verona marble Is an early example 
 of how in the thirteenth century Lombard sculpture seems 
 to have lost much of its old vigour without acquiring any 
 qualities of superior grace or refinement. Each side of the 
 font is covered with a large relief of a Biblical subjed, 
 very dull and coarse in execution. The font itself is inter- 
 esting from its early form, one common in the chief bap- 
 tisteries of Northern Italy. Like an island in the centre of the 
 great odlagonal tank is alobed marble receptacle, in which the 
 officiating priest stood while he immersed the catechumens. 
 A moveable wooden bridge must have been used to enable 
 the priest to cross the water in the surrounding tank. 
 
 There seems to be much disagreement between antiqua- 
 ries in regard to this most pifturesque if notadlually beau- 
 tiful Cathedral at Verona, which owing to the unfinished 
 state of its south-eastern campanile makes but little show 
 in the panorama of the city. It was certainly completed by 
 806, and the epitaph to an archdeacon, Pacificus (who 
 founded seven churches in the city, and was himself a skil- 
 ful artist in wood, stone and metal), tells that he ordered 
 repairs thirty years after the death of Charlemagne, namely 
 in 844.* The apse, withits thin closely-set pilasters of Corin- 
 thian form, together with the lateral walls of the choir, may 
 be of the original strudure, otherwise this grand and cha- 
 raderistic building cannot be referred in any part to date 
 earlier than the twelfth century. 
 
 Externally the salient points in Verona Cathedral are: the 
 
 •This epitaph to Pacificus, whose name is written in three languages, 
 Pacificus, Solomon, Irenxus, deserves quoting: 
 
 Archdiaconus quiescit hie vero Pacificus, 
 Sapientia prseclarus forma prxfulgida. 
 NuUus talis est inventus in nostris temporibus 
 Ecclesiarum fundator, renovator optimus, 
 
 79 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 series of apses along the north and south sides; the south 
 porch, whose illustration precludes the necessity of a de- 
 tailed description; and the graceful two-light window at the 
 west end of either aisle, belonging, it would seem, to some 
 very extensive works undertaken in the fourteenth century, 
 when the whole character of the interior must have been 
 changed by the introduction of those graceful pointed 
 arches rising from complex columns of red marble, boldly 
 sculptured as to their capitals with three rows of leafage. 
 
 The interior of Verona Cathedral is like a vase filled with 
 the memories of the past and the gems of genius — a focus 
 in which are concentrated the thoughts and energies of ages; 
 the successive schools of art from naive simplicity to de- 
 veloped excellence; the spirit of the Middle Ages and that 
 of the Italian Renaissance, all fused together with a result in 
 effeA that defies criticism. 
 
 The first view of an Italian Pointed church, whatever its 
 date, is startlingly unlike anything that we are accustomed 
 to in our own old buildings. It is usually a long, broad, 
 rather low strudure, lighted with but few windows, with a 
 small clerestory, if any, and with scarcely any irregularity in 
 shape or plan. We rarely find more than one tower, and this 
 is never combined with the rest of the design in the manner 
 common to us in the north. There is no approach to such 
 combination of steeples as are familiar to us at Canterbury, 
 Lincoln and Wells ; at Laon, Rheims and Rouen; at Bam- 
 berg, Gelnhausen and Laach.* The steeple, when it does 
 
 Zenonis, Proculi, Viti, Petri et Laurentii, 
 Dei quoque Genitricis. 
 Quadraginta et tres annos fuit Archdiaconus, 
 Septimo vicesimo aetatis anno Caesaris Lotharii, 
 Mole carnis est solutus anno Dominicse Incarnationis 846. 
 *The grand central tower is almost entirely unknown in Italy. 
 
 80 
 
VERONA 
 
 occur, is often detached; and when it is engaged, it is 
 placed in some irregular and abnormal position, where 
 we feel at once that it is purposely not intended to 
 be looked at in conjunction with the main fa9ade of the 
 building. 
 
 This habitual separation of the tower from the church is 
 the principal cause of the inferiority of Italian churches, 
 whether in the round-arched or Pointed styles, to those of the 
 North, such a separation depriving the ensemble of that fea- 
 ture through the help of which the west fronts of English and 
 French cathedrals are so much ennobled and embellished. 
 
 In Italy the only relief to the monotonous outline of the 
 main building is at the crossing, where, particularly in the 
 earlier Lombard churches, an octagonal lantern is intro- 
 duced, but this is as a rule of but slight elevation and not 
 intended to produce any of the effects aimed at in such 
 central steeples as those of Gloucester, Salisbury and Worces- 
 ter, Coutances and Rouen. 
 
 The Northern medieval architeft developed his style 
 away from the reach of the remains of classic architecture, 
 and with no precedents to divert his attention from the one 
 style which he was engaged in almost unconsciously per- 
 fecting, practically without the knowledge of any other. The 
 Italian was otherwise situated. He worked in a country with 
 a great past, the architedural monuments of which were 
 everywhere around him. And these architeftural monu- 
 ments belonged to a school of constructive design totally 
 opposed to that which was dominant in Europe during the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 They were the monuments and representatives of the 
 great lintel system, which had died out with the decline and 
 fall of the Roman Empire. The new structural form was 
 
 8i 6 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 that of the arch in its entirety, which had only been half ac- 
 cepted by the Romans in a one-sided and architedlurally 
 apologetic manner, but was now to be carried to its utmost 
 development by the Goth, whose influence was to become 
 prominent throughout Europe. 
 
 But in the midst of this permeation of the arcuated style, 
 there lingered in Italy a constant tendency to a revival of, 
 or return to, the antique forms, the remains of which were 
 so plentiful; and the result was not only the existence here 
 and there of groups of artists influenced by some one build- 
 ing of antiquity which they admired and were desirous of 
 reproducing in its best features in their new work, but a gen- 
 eral obstacle everywhere to this frank acceptance of the arcu- 
 ated style as a system of balanced and buttressed construction. 
 
 The old classic principle of repose stiU asserted itself in 
 the medieval art of Italy. The buttress was never made a 
 feature in the design, except with old classic pilaster-like 
 forms; the arch was largely used; its pointed form was more 
 or less adopted, though with hesitation, but its external 
 constructive expression was shirked, and the obvious aim 
 was to combine the Gothic arcuated construction with the 
 classic immobility of design and expression; or, if this were 
 not the conscious aim, it was the unconscious result of con- 
 flicting tastes and associations. It is to the lingering of cer- 
 tain reminiscences of classic art that is mainly due the want 
 of unity of design, and the entirely unsatisfactory character 
 of the Italian buildings erected between the middle of the 
 thirteenth and the end of the fourteenth centuries as com- 
 pared with the best of Northern Gothic. 
 
 " You may go to a grand English cathedral," says one 
 of the most distinguished architects of the Gothic Revival, 
 " and find that from every point of view, inside and outside, 
 
 82 
 
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VERONA 
 
 every feature is well proportioned to its place, and beautiful 
 in itself, while the tout ensemble is also perfect both in detail 
 and in mass; and one always finds it necessary to make 
 excuses for even the best foreign works, such as one never 
 finds necessary or allows oneself to think of making for 
 English ones." 
 
 There is something really absurd in comparing even the 
 best of the Italian churches with such cathedrals as those 
 of Canterbury and Lincoln, so superior are the latter from 
 almost every point of view. 
 
 Most of the characteristics I have just pointed out are 
 to be found in the Church of Sta Anastasia at Verona, of 
 which a very good birds'-eye view is given in the plate 
 representing the panorama of the city on page 60. 
 
 In examining the features of any national school of 
 architecture, it is interesting to observe 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 not 
 only of France, England and Germany, but of Spain. Each 
 had its special arrangement of plan seldom departed from, 
 and handed on from age to age as a precious heirloom. In 
 Italy the same feature strikes us there in almost all the 
 buildings of the Pointed style. 
 
 Their plans are all derived from two ancient types, both 
 of which are of great 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 almost all the Italian Gothic churches with transepts 
 were copied. 
 
 Looking at the ground plan of St Paul extra Muros at 
 Rome, and comparing it with the fully developed church 
 
 83 ea 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 of Sta Croce at Florence, we see that the only absolute 
 difference consists in the addition of small chapels in the 
 eastern side of the transepts, so that in place of the one 
 apse which marks the former we have the central apse and 
 five chapels on each side of it; whilst in the churches, 
 founded on the same type, of the Frari at Venice and St 
 Domenico at Siena there are three; and in Sta Maria 
 Novella at Florence, SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice, and 
 Sta Anastasia at Verona, two eastern apsidal chapels on 
 each side of the apse, all opening directly into the 
 transepts. 
 
 The Church of St Clemente at Rome, dating from the 
 fifth century, with its three aisles terminating in parallel 
 apses at the east end, is the other type followed in such 
 churches as the Cathedral of Torcello near Venice and, in 
 fact, all Italian Pointed 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, as, for example, in the StFermo 
 at Verona and the Church of the Eremitani at Padua, they 
 still looked back to their old precedents, and finished them 
 at the east with those parallel apses. 
 
 Thus, in this respect, Italian Gothic was simply a natural 
 development from an earlier style and, adhering very 
 closely to the older plan and arrangements, affords us 
 scarcely an example of those prolonged choirs of which our 
 English cathedrals and abbeys are perhaps the most magni- 
 ficent examples. 
 
 But it was not only in respect of the plan that Italian 
 Gothic thus founded itself upon what had before existed. 
 The traces of classic influence are so many and so clear, 
 that it is not too much to say that Gothic art was never 
 
 84 
 
VERONA 
 
 fully developed in Italy, so fettered was it by the ever-pre- 
 sent influence of buildings in another style. 
 
 Hence the more we study the peculiarities, the more we 
 see how strange a mixture there is in it of the character of 
 Classic and Gothic art. 
 
 Begun by the Dominicans very shortly after the middle 
 of the thirteenth century, Sta Anastasia at Verona is a 
 church of a type specially adopted by that Order in Italy, 
 as, for instance, in St Lorenzo atVicenza and SS. Giovanni e 
 Paolo at Venice, wherein grandeur of proportion, ample 
 space for large congregations and the tall cylindrical column 
 — little used in England after the Transitional period, but 
 on the continent through all the epochs of the Pointed — 
 are the main characteristics. 
 
 Graceful, yet at the same time majestic, Sta Anastasia 
 is cruciform in plan. The campanile stands between the 
 choir and the transept, whose roof is carried without any 
 break in the shape of a lantern from north to south. The 
 effect is peculiar, but the arrangement is only observable 
 from the east, owing to the much greater lowness of the 
 choir and apse. Sta Anastasia, groined in brick throughout, 
 and quadripartitely, has a nave of six bays with tall cylin- 
 drical columns of red and white marble, delicately foliaged 
 as to their capitals, and resting upon very good bases. 
 
 The clerestory windows, as at Sta Maria Novella at 
 Florence and Sta Maria sopra Minerva at Rome, are cir- 
 cular, but enriched with sexfoil cusping. The arches are 
 simple, and evidently prepared for the painted decorations, 
 which are exquisite; and the general effedl of the interior, 
 enriched as it has been from time to time with costly fur- 
 niture, is truly solemn and imposing. A great drawback to 
 the ensemble of this lovely church is the presence of iron 
 
 85 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 ties spanning the bays at the springing of the arch. In me- 
 dieval times vaulted roofs were the favourite mode of cover- 
 ing spaces, and the spans of the arches had to be regulated 
 by the nature of the materials available. Arches could only 
 be pradically built within certain limits of size, and the 
 thrust of such arches had to be carefully provided for by 
 the eredion of buttresses, turrets and similar features. In 
 this respetft the Northern architeds evinced pre-eminent 
 skill. The beautiful curves of their groinings are not inter- 
 fered with by ties or other visible support, and the neces- 
 sary buttresses which exist outside contribute in no small 
 degree to the external beauty of the buildings. Even where 
 these buttresses are exaggerated, they are not without an 
 efFedtive charadter, as may be seen at Chartres, Le Mans 
 and Notre Dame, Paris, where the buttresses around the 
 choir have a somewhat undue influence upon the other 
 architeftural features of the building. 
 
 In the south the Gothic architeds of Italy showed less con- 
 strudtive ingenuity. Ignoring buttresses, they sought other 
 means of combating the thrust of their arches. They found 
 it in a system of iron ties, which connedled the columns 
 with each other and with the walls, and prevented the arches 
 from spreading. This expedient, faulty though it be, has 
 attracted admirers and even some imitators, but it can 
 hardly be approved by the thoughtful critic. It brings too 
 evidently under notice the defedb which attaches more or 
 less to all arched buildings — their quality of unrest, giving 
 an idea of imperfedion, destrudtive of confidence in the 
 solidity and stability of the strudture. 
 
 The windows, as everything in this fine church, are vigor- 
 ous and bold, and executed altogether on proper principles; 
 though, unfortunately, they are disfigured by coloured 
 
 86 
 
Verona : Interior of Sta. Anastasia, looking East. 
 
 Jo fact page iB 
 
VERONA 
 
 glass of the most terrible patterns and tints. They have 
 enclosing arches built in alternate layers of brick and 
 stone, and their traceries are entirely of stone, consisting 
 of simple geometrical piercings of the simplest and purest 
 outline. Here the tracery is treated simply as a piercing in 
 a slab of stone and not as a piece of construded masonry, 
 such as is commonly seen in medieval English buildings, 
 and one to which, therefore, all our prejudices naturally 
 attach us most strongly. Up to a certain point the Italian 
 method had both true principles and good reason in its 
 favour. 
 
 Given an arch of sufficient strength to carry the whole 
 superincumbent weight of wall, it may fairly be argued that 
 the filling in under it would be, where possible, a single 
 thin block of stone, pierced with such openings only as were 
 necessary to admit light; and the result would be generally 
 that we should have nothing but plate tracery (which it 
 would be waste of time to prove to be better than any other 
 form) in place of the too ingenious line tracery, to which the 
 Northern system of construdion was likely to, and did 
 always, lead. But it is obvious that the Italian system could 
 never be carried out properly in any but small windows, 
 and those who have studied North Italian Pointed know 
 that it ended in a less satisfadory manner than did our own 
 system of geometrically construded bar tracery. 
 
 We see comparatively little ancient stained glass in Italy 
 —in Verona none at all— though now and then, as in the 
 Cathedral at Florence, at Arezzo and StPetronio, Bologna, 
 it does occur, and in all these examples of the most gor- 
 geous colour. 
 
 Unless an Italian Pointed church owes something to the 
 hand of the painter, I venture to say that it must be called 
 
 87 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 tame, bald and unsatisfadory, as witness those two huge 
 buildings of different epochs, St Antonio at Padua and St 
 Petronio at Bologna; but we should have affronted Niccola 
 Pisano and Antonio Vincenzi by telling them so to their 
 faces. 
 
 The truth is the Italian architeft of the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries, like a certain great English architect 
 of the nineteenth, regarded architefture as a vehicle for the 
 representation of the sacred story in sculpture or fresco. 
 
 The great religious Orders too were wise patrons of art, 
 as St Francesco at Assisi, Sta Maria Novella, and Sta Croce 
 at Florence amply testify; and not a little of the noblest art 
 of the medieval period is attributable to the foundation so 
 nearly together of the two great religious Orders, the Fran- 
 ciscans in I2IO and the Dominicans in 1215, who, rivals in 
 most things, were rivals also in their patronage of art and 
 artists, and creating rivalry among the latter, pointed the 
 way continually to fresh victories. The result is that some 
 of the North Italian church interiors possess more interest 
 for the true artist who rejoices in the combination of all 
 the arts than any in the world; and St Francesco, at Assisi, 
 a fine groined church of genuine Northern Pointed design 
 and effeft, shows the result of such a combination by pro- 
 ducing the most perfed church interior in Italy; whilst the 
 interior of Sta Anastasia at Verona, an example pitched 
 altogether in a much lower key, is a good example of the 
 effeft which is obtainable by the use of simply decorative 
 painting. Not only is this scheme of coloured decoration at 
 Sta Anastasia remarkable for its beauty and completeness, 
 but as being coeval with the building. 
 
 The vaults are very gracefully painted with floriated 
 bands along the ribs, and central patterns in each cell, the 
 
 88 
 
Verona : Western Doorway of Sta. Anastasia. 
 
 To face page 8 
 
VERONA 
 
 colours being rich and soft on a white plastered ground. 
 The eastern portion of the vault, including the choir and 
 one bay of the nave, has the older and simpler decorations. 
 The rest of the nave has more elaborate painted ornament — 
 foliage mixed with figures of Dominican saints, executed 
 in the fifteenth century. On the walls below are many fine 
 frescoes, ranging from 1300 to the fifteenth century, with 
 noble effigies and reliefs of saints and sacred subjefts. 
 
 High up, over the central opening into one of the 
 chapels opening from the south transept, is one of the 
 most beautiful frescoes of Pisanello or Vittore Pisano, a 
 very charming painter and the greatest medallist of Italy. 
 The scene represents St George and the Princess after the 
 Conquest of the Dragon, with accessory figures, the sea, 
 a mountainous landscape and an elaborately painted city 
 in the background. In the Capella di Gesu, a little chapel 
 off the south aisle, admirers of Early Renaissance orna- 
 ment will view with pleasure a panelled pilaster, which, 
 set at an angle of about 45 degrees, and carried round 
 the arch above the capital, forms in this and many other 
 cases in the same school of work the substitute for the 
 recessed ordering of a Gothic archway. 
 
 The west front of Sta Anastasia is one of that class in 
 which it has been intended to cover the whole with marble. 
 In these cases the walls are first of all built very roughly 
 in brick, with courses projeding at intervals for the sake 
 of affording bond to the marble. In the majority of cases 
 the marble fronts have never been built above the base 
 mouldings, so that such rough, unfinished fronts as those 
 of Sta Anastasia, St Petronio at Bologna and Sta Croce at 
 Florence are quite characteristic of the country. 
 
 From the general truthfulness of St Anastasia, and the 
 
 89 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 exquisite beauty of the arrangement of the red, white and 
 grey marble in its western doorway — than which there 
 is hardly anything of its kind more beautiful or more 
 thoroughly Gothic in the whole realm of Italian Pointed 
 art — it may fairly be thought that we have lost as much 
 by its non-completion as by that of any other unfinished 
 building in the country. 
 
 Adjacent to the west front is the beautiful little chapel 
 of St Peter of Verona with plate tracery in the circular 
 windows similar in charader to the window in the south 
 transept of Sta Anastasia. It is, however, only one of a 
 type frequently met with in Italy, and hardly merits the 
 praise which Ruskin has so lavishly bestowed upon it. 
 
 Verona is particularly rich in early examples of decora- 
 tive sculpture, exemplified in the very interesting series of 
 reliefs which cover the western fagade of St Zeno* — a per- 
 fefl: masterpiece of the decorative art of the period, the 
 middle of the twelfth century. These reliefs represent both 
 sacred subjeds and scenes of war and hunting, mingled 
 with grotesque monsters such as specially delighted the 
 rude, vigorous nature of the Lombards. They are all richly 
 decorative in efiedt, though strange and unskilful in detaiLf 
 
 As a Lombardic Romanesque fa9ade of its period, this 
 of St Zeno may be accepted as typical. The architedural 
 disposition of the interior is well marked on the exterior 
 by slender and most gracefully shaped pilasters or rather 
 half-columns which rise in the centre in four subdivisions, 
 whilst on the sides they are uninterrupted. The vertical lines 
 
 * St Zeno was Bishop of Verona in the time of the Emperors Julian 
 and Valentinian I (a.d. 362-380). 
 
 t Many of these twelfth-century reliefs are signed by the sculptor, but 
 these merely constitute lists of names about whom nothing is known. 
 
 90 
 

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VERONA 
 
 are agreeably broken by a frieze of arcades which empha- 
 sizes the confliding dynamic and static elements of the 
 construdion. Not less worthy of study is the finish and 
 originality of the porch. Projeding half-columns form a 
 tabernacle over the entrance. A semicircle which rises 
 above the door is richly decorated, as also is the field 
 formed by the architrave. Part of the western bronze 
 doors are especially interesting as being among the earliest 
 important examples in Italy of cast bronze reliefs. They 
 represent scenes from the life of the patron saint, are 
 rudely modelled, and yet very dramatic and sculpturesque 
 in style. Part of these doors are covered with bronze re- 
 liefs of scenes from the Bible, which are of stiU earlier 
 date and were probably brought to Verona from the 
 Rhenish provinces. They are frequently stated to be of 
 beaten bronze, but they are really castings, apparently by 
 the cire perdu process. 
 
 A rose window of great beauty, formed of concentrically 
 arranged arcades supported by columns, heightens the 
 beauty of the fa9ade. One of the earliest examples of what 
 is styled a Wheel of Fortune window, it was executed by 
 a sculptor named Briolotus, who also built the Baptis- 
 tery. An inscription in this latter records the fad:, and 
 speaks of the window as a work which excited wonder in 
 those times. 
 
 The Campanile stands detached but close to this fine 
 Lombard church, the west front of which is a reddish mar- 
 ble and the sides of mixed marble and brick in alternate 
 bands. Four or five courses of fine red brick lie between 
 bands of hard cream-coloured limestone or marble forming 
 broad stripes of red and white all over the wall. 
 
 The campanile, surmounted by a cone-shaped spire and 
 
 91 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 pinnacles, is wholly of brick and harmonizes beautifully with 
 the church, which stands clear of the other buildings on the 
 outskirts of the city of the Montagues and Capulets; and, as 
 the traveller approaches from Trent, this great mass of St 
 Zeno standing out against a clear blue Italian sky on such an 
 afternoon as thalt on which I first saw it, forms a never-to- 
 be-forgotten pifture. 
 
 The interior of St Zeno is beyond question the grandest 
 specimen of the Lombardo-Romanesque basilica in exis- 
 tence. Large and lofty, it has all the solemnity without the 
 gloominess of St Ambrose's at Milan or St Michele at Pavia, 
 being as may be supposed from its date (1138-78) in a 
 much lighter and more elegant phase of the style. 
 
 From the west door to the level of the nave there is a 
 descent of ten steps, contained in a kind of additional bay 
 westward of the first of a series of great piers dividing the 
 arches opening into the aisles into groups of twos and threes. 
 These arches rest on gracefully proportioned cylindrical col- 
 umns, whose capitals present much variety of foliaged and 
 other ornamentation, the Corinthian prevailing in the eastern 
 part of the nave. Two of the great attached piers above men- 
 tioned carry a segmental arch which spans the church trans- 
 versely and abuts the vast mass of walling above the arcades. 
 The piers of these spanning arches appear to have formed 
 part of a system of vaulting which was never carried out, 
 the archited contenting himself with a flat ceiling of wood 
 supported at intervals by arches. When the present graceful 
 Gothicchoir tookthe place of the Romanesque one in the fif- 
 teenth century, it was found necessary to remove this flat roof 
 and to replace it with another of larch wood, similar in con- 
 strudlion to those in St Fermo and in the great Eremitani 
 Church at Padua, but less complex in section. At St Zeno 
 
 92 
 
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VERONA 
 the roof takes a trefoil shape, with collars joining the two 
 cusps and coloured with gold flowers in white panels. Thus, 
 the two great transverse stone arches now support nothing, 
 being quite independent of the roof above them, and as may 
 be imagined a very singular efFedt is produced. This, how- 
 ever, is not the only instance in Italy of such an arrangement. 
 It occurs inter alia at Florence in St Miniato, where, how- 
 ever, the space between the arches and the simple wooden 
 roof of low-pitched gable form is filled up with masonry. 
 At St Zeno the remaining great attached piers support 
 nothing, so that the portion of nave eastward of the second 
 great transverse arch bears a considerable resemblance to that 
 of Ely Cathedral, where, it will be recoUedled, the original flat 
 Norman ceiling was raised to its present cradle form after 
 the great alterations carried out under Alan de Walsingham 
 after the old Tower fell early in the fourteenth century. 
 
 The clerestory walls at St Zeno are of great height, 
 pierced rarely at their highest part with very small round- 
 headed windows. We miss, however, the spacious triforia 
 of Milan and Pavia, there being nothing to occupy the 
 great surface of wall under the clerestory windows. 
 
 The aisles have open lean-to roofs, painted, and at the 
 west end of the southern one stands the font, a huge octa- 
 gonal mass of polished marble, having its sides enriched 
 with arcading. There are no sculptured groups, but the very 
 beautiful shaft introduced at each angle imparts lightness 
 and grace to a composition which might otherwise appear 
 heavy. High up in the walls of the aisles are a few small 
 round-headed windows, deeply splayed, and glazed in con- 
 tiguous circles. 
 
 The area of the choir is beautifully spacious and, raised 
 as it is, makes one of the noblest crypts in existence. The 
 
 93 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 services performed in it can be well seen and heard. Thir- 
 teen steps lead up to the choir from the aisles, while twenty 
 conduft down into the crypt, which is visible from the nave 
 through three arcades on elegant coupled shafts. 
 
 In the choir which terminates in a five-sided apse lighted 
 by lancets, unfortunately glazed in ugly sheets, the stalls 
 of excellent Complete Gothic character ranged continuously 
 round it should be carefully studied, likewise an exquisite 
 window in the north wall with a round arch comprising 
 three lancets on slender shafts, and the tympanum pierced 
 plate-tracery wise with two inverted quatrefoils. 
 
 The vaulting is truly beautiful, and the carefuUy restored 
 frescoes, which enrich not only this part of the church but 
 the walls of the choir aisles on either hand, will enchain the 
 attention of the student for hours. 
 
 Apparently these frescoes at St Zeno were painted hap- 
 hazard by one pious man after another without much 
 thought beyond that of making the particular work in which 
 he was interested tell its own story well and produce its own 
 effeA. So little did he think of other men's previous work 
 that the same subjedts are not infrequently repeated, with 
 the result that the walls are here sober and there gorgeous, 
 but everywhere coloured and everywhere more or less in- 
 teresting. 
 
 A genuine and still intact specimen of ninth-century work 
 is the crypt of St Zeno, founded to contain the tomb of that 
 saintly Bishop of Verona by Pepin, King of Italy, with low 
 semicircular vault, supported by forty columns, irregular in 
 their shafts and showing a vast fertility of ideas in the sculp- 
 ture of their capitals. This sole remnant of the original church 
 embodies an idea yet new in Italian architedture; and a mys- 
 terious gloom, a brooding presence of antiquity, imparts an 
 
 94 
 
Verona : The Crypt of St. Zeno, looking West. 
 
 To face page 94. 
 
VERONA 
 
 efFedl of awe and solemnity to those dim aisles and that forest 
 of piUars under its low arched roof. As to the architects of 
 this period little is known, except that the Comasque 
 builders still retained the pre-eminence and privileges they 
 had enjoyed under the Longobard kings, confirmed to them 
 by Charlemagne, with exemption from all local statutes and 
 burdens, the like favour being extended to them by the 
 Popes, They were allowed to fix their own wages, while 
 practitioners not of their society were forbidden to enter 
 into rivalship against them. 
 
 Important as is the brickwork of Northern Germany, 
 upon which I have dwelt at some length in my volume on 
 the architecture of that country,* it cannot be compared in 
 general artistic interest with that of the North of Italy. 
 Much as there is to find fault with in the construction and 
 general system of design of the Italian buildings of the 
 Middle Ages, it would be idle to deny to them those 
 highest merits which mark the work of civilized, delicate 
 and refined artists. German architecture, after the end of 
 the thirteenth century, was uninteresting and unrefined 
 beyond that of any other country, and the ascending scale 
 would take us from it through England and Spain and the 
 North of France, on to the greatest perfection which was 
 reached in some of their works by the best Italian artists. 
 In saying this I by no means give the palm to the Italian 
 artist; far from it. But his work has certain tender graces, 
 especially in its detail, which has never been surpassed; 
 though at the same time no English architect is wise who 
 proceeds, as so many have done, to study it without first 
 of all having studied, to such an extent as to be thoroughly 
 
 * The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine and North Germany, pp. 64 
 et seq. 
 
 95 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 penetrated with the spirit of, the inimitable old churches 
 of his own country. 
 
 There is some charming brickwork in the fourteenth- 
 century Gothic church of St Fermo Maggiore,* close to 
 the Ponto Navi, but it displays one of those features of 
 sham construdlion to which I have drawn attention both 
 in Italy and in Germany, i.e., the screen wall carried up 
 high above the roofs, but of no possible use. It occurs in 
 St Fermo, in the east end, where we have a central and 
 two smaller side apses opening out of one of those vast 
 aisleless churches of which the city presents several other 
 examples. Here we have each of the five sides of the cen- 
 tral apse surmounted by sham gables, the grouping of 
 which, with the pinnacles between them, and the tall, grace- 
 ful campanile adjacent, undoubtedly forms a most pidu- 
 resque tout ensemble. Perhaps the finest example of the 
 treatment of the east end of an Italian Gothic church is to 
 be found in that of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari at 
 Venice, where we have a central apse lighted by two tiers 
 of windows, and a series of chapels on the eastern side of 
 either transept, each with two windows on the same level 
 as the lower tier of the central apse. The division between 
 the two stages of the latter is strongly marked by a bold 
 cornice, occupying the place which in England would be 
 
 * It is traditional that the crypt of St Fermo pertains to the date when 
 the church was certainly founded, i.e. in 755, under the reign of the 
 Longobard Desiderius; and the massive piers, with plain heavy vaulting 
 in that subterranean church, have all the appearance of untouched anti- 
 quity. The date 1065 has been, however, conje£lured for this Veronese 
 example, and more plausibly than that earlier one. The crypt of St 
 Mark's, Venice, is the earliest example — at least, in its developed form 
 and importance — presented by Italian church architeflure, preceding 
 those that follow next in order of date, at St Miniato, Florence, of 1013, 
 and at the abbey of Monte Cassino, 1066. 
 
 96 
 
VERONA 
 
 held by a simple moulded string-course; and this is one of 
 the ever-recurring evidences of the fadl that the Gothic 
 architefts of Italy never so thoroughly and entirely shook 
 off the old classic traditions as did those of our own country. 
 The west front of St Fermo is as good an example of a 
 completed coloured fa9ade as any in North Italy. Its date 
 may be fixed between 1270 and 13 13, but its effedl is, as 
 is often the case in Italian work, that of a considerably 
 earlier period. 
 
 Here we find a round-arched doorway without any capi- 
 tals to its shafts, with two stages of arcading on either side, 
 and four lancets, trefoiled, above. A small four-light win- 
 dow occupies the gable, which is finished with the usual 
 cornice. 
 
 The whole front is built in alternated courses of red 
 brick and stone; pilasters finished with pinnacles stop the 
 strings and cornice at the angles, and a third pinnacle rises 
 from the apex of the gable. 
 
 The imposingly situated north porch of St Fermo is one 
 of that favourite and beautiful type in which each face is 
 arched, and the whole covered with a flat-pitched roof. The 
 arches spring from the carved capitals of single shafts 
 which are held together with iron ties to resist the thrust 
 of the arches. The doorway leading into the church is 
 perhaps one of the most beautiful in Verona, with the 
 rich, rope-like mouldings of its arch in stones of varied 
 hue, supported on either side by three receding shafts 
 with foliaged capitals. Above the shaft dividing the en- 
 trance is an effigy of St Fermo, represented carrying a 
 book and a palm branch, while in the tympanum of the 
 doorway and on the eastern wall of the porch there are 
 some fresco paintings in various states which will repay 
 
 97 7 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 examination by the student of the art, as will those in the 
 interior of the church above this doorway and at the back 
 of the beautiful stone and marble pulpit representing the 
 four Latin Dodlors, the Evangelists, the Ascent of Elisha, 
 twelve prophets with scrolls, and the Crucifixion. A fresco 
 of the Annunciation is the only other existing one of Pisa- 
 nello besides that in Sta Anastasia. 
 
 Originally St Fermo had an aisleless nave and transepts, 
 being in faft one of those great churches that was built for 
 the use and convenience of an order of preachers, and not 
 for receiving a number of altars. These were added and 
 chapels built for their reception in Renaissance times. 
 
 There is no distind choir, a semicircular screen of mar- 
 ble* very similar to that in the Cathedral containing the 
 chorus. The organ stands in the central apse behind the high 
 altar, but was completely hidden from view at the time of 
 my visit by those crimson and other coloured draperies with 
 which too many an Italian church is bedizened at festival 
 times. 
 
 The whole vast area of the nave, some fifty feet across, 
 is covered by a huge complicated wooden roof of multi- 
 foil shape, one of the finest examples of a class found, as a 
 rule, only in Venetia, or in churches built by Venetian archi- 
 teds in Istria and the subjed provinces. Such a roof, which 
 hardly admits of intelligible description, may be considered 
 the type of a late basilican one, basilican naves having been, 
 we know, first spanned by enormous wooden construdions 
 of great plainness. At St Fermo the framing is concealed 
 by a coving or barrel-vaulting in wood, the surface of which 
 is divided into small square panels all painted and gilt, im- 
 
 It has this inscription : " Expensis Corrocatiis et piorum eleemosvnis 
 MDLXXIII." 
 
 98 
 
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VERONA 
 
 parting a rich efFed. These fourteenth- and fifteenth-century 
 painted decorations are well preserved, delicate patterns cov- 
 ering all the framework of the panelling and of all the panels 
 themselves. At two stages where there is a check in the line 
 of the cornice rows of half figures of saints are minutely 
 painted on blue or gold grounds, forming a scheme of de- 
 coration indescribably beautiful. 
 
 I attended an evening service in this church on Whit- 
 Sunday. 
 
 When it began, the vast pillarless expanse was in gloom, 
 but during a very lengthy and impassioned sermon from 
 a Franciscan, every lamp and candle in the church was 
 lighted up, bringing out the shape and colouring of this 
 roof most vividly, the whole efFed being very striking. The 
 music, however, was trivial, the organ-playing very indif- 
 ferent, and the incessant fluttering of the ladies' fans not 
 a little irritating to a Northern temperament. 
 
 Totally unable to comprehend the worthy friar's dis- 
 course, I allowed my thoughts to vagabondize about the 
 architedure, watching the lighting of the aforesaid lamps 
 and candles — conduft which, had my lot been cast in the 
 days of St John Chrysostom, would assuredly have drawn 
 down upon me the reproof of "the Golden-Mouthed."* 
 
 • On one occasion, while Chrysostom continued preaching, probably 
 seated in his high chair, cathedra, or throne in the choir of the church, 
 the sunlight grew dim, and an attendant began to kindle the lamps. On 
 this the attention of the congregation was distradled. The preacher per- 
 ceived this, and recalled their wandering thoughts in the following pun- 
 gent words : "Let me beg you to arouse yourselves, and to put away that 
 sluggishness of mind. But why do I say this ? At the very time when I am set- 
 ting forth before you the Scriptures, you are turning your eyes away from 
 me and fixing them upon the lamps and upon the man who is lighting 
 t];ie lamps. Oh, of what a sluggish soul is this the mark, to leave the prea- 
 cher, and turn to him! I, too, am kindling the fire of the Scriptures; and 
 upon my tongue there is burning a taper, the taper of sound doftrine. 
 
 99 ^a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 It would be tedious to describe the remaining churches 
 of Verona in detail; a few outline notes of a few of the more 
 interesting and important must therefore suffice. 
 
 St Stefeno, distinguished by its rather tall odlagonal 
 lantern of red brick, is situated on Theodoric's side of the 
 Adige. The main body of this church has been ruthlessly 
 modernized, but it keeps the feature already mentioned, 
 its solemn pillared crypt, the arcades surrounding its upper 
 and lower apses, and the stone chair of the bishop still in 
 its ancient place, a memorial of the times when St Stefa- 
 no's disputed with the vaster Sta Maria Matricolare on 
 the other side of the river its right to be principal among 
 the churches of Verona, as the seat of her bishops in life 
 and their resting-place in death. 
 
 A few steps westwards and we arrive at the imposing 
 Renaissance church of St Giorgio, one of the most respec- 
 table of its class in Verona, and due to the native architeft 
 Sanmichele, 
 
 In common with almost every other Italian church of 
 its period St Giorgio shows how the designer made the in- 
 terest of his interior culminate in the central dome, with- 
 out destroying the effeA by something less imposing in 
 the shape of a deep choir beyond. 
 
 St Lorenzo is a small Romanesque church purged by 
 careful restoration of modernisms. It is extremely narrow, 
 and has a chancel, transepts, nave and two aisles. The choir 
 and aisles terminate in apses, and there is an apse on the 
 eastern side of either transept, so that the plan may be 
 termed parallel cinq-apsidal. There are triforia as in the 
 
 Greater is this light, and better, than the light that is yonder. For, un- 
 like that man, it is no wick steeped in oil that I am lighting up. I am 
 rather inflaming souls, moistened with piety, by the desire of heavenly 
 discourse." 
 
 lOO 
 
VERONA 
 
 Rhenish Romanesque churches, large enough for use as 
 galleries. These are vaulted, whereas the nave has only a 
 barrel-roof with tie-beams besides some arches across. 
 
 The arches of the triforia correspond to the nave arcades 
 below them, and are joined at the west end by a gallery. 
 The red marble piers have capitals like classical ones, but 
 some have no bases. There is a large, groined south porch 
 with two marble columns on lofty bases and with tall capi- 
 tals of the Corinthian acanthus kind. A large circular 
 tower rises at the west end of either aisle, built of brick and 
 stone in alternate layers and capped with a low spire of tiles. 
 In addition there is a south-eastern tower all of brick and 
 a cone-like spire. 
 
 The interior of St Bernardino is another of those huge 
 pillarless expanses like St Euphemia, St Thomas of Can- 
 terbury and St Fermo — Gothic^ but horribly modernized. 
 The two great cloisters here, one forming a kind of atrium 
 to the west front and the other lying along the north side 
 of the church, attest its former monastic opulence. 
 
 The little oratory of St Zeno has a pretty interior, the 
 round arch dividing the chancel from the nave rising only 
 to the height of those which separate the latter from its 
 aisles. 
 
 Another very unpretending little church is Sta Maria 
 Antica, consisting only of a -have and apse. The former has 
 six narrow bays on cylindrical shafts, with either plain or 
 much-defaced carved capitals. There is neither triforium 
 nor clerestory, and the groining is quadripartite, the trans- 
 verse arch between each vaulting bay springing from a 
 corbel in lieu of a continuous shaft. At the western part of 
 the nave the stone vault has disappeared, a rough wooden 
 ceiling taking its place. 
 
 loi 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The aisles have very small windows inserted high up in 
 the walls, but there are none whatever in the apse. A pretty 
 efFecft is produced by the responds or half-piers carrying 
 the easternmost bay on either side of the nave, being con- 
 strufted in alternate layers of red and white stone. 
 
 The magnificently-sculptured tombs of the Delia Scala 
 lords, outside this little church of Sta Maria Antica, exem- 
 plify Florentine influence in Verona. Designed with steadily 
 growing splendour, from the simple sarcophagus of Mar- 
 tin© 1. down to the elaborate canopy over the tomb of the 
 fratricide Can Signorio, designed with statuettes of the Vir^ 
 tues, to the possession of which he could lay so little claim, 
 the recumbent effigies and decorative details of these tombs 
 are very beautiful, but the smaller figures of angels, saints 
 and virtues are rather clumsy in proportion. The latest 
 tomb, that of Can Signorio, eredled during his lifetime 
 (c. 1370) is signed "Boninus de Campiglione Mediola- 
 nensisDioscesis." This sculptor, though of Milanese origin, 
 belongs really to the school of the Florentine, Andrea Pi- 
 sano. One characteristic of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies in Verona was the custom, also followed in other 
 Lombardic cities, of setting large equestrian statues on the 
 tombs of powerful military leaders, in some cases over the 
 recumbent effigy of the dead man, as if to represent him 
 in full vigour of life as well as in death. That which crowns 
 the canopy over the tomb of Can Grande is a very noble 
 though somewhat quaint work. 
 
 Apart from its churches, I visited few Italian cities with 
 more pleasure, and quitted few with more regret than Ve- 
 rona; whether as the first Italian city on my road it hap- 
 pened, by its appearance and monuments, very novel to a 
 transalpine traveller, particularly to engage my attention, 
 
 102 
 
VERONA 
 
 or whether it really possesses many means of exciting in- 
 terest, I know not; but, as I bade it farewell in the full 
 blaze of noon on Tuesday in Whitsun week, I could not 
 forbear addressing it in the words of Cotta, one of its poets: 
 
 Verona, qui te viderit, 
 Et non amarit protinus, 
 Amore perditissimo, 
 Is, credo, se ipsum non amat, 
 Caretque amandi sensibus, 
 Et odit omnes gratias. 
 
 103 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Vicenza 
 
 AS Genoa owes her splendour to her architeft, Galeasso 
 Alessi, the friend of Michael Angelo and Sangallo, 
 so Vicenza owes hers to Palladio, whose reputation as a great 
 Renaissance designer will probably survive after a fashion, 
 but more on the wings of fame and because what has once 
 been said about him than on the merits of what he called 
 buildings, but which were rather fuU-size models of build- 
 ings. More thought and more intelledt may have gone to 
 producing some of these than went to any of the now more 
 -admired structures of Venice and Verona; they form a 
 striking warning of the consequences of neglefting the first 
 desideratum of architefture, truth and durability of con- 
 struftion. There is a something singvdar in the geographi- 
 cal juxtaposition of Verona, Vicenza and Venice, lying at 
 the three corners of a not very large triangle of country, 
 representatives respedlively of real architectural building, 
 of "school" designing, and of picturesque architedlure of 
 no rule or regulation at all. 
 
 The fad that the latter has the most lively hold upon the 
 interests of most people at present, must not be made too 
 decidedly an argument in favour of the more lasting influ- 
 ence of the "romantic" school; allowance has to be made 
 for the historical associations of Venice as well as for the 
 faft that the romance side of artistic interest was so long 
 predominant in every branch of art and literature. "School" 
 art, on the other hand, always has in it the seeds of decay; 
 
 104 
 
VICENZA 
 yet the day has come round when the unquestionable talent, 
 not to say genius, applied to it by Palladio, has made Vi- 
 cenza again a centre of interest to the architedural traveller. 
 But the celebrated Renaissance architefl: destroyed his 
 chance by forgetting the construcftive basis of architedure, 
 contenting himself with getting up scenic buildings as fast 
 as he could without considering their future. He did so much, 
 however, in the art of abstradt design that it would not 
 be quite fair or allowable, even for the most ardent zealot 
 for Gothic, to pass his memory over with a sneer; though 
 every candid critic must admit how inferior in interest and 
 association are his artificial compositions to the sometimes 
 less artistic but genuine and durable eredions which the 
 Italian medieval architects, supplying the wants of their day 
 with the materials nearest to hand, have left as illustration 
 of brick and marble in the Middle Ages, 
 
 It is, however, with the ecclesiastical and not with the 
 civil and domestic architefture of Vicenza, that this work 
 is immediately concerned. So I will at once pass on to the 
 Cathedral, one of those buildings in which we can discern 
 how tame and uninteresting beyond that of any other nation 
 Italian Pointed architefture could become after the middle 
 of the thirteenth century. 
 
 Begun in 1260, the Cathedral of Vicenza is an immensely 
 broad edifice, mainly built of brick, and comprising a nave, 
 60 feet wide, without aisles, but with a series of chapels 
 opening out of it, and a choirof corresponding width finely 
 raised upon a crypt and terminating apsidally. 
 
 As I have already pointed out, the clerestory in an Italian 
 Gothic church is, as a rule, a very insignificant feature; in 
 fact, the windows which may be regarded as the eyes of a 
 building, the feature by which it is immediately recognized 
 
 105 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 like the belfry windows of an English tower, contribute 
 but little to the general appearance of the structure. 
 
 At Vicenza, however, the clerestory of the Cathedral is 
 unusually lofty; the windows, which are pointed ones of two 
 lights without any cuspings or tracery, resemble some of 
 our later First Pointed ones.* Three of these clerestory win- 
 dows light each of the four great compartments into which 
 the nave is divided, and to accommodate themselves to the 
 pointedarchof the vaulting which spans them internally, 
 the central one is placed somewhat higher up in the wall than 
 that on either side of it. 
 
 The brickwork forming the parapet above the windows 
 is worthy of notice. It consists of one row of billeted or dog- 
 tooth ornament, a second in which the design takes the form 
 of a rope-like moulding, and a third composed of a number 
 of little diamonds between uprights. 
 
 The windows which light the chapels fringing the nave 
 are of two acutely pointed lights resting upon a corbel in lieu 
 of the prolonged shaft. The effect is singular, but hardly 
 pleasant, being somewhat^ la Strawberry Hill and Fonthill 
 Abbey. 
 
 The west front, of a type common to churches in this part 
 of Italy, has fine tall, wide arcades beneath a gable the whole 
 width of the church. I speak of the gable, but in this instance 
 it has a flat apex and curved sides. The five pointed arches 
 in this west front ofVicenza Cathedral start from square piers 
 with pillarets Jiiched in their angles, such as we see in the 
 Romanesque of Brunswick and Saxony, and beautifully foli- 
 aged capitals. Within the central arch is a squarfe-headed door- 
 way beneath a pointed arch, which has two orders of mould- 
 
 *As, for example, those in the chapel and " solar" of Charney Manor 
 House, Oxfordshire. 
 
 106 
 

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VICENZA 
 
 ingjthe outer one being composed of twisted shafts while the 
 inner one assumes a scroll-like charader. The tympanum is 
 unrelieved by carving or fresco. The wall within the arches 
 on either hand is built of red stone in squares, that immedi- 
 ately adjacent to the doorway being pierced with a long two- 
 light window whose central shaft is banded at mid-distance. 
 The lights are sharply pointed, and a small quatrefoiled 
 circle forms the tracery. Above the arcades is a wall space 
 in whose four compartments the stone-work is relieved by 
 little red diamond-shaped panels, which produce a very pleas- 
 ing effect of natural colour; and in the centre is a finely 
 dimensioned round window, with spokes of a very weedy 
 order radiating from its centre. 
 
 From the south-west corner of the somewhat dreary 
 square in which the Cathedral is situated,an interesting assem- 
 blage of objefts presents itself, embracing the vast but not 
 picturesque Duomo itself; a low campanile imbedded in some 
 houses opposite with shrubs growing out of the brickwork; 
 and the graceful tower in the Piazza Ragione, in which the 
 red brick of its three upper octagonal stages contrasts strik- 
 ingly with the green of its copper dome. I may remark in 
 passing that this campanile which rises from the midst of 
 some of the masterpieces of Palladio, is even more slender 
 than others, being 20 feet at the base and 300 feet high; 
 and it must be remembered that what gives these bell towers 
 their singular aspect to the English eye, as compared with 
 our church steeples, is that the tower is carried up the whole 
 height of the same size as the base, or at least with so small 
 a diminution as to make it difficult to decide whether it 
 actually contracts, or only appears to do so from the effect 
 of perspective. In medieval days the bell tower or campanile 
 was the symbol of power. The liberty to ered such a tower 
 
 107 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 was everywhere highly prized as a sign of independence, 
 and we know that this was the case in the North as well as 
 in the South, in the « Free Towns " founded in France by 
 our own King Edward I, as well as in the prosperous com- 
 mercial cities of the Low Countries, and the more stately cap- 
 itals of the Italian States. 
 
 Apart from their special significance, the Italian Gothic 
 campanili must be considered interesting rather than ad- 
 mirable in an architedlural sense, and cannot, I venture to 
 think, be allowed for one moment to cast into the shade the 
 merits of our own medieval towers and spires. In the plains 
 of Italy they had a special justification, serving both as watch- 
 towers and guides, as well as indicating the power and 
 authority of the cities in which they were placed. 
 
 The apse of the Cathedral has been prolonged into a 
 tall lantern and dome, a questionable addition. Here the 
 material is light and dark red stone in alternate layers. 
 Pilasters with capitals reminiscent of those in the side 
 and main apses of Verona Cathedral run up the wall, mark- 
 ing it off into thirteen compartments which are lighted by 
 as many tall narrow round-headed windows of one opening, 
 whose height would appear exaggerated but for the piece 
 of stone carving introduced transom-wise at mid-height. 
 The low obtuse-headed windows of the modernized crypt 
 are seen below the pilasters, so that altogether this apse of 
 Vicenza Cathedral is unusually elevated. 
 
 Inside, the church, whose arrangement of arcades and 
 vaulting recalls that of Mtinster and OsnabrUck Cathedrals, 
 can hardly be pronounced so poetical from its extravagant 
 breadth, thus neutralizing its height, which is by no means 
 inconsiderable. It is also very deficient in colour. There are 
 four great pointed bays each subdivided into two lesser 
 
 io8 
 
VICENZA 
 
 ones, which open into the lateral chapels and support the 
 above-mentioned clerestory. The great arches spanning 
 the nave transversely spring from attached piers formed of 
 a semicircular half-column with a slender square shaft on 
 either side of it, all with h crochet capitals and rope-like 
 mouldings to the vaulting ribs. 
 
 At the time of my visit the walls and pillars were hung 
 with well-worn crimson drapery bearing large gold crosses 
 and sentences from the hymns Vexilla Regis prodeunt and 
 Pange lingua gloriosi. 
 
 A corbelled gallery at the east end of the nave on either 
 side supports an organ in a case of pseudo-Gothic design 
 painted white and relieved with gold. 
 
 To the choir there is a stately ascent by twenty red 
 marble steps, and on either side another flight communica- 
 ting with the crypt, which has no central avenues of pillars 
 and is, in consequence of its modernization, poor and 
 uninteresting. All its two-light windows are glazed inside 
 irrespective of their muUions, an unpleasant Italian trick. 
 
 The rich marble balustrade which flanks the steps leading 
 to the choir is returned north and south above the arches 
 opening into the crypt, and surmounted by six very hand- 
 some bronze candlesticks, which look remarkably well in 
 their position. 
 
 The stalls are carried completely round the eastern limb 
 and apse; they have Corinthian backs with paintings in the 
 panels, and are surmounted by a sham balcony. The com- 
 paratively small high altar has a reredos consisting of four 
 Corinthian columns and a round-headed centre with square 
 wings, and over it hangs a baldachinoof white and gold stuiF. 
 
 At half-past five on Whit-Tuesday I heard Vespers sol- 
 emnly sung here. 
 
 109 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 The three officiants were in crimson copes, and the 
 cantors, similarly vested, were at the lectern on the south 
 side of the choir. The psalms were sung unaccompanied 
 plain-chant-wise, but at the "Sicut crat in principio" to 
 each Gloria Patri the organ broke in with very pleasing 
 effect, continuing on into a short interlude between each 
 psalm. The office Hymn was the Vent Creator Spirilus, 
 and the Magnificat was sung to the sixth tone with light 
 but not undevotional interludes. Vespers concluded, the 
 organist decamped, leaving the clergy in the stalls behind 
 the high altar to sing Compline as best they might. 
 
 The subject of music at Vicenza recalls an incident in the 
 career of Domenico Dragonetti (i 755-1 846), who was to 
 the aspiring bass-player what Paganini used to be to the 
 violinist. His tone and execution alike were of the rarest 
 type, placing him far above any contemporary performer. 
 It was at Vicenza that Dragonetti, having received an en- 
 gagement to play in the grand opera, met with his renowned 
 double-bass, the work of Gasparo di Sal6, who was master 
 to the celebrated Amati.* The instrument had formerly be- 
 longed to the Convent of St Pietro. The happy Dragonetti 
 hastened to have his prize repaired, and when finished, he 
 proceeded to make the full trial of its powers in the hall of 
 his residence. So great was the strength of the tone he pro- 
 duced, that some of the servants came out of the kitchen, 
 wondering what had caused the vibration of the brazen 
 vessels on the shelves. They who are inclined to question 
 this fact should recollect that it is no uncommon occurrence 
 
 •This celebrated instrument, theidenticalonealways played upon by him 
 at public concerts and at solemn public performance in the church ser- 
 vice, was bequeathed by Dragonetti to the Patriarchal Church of St 
 Mark, Venice. 
 
 IIO 
 
VICENZA 
 
 with powerful voices in a room to produce a considerable 
 vibration of the wine-glasses on the table or sideboard. 
 
 As an architectural monument the Cathedral of Vicenza 
 falls considerably below the churches of La Sacra Corona 
 and St Lorenzo. 
 
 The former is a large cruciform brick church chiefly of 
 thirteenth-century date, with one of those gabled west 
 fronts maskingthe ends of the lean-to aisles that are of such 
 frequent occurrence in Italy. The central compartment of the 
 front, i.e., that corresponding to the nave, displays a very 
 large circular window with wheel-like tracery forming six- 
 teen divisions, and a doorway whose pointed arch rises 
 from square and clustered cylindrical shafts with (J crochet 
 capitals. 
 
 A modern sculpture of the cross encircled with the 
 crown of thorns occupies the tympanum, while the 
 lintel bears the legend, Tuam coronam adoramuSy TDomine. 
 In the compartment at the end of either aisle is a 
 long two-light window, with a traceried cross-bar or 
 transom at mid-height, such as we see in the apses of the 
 two great Venetian churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo and 
 the Frari. The west front of a short lean-to aisle or chapel 
 on the south side, abutting on a very graceful open porch, 
 shows a trefoiled lancet. There are four bays to the nave, 
 the columns being cylinders with cubiform capitals remi- 
 niscent of an earlier style; but the column at the junction 
 of the nave and transept is oftagonal with the oblique sides 
 narrower than the cardinal ones. Here the capitals are of 
 the stiiF-leafed or a crochet kind, and as there is no central 
 tower requiring a great mass of pier to support it, these 
 isolated odagonal columns have a peculiar effed similar to 
 that produced by those beautifully clustered ones in the 
 
 III 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 same position at Exeter, where, it will be remembered, the 
 towers partly form the transepts. From the capitals of the 
 nave piers at La Corona rise pilaster-like shafts supporting 
 the plain, wide transverse arches of the quadripartite vaul- 
 ting. The triforium is absent, and the bare expanse of wall 
 between the nave arcades and the clerestory windows is an 
 unpleasant, and by no means infrequent, Italian-Gothic 
 feature. The clerestory is of good height, the heads of its 
 two-light windows, with shafts coupled transversely, fol- 
 lowing the lines of the vaulting. There is no clerestory to 
 the first bay of the eastern limb, its arch rising to the same 
 height as those opening into the transepts. Beyond this 
 there is a short unpierced bay containing the steps leading 
 up to the choir and down to the crypt. An apse without radi- 
 ating chapels, and lighted by blunt-headed lancet windows, 
 transomed at mid-height like those in the choir of the 
 Duomo, terminates the whole; the division between the 
 eastern limb and the apse being marked by an arch rising 
 from two attached half-columns with foliaged capitals. 
 
 Some of the best modern stained glass I saw in Italy 
 fills the narrow lancets of the apse, the tinctures of the full- 
 length figures of saints therein represented being unusually 
 brilliant and good. 
 
 My ecclesiological studies at St Lorenzo were impeded 
 by the works of restoration which, at the time of my visit, 
 were going on in the interior. Like La Corona, St Lorenzo 
 is a cruciform church without much beauty of external out- 
 line, but here the aisles are much loftier, and the western 
 fa9ade resembles that of the Cathedral, comprising seven 
 pointed arches on square piers extending completely across 
 its lower portion, and a large rose window surmounted by 
 smaller ones which follow the great gable of the upper one. 
 
 112 
 
VICENZA 
 
 The three central arches are interrupted by a very noble and 
 deeply recessed portal, whose gable reaches nearly to the 
 whole height of this lower stage of the facade, while in each 
 of the two on either side is one of those tombs which, cor- 
 belled off from the wall and surmounted by a gabled arch 
 commensurate in depth, are of such frequent occurrence on 
 the exteriors of Italian-Gothic churches. Within, the arcade 
 assumes much loftier proportions than that of the Corona 
 church, pointed arches rising from gracefully proportioned 
 cylindrical pillars, the carving of whose capitals is of some- 
 what ambiguous design, at one time looking like shells, at 
 another like flowers. 
 
 The other churches that I saw in Vicenza are in the Re- 
 naissance style and, although imposing from their grand 
 dimensions and the richness of their furniture, do not call 
 for any special description. St Stefano is a Corinthian edi- 
 fice with an aisleless nave, transepts, short apsidal sanftuary, 
 in the apse of which is placed the organ, while a well-pro- 
 portioned dome rises at the intersedtion. There was an 
 Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament when I visited this 
 church during the afternoon; several ecclesiastics in albs 
 and crimson tippets were engaged in private devotion at 
 desks placed within the sanduary rails, and some tapers 
 burned upon the high altar. 
 
 At night the interior was a scene of much gorgeousness, 
 a result towards which the crimson damask hangings on the 
 walls and pillars largely contributed. The altar was a per- 
 fe6b blaze of lights, and when at certain parts of the service 
 the acolytes tossed up their thuribles, and the priests in 
 their fine copes grouped themselves in the sandluary, the 
 effed was really imposing, and, when the usual confusion 
 attendant upon the hiring of chairs had subsided, the ser- 
 
 113 8 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 vice was restful. The "Te Deumy solemnly sung to the plain 
 chant and in concerted parts in alternate verses, was toler- 
 able; but the Tantum Ergo was to that slip-shod version of 
 the melody which I heard everywhere in Italy, albeit the 
 congregation joined in it with considerable vigour and with 
 impressive efFedt. 
 
 St Stefano at Vicenza has four remarkably fine and sono- 
 rous bells, which, in accordance with Italian usage, were 
 rung intermittently for nearly an hour before the service 
 began. Their voices, however, alternated very agreeably 
 with those of the choir whom I heard rehearsing the music 
 for the forthcoming service in the adjacent song school, as 
 I strolled about the Piazza surrounding the church under 
 the starlit sky of a still June night. 
 
 114 
 
Padua: interior of ttie Arena Cliapei, looiiing West. 
 
 To face page 115 
 
PADUA 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Padua 
 "TT was heat and midday," when, on Wednesday in 
 XWhitsun week, I reached Padua, that city of domes, 
 wall-paintings and endless perspeftives of colonnades, that 
 "UrbemPatavi sedesque Teucrorum," and refledled with 
 no little exultation that I stood, so to speak, on the confines 
 of Greek and Latin literature, in a city that derives its 
 origin from a catastrophe celebrated in itself or in its con- 
 sequences by the two greatest poets of antiquity. 
 
 A picturesque but in some places deserted-looking city is 
 Padua, with arcaded streets and many bridges crossing 
 the various branches of the Bacchiglione, which once sur- 
 rounded the ancient walls. 
 
 The Palazzo della Ragione, with its great hall on the 
 upper floor, is reputed to have the largest roof unsupported 
 by columns in Europe. In plan it is nearly a rectangle, 267^ 
 feet long by 89 broad, and 78 high. The walls are covered 
 with symbolical paintings in fresco, and the whole stands 
 upon arches, the upper story being surrounded by an open 
 loggia not unlike that of the great basilica at Vicenza. 
 
 Begun in 1172 it was not completed until 1306, when 
 it was roofed by the skill of Giovanni, an Augustinian friar. 
 Originally it had three roofs spanning three chambers, into 
 which the hall was at first divided. The internal partition 
 walls remained until a fire in 1420, when a Venetian archi- 
 tedt who undertook the restoration of the building removed 
 them, throwing all three compartments into one and form- 
 
 115 %a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 ing the present huge pillarless expanse. Viewed at a distance 
 the roof looks like the inverted hull of some great ship. 
 
 The Cathedral of Padua, which by the way is built with 
 the apse to the west, is a large, naked and unfinished church 
 designed in revived classical by Michael Angelo. It is cruci- 
 form with a dome which seems poor and unsatisfactory in 
 efFeft. There is an (ecclesiologically) western transept sur- 
 mounted by a smaller dome, and a miserable unfinished brick 
 fa9ade. Internally the Cathedral is spacious but quite unin- 
 teresting architecturally. The stalls are behind the high altar 
 and are triple. 
 
 The high altar has two faces, but neither super-altar nor 
 reredos, but a baldachino is suspended above it. 
 
 The transepts are fitted up like choirs, and there are two 
 organs. 
 
 However, there are some relics of the earlier building in 
 the shape of an extremely good recumbent eflligy of a bishop, 
 and a high tomb bracketed on the wall with half-figures of 
 saints in bold relief .in quatrefoils on the sides. There is 
 another equally good tomb bracketed on the east wall of 
 the south transept. 
 
 Of far greater interest is the thirteenth-century Lombard 
 Baptistery, or Church of St Giovanni Battista, adjacent to the 
 south-west, really north-east, end of the Cathedral. In plan 
 it is a square for some height, then becoming circular and 
 surmounted by a dome masked externally by high walls 
 like that at Parma only on a much more modest scale. On 
 the eastern face of the square is a low projeftion constitu- 
 ting a chancel with an altar under a smdler dome, seen 
 rising out of the roof of a lean-to roofed building com- 
 mensurate in length and pierced at its south-east angle with 
 a porch. The walls are of brick, with very few openings, 
 
 ii6 
 
PADUA 
 
 and are recessed in panels between surface-buttresses and 
 engrailed corbel tables. 
 
 In the centre of the building stands the font, cylindrical 
 and bearing on its cover a figure of St John the Baptist, 
 Frescoes of much beauty and excellence enrich the entire 
 walls. In the middle of the large dome is a half-figure of 
 our Lord in the attitude of benediction, clothed in light 
 pink, with a mantle of light blue, and holding an open book 
 thus inscribed. Ego sum AQ, Primus et No\yis5imus'\. All 
 around there is a hierarchy, the blessed being arranged in 
 circles and the Virgin Mary appearing in an aureole. Scenes 
 from the Creation and Biblical history are depided in the 
 tambour, while the pendentives display the Evangelists 
 and their symbols. The southern wall of the square portion 
 has the following scenes from the life of St John the Baptist: 
 the Angel's Visit to Zacharias; Birth of St John; he is 
 brought to Zacharias; Preaches in the Desert; Baptizes our 
 Lord; Lies in Prison; Certain Miracles; Herod's Feast; 
 TheDecoUationof St John; his Head carried on the Charger. 
 On the west side — taking the chancel as the east — are the 
 Annunciation, Presentation, Visitation, Herod's cruelty, 
 the Dispute of the Doctors, the Procession of Palms and 
 the Last Supper, besides the Blessed Virgin under a canopy 
 and St John the Baptist. 
 
 On the north side we see the Nativity, Epiphany, Cir- 
 cumcision, Call of St Peter, of St Matthew, the Marriage 
 at Cana and three scenes from the Passion. 
 
 The remaining side has the Flight into Egypt, the Trans- 
 figuration, the Crucifixion, so placed that it forms the cen- 
 tral subjedb over the arch opening into the chancel, the 
 Entombment, the Resurredion and the Ascension. The 
 small dome, over the chancel, has a half-figure of our Lord 
 
 117 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 in the middle surrounded by the Blessed Virgin and the 
 twelve Apostles. Subjedts from the Apocalypse enrich the 
 side walls, and behind the altar there is a reredos painted 
 with many saints in compartments on a gold ground. 
 
 These wall paintings in the Baptistery of the Duomo 
 at Padua have been ascribed to Giusto di Giovanni de 
 Menabuoi, called Padovano, or Justus of Padua, a Floren- 
 tine of the fourteenth century, whose only authenticated 
 pidlure is a small triptych in the National Gallery, having 
 as its central subjeAthe Coronation of the Virgin; but they 
 have now been declared to be the works of two unimpor- 
 tant painters who were probably his pupils — Giovanni and 
 Antonio da Padova — to whom are likewise due the frescoes 
 in the Chapel of St Luke at St Antonio. 
 
 Taken as a whole, the ecclesiastical architedlure of Padua 
 must be pronounced very inferior, but in compensation we 
 have the remarkable wall paintings by which not only the 
 baptistery just described is adorned, but also the little 
 Chapel of the Arena, and the adjacent Church of the 
 Eremitani. 
 
 It is at Padua and Assisi that Giotto's chief works are 
 to be found. Some remain at Rome, and at Ravenna one of 
 the most beautiful contrasts in the world is in St Giovanni 
 Evangelista, where one of the chapels is decorated like the 
 Arena Chapel at Padua with Giotto's blue backgrounds and 
 lovely faces. His greatest architectural monument is the 
 Campanile at Florence ; the Arena Chapel at Padua affords 
 an idea of the universality of his powers as a colourist. To 
 this day no man has excelled or can excel the qualities of 
 the blonde faces one sees at Padua and Ravenna : his blues, 
 warm whites, golden tints on hair and ornaments, with 
 many subtle uses of Indian red or other pigments and va- 
 
 ii8 
 
Padua: Baptistery of the Cathedral. 
 
 Tofacepage ii8. 
 
PADUA 
 
 rious greens, are all matters of professional study to this 
 day. 
 
 Nowhere can the subjedt of painted wall decoration be 
 more advantageously studied than in Italy. In English, 
 French and German buildings we find it in a very frag- 
 mentary state from decay and intentional obliteration, but 
 in those of Italy we may study it in its integrity. Besides 
 this, the Italians having always excelled as colourists, the 
 intrinsic merits of these decorations may fairly be supposed 
 to be such as to command our special attention. 
 
 These details, however, can hardly be generally recom- 
 mended to dired imitation, being very materially derived 
 from classic ornament, and they were frequently guilty of 
 the modern sin of shamming, their decorations often repre- 
 senting marble of different kinds, mouldings and mosaics. 
 The bands or borders of ornamental work with which 
 they framed their frescoes or divided the surfaces of wall 
 or ceilings, and with which they edged their windows or 
 the compartments of groined vaulting, are often peculiarly 
 beautiful in their treatment, and though bearing strong 
 marks of the antique have furnished many a useful hint 
 for ourselves. 
 
 Their mode of introducing small busts of saints in fresco 
 in quatrefoils at intervals in their borders and in circles in 
 the vaulting is peculiarly beautiful, and has been adopted 
 in English work since the Gothic Revival, where a more 
 extended use of fresco has been found impossible. 
 
 Fresco painting, properly so-called, can only be studied 
 in Italy. It is the great glory of medieval art in that coun- 
 try, and in many cases buildings seem to have been de- 
 signed expressly as a field for artistic decoration of the 
 highest order, as for instance in this little Arena Chapel at 
 
 119 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Padua, the depository of the freshest and on the whole the 
 most delightful works of Giotto. Indeed, its walls resemble 
 pages from an illuminated manuscript. 
 
 Although studiously simple, few buildings in Italian 
 Pointed can exceed in interest the little chapel of Sta Maria 
 deir Arena at Padua, which was not only painted but de- 
 signed by Giotto, who is said to have been aided by Dante 
 in the choice of designs. In plan it is an oblong nave, with 
 a chancel of one bay besides an unequal three-sided apse, 
 about half the breadth of the nave. The chancel is groined; 
 its north wall has a door (at its extreme west end) into a 
 sacristy, beyond which are four miserere seats, well carved, 
 with a stone canopy. There are five such seats against the 
 south wall, and a piscina west of them all, facing the sac- 
 risty door. The broadest side of the apse is blank, but has 
 a rood, but the oblique sides haye single lancet lights with 
 broad splays. The heads of these lancets are not pierced, 
 but fitted with a plain surface of stone, below which are 
 pierced openings, with square cinquefoiled tops.* Under 
 each of these windows are two stone seats, presumably for 
 sedilia. The altar stands detached from the wall in the 
 apse, and there is an ascent to it of three steps guarded on 
 each side by rails of wrought iron, with sockets for tapers 
 along the top. The chancel arch is pointed, of two plain 
 orders, merely marked at the impost by a band of floral 
 mouldings on the hollow chamfered under-edge of an 
 abacus. 
 
 The north side of the nave has no windows; the south 
 has six blunt-pointed lancets, and the west end a three- 
 light window above the only door. The windows mostly 
 
 * These windows are examples of the plate form of tracery in its 
 simplest conditions, a system at once simple, natural and effedlive. 
 
 120 
 
PADUA 
 
 retain their ancient Venetian glazing — small circular panes 
 of thick glass; but remnants of rich figured glass exist suffi- 
 cient to show that it originally filled the windows, and its ab- 
 sence gives a somewhat cold, crude tone to the decorations. 
 The roof is coved, painted in azure with gold stars and 
 relieved by medallions containing half-figures of our Lord 
 and the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 The arrangement of the nave is remarkable. The chancel 
 being so much narrower than the nave, there is a con- 
 siderable wall-space on either side of the chancel arch. An 
 altar stands against each of these wall spaces, raised on a 
 platform besides a foot-pace. Westward of these are six 
 stalls on each side, with subsella contained within low solid 
 screens about breast high. 
 
 Thus there is a chorus cantorum locally situated in the 
 nave, besides the chancel. A few feet further to the west 
 are two more solid, but low, screens, between which and 
 the eastern screens on each side are rises of steps to a 
 platform at the level of the top of the screen. 
 
 There is a revolving leftern on the east face of each 
 platform and two more altars, one on each side on the west 
 face of the western-most screens which support sockets. In 
 the roof above is a large hole, pointing to the probability 
 of a rood beam having once spanned the chapel at this point. 
 
 It is not quite certain at what date Giotto went to Padua, 
 but this Scrovegno Chapel in the old arena of the city was 
 not built until 1303, and it was its founder, Enrico Scro- 
 vegno, a noble citizen, who employed Giotto to decorate it. 
 
 The undertaking was an arduous one, but the result 
 was equal to the opportunity, and this great decorative 
 work at Padua may be looked upon as the culminating 
 expression of Giotto's art. 
 
 121 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Nowhere do we find his ideal of concise direftness of 
 representation more successfully expressed than is the case 
 here, and nowhere do we find him reaching a similar per- 
 fedlion in the presentation of form and movement. The 
 entire decoration of this charming little edifice takes a fore- 
 most place among the wonders of medieval art, but to 
 enter into a detailed description of the numerous subjeds 
 would here be impossible. The "Last Judgement" aJone 
 would offer material sufficient for an almost endless study. 
 The influence of Dante was no doubt strong in Giotto at 
 the time when he painted this great "doom," and it is 
 conceived in quite a Dantesque style. 
 
 Briefly, the iconography of the chapel is as follows : 
 Commencing at the west end of the nave, which is en- 
 tirely frescoed without a single string-course or mould- 
 ing, we have above the entrance the "Last Judgement." 
 Our Lord, in an oval aureole, vested in pink with a white 
 mantle, is surrounded by the apostles seated on thrones. 
 St Mary is not enthroned, but stands in an aureole at the 
 head of the redeemed. Two angels, vested with crossed 
 stoles, bear the cross of the T-form. Scrovigno, the foun- 
 der of the chapel, is seen below offering a model of it to 
 our Lord. Three flying angels receive it from him. 
 
 Over the chancel arch is the "Annunciation"; but to de- 
 scribe aU the subjedls in detail would require a separate 
 chapter. Suffice it to say that they are not only very nume- 
 rous and very beautiful, but constitute quite an epitome 
 of sacred history. Our Lord is generally vested in a light 
 pink robe with an upper mantle of light blue, both edged 
 with gold. The under-vestment is seamless, and like a 
 dalmatic in shape. St Mary is always in light blue edged 
 with gold. 
 
 122 
 
Padua: Interior of the Arena Chapel, looking East. 
 
 To face page 122 
 
PADUA 
 
 The treatment of the " Resurredlion " is uncommonly 
 grand and beautiful; the vestments of the Saviour are white 
 and gold, and the attendant angels are represented in copes. 
 It should be observed that our Lord's nimbus is always 
 cruciferous. One of the most beautiful figures inthe " Cruci- 
 fixion" group is that of the Magdalene. Equally well treated 
 are the "Descent from the Cross" and the "Ascension." 
 
 In the " Day of Pentecost " the Twelve Apostles only are 
 present, the Blessed Virgin not being introduced. The base- 
 ment of the walls is painted, not in subjedls, but in allegori- 
 cal or symbolic figures of the Virtues and Vices intermixed 
 into architedlural compartments, presenting imitations of 
 marble, panelling, etc., with borders closely resembling 
 those executed in mosaic upon the tomb of Edward the 
 Confessor in Westminster Abbey, a species of decoration 
 that appears to have found much favour amongst the 
 Italian artists of Giotto's time, as it appears in the papal 
 chapel at Avignon, painted in his style or by his school. 
 
 The northern wall of the chancel shows us the " Repose 
 of the Blessed Virgin"; the southern one her burial and 
 assumption. By the altar are various saints, and in the wall 
 behind the sedilia there is a charming figure of our Lady 
 with the Holy Infent. Here the Virgin is vested in a light 
 blue robe, under a cope, and a white veil. In the tympa- 
 num of the sacristy door is a striking half-figure of our 
 Lord being mocked. 
 
 All these frescoes in the chancel are inferior to those in 
 the nave, and supposed by some to be by Taddeo di Bar- 
 tolo of Siena, but, from the close approach to Giotto's own 
 style, they are more likely to be the work of his pupil, 
 Taddeo Gaddi. 
 
 In close proximity to this little fourteenth-century Chapel 
 
 123 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 of the Arena stands the Church of the Eremitani, dedicated 
 to SS. Philip, James and Augustine, more remarkable for 
 its frescoes by Guariento in the great apse, and those by 
 Mantegna in the chapel opening out of the south transept, 
 than for much beauty as a specimen of late thirteenth- 
 century architedlure. For, like St Fermo and others in 
 Verona, it is one of those huge aisleless churches built for 
 the use and convenience of an order of preachers, and not 
 for receiving a number of altars. 
 
 It consists merely of a nave, 300 feet long, covered with 
 a roof of wood, massy and simple, of trefoil shape, boarded 
 and panelled so as to hide the construdion. There are also 
 many interesting tombs, but perhaps the greatest treasure 
 enshrined in this church is the altarpiece in the large chapel 
 of SS. Christopher and James, so remarkable for the great 
 beauty and purity of its design as to have excited the ad- 
 miration of all competent critics, but which appears to have 
 been executed by a sculptor of whom almost nothing is 
 known, and of whom it is not recorded that we possess 
 any other work. Originally executed in terra-cotta, now 
 coated with a brown varnish which causes it to look like 
 bronze, this altarpiece was carved about 145 1 by Giovanni 
 da Pisa, a companion and disciple of Donatello, who accom- 
 panied him to Padua at that time. This chapel contains some 
 early but very fine frescoes of the painter Andrea Mantegna, 
 and it would seem that this great master's style had largely 
 influenced the mind of the sculptor, if it did not furnish 
 the design, as it is impossible to avoid being struck by the 
 great similarity of treatment and charader in the sculpture 
 to the works of the painter. 
 
 In the centre of the retable is the Madonna seated in a 
 high-backed throne of quite classical severity. On either 
 
 124 
 
PADUA 
 
 side are three standing figures. Those immediately in at- 
 tendance on the Virgin and the divine Infant are St John 
 the Baptist and St Philip, who occupy a curve made by 
 what is apparently a hanging of some textile fabric, and 
 which forms the background to the figures on either side 
 of the throne. To the right of the speftator are St Christo- 
 pher with the Infant Christ on his shoulder, and St James 
 the Less; to the right are two figures in monastic habit, 
 one representing St Augustine, to whom the church is 
 conjointly dedicated. 
 
 In shape this retable is an oblong quite free from archi- 
 tectural accessories, and on this account is apt to be over- 
 looked by the visitor, dazzled and absorbed by Mantegna's 
 superb paintings. It is a work singular for the purity of the 
 composition in which, while partly retaining the antique 
 mode of distribution and its simplicity, we still observe a 
 variety of motives, and a certain grace and naturalness by 
 which the observer finds himself beyond measure charmed 
 by the attitudes, by the beautiful draperies, by the intelli- 
 gent anatomy, and thence he recognizes an art much more 
 mature than would at first appear. Indeed for refinement 
 and dignity of treatment this retable in the chapel of SS. 
 Christopher and James in the Eremitani Church at Padua 
 is worthy of a place amongst the best specimens of the first 
 half of the fifteenth century. 
 
 At precisely what date Mantegna began the paintings 
 in this chapel attached to the Eremitani Church at Padua 
 — the work by which he is best known — we have no cer- 
 tain knowledge; but they may be placed approximately be- 
 tween 1448 and 1455. The commission for the decoration 
 of this chapel had been given to Squarcione and his dis- 
 ciples by the Ovetari family, and it is probable that much 
 
 125 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 of the work had already been begun when Mantegna as- 
 sumed the responsibility. The following are only by his 
 hand: On the left wall, "The Baptism of Hermogenes," 
 "St James before Caesar," "St James led to Execution" 
 and "The Martyrdom of St James"; on the right wall, 
 "The Martyrdom of St Christopher" and "The Removal 
 of his Body." 
 
 Taken in the above order a steady evolution may be 
 traced from an academic and somewhat rigid style to a free 
 and natural treatment of form. Composition and effect show 
 a similar development. 
 
 The fame of these frescoes in the Church of the Eremi- 
 tani spread rapidly, and Mantegna became undisputed chief 
 of the Paduan painters. His genius was recognized and 
 applauded by princes and scholars. Books were dedicated 
 to him and poems composed in his honour. To this period 
 of his career (c. 1460) belongs the altarpiece representing 
 the Madonna enthroned in St Zeno at Verona. 
 
 Mantegna's wall painting was never fresco in the true 
 sense of the word, but is done on the dry plaster, a process 
 to which their present dilapidated condition is due. His in- 
 fluence, not only upon Italian art but throughout Germany, 
 was immense. Through him alone the Paduan school of 
 painting attained independence, and few painters have left 
 stronger or more beneficial efFeds upon contemporary art 
 than Mantegna. Not a school in Italy remained untouched 
 by his influence. 
 
 Padua possesses the earliest dated work of Mantegna, 
 the fresco representing SS. Antonio and Bernardino over 
 the western portal of the church dedicated to the former 
 saint, and to which we must now turn our attention. Early 
 as it is, we find in this embellishment to the great false 
 
 126 
 
ST. ANTONIO, PADUA. 
 
 FROM THE SOUTH. 
 
PADUA 
 
 front given by Niccola Pisano to his extraordinary creation 
 — a front in which everything is sacrificed to breadth of 
 cffcA — that perfeftion of technique, mastery of perspe<3:ive 
 and plasticity of modelling which distinguishes Mantegna's 
 works throughout. The fadt that when only twenty-four 
 he was employed in the three principal churches of Padua 
 proves that Mantegna's powers were fully recognized. 
 
 St Antonio at Padua is one of those buildings met with 
 in many countries which present all manner of anomalous 
 charaders, separating themselves from the other struftures 
 of the same age and nation, and perplexing investigation. 
 The anomalous appearance of this church would appear to 
 have arisen from the attempt of an Italian Gothic archited 
 to imitate other churches, notably St Mark's, Venice. It 
 belongs to an early period of the style, having been in 
 course of construdtion between 1231 and 1300, from the 
 designs of Niccola Pisano. Of the origin of this archited, 
 who was born in 1205, but little is known, but that little 
 is something wonderful if we are to credit the statement 
 that already, when only about fifteen years old, the Emperor 
 Frederick II made him his archited, and took him to 
 Naples, where he was employed on the castle which that 
 Emperor was building there. At the age of twenty-six we 
 find him going to Padua to build St Antonio, and then to 
 Arezzo to build St Domenico. Then we find him develop- 
 ing his skill as a sculptor, executing pulpits for Pisa and 
 Siena, and designing, and with the powerful aid of his son 
 Giovanni executing, the great fountain at Perugia. The 
 upper part of the lovely fa9ade of the Cathedral at Ferrara 
 is likewise due to Pisano, who may be styled the Vilars de 
 Honnecourt of Italy. He visits Venice, studies St Mark's 
 as a preparative for his first great work, St Antonio at 
 
 127 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Padua, picking up ideas where he can, and adapting them 
 to his own purpose. He thinks the group of domes at St 
 Mark's might be improved if they were loftier, and if one 
 were in some way more striking than the rest; then, recol- 
 ledling the great cone which covers the central portion of 
 the circular Baptistery at Pisa, he, with striking efFeft, places 
 it in the centre of this group of domes. 
 
 Then he may have paid a visit to MUnster in Westphalia, 
 where the great Cathedral was then growing to its present 
 shape, and to certain of the French churches where their 
 architects were producing those inimitable apses with pro- 
 cession paths and coronae of chapels, and determines to 
 imitate them ; which he does though in a clumsy and ill- 
 conceived manner at Padua, for they are as badly designed 
 a succession of square chapels as they well can be ; never- 
 theless, in the following century, they seem to have been 
 the model on which the never-to-be-completed choir of St 
 Petronio at Bologna was to have been founded. 
 
 The fa9ade,with its gable screening the whole width of 
 the church and its five shallow pointed arches, surmounted 
 by an arcaded gallery, recalls the outlines of the Greek 
 churches with which he was familiar, and seems to have 
 been pretty closely imitated in this part of the country, no- 
 tably at Vicenza, as we have seen in the fa9ades of the 
 Duomo and St Lorenzo. 
 
 The whole group of domes and steeples at St Antonio 
 surpasses any of those which had been erected somewhat 
 on the same lines before Pisano's time in Lombardy and 
 along the courses of the Rhine and Main, though to the 
 educated eye the whole exterior has an uncomfortably 
 crowded look. 
 
 Thus grew this great church, the Mecca of Northern 
 
 128 
 
PADUA 
 
 Italy. In spite of all interest it lacks the impress of a really 
 great architectural hand, and cannot be compared for a mo- 
 ment with the far more refined and scientific churches which 
 the French had been building for a quarter of a century be- 
 fore its foundation ; but the grouping of the external out- 
 line, a point seldom regarded by the early Italian architects, 
 is undeniably remarkable. 
 
 One of the best views of the exterior is to be had from 
 the great cloister on the south side of the nave. There are 
 four ambulatories : the eastern and western ones are shorter 
 than the northern and southern, and their arcades looking 
 on to the quadrangle have, like those in most North Italian 
 cloisters of the same period, wide pointed arches without 
 tracery, springing from tall cylindrical shafts with capitals 
 of the stiiF-leafed kind. The shaft at the angle of each am- 
 bulatory is, however, an octagon, built in alternate layers of 
 green marble and white stone, and has a much more elabor- 
 ately worked capital. The north and west walks have lean-to 
 roofs of tiles, the other two are surmounted by domestic 
 buildings. The apse of a chapel opening out of the south 
 aisle of the nave projects into the northern walk, while from 
 the eastern one a pointed doorway with simply moulded 
 jambs and three uncarved capitals, and flanked on either 
 side by three pointed arcades on cylindrical shafts with 
 foliaged capitals, admits to the chapter house, which mea- 
 sures 50 feet from north to south. At the south end of the 
 same walk a very plain pointed arch admits to another great 
 cloister, with even loftier arcades of the same type as in the 
 one just described. 
 
 Internally St Antonio at Padua is not only one of the 
 coldest, but for the period of its construction, one of the 
 plainest churches of my acquaintance in this part of Italy, 
 
 129 9 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 deriving its impressiveness mainly from its great size and 
 unencumbered area. Nowhere is sculptural ornamentation 
 visible, for there can be no doubt that the architect intended 
 it for that wall decoration in which, to judge from such 
 fragments as have been brought to light on denuding them 
 of their whitewash, it must have been extremely rich. 
 
 Designs for an elaborate scheme of colouration are hung 
 up in the nave, and progress is now being made with that 
 of the choir which, at the time of my visit, was so encum- 
 bered with scaffolding as to impede any researches into the 
 architecture of that part of the church. 
 
 A commencement of stained glass on the model of that 
 in some of the great Northern French cathedrals has been 
 made, and the great roses of the eastern transepts, so remark- 
 able for their reftilinear tracery — reminding me, by the 
 way, of the eastern circle in St Margaret's, King's Lynn — 
 and the lancets which light the choir and the wall above the 
 arches opening from the procession path into the chapels, 
 have received their complement. 
 
 The arcades surrounding the choir are very lofty, and 
 their piers, being huge elongated ones, recall those in such 
 churches of French Flanders as St Omer and Tournai. 
 One arch opens into the transept and the lesser one to the 
 east of it, while each of the two great domed compartments 
 composing the nave are subdivided by a pair of pointed 
 arches on piers of the simplest description. A passage way pro- 
 tedted by a balcony of pillarets is formed above these arches, 
 and high up in the surmounting wall are windows of two 
 lights each, in couples. Across the great arch opening from 
 the central dome into the transept is a screen of open arches, 
 Pointed on the south and early Renaissance on the north. 
 The former admit to the chapel of St Felix, rich in restored 
 
 130 
 

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PADUA 
 
 wall paintings by Jacopo Avanzi and Altichieri da Zevio 
 (1376); the latter to the chapel containing the shrine and 
 altar of the patron, before which a goodly number of devo- 
 tees were always gathered, and lamps and candles inces- 
 santly burning. At this altar a succession of Masses was said 
 up to eleven o'clock, when a fully choral one commenced, 
 the Gregorian chant being impressively rendered by the 
 brethren in the sumptuously fitted choir. 
 
 The neighbouring great Renaissance Sta Giustina was 
 completed — in so far at least as its interior is concerned, 
 upon one uniform original design. In dimensions it sur- 
 passes almost any other church of its age, excepting, of 
 course, St Peter's,* and its proportions are remarkably har- 
 monious and pleasing. 
 
 There is, however, a plainness almost amounting to rude- 
 ness, in its details which are not only too large and coarse 
 for internal purposes, but is repeated usque ad nauseam 
 throughout the interior. 
 
 As a work of engineering science Sta Giustina may be 
 called a good and appropriate specimen, but as a work of 
 art it fails, chiefly because, though the design is ornamental, 
 the church itself is by no means ornate. Its outline is grand 
 and well proportioned, though monotonous, but It is defi- 
 cient in that grace and elegance of detail which would bring 
 it within the domain of archltedure as a fine art, and with- 
 out which a building remains the work of an engineer or 
 a builder. 
 
 Evidently Sta Giustina had for its pattern the neigh- 
 bouring St Antonio, and Internally presents a fine alterna- 
 
 *The dimensions of Sta Giustina are as follows: Length, 500 feet; 
 breadth, 140 feet; breadth at transept, 350 feet; height, izo feet; the 
 central dome, 265 feet. 
 
 131 9« 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 tion of arch and dome. In its accessory system it employs 
 the pilaster, always less unpleasant in this position than the 
 engaged column, but as a composition perhaps the Cathe- 
 dral is preferable. 
 
 Here we have only two domes, one at the crossing and 
 one at the west end separated by a cylindrical vault spring- 
 ing from a mass which contains two arches with pilasters 
 between them, and crowned with an entablature. A similar 
 space intervenes between each dome and the corresponding 
 end of the church. The imposts of the arches are here plain, 
 instead of being, as at Sta Giustina, repetitions on a small 
 scale of the large pilasters. 
 
 Addison, who set out upon the Grand Tour in 1699 
 with a purse full of guineas, and the reputation of being 
 the most elegant scholar of his day,* visits Padua in due 
 course, where he seems to have been much struck with Sta 
 Giustina, which he describes in his Remarks on Italy as "the 
 most handsome, luminous, disencumbered building in the 
 inside that I have ever seen, and is esteemed by artists one 
 of the finest works in Italy. The long nave consists of a row 
 of five cupolas; the cross one on each side has a single cu- 
 pola deeper and broader than the others." 
 
 Addison's description as to the luminosity and unen- 
 cumbered area of Sta Giustina holds good at the present 
 day. The pavement, perfedlly clear of chairs or benches, is 
 laid out in compartments of white and red marble, and its 
 
 •It was in 1695 that Addison ventured to address a complimentary 
 poem on one of the campaigns of King William III which won the fa- 
 vour of Lord Somers, through whom it reached the royal hand. This 
 procured for him a pension of £300 a year that he might cultivate his 
 classic taste by travel on the Continent. On his return home Addison pub- 
 lished his travels, which he addressed to his patron. This work was some- 
 what neglefted at first, but subsequently, as a classical and scholastic tour, 
 became exceedingly popular. 
 
 132 
 
PADUA 
 
 numerous altars with their decorations are in the same 
 costly material. The whole appeared like a church only just 
 finished, so clean and neat is the air pervading everything; 
 indeed as far as the ensemble goes I must own that of all the 
 Renaissance fabrics which I had the opportunity of examin- 
 ning during this tour, I was most delighted with the in- 
 terior of Sta Giustina at Padua. 
 
 It displays the charaderistic features of Palladian archi- 
 tefture to the highest advantage, and in a manner not often 
 witnessed even in Italy. It was, if I am not mistaken, be- 
 gun on the plan of Palladio in 1 502 from the designs of 
 Padre Giralimo da Brescia, and completed half a century 
 later under Andrea Morona. * Some defedts consequently 
 occur in the execution which ought not to be attributed to 
 its illustrious originator, particularly as these defedls are 
 lost in the admirable symmetry and proportion of the whole; 
 perfedions owing exclusively to the genius that conceived 
 and arranged the original model. On the whole Palladio 
 may be considered as the Vitruvius of revived classical archi- 
 tedure, and those desirous of studying the many monu- 
 ments of Palladian skill that abound in Northern Italy can- 
 not do better than make Vicenza and Padua their head- 
 quarters. 
 
 Like many another North Italian church Sta Giustina 
 was desecrated during the foreign occupations, being turned 
 into a flour magazine, the services intermitted, and the 
 pidures covered. 
 
 Perhaps this fad may account in some way for the cleanly 
 air of the church to which I have alluded. It was in this 
 
 * With the exception of the fafade, which, like that of the Cathedral, 
 has never advanced beyond its lowest stage, the rest being a mere brick 
 wall. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 state in 1861 when it was described in an article entitled 
 "Continental Progress" in the Ecclesiologist of that year. 
 
 Dragonetti, the celebrated double-bass player of whom 
 some mention was made in connexion with Vicenza, went 
 to Padua, where he paid a visit to the monks of the con- 
 vent of Sta Giustina. His beloved bass was of course his 
 companion; and when in conversation with the organist, 
 Turvini Bertoni, he ventured to think that its third string 
 could be made to produce as powerful a tone as the lower 
 pipes of the convent organ. Bertoni treated the notion with 
 contempt. Our contra basso said nothing; but, providing 
 himself with some bass strings of enormous diameter, in 
 the dead of a fine summer night, when the inmates of the 
 convent were all asleep, he stole into one of the corridors 
 and commenced a "Solo fulminato" — in common English 
 he imitated the noise of a tempest with such efFedt that on 
 the following morning every one was talking of the last 
 night's thunder, and were not a little surprised to find that 
 the weather had been unusually clear. On the succeeding 
 night Dragonetti repeated his joke; one of the monks, how- 
 ever, running out of his dormitory, blundered over the 
 double-bass, and at once discovered the philosophy of the 
 thunderstorm. Bertoni yielded the palm for power to the 
 Amati bass. 
 
 Dragonetti considered the Passione or The S^en Last 
 Words from the Cross the finest of Haydn's compositions. 
 
 Padua may be called the City of Domes, it being quite 
 the exception to find a church there without one. 
 
 The manner in which this feature was introduced and 
 adopted in Italy was so diverse in its causes and its results 
 as to render the chronicling of it in any clear consecutive 
 order very perplexing. 
 
 134 
 
Padua: Interior of Sta. Oiustina, looking East. 
 
 To /ace page 134. 
 
PADUA 
 
 There were, in fadt, two distinct influences, both occa- 
 sionally leading to its adoption. At Rome, and in places 
 under Roman influence, such examples as the Pantheon 
 could not fail to have their efFedt upon the architedture, and 
 we accordingly find there numerous scions of the primeval 
 family; while the purely Byzantine forms were simulta- 
 neously introduced by way of Ravenna, and later on were 
 planted at Venice. Through this twofold influence the dome 
 became very frequent throughout Italy. It was carried by 
 Charlemagne from St Vitalis at Ravenna to Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 and later on was carried forward from Lombardy, under 
 the first three Othos, across the Alps, down the valley of 
 the Rhine and far into the interior of Germany. Only a few 
 years later it was conveyed from Venice into the interior 
 of South-western France, whence it spread through an 
 extensive districft stretching eastward into Auvergne, even 
 as far as Lyons, and northwards to the banks of the Loire, 
 where to this day the eflUgies of our Plantagenet kings lie 
 beneath a series of pendentive domes, almost as perfedl as 
 if at Constantinople. 
 
 In the thirteenth century we have several very graceful 
 applications of the dome in Italy, notably in the baptisteries 
 of Parma and Pisa, and when later on the great domed 
 creations of Brunelleschi and Michael Angelo had set the 
 fashion, no church was hereafter built in that country in 
 which the dome did not constitute the leading feature in 
 the design. 
 
 ^35 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Si Jilark's, Fenice, and Torcello 
 
 T is in the peerless evening of Wednesday in Whitsun 
 
 week of the year of grace just passed, that I traverse the 
 dark narthex with its memories of Frederic Barbarossa and 
 Alexander, ascend the marble steps and, drawing aside a 
 curtain, realize what has been the aspiration of a lifetime, — 
 to behold the fair beauty of the interior of St Mark's, 
 Venice, that vast museum filled with curious objects, col- 
 lected with religious zeal and preserved with religious care; 
 that open lap of the Queen of the Adriatic into which the 
 spoils of the East have been poured. 
 
 An Office has lately been concluded, and some wreaths 
 of incense cloud, "lingering as loth to die," hang about the 
 mighty mosaic-encrusted domes from which the images of 
 Christ and His saints look down continually. 
 
 It is a shadowy dreamland, far away from the noise and 
 turmoil of the daytime, upon which I seem to enter this 
 June afternoon. 
 
 Twelve hours later, and I am again on my way to St 
 Mark's, gliding in the freshness of early morning along the 
 Grand Canal in a gondola, with my attention riveted almost 
 every moment by the splendid show on either side of this 
 "silent highway." 
 
 The long wave which the prow turns over is dashed 
 against a wall of marble-fronted palaces, the names of which 
 are carelessly mentioned by the gondolier, awakening trails 
 of golden memories in the mind. High in the clear early 
 
 136 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 morning atmosphere arise the capanili of the churches 
 with which wealth and devotion have crowded the islands 
 of Venice, and their bells are filling the air with a stream of 
 undulating music, inviting the devout to early Mass. 
 
 I disembark at the heart of Venice, the great open space 
 in front of the Ducal Palace, and enter the Cathedral, to 
 enjoy an ecclesiological pleasure which I have often had be- 
 forer— to watch the rising sun bringing out more and more 
 distinctly the form of some saint or angel, mystic form or 
 sacred symbol. Gradually it brings into prominence those 
 twelve apostles, guarding like calm sentinels the gate of 
 heaven, as symbolized in the screen, while ever and anon 
 the silvery tongue of the Sanctus bell proclaims the Eleva- 
 tion of the Host. 
 
 The Cathedral of Venice stands quite alone among the 
 buildings of the world in respect of its unequalled richness 
 of material and decoration, and also from the fact that it has 
 been constructed with the spoils of countless other build- 
 ings, and therefore forms a museum of sculpture of the 
 most varied kind, nearly every century from the fourth 
 down to the latest Renaissance being represented more or 
 less largely. '^ 
 
 The grandeur of its interior amazes one at first, and de- 
 lights all the more afterwards, as one becomes on more 
 intimate terms with it, and can look at it with less emotion 
 than at first. And how shall I describe it.? — for that it has 
 so many bays in length or in the width is not sufficient: 
 all this, and even the detail of the design, was familiar 
 enough to me before I saw it, but still the reality was so 
 far beyond any description, that I felt, and feel still, averse 
 to attempting it. 
 
 During the early years of Venetian history the site of the 
 
 137 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 present church and square of St Mark was a large grassy 
 field, with rows of trees divided by a canal (which no longer 
 exists) and containing two churches. One of them, dedicated 
 to St Theodore, the old patron saint of Venice, stood a little 
 to the north of the site of the present Cathedral of St Mark. 
 The other, that of St Geminiano, was a little to the north- 
 west of the great campanile. This church was built between 
 1 1 73 and 1179 ^7 Sebastiano Ziani, when he demolished 
 the original church in order to extend the square westwards. 
 In the sixteenth century it was again rebuilt by Cristoforo 
 del Legname and Sansovino, and was destroyed in 1 805 by 
 Napoleon to make room for a new block to unite the two 
 palaces of the procurators.* 
 
 The grassy campo where those churches stood was the 
 property of the abbey of Sta Zaccaria. At the eastern ex- 
 tremity a small palace was built for the Doge about 810, 
 when Venice first became the chief ducal place of residence 
 under Angelo Participatio. It was within the chapel of this 
 ducal palace that the body of St Mark was laid when, in 83 1, 
 it was brought from Alexandria to Venice. With the sole 
 exception of Rome, Venice claimed pre-eminence in that pos- 
 session of much valued relics,t which has often proved to 
 
 * The site of this church is still marked by a strip of red marble inlaid 
 in the pavement of the Piazza San Marco. 
 
 t Besides her supremely honoured shi;ine with the relics of St Mark, 
 that veritable palladium of her State in one dominant belief, Ughellius 
 tells us that the churches of Venice contain the bodies of the prophets 
 Jonas, Zacharias and Simeon; of the patron saint Theodore; of the phy- 
 sicians SS. Cosmo and Damian; of St Paul, the first hermit; of St Stephen, 
 the protomartyr, brought from Constantinople byaVenetian monkin 1 1 10 
 (it is needless to undertake to decide between the rival claims of this and 
 the other so-named body reposing at the St Lorenzo basilica, near Rome); 
 of St Helen (also said to be alike at Rome); an arm of St George; a part 
 of the head of St John the Baptist; and that portion of the true Cross, set 
 in gold, which used to be carried by Constantino into battle. 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 Italian states and cities a fecund source of influences and 
 public benefits — an appeal that, acting through the imagina- 
 tion, has touched the chords of loyalty and patriotism. 
 
 Precedence of the more illustrious St Mark's must be 
 allowed to the beautiful old basilican cathedral in the neigh- 
 bouring island of Torcello, to which the citizens of Altinum 
 and Aquileia first fled from the barbarian invaders of Nor- 
 thern Italy, and which became the parent-isle of the new 
 State, seat of its first bishopric, and long maintained as a 
 separate See under government alike independent ; for Tor- 
 cello had its own Podesta and Senate, in whom all ancient 
 rights of its inhabitants were invested, thus preserving for 
 them an autonomic existence till the fall of the Republic. 
 Thither, in the first half of the seventh century did the 
 Bishop of Altinum transfer his See, with the relics enshrined 
 in its Cathedral in the desire to withdraw from the rule and 
 from the heretical intrusions of the Arian Longobards. 
 
 The new cathedral was founded in or about a.d. 641 ; 
 first restored, being already ruinous, a litde more than two 
 centuries later; and again almost entirely rebuilt by the 
 Bishop Orseolo (son of the illustrious Doge, Pietro Orseolo) 
 in 1008, to which date we must assign the present edifice, 
 though it seems certain that the plan of the seventh century 
 basilica was retained, and that many curious architeftural de- 
 tails maybe referred to one or other of the earlier structures. 
 
 Torcello Cathedral is essentially Romanesque in charac- 
 ter, and has none of those Oriental features peculiar to other 
 Venetian churches. Perhaps the structure to which it bears 
 the closest resemblance is the sixth-century cathedral of 
 Parenzo in Istria. 
 
 At Torcello, the arrangement of the chancel and apse 
 are perhaps its most remarkable features. The former fea- 
 
 139 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 tures, and yet differs from, those of Roman basilicas with 
 its enclosure of marble screens, and two ambones both on 
 the same side. The whole area is separated from the apse 
 itself by an intervening aisle, an arrangement quite contrary 
 to all precedents. Here the apse forms a wide semicircle, 
 with six tiers of seats like those in the ancient amphitheatres, 
 and the episcopal throne in the centre elevated on a high 
 staircase, thus following out the prescription of the Apos- 
 tolic Constitution : " In medio autem sit episcopi solium, et 
 utrinque sedeat presbyterium." 
 
 The stern, I had almost said ghastly, mosaics on the walls 
 of this ancient cathedral at Torcello may be referred to 
 the tenth century. Barbaric in conception as in execution, 
 they illustrate the religious feeling and the propensity to 
 dwell on gloomy and terrific ideas of the age that gave them 
 birth. Here we see the Doom represented with numerous 
 episodes of infernal punishment corresponding to the most 
 dreadful visions of medieval mysticism, a charnel-house 
 display of death and the grave, the Limbus and the Para- 
 disus, and, among the figures rising to be judged, kings and 
 emperors in Byzantine costume. The composition is per- 
 haps the earliest example, at any rate in mosaic art, of the 
 treatment of a theme more commonly attempted in later 
 times, though certainly beyond the range of all artistic 
 capacities. 
 
 It was not till the eleventh century that either the Last 
 Judgement or the successive scenes of the Passion began 
 to be generally preferred to those evangelico-historic groups, 
 miracles of mercy, or sacramental types, on which the mind 
 of the Church had rather loved to dwell, and which there- 
 fore had been the favourite representations in earlier ages. 
 
 Several curious illustrations of Paganism in the Middle 
 
 140 
 
Torcello : Interior of the Cathedral looking East. 
 
 To face page 140^ • 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 Ages may be discovered among the sculptured details of 
 Torcello Cathedral, as, for instance, the reliefs on an ambon, 
 that apparently bear reference to the worship of Mercury; 
 while among singular examples of symbolism, I would allude 
 to a relief on the episcopal throne of a hand raised in bene- 
 diction between the sun and moon, implying the Divine 
 Presence. 
 
 In the semi-dome of the great apse is a single figure of 
 the Blessed Virgin robed in blue, on a gold ground, and 
 holding the Divine Infant, whose nimbus is cruciferous and 
 who is draped. The letters MP GY — the first and last 
 letters of her title. MHTHP GEOY, the Mother of God- 
 are on each side of her, and below is this legend. Formula 
 virtutis, maris astrum, porta sailutis, the word is interrupted 
 by the single window of the apse] Proie Maria levat quos 
 conjuge subdidit Eva. In the spandrils of the arch opening 
 into the apse are the figures of the Angel Gabriel and the 
 Blessed Virgin, representing the Annunciation, and round 
 the arch is inscribed the following beautiful legend: Sum 
 Deusatquecaro:Patris etsum matris imago :Nonpiger ad lapsum^ 
 sedflenti proximus, adsum. 
 
 On either side of the apse window are six figures of Apos- 
 tles, and under the window in the middle is a half-figure of 
 St Heliodorus. 
 
 The southern apse has mosaics of our Lord seated, in 
 the aft of blessing, and holding a closed book, between St 
 Michael and St Gabriel. Below are St Gregory, St Augus- 
 tine, St Ambrose and St Martin; and above, the Agnus Dei 
 and two angels. 
 
 Sta Fosca, on the same island, is probably coeval with 
 the Cathedral, to which it is joined by the loggia which ex- 
 tends along the western side of the latter. Though the pre- 
 
 141 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 else date of its origin is unknown, Sta Fosca must be referred 
 to the tenth century at the latest, being mentioned in an 
 extant deed, dated loi i, in the name of two ladies who 
 endowed it with some lands. 
 
 Like St Mark's it is a monument of that veneration for 
 relics once so ascendantly potent in the Italian mind, hav- 
 ing been built expressly as a shrine for the remains of Sta 
 Fosca, a virgin of noble birth who, together with her nurse, 
 Maura, suffered martyrdom at Ravenna during the Decian 
 persecution. 
 
 The plan of Sta Fosca is that of the Greek cross asso- 
 ciated with the cupola of Oriental charader,andin the archi- 
 teftonic ornaments we perceive a blending of the Byzan- 
 tine with the Arabic that illustrates the early influence of 
 the Moslem over the Christian taste. 
 
 The eastern limb of the cross is a bay longer than the 
 others, and each of its aisles terminates in an apse. Along 
 five sides of the exterior are carried double porticoes with 
 high stilted arches and columns, whose antique shafts, un- 
 equal in proportion, are fitted to barbaric capitals. 
 
 The interior presents an efFeft harmonious and graceful, 
 and has happily suffered but little in the course of the several 
 restorations carried out here, the earliest da;ting from 1247. 
 Selvatico, a learned writer on Venetian monuments, draws 
 attention to the points of similarity existing between Sta 
 Fosca and certain churches at Athens, and finds in the 
 former the substitution of the Greek for the Latin type 
 with remarkable clearness. But to return to St Mark's. 
 
 The Church of St Mark at Alexandria* was long cele- 
 brated as being the depository of the Evangelist's body, of 
 
 *Of this church at Alexandria nothing remains. It is believed to have 
 occupied the site of the present lazaretto. 
 
 142 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 the translation of which to Venice a singular account is given 
 by Sabellicus, one of the ancient Italian historians, in his 
 Historia Venetia. It happened that at this period (c. 830) 
 two Venetians, Bona de Malamocco and Rustico de Tor- 
 cello, visiting the church, were struck with the grief ex- 
 hibited by the attendant priests, and inquired into its cause. 
 Learning their apprehensions of the church being despoil- 
 ed by the myrmidons of the Moslem, the strangers en- 
 treated from the priests permission to remove the relics of 
 the saint, not only promising them a large reward, but also 
 the lasting gratitude of their fellow citizens, the Venetians. 
 The clergy at Alexandria first met the request of Bono and 
 Rustico with a decided negative; but when the sanctuary 
 was adlually invaded by the infidels, the defenceless guard- 
 ians consented to yield up their sacred charge. The diffi- 
 culty now was to convey the body on board one of the 
 Venetian ships, of which there were several in the port of 
 Alexandria, and at the same time to conceal the circumstance 
 from the knowledge of the inhabitants, who held the re- 
 mains of the Evangelist in high veneration, on account of 
 the miracles which were performed through their agency. 
 The body of St Mark, being removed, was replaced by 
 that of St Claudian ; but a miraculous perfume which spread 
 itself through the church when the holy relics were brought 
 to light nearly betrayed the removal. In transporting the 
 body through the city to the port, it became necessary to 
 adopt some expedient which should prevent the curiosity, 
 both of the infidels and the Christians, from beingawakened. 
 The body was accordingly deposited in a large hamper, sur- 
 rounded with vegetables and covered with pieces of pork, 
 an article which every good Mussulman holds in abhorrence. 
 Those who accompanied the hamper were ordered to cry 
 
 143 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Kanzir as they went, which in the Oriental tongue signifies 
 pork. Having succeeded in reaching the vessels, the precious 
 burden was suspended in the shrouds to prevent discovery, 
 till the ship put to sea. Scarcely had the Venetians left 
 Alexandria when an awful storm arose; and had not St 
 Mark himself appeared to Bono de Malamocco and advised 
 him to furl his sails, the vessel must have been lost. On 
 their arrival at Venice the whole city was transported with 
 joy. The presence of the saint promised perpetual splendour 
 to the republic. The body was received by the Senate with 
 the same words with which his Master had saluted the saint 
 in prison, "Peace be unto thee, Mark, My Evangelist!" 
 Venice was filled with festivals, music and prayers, and the 
 holy relics were conducted amidst hymns and incense to the 
 Ducal Chapel. 
 
 The Doge Giustiniano Participatio, dying a short time 
 after this event, bequeathed a sum of money to build a 
 church to the saint, which was accomplished under his 
 brother and successor, Giovanni Participatio.* 
 
 In allusion to these translations of the saint's body, the 
 brhie attached to the name of Giustiniano Participatio, in 
 the hall of the great Council, exhibits the following in 
 scription : 
 
 Corporis alta datur Mihi Sancti gratia Marci. 
 
 This Ducal Chapel, projected by Giustiniano, and carried 
 out by Giovanni Participatio, which was built between the 
 site of the existing Ducal Palace and the church of St 
 Theodore — hitherto the Ducal Chapel — was quite different 
 
 *According to local tradition, the remains of St Mark, when first 
 brought to Venice, were laid in a bronze sarcophagus embedded in an in- 
 terior pilaster of the new church, with cognizance of no other indi- 
 viduals than the Doge Participatio and the Primicerius of the basilica. 
 
 144 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 from its present aspect both in extent and plan, and in 
 absence of rich decoration.* It was originally of the simplest 
 basilican form, with three eastern apses and no transepts, 
 and in it were used marble columns and capitals which had 
 been exported from Sicily by Giustiniano Participatio after 
 his conquest there. The ruined cities of Heraclea, Attino, 
 Concordia and others doubtless furnished materials, as 
 examples of all periods are found in St Mark's. 
 
 One very interesting relic of the old Ducal Palace still 
 exists, viz., the lower part of one of its towers with walls 
 eleven feet thick. This was converted into the treasury of 
 St Mark when the church was enlarged so as to include it 
 in its plan at the west corner of the south transept. Recent 
 discoveries have brought to light the external design of the 
 early church, which was of plain red brick, undecorated by 
 marbles or mosaics and only relieved by very simple blank 
 arcading, with round arches not unlike those in some early 
 Anglo-Norman buildings. 
 
 In 976 this church was burnt, together with the rest of 
 the palace, during an insurredion against the Doge Can- 
 diano IV, and rebuilt on a larger scale by his successor 
 Pietro Orseolo, but as he embraced a monastic life within two 
 years, it is hardly possible that he can have done more than 
 restore the old church to its primitive form, and there is 
 no record of a continuation of building in succeeding years. 
 
 The nucleus ot the present church has been ascertained 
 from documents discovered in 1859 to belong to the 
 period comprised between 1047 ^"^ lOT^-t Cuttaneo, who 
 
 *There is much analogy between the relationship of St Mark's to the 
 Ducal Palace, and that of the Abbey Church to the royal palace at West- 
 minster. Both were originally built in connexion with royal palaces, and 
 both possessed privileges as " royal peculiars." 
 
 t An inscription, now lost, recorded the completion of St Mark's in 
 
 145 10 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 has traced the early history of the present cathedral and 
 of its predecessors, accepts 1063 as the date of the adual 
 commencement of the works. All the East, so far as it was 
 accessible to the Venetian ships, was laid under contribution 
 for columns and other architedural embellishments. 
 
 Here the Greek architeft came in, showing the Venetians 
 how the simple basilican plan could be extended north and 
 south by great transepts, and how, without increasing the 
 length, an immense domed space could be obtained in the 
 centre. Thus arose a building which was inspired through- 
 out by Byzantine work, and of which the main design was 
 certainly due to a Greek archited:, and in all probability 
 exercised no small influence on the Lombard architecture 
 of the twelfth and succeeding centuries.* 
 
 The design of St Mark's is often spoken of as founded 
 on that of Sta Sophia at Constantinople. This is erroneous. 
 The Church of the Apostles in that city would seem to have 
 furnished the model. 
 
 That church, however, was demolished in 1464 by Mo- 
 hammed II to build a mosque on the site, so that the only 
 data we have to go upon is the description given of it 
 by Procopius, a historian who flourished in the reign of 
 the Emperor Justinian. 
 
 "In ancient times," says Procopius, "there was one 
 church dedicated to the Apostles, but through length of 
 time it had become ruinous, and seemed not likely to stand 
 
 1071, but it was not consecrated till 1085, in the reign of Vitale Faliero 
 (1084-1096), when it was dedicated "to God, the glorious Virgin An- 
 nunciate, and to the proteftor St Mark." 
 
 *St-Front at Perigueux, built between 984 and 1047, was considered 
 by M. Verneille to be the work of the architeft of St Mark's or a direft 
 imitation of that church, and there was a Greek or Venetian colony at 
 Limoges in the tenth and eleventh centuries. 
 
 146 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 much longer. Justinian took this entirely down, and was 
 careful, not only to rebuild it, but to render it more ad- 
 mirable both in size and beauty. He carried out his inten- 
 tion in the following manner. Two lines were drawn in the 
 form of a cross joining one another in the middle, the up- 
 right one pointing to the rising and setting sun, and the 
 cross line to the north and south wind. These were sur- 
 rounded by a circuit of walls, and within by columns, 
 placed both above and below. About the middle point there 
 is a place set apart, which may not be entered except by 
 the priests, and which is consequently termed the Sandluary. 
 
 "The transepts which lie on each side of thi,s, about the 
 cross line, are of equal length, but that part of the upright 
 line towards the setting sun is built so much longer than 
 the other part as to form the figure of a cross. 
 
 " That part of the roof which is above the sanftuary is 
 construfted like the middle part of Sta Sophia, except that 
 it yields to it in size, for the four arches are suspended and 
 conneded with one another in the same fashion; the cir- 
 cular building standing above them is piercedwith windows, 
 and the splendid dome which over-arches it seems to be 
 suspended in the air. In this manner the middle of the 
 roof is built, but the roof over the four limbs of the church 
 is construdled of the same size as that which I have de- 
 scribed over the middle, with this exception, that the 
 walls underneath the spherical part is not pierced with 
 windows." 
 
 This cruciform basilica of St Mark's was enlarged by 
 degrees. First of all (c. 1 150-1200) the baptistery on the 
 south, and the atrium which extends along the west and 
 north sides of the nave, were added. Next, chapels were 
 built north and south of the transepts. That of St Isidore 
 
 147 loa 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 on the north dates from 1354, and was due to the Doge 
 Andrea Dandolo. 
 
 In the fifteenth century a sacristy at the east end was 
 added, the altar of St Peter in the northern apse being re- 
 moved to make a passage to it. Another way to the sacristy 
 for the use of the clergy was cut through the massive wall 
 of the main apse; but with these exceptions St Mark's has 
 come down to our own day marvellously little injured by 
 Renaissance accretions. In fa<5t, during the long period from 
 its dedication in 1085 till the overthrow of the Venetian 
 Republic by Napoleon, every Doge's reign saw some addi- 
 tions to the rich decoration of the church in mosaic, sculp- 
 ture, wall-lining or columns of precious marbles. 
 
 By degrees the whole walls, inside and outside, were 
 completely faced, either with glass mosaics on gold grounds, 
 or with precious marbles and porphyries, plain white mar- 
 ble being used only for sculpture and then thickly covered 
 with gold. 
 
 Speaking roughly, the plan of St Mark's is a group of 
 five square spaces covered each by its pendentive dome. 
 The peculiarity of the structure lies in its breadth of waggn 
 vaults which support and separate these domes, which is 
 so great that the vast piers which sustain them are pierced 
 in two stories, and divide each other into four piers with 
 a vaulted space between them. Each dome is consequently 
 the centre of a cruciform space, the wings of which have 
 wagon vaults. The only exception is the east end, where an 
 apse is substituted for this space, and out of this apse spring 
 three minor ones, as at Sta Sophia. 
 
 Each dome is about hemispherical above its pendentive 
 and is pierced with windows, as in the Constantinopolitan 
 example. The domes are now, and have been for many 
 
 148 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 ages, covered over by rather tall domical towers of timber, 
 each surmounted by a sort of turret on its apex. The wings 
 which flanked each domed space, bounded as they were by 
 the perforated piers, were so suggestive of side aisles that 
 the builders, familiar no doubt with aisled churches, added 
 arcades from pier to pier both in nave and transepts. These, 
 however, are merely decorative, supporting no galleries, as 
 is frequent in the east, and only serving as narrow com- 
 munications, equivalent to triforium passages, between the 
 upper chambers in the great piers. 
 
 At Sta Sophia, which, since the loss of the Apostles' 
 Church at Constantinople, we must take as our model for 
 St Mark's, we find a building domed throughout, but there 
 is no attempt here to make the dome an external feature 
 of the building. The adoption of curved lines throughout 
 both plan and elevation invests Sta Sophia with a com- 
 pleteness of effedl as a domed strudure which cannot be 
 claimed for buildings which adopt a dome as they might 
 any other form of roof for covering a part only of the in- 
 terior. At Sta Sophia there is no sort of incongruity — no 
 square or reftangular nave or transepts roofed over by 
 curved forms. Curvature is of the essence of the plan, and 
 we see at once that a domical completion is the most ob- 
 vious and natural method to be adopted. The eye passes 
 with pleasure from the walls to the roof. Niche-like recesses 
 lead to semi-domes, and these carry the interest upwards 
 till it culminates in the great central cupola, the whole 
 forming one of the most beautiful works of domical archi- 
 tefture in the world. 
 
 At St Mark's the domes are more numerous, though 
 hardly so successful; indeed, in comparison with their gor- 
 geous mosaic covering, their architetfture is but little 
 
 149 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 thought of. In this resped the contrast with Sta Sophia 
 is very great, for in the latter case the mosaics have been 
 obscured by its Mohammedan possessors. Had such a bar- 
 barism been committed in St Mark's, there would be found 
 little in it to command our admiration. The congruity be- 
 tween plan and sedlion, of which Sta Sophia is so striking 
 an example, is here wanting, while the minor domes adk 
 rather as foils to the central cupola than accessories leading 
 up to and enhancing the efFedb of the chief feature of the 
 design. ^ 
 
 It is worthy of remark, however, that at Venice we find 
 an essential difference of external treatment. Hitherto the 
 dome had been the adual crown of the building. The in- 
 terior surface formed the ceiling of the church, while the 
 exterior was a visible roof to resist the weather. At St 
 Mark's the domes have become mere ceilings construdled 
 at a lower level than the exterior leads us to expeft, and 
 covered with lofty roofs having no relation to^he forms 
 beneath them. This was the method of the Gothic archi- 
 tedls of Northern Europe, though they did not adopt the 
 fantastic shapes we see at Venice. The groining in our own 
 Gothic cathedrals is not the roof, in the sense that the 
 dome of the Pantheon at Rome is the roof of that build- 
 ing. Such groining requires to be proteded by an outer 
 roof of woodwork covered with lead or other weather- 
 resisting material. 
 
 Reference to a sedtional view of St Mark's in the 
 Chiese Principale di Europa will afford an excellent idea of 
 the domical construftion of the Venetian Cathedral. 
 
 Externally St Mark's affords a striking example of how 
 litde of success in effedt is dependent upon scale alone in 
 monumental architefture; for we see here a nobly realized 
 
 150 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 charafter of grandeur, power and solemnity, whilst its pro- 
 portions are far from such as to entitle the building to rank 
 among churches extraordinary for size in Italy or Europe. 
 Its length from the chief portal to the altar of the Holy 
 Sacrament is 220 feet; the width of the fa9ade is 152 feet; 
 the height without the pinnacles is 65 feet, and the breadth 
 at the transepts 180 feet. 
 
 The fa9ade opens upon the Piazza San Marco in a series 
 of deep, round-arched recesses, with vaults resting upon a 
 forest of slender columns, their shafts of many-hued mar- 
 bles in two orders. Above, forming the highest story, is 
 a corresponding series of round-arched gables crowned by 
 delicate finials and pinnacles with canopied niches, and a 
 later addition of Gothic character that supplies a graceful, 
 sky-line to this resplendent front all radiant with coloured 
 marbles, gilding and fields of mosaic. 
 
 Along the entire middle extends an atrium, into which 
 has been incorporated the richly decorated baptistery with 
 mosaic-encrusted vault, perhaps the earliest instance of the 
 edifice appropriated to such sacramental purposes not 
 apart or separated from the church it pertains to, as were 
 all Italian baptisteries during the first nine centuries; and 
 it is probable that modifications in the administration of 
 the rites had been the proximate cause of such changes.* 
 
 The marbles and chiselled details of St Mark's are be- 
 lieved to be, in great part, from the ruins of certain cities of 
 Asia Minor and Sicily, and such use of fragments, from 
 some of these cities at least, is attested in the fa<ft that a 
 species of well-formed brick, much employed in medieval 
 Venice, were called by masons "antineUe," from Altinum, 
 one of the abandoned cities. 
 
 *See chapter on "Ravenna," pp. 216 et seq. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Both the inner and outer bronze portals are among the 
 earliest extant specimens of Italian and Greek metallurgy, 
 inlaid with figures of saints in different metals, two having 
 Latin and one a Greek inscription; the portal so distin- 
 guished as Byzantine being that said to have been taken 
 from Sta Sophia in the sack of Constantinople by the 
 Crusaders in 1204. 
 
 From so early as the period of Charlemagne it had been 
 ordered that in all the provinces and chief cities of Italy 
 "aurifices" and "argentarii" should be established; and 
 the pradtice of the goldsmith's art at Venice in the twelfth 
 century is attested by two documents of 1123 and 11 90, 
 including objedls of its produce among items bequeathed 
 by last wills. 
 
 The Venetian sculpture of this remote medieval period 
 is exemplified in the monuments, now in the atrium of St 
 Mark's, to the Doge Vitale Faliero (1096), to the Doga- 
 ressa Felicita Michel (mi), and to the Doge Maria 
 Morosini (1253), the latter adorned with rude reliefs of 
 the Saviour amidst the twelve apostles and the Virgin Mary 
 amidst twelve angels all holding censers. 
 
 In the richly carved capitals every style from the fourth 
 to the twelfth century is represented, many of them being 
 marvels of delicacy combined with a rare spirit of execution. 
 Some of the larger capitals are partially covered with a rich 
 basket-work completely undercut with great technical skill; 
 others have vine or acanthus foliage treated with vigorous 
 realism; and a large number have either the revived Byzan- 
 tine treatment of the Classic Corinthian, or Ionic capitals 
 with variations, evincing the utmost power of invention 
 and originality. 
 
 In addition to the elaborate sculpture, some of the capi- 
 
 152 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 tals are decorated with inlaid patterns; and many of the 
 mouldings, such as the capping of the triforium screen, 
 are also ornamented in the same way. This use of inlay is 
 almost peculiar to St Mark's, as is also the method of en- 
 circling sculptural reliefs with backgrounds of brilliant 
 gold and coloured glass mosaics, producing an eiFeft of 
 extraordinary richness. 
 
 Pre-eminent in the wealth of piftorial and gorgeous 
 decoration, St Mark's inspires, at first sight, like an en- 
 chanted fabric which imagination might regard as being 
 raised by the wand of a magician from the tributary sea. 
 
 "Being come into the church," says Evelyn, "you see 
 nothing, and tread on nothing, but what is precious." Or, 
 as the author of Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages more 
 scientifically put it two hundred years later: "The colour 
 is so magnificent that one troubles oneself but little about 
 the architedure and thinks only upon the expanse of gold 
 and deep rich colour, all harmonized together into one 
 glorious whole, so that all architeftural lines of moulding 
 and the like are entirely lost, and nothing but a soft, 
 swelling and undulating sea of colour is perceived." 
 
 In truth the interior of St Mark's resembles a casket of 
 jewels, comprising every species of workmanship among its 
 gorgeous contents. 
 
 No European cathedral can compare with that of Venice. 
 The effect is surprising and even magical. The first impres- 
 sion conveyed is that of a cavern of gold encrusted with 
 precious stones which are at once splendid and sombre, 
 sparkling and mysterious. Cupolas, vaults, architraves and 
 walls are carved with little cubes of gilt capitals, of unique 
 form, among which the rays of light sparkle like the scales 
 of a fish. Where the gold ground terminates at the height 
 
 153 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 of the columns, commences a clothing of the most precious ' 
 varied marbles, prophyries and alabaster, relieved by pure 
 white marble, sculptured in panels, string-courses and the 
 like. The various marbles are arranged in broad upright 
 bands, alternating so that one colour enhances the effect of 
 the one next to it. 
 
 For example, the nave wall in the north aisle is faced 
 thus, (i) Verde antico, (2) Proconnesian, (3) red brocca- 
 tello of Verona, (4) Proconnesian, (5) magnificent Oriental 
 alabaster, (6) Proconnesian, (7) verde antico; below these 
 is a narrow band of red Verona marble, and then a plinth 
 moulding of white Athenian marble, which rests on the 
 seat of panelled red marble that runs aU round the interior 
 of the nave and transepts. The large columns between the 
 brick piers, six in the nave and eight in the transepts, are 
 monoliths of fine Proconnesian marble, veined with greyish 
 blue and amber, and the great brick piers are faced with 
 thin slabs of the same material. This facing, and most of 
 that throughout the church, are made of ancient columns 
 sawn into slices. 
 
 No less than five hundred columns of porphyry and 
 costly marbles are used to decorate the church, especially 
 on the west front. Some of those inside the atrium have 
 no constructional use, but are only set against the wall for 
 the sake of their beauty and value. 
 
 " On entering the basilica, the first impression received of 
 its mosaic decoration is similar to that made upon us when we 
 turn at random over the pages of a New Testament without 
 stopping to read any particular part. Christ meets the eye in 
 every place. Not such a Christ, however, as is commonly 
 exhibited throughout Italy — either a helpless babe in His 
 IMother's arms, or a dead man on a cross, but the God iVIan, 
 
 154 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 Christ Jesus, in the plenitude of His power, 'in whom 
 dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' 
 
 "The words of Ruskin are almost literally true: 'Every 
 dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the 
 utmost height of it, raised in power, or coming in judge- 
 ment.' The same gloriously majestic figure dominates the 
 building from apse to pilaster, from pillared porch and 
 broad expanse of wall. Christ; Christ conquers; Christ reigns; 
 Christ rules; is proclaimed in the cupolas, and echoes round 
 the vaults and galleries of the whole structure. We are re- 
 minded of the manner in which the Evangelist, omitting 
 all mention of our Lord's birth and infancy, plunges in 
 medias res in accordance with his intention to set forth in 
 his Gospel Christ as 'the Lion of the Tribe of Judah,' 
 and in observance of the limits laid down by St Peter as to 
 the extent of the apostolic testimony which was to be 
 * from the baptism of John, unto the same day that He was 
 taken up from us.' 
 
 " In short, what strikes the beholder on contemplating the 
 St Mark's mosaics is the absolute supremacy and sove- 
 reignty accorded to our Lord. Thus on entering the chapel 
 of St Isidore * it is not the form of the martyr that first 
 catches the eye, but that of our Lord enthroned on the 
 east wall above the altar."t 
 
 The iconography of St Mark's is briefly thus: On the 
 vault over the western gallery is a subject from the Book 
 of Revelation. 
 
 In the nave dome is the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the 
 day of Pentecost. 
 
 * So called from its enshrining the body of that saint, the martyr of 
 Chios, who was killed by the Emperor Decius in 250, and which was 
 brought from that island (the reputed birthplace of Homer) in 1 125 by 
 the Doge Domenico Michiel. t Robertson. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Tongues of fire radiate upon colossal figures of apostles, 
 and below them on the drum of the dome is a second 
 series of figures representing various nations of the world 
 who were converted by the inspired teaching of the apostles. 
 
 From the unfenestrated marble walls of the dim north 
 and south aisles of the nave ten stately figures framed in 
 gold gleam forth, five on either hand. The central figure 
 on the north side is that of a youthful Christ, with cruci- 
 ferous nimbus, and In a robe of gold against a star-spangled 
 blue ground. On either hand are the prophets, Hosea, Joel, 
 Micah and Jeremiah, holding scrolls on which are inscribed 
 the following sentences foretelling the Incarnation of our 
 Lord: 
 
 Hosea. " Quasi diluculum praeparatus est, egressus ejus, 
 et venit quasi imber nobis temporaneus et serotinus terrae" 
 (Hosea vi, 3). 
 
 Joel. "Similis ei non fuit a principio, et post eum non 
 erit, usque in annos generationis et generationis " (Joel ii, 2). 
 
 Micah. "Ecce Dominus egredietur de loco suo, et de- 
 scendit et calcabit super excelsa terrae" (Micah i, 3). 
 
 Jeremiah. "Post haec in terris visus est, et cum homini- 
 bus conversatus est" (Baruch iii, 38), 
 
 The central figure of the five on the wall of the south 
 aisle is that of the Blessed Virgin standing between Isaiah 
 and David, Solomon and Ezekiel, each of whom bears a 
 scroll, with the following appropriate legends: 
 
 Isaiah. "Ecce Virgo concipiet et pariet filium, et vocabi- 
 tur Emanuel" (Isaiah viii, 14). 
 
 Da'fid. "Defruftuventristui ponam super sedem meam" 
 (Ps. cxxxii, 11). 
 
 Solomon. "Quae est quae ascendit quasi aurora consur- 
 gens" (Cant, vi, 10). 
 
 156 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 Eze^el. "Porta haec, quam vides, clausa erit et non ape- 
 rietur" (Ezekiel xliv, 2). 
 
 The great dome above the crossing represents the As- 
 cension, with bands of large figures of the Apostles and 
 below them the Virtues. 
 
 The choir dome has a grand half-figure of our Lord 
 and a series of prophets. The half-dome across the high 
 altar bears, of course, the Majesty. 
 
 The transept domes have various saints and doctors of 
 the Church, all with explanatory descriptions. The whole 
 of the rest of the walls and vaults are covered with mosaic 
 pidlures, of which a mere catalogue would occupy many 
 pages. 
 
 In the atrium, which extends along the western and 
 northern sides of the nave, the mosaics represent the his- 
 tory of the world from the Creation to the Deliverance of 
 the Children of Israel. 
 
 In the baptistery, which corresponds to the atrium in 
 the north, are the life of St John the Baptist and scenes 
 from the life of Christ. On the first dome (westwards) is 
 the Majesty over a series of baptismal scenes and Greek 
 dodlors; on the second dome is Christ adored by angels. 
 
 In the barrel-vault of St Isidore's Chapel, which lies along 
 the north wall of the north transept, is a very fine series of 
 mosaics representing passages from the life of that saint 
 and other subjeds executed about the middle of the four- 
 teenth century, soon after the completion of the chapel. 
 
 To the succeeding century may be assigned the decora- 
 tion of the sacristy, while in other parts are mosaics of a 
 stiU later date, some from cartoons by Tintoretto and other 
 Venetian painters of the decadence. 
 
 These are not designed with any real sense of the special 
 
 157 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 necessities of mosaic work, and are all very inferior in de- 
 corative effedl to the simple Byzantine style of those exe- 
 cuted between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. 
 
 In subjed many of the early mosaics in St Mark's are 
 scarcely intelligible without a key. Those of the history of 
 the Virgin in a chapel off the north transept by Michele 
 Giambane, 1430, are among the finest. 
 
 Most of them have been subjected to centuries of resto- 
 ration. In the style of the most antique are analogies with 
 the Sicilian mosaic school; and good judges conclude that 
 many are of the eleventh century by artists whose educa- 
 tion had probably been Byzantine, whatever their birth. 
 Occupying as they do the entire golden field of vaults and 
 cupolas, seen In the dim religious light that alone pervades 
 this shadowy interior, their efFe6i: is solemnizing beyond 
 description, and technical deficiencies are forgotten in the 
 grandeur of the whole. 
 
 To this real and essential decoration the architefture of 
 j St Mark's is entirely subordinate. Though incontestably of 
 I the f primitive ages of art, when the means of expression 
 were yet Imperfedt, these mosaics have more than those 
 decorative qualities of colour and design which are often 
 found in semi-barbarous work. They have a special beauty 
 of their own which Is matchless; they are as unique as the 
 incomparable capitals of the arcades of the Doge's Palace, 
 Absolutely unique in variety, wealth and preciousness, 
 the decoration of St Mark's embodies and expresses the 
 religion and throws light on the policy of a great common- 
 wealth that, throughout long centuries, held the place in- 
 telledtually and commercially amongst the nations of the 
 world that England holds to-day. There Is a theory that the 
 undulating pavement of St Mark's was Intended as a sym- 
 
 158 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 bol of the sea waves, but waves were by no means charac- 
 teristic of the lagoons. 
 
 In numerous places the pavement tiles had been cracked^ 
 and some of the pieces were missing. These fradures and 
 other irregularities must have proceeded from the sinking 
 of the foundations, which were largely composed of beams 
 of wood driven hundreds of years ago into the shallows and 
 mud over which the city is built.* The spaces between the 
 inlets now covered over with streets and squares, palaces 
 and churches, were undoubtedly first filled with artificial 
 foundations placed on countless thousands of piles. Such is 
 the substrudture of the railway which now carries the tra- 
 veller into Venice, stretching for more than three miles 
 across the lagoons. In confirmation of this it should be 
 • mentioned that the pavement of other Venetian churches are 
 as far from being even as that of St Mark's. 
 
 The choir, which is raised about four feet above the nave, 
 is separated from it by a marble rood-screen formed of an- 
 cient columns bearing a straight architrave surmounted by ' 
 fourteen statues, viz., of St Mark, the Blessed Virgin and 
 the twelve Apostles. 
 
 This screen, which constitutes one of the most remarkable 
 
 architedtural features of the interior and extends across the 
 
 aisles, forming a north apsidal chapel of St Peter and a 
 
 southern one of St Clement, is signed as the work of the 
 
 Venetians Jacobello and Pietro Paolo, sons of Antonio delle 
 
 Masegna, 1394-1397. The rood itself, signed "Jacobus Ma- 
 
 •The tide ebbs and flows under the floor of St Mark's, so that a boat 
 might come up under the great dome if a canal were cut from the lagoon ; 
 and the undulating floor, which some people regard as a beautiful feature 
 of the design, is only the evidence and the consequence of the upward 
 thrust of the piers of the old church underneath, which prevents certain 
 parts of the pavement sinking as fast as the rest. 
 
 159 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 gistri Marci Benato de Venatico," is singular from the load- 
 ing of the cross with other figures besides the Divine 
 sufferer — St Mark, the four Evangelists and the four Latin 
 dodbors. 
 
 But the silver workmanship of this crucifix and of the 
 seven figures on either side of it is of no high excellence. 
 It may be observed, in the prominence of this rood-loft, 
 impeding to a great degree the view of the high altar and 
 the choir, a proof by inference that nothing like the Bene- 
 diftion rite of more modern origin could have been conr 
 templated among the special appropriations of that altar 
 by those who built the church before us. 
 
 The rood-screen or jube, such as we know it in England, 
 Belgium and Northern Germany, and which until the 
 vicious era of Louis Quinze formed so magnificent a feature 
 in the interior of almost every great French church, is a 
 rara avis in Italy. Doubtless the Italian churches of cathe- 
 dral and conventual rank possessed rood-screens from the 
 fa<ft that they exist, at Torcello, at St Mark's, and the 
 Frari at Venice, in the Cathedral and Church of St Fermo 
 at Verona, and in the early Renaissance church of St Mau- 
 rizio at Milan — an interesting and valuable example of a 
 very high close screen reaching almost to the roof. 
 
 It appears to me, from the numerous cathedrals and 
 churches which I inspefted last summer, from Venice and 
 Ravenna in the north-east to Milan and Vercelli in the 
 north-west, that subsequently to the Renaissance of the 
 classical, when so many medieval church choirs were either 
 rebuilt or remodelled, a compromise was effefted by joining 
 the high altar to the wall on either side by wings, pierced 
 with doorways, after the fashion of the so-called St Cuth- 
 bert's screen in our St Albans Cathedral. 
 
 1 60 
 
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 U 
 
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 u 
 
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 I. 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 In front of the rood at St Mark's stand two very large 
 ambons or pulpits, one of porphyry, the other verde antko. 
 
 In the northern ambon is a lofty patriarch's throne under 
 a metal domed canopy, curiously like a pulpit in a Moslem 
 mosque. 
 
 Within the screen several rows of open benches are ar- 
 ranged, where the service — the daily Chapter or Canons' 
 Mass — might be heard quietly but for the constant 
 ingress and egress of commonplace Baedeker-bearing 
 tourists, whose peculiar mode of comporting themselves 
 as if they were feudal lords coming in amongst supersti- 
 tious serfs must impose a great strain upon the courtesy of 
 the clergy and the forbearance of others who, like myself, 
 were present to worship and not to stare about. 
 
 The music was solemn and devotional, and except that 
 the vestments worn by the celebrant and his assistant 
 ministers were of the customary board-like modern Italian 
 shape, the ceremonial at St Mark's on this morning of my 
 visit left nothing to be desired. 
 
 I may here take the opportunity of reminding the reader 
 that this most celebrated and beautiful of sandluaries on 
 the Adriatic shores was originally built as simply a ducal 
 chapel contiguous to the sovereign magistrate's residence; 
 and that it was not until 1 807 that it became the Cathedral 
 of Venice through the transfer of the patriarchal chair 
 from St Pietro di Castello, the episcopal church of earlier 
 origin, but quite jejune ecclesiologicaUy with the exception 
 of a fine mid-fifteenth-century companile. 
 
 Among the makers of music who have shed a lustre 
 upon St Mark's must be named Giovanni Croce and Agos- 
 tino Stef&ni. The former, born at Chioggia in 1560, be- 
 came vice-chapelmaster in 1603, holding the post until his 
 
 161 II 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 death six years later. Croce was a somewhat prolific com- 
 poser of motets and psalms, which latter were reprinted in 
 London. His music, smoothly written and agreeable to 
 modern ears, first became familiarized in England by the 
 Motet Choir under Thomas Helmore during the 'fifties of 
 the last century, and a madrigal for six voices. Hard by the 
 Crystal Fountain^ is given in The Triumphs ofOriana as his 
 composition. 
 
 StefFani, born at Castelfranco, near Venice, in 1655, was 
 a chorister of St Mark's in his youth, but remained there 
 only two years; for a German nobleman, struck by his voice 
 and appearance, procured his discharge, and took him to 
 Bavaria, where he bestowed on him a most complete edu- 
 cation, the musical part of which was entrusted to Ercole 
 Bernabei, chapelmaster to the Eleftor of Bavaria. His re- 
 putation became so great that his compositions were sought 
 by all, among his admirers being the husband of the Elec- 
 tress Sophia, who invited him to Hanover, made him di- 
 rector of his chamber music, and committed to him the 
 management of the Italian opera. 
 
 At the proper age StefFani took orders, and soon became 
 entitled to the appellation oi Abbate^ by which he ought 
 always to be distinguished. 
 
 His early compositions were for the Church, two of the 
 most admired being a trio. Rejoice in the Lord, O ye right- 
 eous, given by Stevens in his colledtion of sacred music, and 
 a motet for five voices. Qui diligit Mariam, which is generally 
 considered as one of the finest of his efforts, its principal 
 charaderistics being a grandeur and severity of style in the 
 melodies, profound science in the harmonies, and masterly 
 skill in the construdlion of the most ingenious and elaborate 
 counterpoint. 
 
 162 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 Steffkni was not only a musician but a statesman. He 
 had a considerable share in concerting with the courts of 
 Vienna and Ratisbon the scheme for ereding the duchy of 
 Brunswick-Lunenburg into an eledlorate, for which service 
 the Eledtor assigned him a handsome pension, and Pope 
 Innocent XI gave him the Bishopric of Spiga. In conse- 
 quence of this he no longer put his name to his composi- 
 tions, but adopted that of his secretary, Gregorio Piva, and 
 in 1 708 relinquished his appointments in Hanover in fa- 
 vour of the afterwards great Handel, who professed to 
 imitate his duettos for two voices with a bass accompani- 
 ment in his twelve celebrated Duetti di Camera, which 
 he composed for Queen Caroline. In 1 724 the Academy 
 of Ancient Music in London eledled him their president, 
 and five years later he died at Frankfort. 
 
 Another composer in connexion with St Mark's, though 
 now almost forgotten save as a name in musical history, 
 was Antonio Lotti. A chorister of the Ducal Chapel, he 
 became second organist in 1692 and first organist in 1704, 
 holding the post for nearly forty years. He was a prolific 
 composer of ecclesiastical and operatic music, but is now 
 hardly remembered in England save by his -charming air. 
 Pur di cesti, O bocca bella. 
 
 The ciborium of the high altar, a work of the eleventh 
 century, is supported on marble columns, encrusted with 
 high relief groups of minute subjedts from Old and New 
 Testament history, with explanatory Latin epigraphs on 
 bands that encircle their shafts at intervals. 
 
 These sculptures are more curious than beautiful; they 
 are Greek in style, and are supposed by Cicognara to have 
 been executed at Constantinople by order from Venice 
 about the close of the tenth or in the course of the next 
 
 163 iia 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 century. Under the mensa of this altar, which was renewed 
 in porphyry and rich marbles in 1 834, the relics of St Mark, 
 discovered after ages of oblivion in 1 8 1 1, were re-enshrined 
 with great solemnity on August 26, 1835. 
 
 The eastern crypt, or confessio, extends under the whole 
 of the choir behind the rood-screen, and has three apses 
 like the upper church. The body of St Mark was originally 
 placed here, but is now within the high altar of the upper 
 church. Below the nave is an older crypt, the existence of 
 which was only discovered towards the latter part of the 
 last century; it is not accessible, having been filled in with 
 earth and rubbish at a very early period. 
 
 The still richly endowed, though often despoiled, trea- 
 sury of St Mark's contains three relics, each as revered as 
 it is precious.* 
 
 One of these is the original autograph of St Mark's 
 Gospel, set in a case, on one of whose sides is a medieval 
 relief in gold of the Delivery of the Keys to St Peter. It 
 consists, however, of nothing more than two pages of pa- 
 pyrus, now torn into fragments, in which, when permitted 
 to insped, I found it just possible to distinguish Greek 
 letters, but neither verse nor sentence recognizable as by 
 that Evangelist. 
 
 For the marble chair which is said to be the identical 
 episcopal throne of St Mark, no higher date than the tenth 
 or eleventh century can be claimed. It is traditionally be- 
 lieved to have found its way hither after being presented 
 by the Emperor Heraclius to the Patriarch of Grado; but 
 
 * In the Guardian of November 7, 1906, is an interesting detailed ac- 
 count of some of the thirty Byzantine chalices preserved in the treasury 
 of St Mark's; most of them are believed by Mr F. Hamilton Jackson, 
 the virriter of the article, to have formed part of the spoils of the sack of 
 Constantinople in 1 204. 
 
 164 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 the charafter of the reliefs adorning it — the Evangelistic 
 emblems, each six-winged; the Lamb on the mystic mount, 
 with the four rivers; SS. Peter and Paul; and the Cross 
 between candelabra — indicate a much later period. 
 
 But perhaps the greatest treasure of St Mark's is the 
 superb altar pallium (Palla d' Oro) only to be seen upon 
 the high altar on certain great days.* Executed at Constan- 
 tinople by order of the Doge Pietro Orseolo in 976, or 
 at least begun in that year, but not brought to Venice (as 
 supposed) till 1102, it stands before us, a work added to 
 and embellished by order of successive Doges in 1105, 
 1209 and 1345. It is eleven feet long by seven feet broad, 
 the lower portion being twice the breadth of the upper, 
 and is wrought in laminas of gold, encrusted with groups 
 and figures in low relief, the general design of the upper 
 part being a central quatrefoil between six round arches on 
 pillarets, and of the lower part a circle surrounded by four 
 small circles within a square, with, on either side, three tiers 
 of six arcades bearing figures. It contains about 3olb. weight 
 of gold, nearly ten times that weight in silver, and is set 
 with over 2000 pearls and precious stones. Unfortunately 
 the latter have no great value, the originals having fallen a prey 
 to the invader at the fall of the Republic, the Talk itself only 
 escaping the melting pot because its value was not known. 
 It is not unlikely that this precious shrine destined for the 
 Evangelist's relics, divided as it is into panels made to fold 
 horizontally, was to have been placed above the mensa of 
 the high altar, but not intended to be used, as it now occa- 
 sionally is, for encasing the sides. A lengthy inspedion of 
 
 • It was apparently on the altar at the time the accompanying view of 
 the mterior was taken. With the aid of a magnifying glass someof its de- 
 tails may be seen. 
 
 165 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 this Palla d' Oro enabled me to recognize in it the strongly 
 marked characteristics of the Byzantine school in all its 
 rigid mannerism, studied asceticism and overloading of 
 gorgeous ornaments. On the central panel of the front is re- 
 presented our Lord enthroned and in afl of blessing. His 
 countenance is of the Greek type, dark, sullen and severe; 
 in His left hand the Gospels gorgeously bound and set with 
 twenty-four gems ; the nimbus and the supporters of the 
 throne are likewise profusely jewelled. On either side are the 
 Evangelists, each seated at a desk, each nimbus defined in 
 pearls; and below the throne is St Mary in attitude of prayer, 
 the arms outspread, and supported on either side by the 
 Doge Giustiniano Participazio and a regal lady, probably the 
 Empress Irene. The other larger figures are: the twelve 
 Aposdes, prophets and saints of the Old Law, and white- 
 robed angels in adoration. 
 
 Among the smaller compositions are scenes from the life 
 of St Mark and the translation of his relics, including their 
 arrival and pompous reception at Venice. A cornice presents 
 us with a series of miniature designs hardly distinguishable 
 except in the central subject, the Virgin and Child. The form 
 of the Divine Infant is entirely covered with jewels. Then 
 there are several bust-reliefs, their interstices filled with 
 graceful flowery borders, showing how eminent was the 
 skill of the Byzantine artist in this, whilst his school stood so 
 low in other departments. The effeminate Greek treatment 
 of the figures and costumes of Old Testament personages 
 is curiously marked; and it may be worth while to consider 
 the immeasurable distance of idea between the Moses, here 
 noticeable for a certain girlish prettiness, and the colossal 
 statue of the Lawgiver by Michael 4ngelo at Rome. 
 
 Poetic and wondrously effective as is the whole of St 
 
 i66 
 
ST MARK'S, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 
 
 Mark's, its claims as a Christian type in architedure are 
 open to question. It resembles a casket of jewels comprising 
 every species of workmanship among its gorgeous contents ; 
 its overloaded details divert from what is essential in the 
 sacred edifice, the spiritual intent and heavenly dedication. 
 Many of the antique ornaments set in its outer walls are 
 indeed quite foreign to the religious character, and, like the 
 necklace on the classic idol, serve but to deck the form, not 
 enhance the beauty of the art-work; and even the celebrated 
 horses of gilt brass, brought from the Hippodrome at Con- 
 stantinople among the spoils apportioned to the Venetians 
 on the taking of that city by the Crusaders, are quite un- 
 suitable, however imposing in their conspicuous place over 
 the central portals. 
 
 Of all the numberless details that trench upon the atten- 
 tion, the statues, the columns, the mosaics, the rare marbles 
 which line the walls or cover the domes and pavements, 
 there is hardly one that has not its value and significance, 
 either in itself or in its past history. Such a church cannot 
 be conquered without time. It must be visited again and 
 again, and slowly and patiently studied. 
 
 As I dreamt there under almost every condition of light, 
 how many shadows from the past arose and filled this "dim 
 and mighty minster of old time" with their historic forms! 
 I thought of the stern crusaders swearing on the banner of 
 the cross before setting out for the Holy Land; of the 
 bronzed warriors who bore the standard of the old Queen 
 of the Adriatic far through the glowing East, and who 
 brought their spoils and riches to lay them at the feet of 
 
 their patronandprotecSor; of themightyDoges,whosenames 
 recall all that Venice was in the plenitude of her power, and 
 whose blazoned shields once hung on the marble walls; I 
 
 167 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 pictured them slowly pacing these shadowy vistas in their 
 robes of state ; of ambassadors from distant lands, and Popes, 
 in the plenitude of their pomp and power, bending in homage 
 at the shrine of the Republic's chosen saint. 
 
 I thought of those nameless multitudes whom history 
 calls "the people"; that people whose love for St Mark's 
 was based on and inspired by a love for their country and 
 its greatness; a people who loved freedom as their own sea 
 Waves, and who saw in the old basilica not merely the ex- 
 pression of a religious creed, but the palladium of their 
 cherished liberty, the inviolable temple of their God, and 
 the Holy Ark of their own beloved State. 
 
 i68 
 
Bologna : Interior of 55. Pietro e Paolo (in 5t. 5tefano). 
 
 To face page 169. 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Ferrara and Bologna 
 
 THE western fa9ade of the Cathedral at Ferrara, the 
 glory of the old States of the Church, and the fittest 
 save one in Italy — that of St Lorenzo at Genoa — to rival 
 the front of a French church, is to the Italian what the 
 west front of Rheims is to a Frenchman, or that of Wells 
 to an Englishman. 
 
 Entirely different in outline from the generally adopted 
 simple one with its broad low gable, its western doors, 
 its buttresses in the form of attached shafts sometimes 
 supporting nothing, and its rose window surrounded by 
 the symbols of the Evangelists, this fagade of the Duomo 
 at Ferrara, which might vie even with that of a northern 
 church in beauty, intricacy and richness of character, is 
 nevertheless an entirely shamelessly false one, which the 
 less ornate ones are honourably not. 
 
 Dating from the middle of the twelfth century, and built 
 of pale yeUow marble, to which, in certain parts, a rose- 
 coloured one lends an additional charm, it is divided into 
 three nearly equal compartments. Each of these divisions, 
 which are gabled, rises in four stages, wherein it is interesting 
 to trace the gradual growth of Gothic purity and richness 
 as they ascend. The central compartment is occupied by a 
 slightly projecting porch, whose inner doorway of the 
 richest and most exuberant late Romanesque architecture 
 bears in its lintel eight sculptured scenes from the life of the 
 Virgin, and its tympanum a "St George and the Dragon," 
 
 169 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 reminding us that our royal family have sprung from the 
 same stock as the D'Estes, once lords of Ferrara. Over 
 this porch the genius of Niccola Pisano raised a pronaos, 
 which in its early thirteenth-century Gothic purity is pro- 
 bably without a rival in these Northern parts of Italy. In 
 the central arcade the subdividing shaft gives place to the 
 same artist's world-famed statue of the Madonna, on either 
 side of which a lamp is kept burning with solemn effe£t all 
 through the night. The whole of the pronaos above these 
 graceful open arcades with the varied mouldings and boldly 
 foliaged capitals of their shafts, and the quatrefoils pierced 
 plate tracery-wise in their tympana, is occupied by a re- 
 presentation of the Last Judgement, spread, however, in too 
 unsystematic a manner to bear comparison either with the 
 French examples or with the sculpture on the west front 
 of Orvieto Cathedral, which is not only beautiful in its 
 position, but beautiful also to a high degree in all its detail 
 of design and execution. At Ferrara the gable of the pronaos 
 is occupied by the Majesty seated within a vesica and sup- 
 ported on either side by two saints, while following the line 
 of the gable is a guipure band of sculpture, which on ex- 
 amination will be found to consist of a number of half 
 figures, dominated at the apex of the gable by two angels 
 who hold a crown over the seated figure of our Lord. In 
 the frieze below, the blessed are seen being conducted into 
 the presence of the Father, and the accursed into the place 
 of torment, which is here represented with all that hideous 
 and terrible realism which the medieval sculptors knew so 
 well how to depict. I believe I am right in asserting that 
 there are no representations of the Resurrection and Last 
 Judgement together of earlier date than the year looo. 
 The explanation appears to be that prior to that year there 
 
 170 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 was a deep and widespread feeling in the minds of people 
 that the end of the world would come in looo; but when 
 the period passed without its having come, a revul- 
 sion of feeling ensued. To correft this the clergy dwelt 
 strongly and frequently on the certainty of the last judge- 
 ment in their sermons, and caused architects and artists, 
 especially during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to 
 place representations in the most conspicuous situations in 
 churches; hence they are sculptured over the principal 
 doorways or on the western fagade, as at Amiens, Autun, 
 Bourges, Chartres, Paris, Lincoln and elsewhere; painted 
 upon the glass of the great east window as at Fairford, or 
 combined with the Radix Jesse as at Selby, and formerly 
 no doubt at Carlisle; or painted on the plastered wall above 
 the chancel arch, as in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, 
 Lutterworth, Bedford near Hounslow, Slymbridge, St 
 Thomas's, Salisbury, and elsewhere. 
 
 Of Italian Gothic sculpture, which would admit of much 
 praise of the highest kind, the greatest school is that of 
 thePisani. Besides the exquisite piece of work over the porch 
 at Ferrara we owe to them the unsurpassed sculpture of the 
 front of Orvieto Cathedral, as we do also the fine pulpits of 
 Siena, Pisa and St Andrea at Pistoja, the idea of which, it 
 is only fair to say, was not theirs, but derived from a cer- 
 tain Guido de Como, who in a.d. 1250 executed a fine 
 sculptured pulpit in the church of St Bartolommeo at Pistoja. 
 But whilst none, or at any rate very little, of this figure 
 sculpture, either in execution or in the elaborate telling of 
 its story, surpasses the best thirteenth-century French work, 
 it is remarkable that the sculpture of foliage is compara- 
 tively rare, and seldom good or at all architectural in cha- 
 racter when it does occur. 
 
 171 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The cause of this would open up a very interesting in- 
 vestigation. Perhaps it was the continued recolle<ftion of 
 the antique, which in our own time has produced the same 
 results, which hampered the Italian artists; but however it 
 is, we see nothing in the purely Gothic sculpture of Italy 
 at all worthy of comparison with the exquisite works of 
 the Byzantine artists in St Mark's, Venice, and at Torcello, 
 or with the contemporaneous work of the Northern sculp- 
 tors, who in Paris, Chartres, Bourges, Rouen, Nuremburg, 
 Bamberg, Freiburg in Saxony, Lincoln and Wells, were 
 devising for us such perfeft embodiments of the best 
 architedtural sculpture, founded properly on nature, as it 
 would seem impossible ever to excel. 
 
 In Italy sculpture of figures was introduced in a much 
 less general way than might have been expedled. There 
 are no examples of anything like the great French portals 
 covered with a profusion of sculpture on a grand scale. 
 Here it is often introduced in a succession of very small 
 medallions scattered about the facade, as, for example, in 
 that at Modena, but the delicacy and tenderness of senti- 
 ment exhibited in such works as this, and in the doorways 
 of the Baptistery at Parma, only make us regret that this 
 species of ornamention was not made use of on a more 
 impressive scale by the Italian architefts. 
 
 Quitting Venice in the afternoon, darkness had fallen 
 ere I drove into Ferrara through the pleasantly umbrageous 
 road which lies between the railway station and the some- 
 what melancholy old archiepiscopal city, so that when 
 quarters had been secured at the Albergo della Stella d' Oro, 
 fronting the great frowning red-brick mass of the Castle 
 with its dreadful memories of that tragedy immortalized 
 by Lord Byron in his Parisina, the Cathedral was closed. 1 
 
 172 
 
2 
 
 s: 
 
 u 
 
 o 
 
 1. 
 
 10 
 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 had, therefore, to content myself with a survey of its fa9ade, 
 which, looming large against the deep blue star-spangled 
 heavens, with the lamp burning on either side of Pisano's 
 exquisite Madonna in the pronaos, left an extraordinary 
 impression upon me, and I retired to rest with delightful 
 anticipations of what the interior would reveal on the 
 morrow. 
 
 "Whispers had reached methat it had been "modernized," 
 a term which may mean anything; but my consternation 
 may be imagined when, on drawing aside the curtain which 
 veils the entrance to the nave from the narthex, I found 
 myself in a building, spacious and of its kind imposing, 
 but from which, with the exception of its font, every trace 
 of medievalism has been ruthlessly banished.* 
 
 During a subsequent ramble about the deserted streets 
 and grass-grown squares in remote parts of the city, I 
 lighted upon an engraving of the interior of the Duomo, 
 made before the work of spoliation, which extended over 
 the century comprised between 1637 and 1737, had been 
 commenced. 
 
 The view in question was an internal elevation of the 
 greater part of the south side, and from it I could gather 
 that, like most of the early Italian Gothic churches of its 
 age — the middle of the twelfth century — Ferrara Cathedral 
 had its several great vaulting bays subdivided into two 
 lesser ones supporting a triforium, comprising two triple 
 arcades under semicircular arches, and a clerestory curi- 
 ously lighted by two tiers of very small round-headed 
 windows. There would also appear to have been one of 
 those complex multifoiled wood roofs which we still see at 
 
 * It was such strufliures as these that so justly excited the indignation 
 of Pugin. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Verona in St Zeno and St Fermo, and at Padua in the 
 great aisleless church of the Eremitani. 
 
 There is much painting in the interior of this Duomo at 
 Ferrara. The semi-dome of the richly stalled choir, remo- 
 delled in 1499 by the Ferrarese Rosette, one of the earli- 
 est of the classical revivalists, represents the Last Judge- 
 ment. It is from the brush of Bastiniano, a favourite pupil 
 and good imitator of Michael Angelo, and has been extolled 
 by Lanzi for its grandeur of design, the great variety of 
 its figures, the judicious disposition of the groups, and 
 the pleasing repose which it presents to the eye of the 
 spedator. The rest of the mural decoration is the work of 
 the last century, and as it has been carried out in the Raf- 
 faellesque style, steers a medium course between the archaic 
 school on the one hand and the ultra-naturalistic on the 
 other. 
 
 A curious but pleasant feature of the interior of Ferrara 
 Cathedral is the manner in which the architedb has broken 
 up the great length of its nave by quasi-transepts, that is 
 to say, in the first bay on either hand immediately on enter- 
 ing and also in the third bay beyond he has carried his 
 arch above the rest, treating the roof over it dome-wise. 
 There is in addition a larger and bona fide transept between 
 the nave and the choir, whose construction, as well as that 
 of the lesser transepts, can be studied from the exterior, 
 where the walls are for the most part left in their original 
 twelfth-century condition, with a series of tall, shallow 
 arcades in continuation of the lowest tier of the west front. 
 All above them, has been modernized in the very worst 
 and feeblest phase of pseudo-classical. 
 
 Viewed from the narthex, which runs the width of the 
 church between the outer and inner west walls, the great 
 
 174 
 
u 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 c 
 
 u 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 U 
 
 
 
 '5 
 
 u 
 
 s 
 
 u 
 
 i2 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 length and unencumbered area of Ferrara Cathedral is un- 
 doubtedly very striking, but it is hardly one which a medie- 
 valist would revisit with much pleasure. 
 
 Those Pointed styles which awakened so many recollec- 
 tions, and which called forth some of the best and most holy 
 feelings in the mind of the Englishman during the coldest 
 and laxest days of Church discipline, had no counterpart in 
 that of the Italian. He looked upon Gothic as an invention 
 of the Northern barbarians, and a combination of dispropor- 
 tions and dissonances. Its milight pale was to him the sullen 
 gloom of Northern forests and of skies for ever clouded; 
 its clustered pillars he regarded as mere confusion, ill- 
 contrived bundles of stone; the apparent length appeared 
 to him the result of narrowness and disproportion; the 
 pointed arch, the consequence of ignorance in not knowing 
 the art of forming a round one; the tracery of the windows, 
 happy inventions to obstruct the light; in short, he looked 
 upon the whole Gothic style, or Tedesca, as he called it, as 
 an ill-assorted mass of incongruities, disproportions, encum- 
 brance, confusion, darkness and intricacy; well adapted, 
 indeed, as were the forests of Teutonland, to the gloom and 
 horror of Druidical sacrifices and Runic incantations, 
 
 Barbara ritu; 
 Sacra Deum, struftae divis feralibus arse,* 
 
 but very ill-calculated for the purposes of a Christian con- 
 gregation, the order and decorum of its rites and the fes- 
 tive celebration of its mysteries. 
 
 While I was inspefling the Cathedral, the Canons were 
 monotoning the matutinal offices in the choir by accumu- 
 lation, and the sacristan was arranging the altars in the side 
 
 *Lucan. 
 
 I7S 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 chapels attended by an underling. From the scraps of con- 
 versation which reached my ears from time to time, ill will 
 appeared to exist between the parties, who were accom- 
 panied by a neat white cat, the property of one of those 
 elderly dames who may often be seen industriously plying 
 the needle in Italian churches. Puss, who after the manner 
 of her species evinced the greatest curiosity in the pro- 
 ceedings, afterwards took a stroll on her own account about 
 the aisles, and finally walking in the stateliest manner and 
 with tail eredt up the choir, disappeared behind the high 
 altar where the Canons' Mass was being celebrated. How- 
 ever, as nobody took the slightest notice, I came to the 
 conclusion that puss was a persona grata with the ecclesi- 
 astics who were occupying their staUs around the apse. 
 
 Later in the day — it was the Saturday in Whitsun week — 
 I was speeding towards Bologna, that " mother of cities," 
 celebrated alike in arts and in letters, and presenting mani- 
 fold objeds of interest to the scholar and the dilettante. The 
 halls which were trod by Lanfranc and Irnerius, and the 
 ceilings which glow with the colours of Guido and the 
 Caracci, the churches which are very numerous and repre- 
 sent almost every phase of Italian architefture, the palaces 
 and the apparently interminable vistas of arcades which line 
 the streets, can never be neglected by any to whom learning 
 and taste are dear. 
 
 My first care on arrival was to seek out that singular 
 congeries of seven churches grouped together under the 
 general name of St Stefano, taking as my point de dipart those. 
 towers of the Asinelli and Garisendi, which, inclining cross- 
 wise as if bowing to each other, form one of the most con- 
 spicuous and well-known features in the panorama of thecity. 
 
 During the twelfth century, when the cities of Italy, tutte 
 
 176 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 piene di tirranna, were rivals in arms as afterwards in arts, 
 watch-towers of unusual elevation were frequently erected. 
 In Venice, in Pisa, in Cremona, in Modena and in Florence 
 these singular structures yet remain; but none are more 
 remarkable than the towers of the Asinelli and Garisenda 
 families in Bologna. 
 
 The latter has been immortalized in the verse of Dante. 
 When the poet and his guide are snatched up by the huge 
 Antaeus, the bard compares the stooping stature of the giant 
 to the tower of theGarisendi,which,as the spectator stands 
 at its base while the clouds are sailing from the quarter to 
 which it inclines, seems to be falling on his head: 
 
 As appears 
 The tower of Garisenda from beneath 
 Where it doth lean, if chance a passing cloud 
 So sail across that opposite it hangs; 
 Such then Antxus seemed, as at mine ease 
 I marked him stooping. 
 
 The tower of the Asinelli rises to the height of about 
 310 feet, and is said to be three feet and a half out of the 
 perpendicular. 
 
 I ascended. The evening was favourable for a view, and 
 I could well distinguish Imola, Ferrara and Modena, as well 
 as the hills about Verona, seeming to rise abruptly from the 
 dead flat which extends on three sides of Bologna. 
 
 The Garisenda Tower, ereded probably by the family of 
 the Garisendi, is 160 feet in height, and inclines as much 
 as eight feet from the perpendicular. The leaning charafter 
 of these Bolognese towers is probably attributable to the 
 carelessness or ill fortune with which their foundations were 
 prepared, converted by the Italians into an additional proof 
 of the skill of the architeft, who was able to make a tower 
 lean so far over its base without falling. Of architeftural 
 
 177 12 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 design these strudlures possess no more than the chimney 
 of a factory, being merely tall square brick towers with, for 
 their sole ornament, a machicolated balcony at the top. 
 
 Thus it was that, from Garisenda's aerial height, I was 
 enabled to locate St Stefano's without indulging in any 
 speculative Italian on my own account; unlike Sir Gilbert 
 Scott and Benjamin Ferrey when in quest of this church 
 during their visit to Bologna in 1851. In his Personal and 
 Professional Recollections Sir Gilbert amusingly narrates how 
 he and the architect of St Stephen's, Rochester Row, having 
 inquired of a benign-looking elderly gentleman the way to 
 this singular group of buildings, were led by him silently 
 through two or three streets, conduced into the middle ot 
 the church, shaken hands with in dumb show, and so taken 
 leave of. 
 
 The exact rawoK^'^/rifof this curiouslabyrinth of churches, 
 most of which are of great antiquity, is hard to account for. 
 It is a colledion of buildings of all sizes and forms, the 
 only principle of unity being, as far as I could see, that 
 every incident of the Passion is objectively represented — 
 on a large scale — in some one part or other of the group; 
 so that one may go from place to place in a regular course, 
 and so pursue the events of the Passion and merit indul- 
 gences. During the two hours which I passed in trying to 
 unravel the architedural mysteries of these churches, per- 
 sons came in and kissed pillars and crosses, with a few 
 seconds' prayer at each, and then retired. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the site of St Stefano at 
 Bologna is that of a pagan temple, the materials for which 
 have been freely used in the construction of some of the 
 buildings composing it. Antique marble columns, caps and 
 bases, not always fitting into one another, and rarely or 
 
 178 
 
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 u 
 
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FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 never in their original places, are discoverable in their various 
 parts. 
 
 The first church, that of II Santissimo Crocifisso, appears 
 to the right of the illustration on page 178. The second, 
 that of St Sepolcro, stands between it and number three, 
 which is dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul. The fourth church, 
 styled the Atrio di Pilato, is a quadrangle with a cloistered 
 walk on two sides, and lies immediately behind St Sepolcro, 
 beneath which is, number five, a crypt or confessionary. The 
 sixth church, called La Madonna della Consolazione, is 
 formed in a court, likewise cloistered, to the east of number 
 one, and from its northern walk we enter the seventh church, 
 dedicated to the Holy Trinity. 
 
 The Santissimo Crocifisso, through which the other 
 churches are generally approached, has a very good early 
 pointed fa9ade, but interiorly it has been modernized and 
 is uninteresting. 
 
 Passing through a door on its left side, and descending 
 some steps, we enter the most interesting church of the 
 group, the odagonal St Sepolcro, originally the baptistery 
 either to the contiguous SS. Peter and Paul or to the Holy 
 Trinity, from which it is separated by the Atrio di Pilato, 
 now containing the font. Although odagonal without, St 
 Sepolcro is dodecagonal within, the twelve round arches 
 which separate the domed space from the surrounding aisle 
 springing from tall circular columns, coupled in the western 
 half of the dodecagon, and single in the eastern. One of each 
 of the coupled columns is of marble, the others are all of 
 red brick; indeed, very little stone is used at all, that ma- 
 terial appearing only in the capitals of the columns, a;nd in 
 the little shafts of the coupled arcades which light the space 
 above the circumambient aisle. Almost in the centre arises 
 
 179 12a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 a tall marble eredion of early Pointed Gothic charader 
 which appears to serve a threefold purpose — as the place 
 of sepulture of St Petronio, as a pulpit or ambon, and as 
 the platform for the altar. The three sculptured panels in 
 the back of this shrine within the shallow trefoiled arch 
 represent the Resurredlion. In the centre panel is the angel 
 sitting on the empty tomb; in the left-hand panel the holy 
 women are seen approaching the sepulchre; and in the right 
 hand one are the guards sleeping. Beneath the figure of the 
 seated angel is inscribed, "Quivi riposa il corpo del glo- 
 riosi S. Petronio, Vesc e protett di Bolog." — "Here rests 
 the body of St Petronius, bishop and patron of Bologna." 
 
 Graceful pillarets, continued as a handrail to the stair- 
 case leading to the top of the shrine, encompass the altar, at 
 which a Low Mass was being celebrated while I was in the 
 building. 
 
 The ambon, adjoining the sepulchre on the left, looking 
 towards the west, has very large and bold carvings of the 
 evangelistic symbols on its northern and eastern faces. 
 Those seen in the illustration, on the latter side, are the 
 winged lion and the eagle emblematical of St Mark and St 
 John; while the angel and the winged ox, which are the attri- 
 butes of St Matthew and St Luke, occupy the former one. 
 
 SS. Pietro e Paolo, entered from the church just des- 
 cribed by a door in the northern ambulatory, is a Roman- 
 esque parallel triapsidal basilica of extremely simple cha- 
 rader, and, from the paucity of window openings, very 
 sombre. The pillars supporting the coupled arches, and 
 secured by iron ties and bands, are cylinders with capitals 
 whose foliaging is a kind of cross between the Corinthian 
 acanthus and the Gothic "stifF-leafed" forms. 
 
 One column on the south side has an Ionic capital. The 
 
 1 80 
 
Bologna: Interior of St. Sepolcro (in St. Stefano). 
 
 "To face page i8o. 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 intermediate piers are remarkable masses of brick formed 
 of four half-columns attached to a square nucleus. 
 
 In the Atrio di Pilato we find pillars of similar shape, 
 but with plain cubical capitals forming the arcade which 
 runs along its north and south sides, and reminding one 
 rather of the great atrium of St Ambrose at Milan. This 
 court opens into the three-aisled Church of the Holy 
 Trinity, in which are some graceful columns. The altar is 
 placed at the north end, but I susped its original place was 
 in one of the recesses opening out of the easternmost of the 
 three aisles, the church being built with its longest par^: 
 running from north to south. 
 
 The last of this singular congeries of buildings to which 
 I shall allude is the large cloister adjoining the Church of 
 the Trinity on the south and that of the Crocifisso on the 
 east. It has four ambulatories, above each of which is an 
 upper story such as may be seen in some German cathe- 
 drals, as, for instance, at Hildesheim and Halberstadt. The 
 lower, and earlier, walks have very simple round arches 
 resting generally on four slender shafts detached from each 
 other. The upper ambulatories have a continuous arcade 
 of deep round arches supported on delicate pillarets coupled 
 transversely and crowned with rather elongated capitals 
 which exhibitconsiderable variety in their foliaged ornament. 
 
 The wall above this arcade is built of various-coloured 
 bricks — ^green, red and yellow, arranged in patterns, with 
 no little beauty of efFedl. The cornice is very peculiar, being 
 in part inlaid with pattern tiles and in part with tiles cut to 
 a shape and set forward at an angle from the face of the 
 wall. The whole work is of great value as an example of 
 coloured wall decoration, which is entirely without the usual 
 architedural mouldings. 
 
 i8i 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Bologna contains two churches built respedtively by the 
 Dominican and Franciscan Orders of Friars Preachers, 
 which were principally and essentially designed for preach- 
 ing and teaching, "in order thereby to communicate to 
 others the fruits of contemplation, and to procure the sal- 
 vation of souls." For this purpose they took up their abodes 
 in the crowded cities, where their churches were usually 
 adapted to the accommodation of large congregations. 
 
 Bernardus valles, monies Benediftus amabat, 
 Oppida Franciscus, celebres Ignatius urbes. 
 
 The naves were capacious, sometimes, as in the destroyed 
 church of the Dominicans at Ghent, built in a single span 
 without aisles, although no absolute rule is applicable to 
 define the arrangement of churches of these Orders, which 
 exhibit great diversity in the form of their plan, from that 
 of the venerable basilica to the elegant creations of the 
 Dominican architefts of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
 turies, for this Order gave a vigorous impulse to the fine 
 arts, and scope for the exercise of the talents of eminent 
 architefts and unrivalled painters and sculptors. 
 
 Spacious as were the churches of the Friars Preachers gen- 
 erally, they were often far too small for the crowd of hearers, 
 who were obliged to adjourn to the piazza for a sermon in 
 the open air. Doubtless the designation of the preaching-yard 
 at Norwich has reference to this fa6t, and also the preaching- 
 cross in the centre of the Blackfriars cloister at Hereford. The 
 plan of the primitive churches first granted to the Order, 
 and continued in later times, has been but slightly modified 
 in many churches built by the Friars Preachers in Italy. 
 The breadth of the nave by which they were distinguished 
 was retained or amplified, the transept when introduced 
 was most frequently at the east end, so that the apse or 
 
 182 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 central chapel alone projefted beyond it and formed the 
 choir.* Hence it will be inferred that there were certain 
 provincial peculiarities, and that while in Italy the basilica 
 was in some degree the basis of the plans, in the French 
 provinces the twin nave was adopted as at Toulouse, Paris 
 and Strasburg; and such variations verify the statement that 
 the designs of the Friars Preachers exhibit great latitude and 
 dissimilarity; their facility in adaptation is borne out in prac- 
 tice in the venerable Dominican rite, which much resembles 
 the old English useof Sarum.This was celebrated with much 
 solemnity on the Trinity Sunday morning of my visit in 
 their great church at Bologna, the ceremonial of the censing 
 of the altar, when the officiating clergy passed completely 
 round it by means of the doorways contrived in the wall 
 connedbing the reredos with the pillars of the choir, being 
 a particularly solemn and impressive feature in the rite, 
 Dominic de Guzman, the patriarch of the Order, was born of 
 an illustrious family at Cdarogo in Old Castile in 1 1 70. At 
 the age of twenty-five he joined the Canons Regular of 
 Osma, and he was eventually chosen prior. In 1203 he con- 
 ceived the idea of establishing a new Order for the defence 
 of the faith, and in the following year set out on a pilgrim- 
 age to Rome with the Bishop of Osma. With six followers, 
 whom he clothed in the habit of the Canons Regular, Do- 
 minic commenced the formation of the Order in Toulouse; 
 
 •The following are a few of the most remarkable churches built by the 
 Dominican Order: St Andrew's Hall, Norwich; Notre-Dame, Louvain; 
 the Church of the Jacobins, Toulouse, remarkable for the manner in which 
 it is divided by a row of columns down the middle into two parts which 
 terminate in a common apse ; churches at Erfurt, Ratisbon and Strasburg; 
 SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice ; Sta Anastasia, Verona ; Sta Maria delle 
 Grazie, Milan ; St Dominic, Prato ; Sta Katerina, Pisa ; Sta Maria No- 
 vella, Florence ; and Sta Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. 
 
 183 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 from this lowly origin it soon made stupendous progress. 
 
 In 12 1 6 Fulk, Bishop of Toulouse, with the consent of 
 the Chapter, granted to Dominic three churches to which 
 convents were added ; that of St Romanus became the first 
 monastery of the Order, and the model for later foundations 
 elsewhere. Three days before Christmas of the same year 
 the Order was confirmed by Pope Honorius III at the 
 Pontifical Palace adjoining Sta Sabina. 
 
 Dominic took his departure from Rome after Easter of 
 the following year and rejoined his brethren in Toulouse, of 
 whom there were sixteen — eight Frenchmen, seven Spaniards 
 and Brother Lawrence, an Englishman. These were to be- 
 come the new apostles of a later age, and to be dispersed 
 far and wide as soon as they had been assembled; the great 
 objeft of the Dominican institute, in contradistin<5lion to 
 that of the regular clergy, being to go out two and two from 
 town to town preaching and missionizing, and not to settle 
 down to parochial duties. Three years had hardly elapsed 
 after the dispersion of the brethren ere they possessed con- 
 vents in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland ; and 
 on Whit-Sunday, 12 19, the first General Chapter of the 
 Order was held in Bologna, where Dominic passed his latter 
 years. Dying in 1221, a costly tomb, one of the earliest tri- 
 umphs of the genius of Niccola Pisano, was placed over his 
 remains. 
 
 The exterior of this Dominican church at Bologna, though 
 uncouth in the mass, still retains a good deal of its Gothic 
 beauty in the west front, the lofty chapels round the choir 
 with their two tiers of lancet windows, and the great northern 
 apsidal transept. 
 
 The interior, however, was so completely transformed in 
 the eighteenth century as to have completely lost its Pointed 
 
 184 
 
Bologna : The Shrine of St. Dominic. 
 
 Ic fr.ce page 184, 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 charafter, traceable now only in the plan. The Church of St 
 John Lateran at Rome would appear to have furnished the 
 model, evident from the ten arcades into which its enor- 
 mously long nave is divided. They are alternately a round- 
 headed and a square bay, the former rising from Ionic pil- 
 asters, the latter from circular columns of the same order. 
 At the Lateran Church, however, the square bay is solid 
 and filled with large canopied figures,* at Bologna it is 
 open. 
 
 The wall space over each square-headed bay is relieved 
 with a framed picture, otherwise the interior is devoid of 
 colour, yet, in spite of the disappointment occasioned by 
 finding a thirteenth-century church so completely modern- 
 ized, it is impossible not to admire its grand spaciousness 
 and the restraint which has been exercised in its furniture 
 and decoration. 
 
 A lettered slab in the pavement of the north transept at- 
 tracted my attention. Stooping down I read as follows : 
 
 Nobiles de Guidottis sibi et suis. 
 
 And this is all to mark the resting-place of the Bolo- 
 
 gnese Guido Reni, whose works, if deficient in strength and 
 
 expression, are unsurpassed in grace and beauty; whose 
 
 beau-ideal in respect to sacred subjects was admirable; and 
 
 *This, it should be noted, is but a modernization ; the guilt of which 
 must rest upon the head of Borromini, who walled up the old columns 
 of St John Lateran in huge piers, and transformed the whole interior into 
 its present shape. Among his original designs in Rome, the Church of St 
 Agnes in the Piazza Navona, though extravagant and faulty, has redeeming 
 features, and is not his worst. That unenviable distinction belongs to the 
 little Church of San Carlino at the Four Fountains, a building whose whole 
 cubic contents are said not to equal one of the piers of St Peter's. On its 
 puny front the outlines undulate like waves ; and columns large and small, 
 pedestals, entablatures and balustrades, doors, windows, niches, panels and 
 sculptures, jostle each other as if fighting for room. 
 
 185 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 whose genius is strongly attested by the celestial charadter 
 so peculiarly impressed on his figures. 
 
 St Francesco, the other great church biiilt by the Preach- 
 ing Orders in Bologna, and situated a little to the west of 
 the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, has escaped pretty well from 
 the wholesale classicizing inflicted on St Dominico, although 
 it suflTered much during the French occupation of 1798, 
 when it was turned into the customs-house, not being vendue 
 au cube until 1847.* 
 
 This is a church of great size, built almost entirely of 
 brick even to the piers, and in a very simple and severe 
 early Pointed style. The nave is of surprising height, vaulted 
 in octopartitebays. The clerestory windows are blunt lancet- 
 headed. There is no triforium, but an arcade of broad 
 Pointed arches springing from octagonal brick piers with 
 caps and bases of a boldness very unusual in Italian Pointed. 
 Without any intervention of screen, or even diminished 
 breadth, the choir exhibits a seven-sided apse lighted as to 
 its clerestory by very simple lancets filled with some of the 
 best modern stained glass of my acquaintance in Italy. It 
 has been carried out in the true early thirteenth-century 
 style with somewhat elongated and archaically treated figures 
 such as we see in the clerestories of Bourges and Chartres 
 and Lyons. 
 
 The central lancet has a grandly treated Crucifixion with 
 SS. Mary and John. Very little white glass is used in these 
 lancets, but we do not seem to desiderate it in windows of 
 this style. A curious feature is the small circular window 
 placed above the lancet in each bay right up at the apex of 
 
 *Upon the expulsion of the religious orders from Italy in 1866 St 
 Francesco was once more secularized, but was given back again to the 
 Church twenty years later. 
 
 186 
 
BOLOGNA. 
 
 EAST END OF ST. FRANCESCO. 
 
M^' 
 
 igij 
 
 4^ 
 
 ■^J 
 
 
 ^^mJ^^^H I "'^ 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 the vaulting cell. It may be a German importation, as it 
 occurs in the apses of St Mary at Gelnhausen, and in that 
 of the western choir of Bamberg Cathedral. A series of very 
 acutely pointed arches separates the choir from the procession 
 path and series of chapels opening therefrom. According to 
 the original design the transepts at St Francesco did not ex- 
 tend beyond the breadth of the aisles, but chapels had been 
 added at their extremities in the rococo style, and a modern 
 lady-chapel built at the east end. All these accretions have 
 now vanished, and new Gothic work, presumably on the 
 lines of the old, but far from satisfactory, substituted. In 
 shape the chapels which radiate from the procession path 
 of the apse, alternate between the apsidal and the square 
 ended, looking as though the archited could not make up 
 his mind which form to adopt. The general effedl is most 
 ungraceful, and cannot be compared for a moment with 
 that of any one of the French chevets. Along the aisles 
 chapels had been built of various dates and designs, making 
 the exterior very varied. These have all been removed during 
 the extensive works that are still in progress at this church 
 since the 'forties of the last century. Externally St Francesco 
 is remarkable for its noble flying buttresses round the choir 
 and on the sides of its grandly clerestoried nave ; for the 
 low pitch of its roofs; for an extremely beautiful and lofty 
 square tower, of moulded brick, elaborately panelled in 
 various stages at the south-east of the plan; and for its very 
 imposing west front which is of the customary Italian screen- 
 like charadler and has tombs bracketed out on its lower 
 part, and a rich recessed door with a moulding of vines 
 under a canopied portal. Above its round window and 
 couple of large plain lancets a cross of stone is inserted in 
 the gable; there is also a rich corbel-tabling imparting a 
 
 187 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 delightful finish to a mass of red brickwork which ap- 
 peared to unusual advantage under the cloudless sky of a 
 calm June evening. 
 
 The gem of the interior of St Francesco is its reredos, 
 restored about 1845 by Professor Filippo Antolini from 
 existing fragments.* The whole is of most delicate work- 
 manship and carried out in white Carrara marble. Its de- 
 sign comprehends a broad central niche, filled with a sculp- 
 ture of the Coronation of the Virgin, and supported by four 
 niches on each side, each containing the figure of a saint. 
 
 Above the canopies of this lower range are nine smaller 
 niches with half-figures in them. The central compartment 
 rises higher, with another niche containing figures of the 
 Blessed Virgin and the Holy Infant, the spiry canopy of 
 which terminates in a beautifully wrought crucifix with our 
 Lady and the beloved Disciple standing by it. 
 
 The eight subsidiary compartments terminate in lower 
 pinnacles, and the design is flanked by buttressed pinnacles 
 ending in figures of angels blowing trumpets. The altar, 
 which was renewed at the same time as the reredos, is a 
 large slab of white marble, supported in front by four 
 carved spiral columns of the same material. Behind the 
 columns is a front carved in very low relief in arabesque 
 patterns. The reredos is placed on a high marble strufture 
 which rises above the altar. 
 
 This substrufture appeared to me to be over-large, 
 having the efFedl of raising the reredos far too much, so 
 -that the effecft of its own delicate work and its relation to 
 the church are both spoilt. 
 
 * It was originally the work of Giacobello and Pietro della Massegne, 
 and for which in 1388 they received 2,150 golden ducats — a very large 
 sum in those days. 
 
 188 
 
To face page i88. 
 
 &ologna : Altarpiece in St. Francesco. 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 The substrudure itself is, although intended to be 
 Pointed, almost classical in charadler, horizontal lines pre- 
 vailing, and the panelling being somewhat wanting in 
 depth. The criticism of this detail which I have thus been 
 constrained to make does not make any abatement to the 
 high praise which is due to the work as a whole. For the 
 period of its execution it must be looked upon as a work 
 of some importance, since it was one of the first move- 
 ments in Italy towards a revival of the Pointed style. 
 
 The huge Church of St Petronio, which, from its cen- 
 tral position, is to Bologna what the Dom is to Cologne, 
 was commenced when the fourteenth century was draw- 
 ing to its close, from the plans of Antonio Vincenzi, cele- 
 brated as one of the sixteen Reformatori and as the 
 ambassador of the Bolognese to the Venetian Republic 
 in 1396. 
 
 Designed to eclipse in splendour the Duomo of Flo- 
 rence, St Petronio was to have been a cruciform church of 
 the most grandiose dimensions — the largest in Europe in 
 fadt. From north to south (for St Petronio does not orien- 
 tate) it was to have measured nearly 800 feet; its greatest 
 breadth, namely, at the transepts, was to have been 525 
 feet, and it would have covered ground to the extent of 
 212,000 square feet. Of this gigantic design, the six-bayed 
 nave and its aisles, with their lateral chapels and south-east 
 campanile, were alone completed. The transepts were just 
 turned and the three doorwaysof the western fafade finished. 
 But even in this state, the dimensions of St Petronio are 
 enormous, the adual area which it covers being 74,000 
 square feet. The length of the nave is 383 feet, each of 
 the six bays dividing it from its aisles being very nearly 
 60 feet from one huge pier to the other, and equalling in 
 
 189 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 span the breadth of the nave. The width of the church in- 
 cluding the chapels is 156 feet. 
 
 The first view of St Petronio, although striking, cannot 
 be called prepossessing, owing to the mass of bare brick- 
 work which, as at Sta Anastasia at Verona, surmounts the 
 western portals. Ranking amongst the finest examples of the 
 Italian Gothic, these doorways at St Petronio are covered 
 with bas-reliefs setting forth various events of Scripture 
 history from the Creation to the A<5ls of the Apostles, and 
 are ornamented with busts of prophets and sibyls quite 
 Rafl&ellesque in conception. 
 
 The central doorway and its bas-reliefs were justly con- 
 sidered the masterpiece of Jacopo dalla Quercia, and were 
 entirely executed by him in grey limestone provided by 
 the Reverenda Fabrica. Their iconography deserves the 
 most careful study. In the centre of the arch is the Al- 
 mighty surrounded by thirty-two half-figures of the patri- 
 archs and prophets. 
 
 In the architrave are five subjedts from the New Testa- 
 ment, and on each pilaster the same number of subjefts 
 from the Old Testament, from the Creation to the Deluge. 
 Under the arch are statues of the Virgin and Child, St 
 Petronius and St Ambrose. 
 
 According to Vasari, dalla Quercia devoted twelve years 
 to this doorway, receiving 3,600 golden florins as the price 
 of his labour. 
 
 The left-hand doorway is remarkable for the angels and 
 sibyls round the arch, chiefly from the chisel of Tribolo, 
 the friend of Benvenuto Cellini. Of the four subjedls on 
 the left pilaster, the first, third and fourth are by Tribolo, 
 as well as the fourth on the right pilaster. Tribolo was as- 
 sisted in these works by Seccadenari, Properzia di Rossi, 
 
 190 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 the Bolognese Sappho, and by Cioli and Solosmeo, pupils 
 of Sansovino. 
 
 The three other subjefts on the right pilaster are by 
 Alfonso Lombardo, and represent different scenes from 
 the Old Testament. The sculptor of the second subjeft on 
 the left pilaster, Jacob giving his blessing to Isaac, is un- 
 known; Alfonso Lombardo's "Resurredion" under the 
 arch of this doorway is a superb piece of work, replete with 
 simple dignity and truth, and as such highly extolled by 
 Vasari. The taste and purity of Tribolo is further displayed 
 in the dexter portal of this fa9ade at St Petronio. To him 
 are due the angels in the arch, the sibyls, the eight subjefts 
 from the Old Testament on the pilasters and the effigy ot 
 the Virgin on one side under the arch. The group of Nico- 
 demus supporting the dead body of our Lord is by Amico, 
 and the figure of St John the Evangelist, corresponding to 
 Tribolo's of the Virgin, is by Ercole Seccadenari. 
 
 In the Italian Court at the South Kensington Museum 
 is a full-size plaster model of the central doorway, and close 
 by is a plan of this immense unfinished facade, of which 
 the three portals above described form a comparatively 
 insignificant portion.* 
 
 It may not be generally known that about fifty years ago 
 a move was made in the diredion of completing this gigan- 
 tic work, or that Pius IX on the occasion of his last visit 
 to Bologna — at that time (1857) the second capital of the 
 
 *In the transaflions of the Royal Institute of British Architefls for 
 1870-1 is an interesting communication from Mr H. L. Florence — then 
 travelling as Soane Medallist — respefting the designs for the completion 
 of the west front. Forty in number, these designs are hung up in the 
 vestry of the church. Although Italian Gothic seems to be the most ap- 
 plicable term to apply to most of these designs, many of them, although 
 Gothic in general form, are yet very Renaissance in character. 
 
 191 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 States of the Church — promised a sum amounting to 
 £1^,560 in aid of the undertaking. 
 
 After the annexation of Bologna by the kingdom of 
 Italy the municipality sought to obtain from the new gov- 
 ernment the sum promised by the Pope, but the case was 
 decided against them on the plea that Pius had intended it 
 as a personal, and not an official, gift. Now, however, after 
 years of litigation, the courts have reversed the decision, 
 declaring that the Italian Government is liable not only for 
 the principal sum, but for a considerable amount of in- 
 terest as well. But will the glorious fa9ade of St Petronio, 
 larger far than the majestic fronts of Orvieto and Siena, 
 ever become an accomplished fad? ;^ 13,000 would certainly 
 not suffice to finish a work conceived on such a magnifi- 
 cent scale. When, however, one remembers the completion 
 of the west front of the Duomo at Florence after long cen- 
 turies, there still seems hope that the dreams of the archi- 
 ted who designed that of St Petronio may one day be 
 realized. Even in its present state — lacking as it does its 
 transepts and choir, the latter being representedby a window- 
 less apse hitched on to the vast nave and painted in imita- 
 tion of a groin and a classic altarpiece — St Petronio is 
 Bologna's chief glory; but only one, after all, among the 
 priceless artistic treasures of a city which in late years has 
 done so much in the way of architedural restoration. 
 
 Long after St Petronio was left in negled, Bologna built 
 her cathedral in the classic style. Why instead the citizens 
 did not spend their money in finishing St Petronio and 
 crown it with cathedral dignity is one of the points of 
 Bolognese history about which the lovers of Italian Gothic 
 may well be curious. 
 
 The sides of the church are interesting but less to be 
 
 192 
 
Bologna: Central doorway of St. Petronio. 
 
 Tofacepnge 192, 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 admired, inasmuch as they exhibit some questionable fea- 
 tures borrowed from Germany, and introduced solely for 
 the sake of effedt. I would mention, inter alia, the construc- 
 tion of a window round two sides of the angles formed by 
 the nave and the projefted transept, one half on the western 
 and the other on the southern side, with the point of the arch 
 curiously canopying over — ^if I may so speak — at the angle. 
 
 Yet, in spite of such singularities, the detail is fine. The 
 base, of extraordinary height and grandeur, is of stone and 
 marble; and each chapel has been finished with a steep 
 gable cut off square at the top and lighted by a noble 
 window, generally of four compartments mainly construc- 
 ted in brick, but with shafted monials and traceries feirly 
 executed in stone. 
 
 Here brick is used to the utmost allowable extent, the 
 architeft having wisely changed it for stone wherever the 
 latter was the more conveniently used material. 
 
 A tall campanile, whose weight rests entirely upon the 
 last chapel on the left, rises at the (ecclesiologicaUy) south- 
 east angle. 
 
 It will be remembered that St Petronio consists of the 
 nave and aisles merely of the intended church. Following 
 the usual Italian tradition, the archited made each of the 
 bays of his nave square in plan, whilst those of the aisles 
 are oblong compartments with their greatest length from 
 east to west. Each bay of the aisles has two arches opening 
 into the side chapels beyond the aisles, the chapels being 
 lighted by large traceried windows of four lights and sepa- 
 rated from the aisles by screens of marble or metal, vary- 
 ing in style from the most delicate Venetian Gothic in the 
 former material to the simplest cross-framed type in the lat- 
 ter, but each in itself a study. 
 
 193 13 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The walls, the columns, and indeed the whole internal 
 work — save only the capitals and bases of the huge com- 
 plex columns, which, when I saw them, were swathed in 
 crimson drapery — is executed in brick, yet with a degree 
 of severity and simplicity in detail and general design that 
 impresses one from its air of virtuous self-restraint. 
 
 As I have remarked in the chapter introdudory to this 
 volume, we find none of those several interesting phases 
 in Italian Pointed Gothic that are so conspicuous on this 
 side of the Alps. We see through a part of the career ot 
 the harsh conflidl of the abundant classic remains through- 
 out the peninsula; and when it did for a short time succeed 
 in being free, the result did not appear to advantage by the 
 contrast, and it was soon set aside in favour of the revival 
 of the classic. 
 
 In decorative detail, however, as it might be supposed 
 in presence of such vast stores of conventional classic orna- 
 ment, Italian Gothic did not maintain the same conflift as 
 in the principles of construftion, and throughout its career 
 it affedled ancient precedents rather than natural types; 
 thus, the foliage of the acanthus is the general motif for the 
 carvings, with the sharp or round-lobed leaf according as 
 native or Byzantine influence predominated in the different 
 localities. 
 
 In the vast church of St Petronio at Bologna we see all 
 the general charadleristics and also those of detail just 
 mentioned. Vertical lines so far preponderate that there is 
 absolutely no continuous horizontal line to be seen within 
 the structure, which is produdive of a weak, ill-connefted 
 effedb. The transverse rib, the diagonal rib and the wall 
 rib, each with edge moulds, is carried down from ridge 
 to pavement with all the impost mouldings broken round 
 
 194 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 them, so that not even the capitals break the continuity of 
 these vertical lines; the pier arches likewise have their 
 edge-mouldings carried down with those of the vaulting 
 ribs in the same compound pier. 
 
 In the church now under review, we have all the general 
 principles of Gothic carried almost to excess, and in the 
 windows of the chapels opening from the aisles we have 
 Gothic details in their subdivision into couplets of two 
 lights by mullions, arches acutely pointed and cusped, and 
 cinquefoiled circles in the heads and a multifoiled cusped 
 circle in the space formed by the arch spanning the two- 
 light couplets. There are also cusped odofoiled circular 
 windows in the upper space of the walling of both nave and 
 aisles beneath the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the method 
 of moulding all the edges of the vaulting ribs and arches 
 is according to the true medieval system. Still there is in St 
 Petronio a lack of Gothic feeling, and strong reminiscences 
 of classical work to be seen in the great comparative breadth 
 of the compartments, in the flat, pilaster-like form of the 
 bearing member of the transverse rib of the vaulting, and 
 in the sedion of that rib itself in the treatment of the 
 banded imposts, which do duty as capitals at the level of 
 the springing of the pier arches, but which are wholly diffe- 
 rent from pure Gothic capitals, and in their successive 
 ranges of acanthus-like leaves recall the Corinthian of older 
 days. Then, by repetition of the same class of enriched 
 banded imposts at the springing of the vaulting ribs, the 
 efFecft given is of a secondary stage of classic pilasters, 
 placed upon, though without intervening base, the lower 
 impost of the pier of the nave arcade. 
 
 Again, in the plain, oblong-seftioned pier of division be- 
 tween the aisle and the chapels, with its quasi-cornice as 
 
 195 13a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 imposts, and absence of edge-moulding to those arches, it 
 is as if the architect had forgotten for the nonce the role he 
 had been striving to play, and had in forgetfiilness relapsed 
 to the classic character with which he was really more fami- 
 liar. There is no straining after height, no feeling of growth 
 in the strudlure, no subdivision into ascending stages of 
 arcade, triforium and clerestory, no contrast by string-courses 
 to enhance the value of what height there is, no delicate 
 proportioning of the several capitals to the scale of the mem- 
 bers they have to support. But, in lieu thereof, we perceive 
 a contentment with the breadth of the separate features 
 which gives a painfully disconnedled charafter to the whole. 
 Whether St Petronio would have presented a far finer en- 
 semble had the architect copied such naves as those of Pa- 
 derborn and Minden cathedrals, in which both triforium and 
 clerestory are dispensed with, I must leave others to judge. 
 
 The glories of St Petronio at Bologna are, unquestion- 
 ably, its stained glass and the screens of varied style which 
 those twenty-two chapels enclose. 
 
 The former is invested with a high interest from the very 
 fine examples of the several periods which it presents, and 
 its rarity; the Italians for climatic reasons generally using 
 small windows, thus obviating the necessity of painted glass. 
 Thus it is that we see comparatively little stained glass in 
 Italy, the transalpine architeds appearing to have thought 
 the church walls the best vehicle for the painter to tell his 
 story upon, knowing that the more space he left for his 
 brush to work upon, the better his brother artist would be 
 pleased. The art of glass painting was as favourite a one 
 north of the Alps as mosaic and fresco painting were south 
 of them. 
 
 The best coloured glass for painted windows in Italy, 
 
 196 
 
To face f-age ig6. 
 
 Bologna: Interior of St. Petronio. 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 called "smalti," was brought from France and Germany, 
 and the artists who established schools of glass-painting 
 and executed the finest works in Italy were either natives 
 of those countries or had learnt their art in them, like the 
 arcWtects of the time that witnessed the erection of the 
 gigantic fabric now under review. 
 
 At Venice and Murano scant attention appears to have 
 been paid to the vitreous art, and the glass made there for 
 that purpose was proverbially bad. 
 
 So much has been written of the biographies of Italian 
 artists, that if this art had been a favourite one with them 
 we must have heard of it. 
 
 In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was a 
 school of glass painting at Pisa. Many, if not all, of the 
 windows of the Campo Santo were filled with painted glass, 
 and the names of some of those engraved upon them are 
 mentioned. Marchesi in his biography of the Dominican 
 artists says a good deal about glass painters at Venice and 
 elsewhere. Fra Bartolommeo, a monk of the Dominican Order 
 at Perugia at the end of the fourteenth or the beginning 
 of the fifteenth century, appears to have been the first 
 Italian glass painter of real eminence. But, as I have already 
 said, the greatest impulse given to this art in Italy was 
 due to men of Northern birth or education, and as the 
 great fourlight windows in the chapels of St Petronio at 
 Bologna are manifestly based upon a study of some in the 
 nave of the Cathedral at Paderborn, it is not unreasonable 
 to suppose that their vitreous decoration in the Gothic style 
 was largely influenced by that of Germany. 
 
 The two greatest glass painters in the cinquecento period 
 in Italy were natives, one of Germany, the other of France. 
 The former, a native of Ulm, and known in Italy as "Gia- 
 
 197 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 como da Vlmo," was the painter of the magnificent window 
 in this style at St Petronio. He was the founder of a great 
 school of glass painting. He was the Beato Angelico of 
 glass painters. Like Angelico he was a Dominican, and in 
 his work was inspired with deep religious sentiment. He 
 had learnt his art with his father at Ulm, and after early 
 middle-age he joined the Dominican Order and settled at 
 Bologna. Some of his work exists in the Dominican convent 
 there. After death he was beatified and honoured as the 
 Beato Giacomo. He is the Jacques I'AUemand honoured as 
 one of the special patron saints of his old craft. To him has 
 been very incorrectly attributed the invention of the yellow 
 stain in glass, produced by oxide of silver. This stain, as all 
 students of glass painting will remember, was introduced 
 very shortly after 1500, a century before good Jacques 
 I'Allemand saw the light. 
 
 Of the stained glass in St Petronio, perhaps the finest 
 and most brilliant is in the fourth chapel on the ecclesio- 
 logically north, but really east side. The window is a four- 
 light one, with tracery formed of three cusped circles. Each 
 light has three tiers of figures representing the Apostles 
 seated beneath canopies of a much more conventional 
 middle-pointed character than would have been employed 
 by a Northern artist at the date of the execution of this 
 glass, early in the fifteenth century. The circle above each 
 pair of lights has the Annunciation, St Gabriel occupying 
 the sinister circle and the Blessed Virgin the dexter one, 
 while in the top circle is our Lord in Majesty, vested in a 
 light ruby robe and wearing a crossed stole and holding a 
 book. The aureole is lozenge-shaped, and the field azure. The 
 borders to the lights are specially worthy of study. Small 
 green circles compose the groundwork of the two upper 
 
 198 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 tiers of figures, whose colours reminded me of those em- 
 ployed by Hardman when under the guidance of Pugin. 
 It was eight o'clock in the morning when I made my studies 
 of the glass in St Petronio,and the sun was pouring his full 
 radiance through this window, casting the most lovely hues 
 upon the pavement and frescoed walls of the chapel, but 
 leaving Costa's delicately sculptured altarpiece, with its 
 Majesty and Coronation of the Virgin flanked by two tiers 
 of canopied figures, in comparative obscurity. Rarely have 
 I seen three such exquisite specimens of the arts ancillary 
 to architecture brought together into so small a space, or 
 under conditions so tridy magnificent. 
 
 The glazing of the windows in the fifth chapel of the 
 same aisle is quite Renaissance. Here we have two rows 
 of figures, very rich and deep in colouration, standing under 
 canopies. 
 
 In the upper row two of the figures are bishops in full 
 pontificals, two are religious in monastic habit, while the 
 four below are in secular dress. Above the canopies the 
 groundwork is blue. A ruby in the cope of one of the 
 bishops is singularly fine, and the deep browns and blacks 
 in the robes of the two monks are certainly very well man- 
 aged. In the seventh chapel the Renaissance glass is less 
 refined in tincture, besides which the full-length figures are 
 too large for the lights in which they are placed. The 
 Majesty and the Annunciation again occur in the circles 
 above. There may be some reason for the repetition of this 
 subject, but it seems at first sight to shew a poverty of in- 
 vention. Crossing to the opposite aisle, we find in the Chapel 
 of St Anthony of Padua some stained glass attributed to 
 Michael Angelo. The circle in the head of the window has 
 a figure of St Anthony, and that in either subarcuation, 
 
 199 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 the Annunciation, as usual. The eight saints below are 
 under Renaissance canopies. Their draperies are bold and 
 simple but their attitudes are forced and strained, and there 
 is a great deal too much relief given by shading to be 
 proper for the material. Another chapel in this aisle, the 
 fourth counting from the west, has some good early glass. 
 The tones of the full-length figures under silvery canopies 
 are truly lovely. Here again the Annunciation occupies the 
 circles above the subarcuations, but the Resurrection takes 
 the place of the Majesty in the topmost one.^ In the top 
 circle of the window in the next chapel is the figure of a 
 bishop seated upon a white throne against a groundwork 
 of blue, the whole being very harmonious and pleasing. In 
 all this glass at St Petronio very little or no white is em- 
 ployed in the figures, but the colours are so skilfully 
 blended that for once we do not seem to remark its absence. 
 
 The Cathedral of Bologna was rebuilt piecemeal between 
 1605 and 1750 on the foundations of more than one an- 
 cient edifice with the exception of its Lombardic campanile, 
 so that it is intus et in cute Renaissance, though of a re- 
 spectable type. 
 
 Outside it is neither better nor worse than the generality 
 of such structures, presenting a transeptless carcase with a 
 very taU clerestory propped up by cyclopean buttresses 
 with tiled slopes, and a grand show front giving on to the 
 Via Indipendenza, all carried out in brick. If not prepossess- 
 ing without, Bologna Cathedral is grandiose within. 
 
 The three doorways in Torregiano's'^west front open 
 into the nave, which, as may be imagined, is of abnormal 
 breadth, carried off, however, by its commendable height. 
 Three wide arches on Corinthian pilasters coupled trans- 
 versely separate it from the aisles, which are only a series 
 
 200 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 of chapels. Between each of these arches there is, in lieu 
 of one great pilaster, a narrower and lower arch on coupled 
 pilasters of the Tuscan order, surmounted by a balconied 
 gallery behind which the wall is relieved by a pedimented 
 arch supported by Corinthian half-columns in pairs. The 
 cornice dong the entire length of the nave is richly carved 
 with half-figures amid foliage. At the west end above the 
 central doorway is a large square-headed window, and below 
 it, corresponding with the Corinthian pilasters of the major 
 arcade, two large half-columns of the same order. In the 
 angles of the choir are two columns coupled, and of enor- 
 mous girth, fluted and crowned with noble acanthus-leafed 
 capitals profusely gilt. The western pair of columns supports 
 an entablature from which rises a stilted arch whose broad 
 flat sofiit is frescoed between the movdded boutels. 
 
 In ensemilethisTpoTtionoi the church recalls Hawksmoor's 
 St Mary Woolnoth, and its quadripartite vault is painted 
 in a good Raffkellesque style such as St Paul's requires. On 
 either side, within a low arch on Corinthian pilasters is an 
 organ with a gallery in front of it, and above, a lunar 
 window with bar-like tracery similar to that inserted in the 
 choir and transept of the Frari Church at Venice.* Here is 
 placed the sanctuary, raised on a crypt and enclosed with 
 marble balustrades and metal gates of the most sumptuous 
 description. Twenty steps broken up by a landing into 
 twelve and eight conduct to the crypt which contains nu- 
 merous relics and some works of art, among which are a 
 Crucifixion and a group of the two Marys weeping over the 
 body of our Lord, in terracotta, by Alfonzo Lombardo. 
 
 Opening from the choir into the much lower apse con- 
 taining the stalls for the clergy, and lighted by four plain 
 
 •Vide illustration of the Frari Church, Venice. 
 20I 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 square-headed windows between Corinthian pilasters, is an 
 arch, and above it Lodovico Caracci's celebrated fresco of the 
 Annunciation, the last work of that artist. The foot of the 
 angel bending before the Virgin was a little crooked, and 
 the story goes that when the aged artist made the discovery 
 he offered to defray the expense of re-ered:ing the scaffold 
 in order that he might retouch it, but the request was re- 
 fused, and Lodovico died, it is said of grief on this account, a 
 few days after. The painting on the semi-dome of the apse 
 by Fiorini, and coloured by Aretusi, represents Christ's 
 charge to St Peter. 
 
 I "assisted" at High Mass here on Trinity Sunday. 
 There was no choir, the Gregorian chant being sustained 
 by the clergy in the apse, and unaccompanied. Between 
 each Kyrie and sentence of the Gloria in Excelsis, Credo, 
 etc., the organist played a few bars of trivial music, which to 
 ears that remembered W. H. Monk's massive accompani- 
 ment to such services as Marbeck, the Missa de Angelis, and 
 that adapted from the Amiens Liturgy, at St Matthias's, 
 Stoke Newington, was feeble in the extreme, and quite 
 beneath the dignity of a church which contains the cathedra 
 of a Cardinal Archbishop. 
 
 Many a student of ecclesiastical music starts for Italy 
 Under the impression that he will hear the sublime strains 
 of Allegri and Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso and Vittoria in 
 the land of their birth, but when he arrives there he will 
 find himself woefully deceived, Experto crede. 
 
 Although my visit to the Land of Song extended over 
 the whole of June, which last year embraced the great 
 festivals of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, the 
 Sunday within its odave, the Nativity of St John the 
 Baptist and St Peter, spent respedlively at Verona, Bologna, 
 
 202 
 
FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 
 
 Modena, Piacenza, Pavia and Turin, each containing a cathe- 
 dral of the first class, the music I heard in them was of the 
 feeblest and most trivial description. 
 
 Travel certainly expands the mind, but it destroys many 
 a pleasant illusion. 
 
 203 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Ravenna 
 
 RAVENNA, the seat of an Archbishop to whom the 
 bishops of the Ronjagna were suffragan,* owes both 
 its great historical importance in the past and its compara- 
 tively desolate appearance in the present, to the same cause 
 — its position in an alluvial plain, formed and continually 
 extended by the deposits brought down by a number of 
 small and rapid streams from the neighbouring Apennines. 
 
 A glance at the north-east corner of the map of Italy 
 wiU show the reader the general character of the Adriatic 
 coast — broad lagoons, sometimes stretching fer inland; 
 flat alluvial plains inter sefted by endless dykes; numerous 
 rivers (of which the Po is by far the largest and makes the 
 most conspicuous delta) descending from the Apennines or 
 the Alps; and outside of all a barrier of islands which have 
 a continued tendency to become adherent to the shore 
 through the new deposits that are brought down, and thus 
 to be turned from islands into low hills. 
 
 This description suits Venice nearly as well as it suits 
 Ravenna, and the chief difference between these two great 
 historic cities is that the Ravennese lagoons are about twenty 
 centuries older than those of Venice. 
 
 The city is now connefted with the Adriatic by the Cor- 
 sini Canal, the two small rivers Ronco and Montone no 
 longer serving as a means of communication between the 
 city and the sea. 
 
 *TheRomagna has now three archbishoprics, viz., at Bologna, Fer- 
 rara and Ravenna, with suffragan sees at Bertinoro, Cervia, Cesena, Co- 
 macchio, Faenza, Forii, Imola, Rimini and Sarsina. 
 
 204 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 "Urbs maxima Ravenna," wrote that famous ancient geo- 
 grapher Strabo, "posita est tota ligneis compada aedificiis, 
 acquis diffusa, pontibusque, ac lembis peragrata," whence 
 it would appear that the original position of the city was 
 very similar to that of Venice. 
 
 It was in 402 that Honorius, for strategical reasons, re- 
 moved his court from Constantinople to Ravenna with every 
 hope of making it the most important port on the Adria- 
 tic. But neither King Canute nor Honorius succeeded in 
 compelling the sea to their will; and to-day the great sea- 
 port — the Venice of the Romans — is an unhealthy desola- 
 ted town, left dry by a sea which has retired six miles from 
 the harbour where once rode the navies of Imperial Rome. 
 Truly we may say of Ravenna in the words of the Prophet 
 Jeremiah: "How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of 
 people.? how is she become as a widow .'' she that was great 
 among the nations and princess among the provinces, how 
 is she become tributary?" 
 
 Christianity was introduced here by St Apollinaris, whom 
 
 legend represents as the personal friend and disciple of St 
 
 Peter, commissioned by that Apostle from Rome to found 
 
 this illustrious church in the Adriatic, and surviving through 
 
 an ordeal of multiform persecutions to govern his flocks in 
 
 his missionary diocese for twenty-nine years, after which 
 
 period he suffered martyrdom, a.d. 74, under Vespasian. 
 
 Till St Ursus (elefted to this See about 400) built the first 
 
 architeftonic cathedral at Ravenna under the name "Anas- 
 
 tasis," the Christians here had no other places of worship 
 
 than cottages, performing their devotions "in tiguriis," as 
 
 Agnellus* informs us in his chronicle, which extends over 
 
 * Agnellus was Bishop of Ravenna about 880, and his chronicle, the 
 Liber Pontificalis Ecclesia Ravennatis, is, although written in very indifferent 
 
 205 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 the period from a.d. 50 to 841. Whilst Ravenna was the 
 Imperial residence during the period most disastrous for 
 the Western Empire, Honorius, Valentinian III and Galla 
 Placidia, widow of the second Constantine, who took up 
 her abode here, enriched the city with a series of ecclesias- 
 tical edifices finer than the capital of the Eastern Empire, 
 and, as regards internal decoration, more interesting than 
 those of Rome. To the last-named enlightened patron of 
 the arts we owe those mosaics in the Baptistery contiguous 
 to the Cathedral, those in the chapel of the Archbishop's 
 palace, and in SS. Nazario e Celso, which she built as a 
 family mausoleum. 
 
 Theodoric the Arian was also a benefaftor to his capi- 
 tal, and, judged by the light of his time, an intelligent auto- 
 crat who promoted civilization at this centre. 
 
 Ravenna, as the metropolis of the Greek Exarchs, be- 
 came more Byzantine than Byzantium itself. After their 
 government had lasted a hundred and twenty-five years, 
 the last of those vice-regal officers was expelled in 754 by 
 Astolphus, the Longobard King, and Ravenna became, for 
 but a short period indeed, the new capital of that semi- 
 barbaric people. Soon occurred those events so fraught with 
 importance to the temporal interests of the Papacy, the 
 donation of Pepin comprising in the liberal concession to 
 Rome (755) the whole of the province which from this time 
 began to be styled "Romagna." Now the government of 
 Ravenna was administered by her prelates in the name of, 
 and in subjedlion to, the Popes (though certain of them 
 
 Latin, an invaluable document of those earlier ages in the Italian Church. 
 It is minute, scrupulously careful in detail, and distinguished by the ear- 
 nestness of a fresh and simple nature. It is printed in vol. 11 of Mura- 
 tori's Rev. ltd. Scriptores, but by far the best edition is that by Holder 
 Egger, in the Mmumenta Germania Historica, 1878. 
 
 206 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 seem to have been loath to submit to such a yoke); but 
 about the time that other Italian cities shook off the tram- 
 mels of aristocratic or imperial dominion, Ravenna also 
 freed herself from the authority of her mitred rulers, and 
 founded her new government on independently republican 
 principles with a general council of 250 and a special coun- 
 cil of seventy citizens. Early in the thirteenth century, one 
 of the powerful Traversari family disturbed this order of 
 things by raising himself to the rank of Duke of Ravenna, 
 a title yet new, but without otherwise setting aside the in- 
 stitutions of his native city. 
 
 In 1 240 Ravenna fell under the power of the Emperor 
 Frederick II, who did not scruple to sacrifice her liberties 
 by consigning her, eight years afterwards, to the troops of 
 Pope Innocent IV, thenceforth to be governed by a papal 
 officer with the title Count or Rector of Romagna. This 
 new political phase was not of long duration, being brought 
 to an end about 1300 by the ascendant influence of the 
 Polenta family, who made themselves lords of Ravenna, 
 and retained that power till nearly the middle of the fif- 
 teenth century, when, having become odious to the citizens, 
 their usurpation was overthrown, and the Romagna spon- 
 taneously placed herself under Venice. 
 
 Till 1 509 that Adriatic Republic comprised this acquisi- 
 tion within its territories, then ceded it to the Papacy; and, 
 though in 1527 the Venetians again occupied Ravenna in 
 order to make a more efficient stand against the mercen- 
 ary armies of Charles V, three years later they once more 
 handed over this possession to Rome by the treaty of 
 Bologna. 
 
 The annexation of Ravenna to the Italian Kingdom is 
 an event of comparatively recent history, and, as well known, 
 
 207 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 was accomplished with hardly a shadow of resistance on 
 behalf of the feeble government overthrown. 
 
 At present Ravenna wears an air of desolation which 
 sheds a gentle melancholy upon the soul. The people in its 
 streets and grass-grown squares are few, and it has entirely 
 lost the indications of commercial prosperity. 
 
 Its appearance is the more mournful from its great ex- 
 tent, of which I gained a clear idea when I ascended to the 
 walls and took the whole city in circumbendibus, and from 
 the size and almost unaltered splendour of those numerous 
 churches in which, at the present day, the one transcendent 
 interest of Ravenna consists. 
 
 Fair city, worthy of her ancient fame! 
 
 The season of her splendour is gone by, 
 Yet everywhere its monuments remain. 
 
 No other city in the world — not even Rome itself — can 
 shew so many striking examples of the ecclesiastical archi- 
 tedlure of the period comprised between the fourth and 
 eighth centuries. The style is commonly called Byzantine, 
 and no doubt from the close connexion of Ravenna to 
 Constantinople, considerable influence was exerted by the 
 latter city on the former; but some of the most striking 
 features of the Ravenna churches — the colonnades, the 
 mosaics, the circular campaniles, and perhaps the cupolas — 
 are not so much Byzantine as representative of early Chris- 
 tian art generally. 
 
 In Rome, where temples and thermae lay in splendid 
 and massive ruins on every hand, the founders of churches 
 had no need to quarry columns nor to sculpture capitals or 
 cornices. They had these ready to hand. In Ravenna, though 
 both in that city and in Constantinople the emperors helped 
 themselves to such precious shafts as were worth a sea 
 
 208 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 voyage, the architefts originated capital and cornice decora- 
 tions for themselves. The general charadler of the Raven- 
 nese sculpture, though far ruder than that of Rome in 
 execution, is interesting from its simplicity and originality. 
 We find the acanthus-leaf capital, but in a form which 
 suggests the fresh joyousness of living vegetation blown 
 by winds and clinging round the convex mass, rather than 
 adhering to it in the old Corinthian manner, and this cha- 
 racter of detail displays itself in the oldest of Ravenna's 
 churches. 
 
 Generally speaking the outline of a Ravennese basilica is 
 an unadorned and unattractive pile of brick. If it has any 
 architectural grouping or outline about it, it owes it to the 
 campanile which a later age has added. But if the churches 
 of Ravenna are thus unattradive without, they are em- 
 phatically all glorious within. The eye dwells with genuine 
 artistic delight on the long unbroken rows of pillars and 
 arches, their marble shafts, their floriated capitals,!sometimes 
 the work of the Christian craftsman, sometimes the spirit 
 of heathendom pressed into the service of the sandluary. 
 The whole plan of these buildings allows a great field for 
 void spaces; but the void spaces thus left are filled up by 
 those wonderful mosaics and paintings which look down 
 upon us as fresh as when they were thirteen hundred years 
 ago. They were older when Giotto painted his first fresco 
 than Giotto's frescoes are now. 
 
 Christian art in general, but especially the mosaic, seems 
 to have attained high excellence at Ravenna even earlier than 
 at Rome. Indeed, the various works in the latter artistic 
 form of the fifth and sixth centuries that still adorn Ravenna's 
 churches are more interesting, more elaborate and bolder in 
 composition than the contemporary examples of the same 
 
 209 14 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 art in the Eternal City. Vitreous mosaic — crustte vermiculatte 
 — substituted for that in coloured marbles or terra-cotta 
 more anciently in use, was first applied under the Empire 
 to the adornment of walls and ceilings in private churches, 
 sometimes also for pavements of temples, or in the ban- 
 quet hall. In this latter material, more capable of brilliant 
 effeft, mosaic was early adopted by the Church for the re- 
 presentation of sacred subjects; its enduring nature, its 
 suitability for majestic and colossal figures and groups being 
 sufficient recommendation. 
 
 When at Ravenna, lingering in these old churches at a 
 late hour, I have frequently noticed how the majestic mosaic 
 forms that look down from conch of apse or frieze of nave 
 gain enhanced efFedl, more solemnly expressive in the dim 
 light, whilst coloured representations in fresco become too 
 obscure for notice; and it cannot be denied that, though 
 some charms are more easily felt than explained, many of 
 these early Christian works of art have power to impress 
 and interest, quite apart from the claims of the beautiful, 
 and even when their charafteristics are actually rude or 
 grotesque. 
 
 The mosaic adornment of churches became conspicuous 
 at Ravenna in the fifth century, through the care of its 
 archbishops, of Honorius and of Galla Placidia, and in the 
 latter part of the sixth century, after the fall of the Gothic 
 kingdom, the churches rebuilt or reconstrudied for Catho- 
 lic instead of Arian* worship here received new embel- 
 
 * So called from Arius, a presbyter of the Church of Alexandria in the 
 fourth century. Having maintained that the Son and the Father were 
 essentially distindl, and that the Son was created out of nothing by the will 
 of the Father, Alexander, the Bishop, in opposition to whose preaching he 
 broached this doctrine, called a council, in which the dodlrine was con- 
 demned, and Arius and those who sided with him, excommunicated. He 
 
 2IO 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 lishments, though in some instances doubt exists whether 
 their extant treasures be attributable to heretic or ortho- 
 dox donors. The beautiful and varied series ordered for 
 the chapel of the archiepiscopal palace (c. 440) are still 
 seen in preservation. Those in the basilica of St Giovanni 
 Evangelista, founded byGalla Placidia in 42 5, have perished 
 save a few insignificant fragments; another church, raised 
 by that princess in 438, was almost rebuilt and classicized 
 towards the end of the seventeenth century. The sixth-cen- 
 tury mosaics in the now ruinous St Michele were long ago 
 sold and are, I believe, now at Berlin. When Ravenna Cathe- 
 dral was rebuilt in its present rococo form in 1735, not only 
 with almost total loss of its ancient artistic wealth, but with- 
 out regard for the norma of the original in the new archi- 
 tedure, among other contents that perished were all the 
 mosaics of the tribune and choir, ordered by an archbishop 
 in 1 1 i2,their subje(5ls being the Resurrection and the Ascen- 
 sion, the martyrdom of St ApoUinaris and the seventeen 
 sainted prelates of the See. 
 
 The most important ofthe Ravenna churches group them- 
 selves into the following classes and, as far as possible, should 
 be visited in the order given. 
 
 I. Churches belonging to the first age ofthe city, namely, 
 to the time preceding the final overthrow of the Western 
 Empire in the Gothic conquest under Odoacer in 476: The 
 Baptistery ofthe Cathedral; St Giovanni Evangelista; Sta 
 Agata; St Pietro Chrysologo (chapel in the Archbishop's 
 palace), SS. Nazario e Celso; St Francesco. 
 
 ivas, after much discussion, recalled from banishment by the Emperor 
 Constantine, and was just about to be received again into the pale ofthe 
 Church when he died suddenly. Of his writings only two epistles are ex- 
 tant; and though there is a sect called "Arians," its doftrines are far more 
 modified and less startling than those held by Arius. 
 
 211 14a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY ] 
 
 2. Churches of the second epoch, i.e., from 476 to the 
 death of Theodoric the Arian in 526. St Teodoro or St 
 Spirito; Sta Maria in Cosmedin (formerly the Arian Bap- 
 tistery); St ApoUinaris Nuovo; St Vi talis; St Apollinaris 
 in Classe. 
 
 3. Churches eretftedfrom the death of Theodoric, through 
 the existence of the Exarchate to the decline of art: St Do- 
 menico, Sta Maria in Porto Fuori, Sta Maria in Porto, the 
 Cathedral and others, some of which are desecrated. 
 
 Here then, within a circuit of about three miles, we 
 have a most remarkable assemblage of religious edifices, 
 almost the only remaining sign of this last stronghold of 
 declining empire; this capital of the Gothic Italian king- 
 dom; this seat iof the feebly tyrannic Exarchate, long fa- 
 voured by the munificent regards of Justinian and his 
 orthodox successors and eventually handed over to the 
 Papacy to become one of the most precious jewels in the 
 tiara. Fraught is Ravenna with romantic incident, contrasts 
 and eventful vicissitude. Her ecclesiastical annals alone are 
 so important as to suffice for an interesting chapter in 
 Italian story; and her religious monuments are, of their 
 description, unique, less impaired by modern interferences, 
 and more impressively complete than those ot Rome, 
 whilst supplying the fullest illustration of the ideas and ge- 
 nius that animated sacred art in the fifth and sixth centuries. 
 
 Observing due chronological order in our studies, we will 
 proceed first to the orthodox Baptistery, or Church of St 
 Giovanni Battista, situated a little to the north of the large 
 but uninteresting eighteenth-century Cathedral. To give as 
 clear an idea as is possible of the form of this building, I 
 must ask the reader to imagine a plain square with the corners 
 rounded off, rising seven and three-quarter metres from 
 
 212 
 
Ravenna: Interior of the Orthodox Baptistery. 
 
 To face page 212. 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 the ground, and at that height converted into a perfeft ofta- 
 gon terminating in a low eight-sided pyramidal roof of tiles, 
 and having at the spring of four alternate sides little half- 
 domes also tiled, covering the summits of the angles of the 
 squares, where they are cut off to form the upper odagon. 
 These half-domes are the roofs of four internal niches. 
 The interior line of the ground plan is, in faft, a perfedt o6la- 
 gon, with large semicircular niches projefting outwards 
 from four alternate sides; but, by the concealment on the 
 outside of the set-in, caused by the diameter of the niches 
 being necessarily so much less than the width of the sides 
 of the odagon from which they spring as was requisite to 
 bring them within the original square, the outer line of the 
 ground plan and the lower seven and three-quarter metres of 
 the building externally preserve that form, with, as I have said, 
 rounded angles. Earlier writers have described this Baptis- 
 tery as an oftagon with five continuous plain sides and two 
 niches within the other three. So it appeared when they 
 wrote. Two of the niches had been destroyed, but, as dis- 
 tinft traces upon the walls show where they originally stood, 
 they were carefully restored in 1866 in exadt accordance 
 with the others. The exterior of the building is quite plain, 
 with the exception of very simple brick cornices below the 
 lines of the side and central roofs, and on the upper part of 
 each wall of the odagon a blind window, like a sunk panel, 
 having a double-arched top without any central muUion. 
 On the lower part of one of these panels a small antique 
 marble bas-relief of a mariner on horseback, with the right 
 hand extended, has been let in, but why or when there is 
 nothing to show. 
 
 While the sea-line had been further removed, the original 
 formation of the soil had sunk until the ancient floor of 
 
 213 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 the Baptistery was sixteen centimetres below the level ot the 
 low-water line, and buried under three metres of filling in, 
 being thirty-five centimetres lower than the actual level of 
 the streets around, which had been raised through accumu- 
 lation and other causes.* On entering, the mass of mosaic 
 work covering this baptistery from floor to ceiling presents 
 a scene of glorious beauty. 
 
 The earlier, dating from a.d. 430 and due to St Neon, 
 Bishop of Ravenna at that time,t are those on the lower 
 walls, where the prophets are represented on ovals of gold 
 surrounded by green or gold scroll work. A little later are 
 tliose in the cupola which in the Byzantine Church always 
 absorbed the artist's highest powers. 
 
 Here we have for the central subject the Baptism of our 
 Lord, a mosaic composition in which classic influences are 
 still apparent. The principal figures have great dignity, be- 
 yond the central group being seen the Jordan, personified 
 as an aged man with long hair and beard, who seems float- 
 ing on his stream like the river gods in antique sculpture. 
 Below, carried round the domed compartment, are the 
 twelve Apostles, all executed on a blue ground. They are 
 majestic figures, quite classically treated, in aspedl (St Peter 
 excepted) almost youthful, vested either in a cloth of gold 
 tunic and, white pallium, or with the tunic white and the 
 pallium golden, each wearing a high cap like a mitre, and 
 
 * The seflional view of this baptistery as given in Isabelle's Edifices Cir- 
 culaires (Paris, 1855) shews the present and original levels of the pavement. 
 In the illustration here given only half the true height of the attached 
 columns surrounding the building is shewn, the rest being buried beneath 
 the present flooring. 
 
 t As we learn from the following distich, forming part of a metrical 
 epigraph inscribed round the arches: 
 
 Magnanimus hunc namque Neon summusque sacerdos 
 Excoluit pulchro componens omnia cultu. 
 214 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 carrying a leafy crown in one hand, that of St Peter red,, 
 that of St Paul gold (certainly no indication of inferiority 
 in the latter to the former). The Christ and St John have 
 pale, greenish-blue nimbi with a red outline. On a still 
 lower compartment at the intervals between the arcades of 
 a sort of triforium are alternated designs, also mosaic, of 
 a singularly symbolic charafter, consisting of altars or altar 
 tombs, on each of which is laid a lily or a palm, and the four 
 Gospels, each placed on a kind of suggestus with a richly 
 embroidered cushion on which the Sacred Book lies open, 
 just as it used to be exhibited in the midst of the church 
 where the assemblies of the CEcumenical Councils were 
 held. Thus we see here, in compendious symbolism, the 
 representation of those great comitia of the Church. 
 
 In the centre of the building is the font, an octagonal 
 bath, concerning which M. Isabelle in his Edifices Circulaires 
 oiFers the following remarks: 
 
 **On y voit seulement, et c'est le premier example de 
 cette disposition, una esp^ce de niche avec un pupitre en 
 marbre, en avant de laquelle sont deux marches de la mdme 
 mati^re. Le pr^tre devait monter ces degres, et il se trou- 
 vait ainsi plac6 de manifere a dominer un peu le ndophyte, 
 ou, comme le dit Ciampini, i baptiser plus facilement les 
 enfants." 
 
 There is no surrounding aisle to this baptistery such as 
 we see in some later works of the same class, and its inter- 
 nal arrangement is worthy of particular notice, as we find 
 in it a feature copied afterwards in the triforia of the basi- 
 lican churches. 
 
 The feature to which I allude is the arched panel, includ- 
 ing three arched openings separated by detached columns. 
 This may be considered as one of the first instances of 
 
 215 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 decoration in difFerent planes, which manifestly led to the 
 formation of tracery. 
 
 This Baptistery at Ravenna is in all probability one of 
 the earliest of that still numerous race of buildings belong- 
 ing .to a period of the Church when great numbers of adult 
 catechumens were baptized, and when immersion was the 
 rule. In other parts of Europe few baptisteries were built 
 after the ninth century, but in Italy this adjunft was per- 
 petuated into the thirteenth century, as witness such noble 
 eredions as those of Cremona, Florence, Lucca, Padua, 
 Parma, Pisa and Pistoja. In later times these baptisteries 
 were not infrequently converted into churches, as, for in- 
 stance, at Asti.* Some of them are of great size, and occa- 
 sionally, as at Novara, were connedted with the Cathedral 
 by means of an atrium or colonnade surrounding a square. 
 Others were so large that councils and synods were held in 
 them. It was necessary to make such strudures large, be- 
 cause in the Early Church it was customary for the bishop 
 to baptize all the catechumens in his diocese (and so bap- 
 tisteries are commonly found attached to the cathedral, 
 and not to parochial churches), and also because the rite 
 was performed only thrice a year. 
 
 During the months when there were no baptisms, the 
 baptistery doors were sealed with the bishop's seal. From 
 the records of early councils we find that these strudures 
 were first built and used to correct the evils arising from 
 the pradbice of private baptism. 
 
 * Perhaps hardly any example can be found beyond the Alps, except 
 in our own island. Elgin furnishes the solitary instance where the octa- 
 gon baptistery in the most graceful Gothic style groups with the cathe- 
 dral, whose ruins relate the calamities which the Church of Scotland has 
 sustained. In Germany the detached baptistery became merged in the 
 western apse. 
 
 2l6 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 As soon as Christianity made such progress that infant 
 baptism became the rule, and as soon as immersion gave 
 place to sprinkling, the ancient baptisteries were no longer 
 necessary. They are still in general use, I believe, in Flor- 
 ence and Pisa. In the early period, while immersion con- 
 tinued to be the ordinary rite in the administration of the 
 sacrament, the baptistery was furnished with a basin in the 
 floor sufficiently capacious to admit of a certain number of 
 converts at one time. When it became customary to bap- 
 tize by effusion, the size of the basin was naturally dimi- 
 nished, and eventually it assumed the dimensions and the 
 form which are now familiar to us in most of the medieval 
 churches in Great Britain and upon the Continent, and was 
 placed in the church, either in a separate chapel or in some 
 railed-ofF space. 
 
 It may be interesting to mention that in several English 
 churches provision has been made of late years for baptism 
 by immersion, notably in the beautiful church of St John, 
 Torquay, and the parish church of St Mary's, Lambeth. 
 
 In Italy it frequently happens that the cathedral is the 
 least interesting church in the city, architedlurally consi- 
 dered. Those of Bologna, Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, Pa- 
 dua and Pavia are instances in which either an entire re- 
 building has taken place during the classical period, or 
 where medieval work has been so shamelessly tortured into 
 classical forms as to have lost all traces of antiquity. 
 
 The Cathedral at Ravenna is, I regret to say, an instance 
 of this drastic treatment. All that remains of the church 
 founded by St Ursus towards the close of the fourth cen- 
 tury is the lofty cylindrical campanile,* which stands a litde 
 to the north-west and is compared to those of Oriental 
 
 * This is the prevailing form of the Ravennese campanile. 
 217 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 churches, the Cathedral itself having been entirely rebuilt 
 in the uninteresting Italian style of 1733 with a grandiose 
 western fa9ade, a bare brick cruciform body and apsidal 
 transepts. The whole is, in faft, only one of such struc- 
 tures the ecclesiologist encounters in this part of Europe 
 usque ad nauseam* 
 
 That the interior of Ravenna Cathedral is imposing from 
 its ample dimensions it were idle to deny; but it will be 
 quitted without much regret after a few antiques from the 
 medieval cathedral have been viewed. One of these is the 
 ivory throne of St Maximianus, with the monogram of his 
 nameand title, "Episcopus." It shows various sacred reliefs, 
 rude in design, but beautifully executed. In front is our 
 Lord, of aged and severe asped, giving benediction, while 
 one hand holds a disc with the Lamb in relief upon it — 
 a not very usual symbol for this subjed;. Beside Him are 
 the Evangelists, each figure being under an arch. At the 
 sides and back of the seat we find scenes from Gospel his- 
 tory and the life of the Patriarch Joseph.f 
 
 Parts of an ancient ambon of grey marble also remain 
 imbedded in the wall of a passage behind the apse. They 
 show low reliefs of birds, fishes and animals in square figures, 
 and the legend, " SERVUS XPI Agnellus episc. hunc pyr- 
 gum fecit," which would fix the middle of the sixth century 
 as the date of its execution. 
 
 Of about the same period is a silver processional cross 
 also ascribed to St Agnellus. 
 
 It is of the Greek form, measures six palms at each 
 length, and is adorned with forty heads of saints in medal- 
 
 • Eyesore as it is, it is wellnigh forgotten besides its own baptistery and 
 campanile. 
 
 t A fine sepia coloured plate of this pulpit is given in Dusomerard's 
 Let Arts en Moyen Age. 
 
 218 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 Hon relief. On one side at the junftion of the arms is a 
 larger relief of the Resurrection, of strange and quaint de- 
 sign, the figure rising with one foot out of a deep tomb 
 and holding a banner with the cross upon it. On the reverse 
 side, similarly placed, is the Blessed Virgin, a veiled ma- 
 tronly figure in the adt of prayer, but represented without 
 the nimbus which is common to all the other saints. 
 
 Among the latter are introduced bishops of Ravenna, and 
 the form of the pallium worn by them led Ciampini to assign 
 a somewhat later origin for this beautiful cross than the 
 time of St Agnellus. 
 
 The large two-bayed chapel opening out of the south 
 transept contains two ancient tombs of marble with shallow 
 reliefs upon them. Each is a shallow sarcophagus in form, 
 standing on four low legs with semi-cylindrical top. One of 
 them, the tomb of St Raynold, has in front our Lord in 
 majesty, with cruciferous nimbus, between two angels who 
 are presenting wreaths. At the ends is the monogram XP 
 between the letters A Q. 
 
 The other tomb, that of St Barbatian, the confessor of 
 Galla Placidia, is very similar. It has, however, a head of 
 our Lord in a circular nimbus which is cruciform with a 
 St Andrew's cross, formed by the monogram XP being in- 
 scribed on the nimbus behind the head. The frequent device 
 of two peacocks plucking at a wreath which surmounts the 
 monogram XP may also be seen here. 
 
 The dome of this chapel is frescoed with an Assumption, 
 but the Cathedral generally is devoid of colour except 
 what is struck by the pillars of very strongly veined grey 
 marble. In the aisles the marble of the pillars is almost 
 white. 
 
 The north transept contains Guido's pidure of the Ga- 
 
 219 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 thering of the Manna, inscribed, "Panem de coelo praesti- 
 tisti illis omne deleftamentum in se habentem." 
 
 The mosaic floor is from the former edifice, and enclosed 
 within the great west door are still preserved some frag- 
 ments of its celebrated Door of Vine-wood. The original 
 planks are said to have been thirteen feet long and nearly 
 one and a quarter wide, a proof that the ancients were right 
 in stating that the statue of Diana of Ephesus was hewn 
 from the vine-wood of Cyprus. The wood of the Ravenna 
 doors was probably imported from Constantinople. 
 
 The archiepiscopal throne, surmounted by a white tester, 
 stands in the centre of the apse behind the high altar. The 
 credence table, at which, by the way, two servers were in- 
 dulging in a pugilistic encounter while I was inspedling the 
 Cathedral, stands on the north side of the sandbuary. The 
 tTvo organ cases have sham pipes painted on the blinds 
 which are ordinarily kept drawn over the tin ones. In the 
 apse are large pidlures representing scenes in the lives ot 
 SS. Sevcrus, Apollinaris, Peter Chrysologus and Ursus, 
 four of the greatest of Ravenna's archbishops. 
 
 Buonamici, in his Metropolitana di RalDenna Architettura, 
 published in 1768 and dedicated to Pope Benedid XIV, 
 gives a large plate of the apse of the old cathedral, showing 
 its mosaic decoration, which must have transcended those 
 of the other churches in magnificence. In the semi-dome was 
 the Resurredion, and below, between the windows, two 
 subjedts from the life of St Apollinaris and figures of St 
 Barbatian, the Blessed Virgin, St John the Baptist and St 
 Ursus. In a frieze beneath were eighteen figures of sainted 
 prelates of Ravenna, and in the roof the "Resurredion." 
 
 Taking the monuments of Ravenna in due chronological 
 order we leave the Cathedral and, threading the Strada del 
 
 220 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 Duomo and the Strada Cavour, find ourselves standing be- 
 fore the church of St Vitalis, a little to the east of which — 
 in fa(Sb, within the same enclosure — we find SS. Nazario e 
 Celso, constructed in the fifth century as a sepulchral chapel 
 for herself and family by the Empress Galla Placidia, who 
 has left us in this little building one of the most interest- 
 ing of yet existing basilicas. Its plan is that of a very short 
 Latin cross, almost Greek in fadl, and with all its decora- 
 tions perfed: except where the golden marble panelling from 
 Numidia which covered the lower four feet of the walls 
 was long since stripped off. 
 
 Galla Placidia, whose early life was a tragic romance, 
 governed the remains of the Western Empire after the 
 death of Honorius during the minority of her son Valen- 
 tinian III. With large resources at her disposal, and de- 
 voutly inclined, she was solicitous for the construction and 
 decoration of churches both at Rome and Ravenna, and 
 amongst the rest built this sepulchral chapel. Galla Placidia 
 died at Rome in 440, but her remains were conveyed to 
 Ravenna and deposited in the place which had been pre- 
 pared for their reception. 
 
 This building is very small, scarce forty feet in greatest 
 length, cruciform, of the regular Latin proportions, and 
 rises into a little dome at the intersedlion. The whole is 
 vaulted in very massive masonry and beautifully encrusted 
 with marbles and mosaics in that Arabico-Byzantine style 
 which first found its way into Italy from the Sicilian shores. 
 
 SS. Nazario e Celso was built to contain three heavy 
 sarcophagi, for which there is just room in the three smaller 
 arms of the cross; and the Christian symbols with which 
 they are sculptured — ^lambs, doves drinking from vases, 
 fruit-bearing palms, the four rivers of Paradise, fountains 
 
 221 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 and the sacred monogram — entitle these sarcophagi to rank 
 among objefts of sacred art. These have never been dis- 
 turbed, and are the only tombs which remain in their 
 places of the whole line of Caesars, whether Eastern or 
 Western. The Empress herself was interred in the immense 
 marble sarcophagus behind the single altar of diaphanous 
 Oriental alabaster. Her body was preserved in full dress, 
 sitting upright in a chair of cypress wood, down to 1577, 
 when it was unfortunately consumed through the mischief 
 of some children who inserted a taper into the aperture, 
 and thus, the rich vestments taking fire, was this unique 
 relic of imperial pomp in death reduced to a heap of ashes, 
 no more even in this condition visible, as the orifice has 
 been closed ever since. 
 
 The altar, to which I have already alluded, stands under 
 the cupola. It is of the usual height and proportions, ra- 
 ther short, and is raised upon a single step or foot-pace. 
 The front is rudely sculptured with a cross, a lamb and a 
 dove in basso-rilievo. On the altar is a small predeUa to 
 carry the candlesticks. Whether this forms part of the 
 original altar is doubtful, but the whole is a fair specimen 
 of an altar in its ancient state. 
 
 Ravenna under the Greek exarchs became more Byzan- 
 tine than Byzantium itself. It certainly possesses a finer 
 series of ecclesiastical edifices than the capital of the Eastern 
 Empire, and, as regards internal decoration, more interest- 
 ing than those of Rome. That of the little building now 
 under review is among the loveliest gems of the mosaic art 
 whether at Ravenna or elsewhere. 
 
 The upper portions of the walls and the vaulted ceilings 
 are covered with the richest mosaics, scarcely, if anything, 
 inferior to the Prophets in the Baptistery, and infinitely 
 
 222 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 finer than the decoration of the dome. The works here 
 afFord abundant evidence of the great vitality still existing 
 in pictorial art even at that late period, and of what was the 
 spirit of the Christianity of that time. Like those in the Baptis- 
 tery, the mosaics in this mausoleum are evidently separate 
 productions by different distinguished artists belonging to 
 one school, but each leaving the mark of his individual 
 style upon his work. The Prophets in the Baptistery are 
 probably by one master, but in the mausoleum the work of 
 four if not five different artists can be traced. The lower 
 portion of the walls was, as I have remarked, originally pan- 
 elled with the golden yellow marble of Numidia, which has 
 disappeared, but from theheightof about six feet the interior 
 is completely covered with mosaic in every part. In the 
 lunette at the summit of the wall at the foot of the cross is 
 a picture of the Good Shepherd. In every sense it is a re- 
 markable work, rivalling in drawing and beauty of com- 
 position the best wall paintings found at Pompeii. It may, 
 with a fair degree of probability, be considered the earliest 
 pictorial representation of our Blessed Lord, and marks 
 distincdy the religious development or change which, at 
 the time when the Pagan religion was still a living creed, 
 unconsciously influenced the artist to merge and lose the 
 milder glories of Apollo in his representation of the divinity 
 of the Son of Man. At first sight this picture in the mau- 
 soleum at Ravenna looks like a lovely rendering of the 
 youthful ApoUo or of Orpheus, but it is only necessary to 
 dismiss all classic recollections to recognize nothing but the 
 art production of a mind fully impressed with the inex- 
 haustible love of the Good Shepherd for His sheep. Our 
 Lord here is represented seated in a grass-grown, rocky land- 
 scape, in a slightly reclining posture, with the feet extended 
 
 223 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 forward, and one negligently thrown over the other. His 
 right hand, extended downwards by His side, caresses one 
 of the six sheep grouped about Him, and His left, raised 
 upwards, rests upon a crux hastata of gold, with one cross- 
 bar above, and two close together near the foot. He is draped 
 in a long vesture of gold with loose sleeves, of which the 
 left has fallen back, leaving the raised arm bare. 
 
 Over the left shoulder hang the folds of a light chlamys 
 of rich purple, which passing behind the figure, crosses the 
 lap above the knees and falls on the left side. The colour- 
 ing of the cloth-of-gold tunic is most skilfully rendered. It 
 has the semi-transparent efFedl of a kind of golden gauze, 
 and the diaphanous shadings of the light folds is admirable. 
 Down the length of the tunic, from the shoulder to the 
 ground, are two lines of blue. On the feet are black sandals 
 tied with bows above the instep. The face is that of a beau- 
 tiful beardless youth, with auburn hair falling on the shoul- 
 ders, and around the head is a plain gold nimbus. Anything 
 more classic in art, imbued with the deepest sentiment of 
 the Christian religion, it would be difficult to imagine. 
 
 Entirely in a different style is the picture at the opposite 
 extremity of the mausoleum. The centre is occupied by a 
 great gridiron above a flaming fire. 
 
 On the right, advancing with energetic stride towards it, 
 is St Lawrence, his drapery floating behind him in the 
 wind, and on his shoulder he carries a long slender cross, 
 lance fashion. To the left is what looks like an open cup- 
 board, on the two shelves of which lie four volumes bound 
 in red, each bearing the name of one of the Evangelists. 
 This pidture is the work of an artist whose bold, vigorous 
 and somewhat crude touch is essentially different from the 
 exquisitely delicate finish which evidently constituted the 
 
 224 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 charafteristic of the works of the author of the Good Shep- 
 herd; and as distinftly different from these is the no less 
 masterly style of the harts at the water brook. 
 
 By another hand again are the eight figures — one on 
 each side of the windows in the four walls above the arches 
 supporting the dome. They are full of adtion, admirably 
 posed, and bear resemblance to the Prophets in the Bap- 
 tistery, but are inferior to them. 
 
 Below each window is a vase, with doves perchdd on 
 the rim and drinking, noticeable from the resemblance they 
 bear to the celebrated antique mosaic known as "Pliny's 
 Doves." 
 
 Space precludes me from descanting upon the exquisite 
 wreaths of fruit, the ornamented surface of the vaulted 
 ceilings and the variety of detail which adorn and frame 
 these pictures. The whole is set in a rich background of 
 deep blue, which makes that colour, intermingled with 
 gold, the prevailing tone of the whole, culminating in the 
 dome, where circles of stars, gradually increasing in size, 
 blend as it were into each other, through their long thin 
 rays, like those flashing from the planets, touching until 
 they enclose a Latin cross at the summit. 
 
 The solemnity of this little Church of SS. Nazario e 
 Celso is beyond description, built by a woman, the strange 
 vicissitudes of whose chequered career add another tragic 
 chapter to the story of declining Empire, which would, in 
 her case, be more pathetic were we allowed to ascribe any 
 attributes of moral elevation to her charader. Alternately 
 exalted and degraded, she lived to be a Gothic Queen, a 
 Roman Empress, twice a captive in barbarian armies, and 
 once driven on foot amidst the common herd before the 
 car of the Gothic usurper, her first husband's murderer. 
 
 225 15 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 She does not appear to have been deficient in talent to 
 subjugate the will of her two husbands and her feeble 
 brother, Honorius, or in that sort of demonstrative piety 
 then fashionable at the imperial court; but her condudl in 
 consentingto the unjust execution of her unfortunate cousin, 
 Serena, widow of Stilicho, during the siege of Rome by Alaric 
 shews Galla Placidia in a repulsive light, cruel in her lenity. 
 
 There is a curious legend in connexion with Galla Pla- 
 cidia which I will relate to the reader as we walk towards 
 St Giovanni Evangelista, another church founded by that 
 lady, and situated in the prosaic vicinity of the railway 
 station. The princess and her suite were on a voyage from 
 Constantinople to Ravenna, when a great tempest overtook 
 their vessels. In the extreme of peril Placidia called on all 
 to diredt their prayer and trust to the beloved Apostle, 
 vowing a splendid church to be dedicated to him should 
 they reach Ravenna in safety. Presently appeared the visible 
 assurance of his protedtion, for St John the Evangelist was 
 seen by all, on each ship, performing the task of the para- 
 lysed mariners, and thus steering them safe to port. Mind- 
 ful of her vow, Placidia ordered works to begin for con- 
 strudting one of the finest churches yet seen in Ravenna. 
 The richest marbles were brought from various quarries, 
 mosaics were executed for ap&e and "arch of triumph" re- 
 presenting the tempest and vision at sea, also the subjed 
 from the Apocalypse of the Saviour giving a book to the 
 Apostle and desiring him to eat it; and the teselated pave- 
 ment was disposed so as to imitate, in wavy lines of marble, 
 the tossing sea-waves. 
 
 But Placidia was in grief, seeing she could not hope to 
 obtain any sort of relic of St John for her church's last 
 consecration; so her confessor, St Barbatian, advised her 
 
 226 
 

 Ravenna: Doorway of St. Giovanni Evangelista. 
 
 To face page 226. 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 to persist in prayer and fasting, with the trust that her great 
 desire might in some measure be fulfilled. He kept vigil 
 with her himself, night after night, in the same church; and 
 at last, when both had fallen asleep after long watching, the 
 confessor saw a majestic personage in long white vestments, 
 who stood offering incense at the altar. He woke Placidia 
 to point out that vision which she also beheld, and straight- 
 way rushing to the altar, the princess threw herself at the 
 feet of the mysterious figure, seized his right foot, and so 
 firmly, that the sandal was left in her hand, when St John 
 the Evangelist, for he it indeed was, vanished the moment 
 mortal form had touched his form, now become immortal. 
 Next day in presence of the Emperor, the Archbishop and 
 St Barbatian, Placidia offered this inestimable relic at the 
 altar, and then had it immured in a secret place within this 
 building where none should be able to find it. 
 
 And here in the tympanum of the exquisitely beautiful 
 Giotto-like portal which admits to the cortile in front of 
 the church, we see sculptured the apparition of the Apostle 
 attended by angels at the altar, while Placidia kneels to 
 touch his foot. 
 
 Two reliefs within the gable represent the offering or en- 
 shrining of the holy sandal by the princess, while between 
 them seated figures of the Emperor and a mitred prelate are 
 introduced, above them being a half-length figure of our 
 Lord, who looks down upon the group below from a species 
 of tabernacle. The spandrels formed by the arch of this door- 
 way and the lintel of the gable illustrate the Annunciation. 
 No description can do justice to this doorway, a rara 
 avis in Ravenna, with its variety of mouldings and exqui- 
 site leafage, so I must refer my readers to the accompany- 
 ing illustration, in which they will not fail to observe the 
 
 227 15a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 six rows of minute canopied figures introduced between the 
 slender twisted shafts supporting the three orders of the arch. 
 
 The basilica in the rear of this graceful conception now 
 contains little of the splendour and scarcely a remnant of 
 the mosaic decoration with which Galla Placidia so richly 
 endowed it, and upon which the old chroniclers have so 
 enthusiastically descanted, having been entirely rebuilt, but 
 with the preservation of its colonnades of beautifully veined 
 iigio antico, a dark grey marble, which in the cross views 
 of the interior assume the most elegant attitudes. The 
 capitals are Corinthian, and have as usual in Ravenna the 
 superimposed capitals* inscribed with crosses. All above 
 the arches is poor, feeble work of pseudo-classical character. 
 
 To the apse, which is very small and contains the stalls 
 of the Sisters attached to the contiguous hospital, is an 
 ascent of thirteen steps, and beneath the high altar repose 
 the remains of the martyrs, SS. Cangius, Cangianus and 
 Cangianilla. 
 
 The church retains, however, some vestiges of antiquity. 
 One is a great column with a nobly foliaged capital of Vene- 
 tian type built into the wall at the south-west corner of 
 the nave and belonging to an older church. The pavement 
 around this pillar has been taken up, and its lower part, 
 surrounded by water at a depth of five feet below the pre- 
 sent flooring of the church, exposed. 
 
 Another is the original high altar with its confessionary, 
 a rich and beautiful work in Greek marble, porphyry and 
 serpentine of the fifth century. 
 
 Some fragments of the ancient decorations are extant in 
 a mosaic, representing the vow of Galla Placidia, at the east 
 
 *In strict architedtural nomenclature this additional capital is styled 
 " dosseret." 
 
 228 
 
RAVENNA 
 end of the north aisle, and in some frescoes on the vault of 
 the fourth chapel in the south aisle, ascribed to Giotto, and 
 representing the four Evangelists with their symbols and 
 the four Latin doctors. 
 
 The square pulpit, supported on four Tuscan columns of 
 veined marble, is one of the most pleasing ot the instrumenta. 
 
 Externally the appearance of St Giovanni Evangelista is 
 rude, but the square south-western campanile, crowned by 
 a tiled spire, has a graceful contour in the different views 
 of the city. 
 
 Sta Agata Maggiore (St Agatha the Great) is a good, but 
 not large, example of its period. It was built about a.d. 400 
 by the Bishop Exuperantius, and, although deficient in 
 mural decoration, is one of the most charming of the Ra- 
 vennese basilicas, having undergone a careful restoration 
 which has purged it of much tawdry rococo work. 
 
 The nave, which has in all eleven bays, is divided from 
 its aisles by an arcade supported on columns of varied 
 material, such as granite, bigio antico, cipoUino and other 
 marbles for which the Italians have so extensive a nomen- 
 clature. The foliaging of the capitals hesitates between the 
 classic and the Byzantine variety of Corinthian, and instead 
 of the square abacus, the cap is surmounted by that Raven- 
 nese peculiarity, the impost, sculptured with the cross. The 
 last arch on either side dies off into the wall in lieu of being 
 brought down on to the capital of a half-pillar.* 
 
 Mr R. Phen6 Spiers, in his ArchiteSlure East and fFest, 
 is of opinion that many of these capitals in Sta Agata belong 
 to the sixth century, and were not carved for the church, 
 whilst others are barbarous copies of eighth- or ninth-cen- 
 tury work. The arches of the original church were carried 
 * See illustration, p. 22. 
 229 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 on piers instead of columns. In Rome, where the architedts 
 had abundant resources, they were enabled to take the 
 columns from ancient buildings, but in Ravenna they were 
 forced to content themselves with piers, unless, as in St Vitale, 
 St Apollinaris Nuovo and St ApoUinaris in Classe, they were 
 privileged by the Greek Emperor to obtain them from the 
 Greek quarries. 
 
 Square piers, however, were much in the way, so that, 
 probably in the ninth century, when there seems to have 
 been a revival in church building in the North of Italy, Sta 
 Agata was partially rebuilt and with materials from more 
 ancient structures. 
 
 Excavations have revealed the fa6l that theioriginal floor 
 of the fifth-century church, laid with cubes of mosaic half- 
 inch square, has been found at a depth of eight feet below 
 the present church, which is on the same level as the street, 
 so that, allowing two feet for the steps entering the ori- 
 ginal church, the street has risen ten feet between the fifth 
 and the present century. 
 
 The roof of the nave is a low gabled open one of wood, 
 with the beams placed close together ; roofs of the lean-to 
 type cover the aisles. 
 
 The apse, which joins the nave without any intervening 
 bay, dates from the latter part of the seventeenth century, 
 the original one, together with the mosaics which adorned 
 it, having been destroyed by an earthquake in 1688. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking constructional feature in Sta 
 Agata is its internal narthex, one not only interesting as 
 being unique, I believe, in Ravenna, but admirable from 
 the manner in which it imparts an appearance of greater 
 length to the interior. 
 
 This narthex is formed by separating the first two arcades 
 
 230 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 on either side from the remaining nine by a pier instead of 
 a column. Against this pier is placed a plain massive square 
 half-column supporting an arch which spans the church 
 transversely at the same height as that opening into the 
 apse. The effeA of this division is very striking indeed. 
 
 It is curious to observe how, in the long cycle of the 
 Christian Church, things of old are inevitably revived. The 
 late William Butterfield in designing churches almost in- 
 variably caused his porch or porches to open into a spacious 
 unbenched bay at the west end, as at St Matthias', Stoke 
 Newington, where the most westerly arch on either side is 
 separated from the rest by a pier instead of a detached 
 column. At St Matthias' the finely proportioned saddle- 
 back steeple stands over the chancel, but at St Alban's, Hol- 
 born, a no less striking example of his skill, where the gabled 
 steeple constitutes part of a gigantic fafade from which 
 transepts extend as at St Cunibert's, Cologne, the distinc- 
 tion is still more marked by the noble arch which, carried 
 up to the full height of the church, separates the nave 
 from the space formed beneath the steeple. 
 
 Within one of the arcades on the south side of the nave 
 of Sta Agata stands a most interesting and elegant oval- 
 shaped ambon of cipoUino marble, mounted upon a plain 
 base and with its sides ornamented by concave arcades call- 
 ing to mind the font in Ancaster Church, Lincolnshire. These 
 ambons, of which there are several in the Ravenna churches, 
 seem to have had no permanent steps to reach them, being 
 approached in all probability by temporary wooden ones, 
 an aperture being made large enough for the reader or 
 preacher to enter. There are two apertures in this ambon 
 at Sta Agata, which is in all probability the hollowed out 
 sedtion of a huge fluted column. 
 
 231 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The front of the high altar is enriched with carving. 
 There is a Latin cross in the centre interseded at the junc- 
 tion of the arms by one of the St Andrew's shape. 
 
 On either side is sculptured a bird, a peacock presum- 
 ably, and above is a band of gracefully foliaged orna- 
 ment. 
 
 Behind the altar, and following the sweep of the apse, 
 are some very good Renaissance stalls. The altar of the 
 south chapel contains the bodies of St Sergius, martyr, 
 and St Agnellus, archbishop, and bears the two mono- 
 grams of Sergius Diaconus. 
 
 The very curious ancient chapel in the archbishop's 
 palace, attributed to the time of St Peter Chrysologus, 
 should by no means be overlooked, containing as it does 
 some of the noblest among specimens of fifth-century art 
 at Ravenna. They expand above the marble incrustation 
 round the lower part of the building, which comprises a 
 small square nave with intersedling cylindrical vaults open- 
 ing into a small chancel also cylindrically vaulted by an 
 arch with deep intrados. The efFedt in this little building 
 produced by the mosaic decoration is one of great gor- 
 geousness allied with an austere and unworldly beauty. 
 The brilliant hues of the mosaic are as unfaded as the 
 quaint and massive architefture is intadt, since the days 
 when the emperors of a ruined State trifled away their 
 fear-stricken lives at Ravenna. 
 
 The most remarkable feature in these pidures is the 
 representation of our Lord at different ages. In one place 
 we see Him as a young boy; in another as a youth of 
 eighteen with the same benignly beautiful features more 
 developed; in a third as a fully matured man, costumed 
 like a Greek emperor in gold and purple, bearing in one 
 
 232 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 hand a long red cross, and in the other an open book in- 
 scribed Ego sum Via, Veritas et Vita. 
 
 Then there are four majestic-looking angels in long 
 white vestments with solemn countenances expressing a 
 kind of awful joy, and supporting on their uplifted arms 
 the labarum within an aureole, and numerous other figures 
 and heads of apostles and saints, all charadterized by gene- 
 ral sameness of type; eyes large and staring, forehead low 
 and flat, lips full and curling; the female heads all veiled, but 
 with rich coiffure, braided hair in sight, except one, St Fe- 
 licitas, who has the head-dress of a religious. Over the altar, 
 which is at the extreme east end, is a mosaic of the Bles- 
 sed Virgin with expanded arms and in adt of prayer. The 
 head is closely veiled, the robes are ample and of purple, 
 and the aspeft is one of matronly maturity, severe yet 
 modest. It is a figure of the interceding mother or rather 
 the personified Church, not that of the heavenly Queen 
 who herself demands worship. This pidlure came from the 
 Cathedral when it was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. It 
 is of the twelfth century, and the only mosaic here of later 
 date than the rest. 
 
 The Basilica of St Francesco was dedicated, on its com- 
 pletion during the first half of the fifth century, to St Peter, 
 the change in its name taking place in 1251 when the Fran- 
 ciscan Order came into possession of it. 
 
 Although this church passed through the revived clas- 
 sical period without loss of much that is essential to 
 the early basilican style, it has little to recommend it be- 
 yond its spacious imposing interior with three apses cor- 
 responding to the nave and aisles, its eleven arches carried 
 on Corinthian columns of grey marble, and its finely pro- 
 portioned campanile, a curious mingling of the Lombard 
 
 233 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 and Roman types and built of the darkest brick, like that 
 at St Albans. It projecfts into the aisle at the south-west 
 corner, leaving just a little space between its wall and the 
 two most westerly bays of the nave. The pseudo-Renaissance 
 high attics and sham vaulting, which, by the way, is cracking 
 in all direftions, mask that simple frieze and open wooden 
 roof which are assumed to be the primitive form of basilican 
 covering. It is to be hoped that this wretched work may 
 ere long be removed, and the upper parts of this nobly 
 proportioned church restored in all their early simplicity. 
 
 The holy water stoups in St Francesco have a large 
 marble globe placed in their middle on a pedestal, which in 
 many other instances I found surmounted by a figure or a 
 representation of our Lord's Baptism. 
 
 There are two rows of stalls behind the choir and an 
 organ on each side. An inscription here informs us that 
 the anniversary of the consecration of this church is ob- 
 served on February 22. 
 
 At the east end of the south aisle is an ancient altar, 
 panelled in front with five arcades and covering the dust 
 of Archbishop Liberius II. These have shell-shaped half- 
 domes, twisted pillarets and gracefully draped figures, of 
 which the central one is represented seated in a curule 
 chair. There are likewise two niched eflfigies at the north 
 and south sides. 
 
 This church is remarkable for its medieval tombs, of 
 which that on either side of the west door is a good example. 
 One has the recumbent figure in bas-relief of Ostosio da 
 Polenta, Count of Ravenna (died 1386), and vested as a 
 mendicant friar. The head is singularly beautiful. Perhaps 
 the greatest lustre is shed around St Francesco as the 
 church in which Dante was originally interred. His remains 
 
 234 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 are no longer here, but repose in a mausoleum leaning 
 against the lateral wall of the church though quite distind 
 in architedure. Originally built in 1482, it was feebly 
 restored two hundred years later. 
 
 We now pass on to the churches of the Ostro-Gothic 
 period, built between 489 and 526 during the glorious 
 and prosperous reign of Theodpric, which gave the first 
 example of enlightened and temporary popular foreign 
 domination in Italy. Like his ancestors of the royal Gothic 
 race of the Amali, Theodoric was an Arian, but indiiFerent 
 to controversy, and never violated the peace or privileges 
 of the Catholic Church. The particulars of the government 
 of this memorable prince, who shed a short-lived lustre on 
 the Gothic name, are recorded in twelve books by his 
 secretary, the senator Cassiodorus, a man of learning, who 
 induced his illiterate master to become a patron of art and 
 literature. Towards the close of his reign an intolerant 
 edi(5l of the Byzantine court against the Arians in his 
 dominions induced this prince, against his usual policy 
 to meditate a retaliation against the orthodox of Italy, 
 which, however, was frustrated by his death. It is to be 
 lamented that an adl of tyranny against two exemplary 
 charadlers, Boetius and Symmachus, his father-in-law, closed 
 his career. These senators were both arbitrarily put to 
 death on the mere suspicion of an intrigue between a 
 senatorial party and the imperial court. 
 
 No sooner had this cruel a6t been perpetrated than Theo- 
 doric was seized with remorse, and a fever ensued which 
 terminated his existence in three days, leaving his sceptre 
 in the hands of a feeble boy, diredted indeed by an able 
 and high-minded woman, Amalasuntha,Theodoric's widow- 
 ed daughter, who was ungratefully betrayed and put to 
 
 235 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 death by her cousin Theodatus, called by herself to the 
 throne left vacant by the premature death of her son Atha- 
 laric. Ravenna was the ordinary residence of Theodoric, 
 and the fa9ade of what must have been a most sumptuous 
 palace is still to be seen adjacent to St Apollinaris Nuovo, 
 the most noble of the many noble churches founded by the 
 prince in his capital of the Romagna. 
 
 Amalasuntha is said to have raised the mausoleum of 
 Theodoric, which, like those of SS. Helena and Constan- 
 tia at Rome, was at some medieval period dedicated as a 
 church, having successively borne the names of <?/« Maria 
 in Memoriam Regis, of Sta Maria ad Farma and Sta Maria 
 Rotonda, but it has been ascertained to have been built dur- 
 ing the lifetime of that monarch. 
 
 Few of the monuments of Ravenna are invested with a 
 greater solemnity than this singular mausoleum of Theo- 
 doric. Rising among woods at a short distance from the city 
 on its north-eastern side, where a sylvan scene of quiet 
 loveliness environs this monument of eventful story and 
 perished nationality, it is now left to silent solitude, having 
 been long since robbed of the sarcophagus in which Greek 
 bigotry would not grant the repose of the tomb to an Arian 
 sovereign. 
 
 The very contradictory of such a system of construftion 
 as prevails in St Vitalis, this mausoleum is a circular — or 
 rather a polygonal with the efFed of being a circular — struc- 
 ture of marble. It consists of a very solid cruciform vault 
 in the basement, into which the sea-water has access. 
 
 Above this rises the polygonal portion, at each of whose 
 ten sides opens a deep recess under a semicircular arch. 
 This portion, reached by two outer staircases, added in 
 1780, is surrounded by a vaulted gallery which was — for it 
 
 236 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 is no longer existing — completely external to the main cham- 
 ber and only entered from it by two or three openings. 
 The drum of the dome that covers the centre is lighted by 
 a row of small windows between a simple band and cornice. 
 The dome itself is of one single, solid mass of Istrian stone, 
 hollowed out and cut externally into a bold convex, having 
 massive stone handles hollowed under, by means of which 
 it was raised to its position. 
 
 Against the outer surface of each of these stood, it is 
 said, the image of one of the Apostles. There is no trace of 
 them now, the vault of the surrounding gallery having been 
 destroyed. 
 
 What is most curious about this enormous mass of stone, 
 weighing 2,28o,ooolb. in its rough state, and 940,0001b. 
 at the present time, is that it must have been the first stone 
 of the building. It is quite inconceivable that, after the 
 raising of the walls to the requisite height, such a mass 
 could have been first raised and then moved by machinery 
 wide enough to embrace the building and drop its roof 
 upon it. The only reasonable explanation of it is that the 
 stone was raised and held aloft by scaffolding until the walls 
 rose and received it. 
 
 As a tour deforce it is a wonderful testimony to the energy 
 and vigour of Theodoric the Goth, who had it made to 
 support the porphyry sarcophagus he was buried in, which 
 may now be seen attached to the front of his palace as above 
 mentioned. 
 
 Of the Ravennese monuments raised under the auspices 
 of Theodoric, let us take the first, the Arian Baptistery, 
 situated a little to the west of the Church of St Spirito, which 
 lies to the western side of the Corso Garibaldi, turning to the 
 right on leaving the open space before the railway station. 
 
 237 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 This strudhure, now known as Sta Maria in Cosmedin, 
 is circular within, odtagonal without. From one of the eight 
 sides projects a small round-ended apse, while another has 
 a loggia of three arches. The building is entirely without 
 mouldings but gorgeous with mosaics, which were not added 
 until after the reconstrudlion of the edifice by the Catholics. 
 From the close resemblance in the style, arrangement and 
 detail of the mosaics in the dome of this baptistery and 
 of those in the upper part of the dome of the Orthodox Bap- 
 tistery, one would opine that they belonged to the same 
 period. It is possible that the upper mosaics in the Orthodox 
 Baptistery may have been injured during the religious con- 
 tests between the Arians and the Catholics, or they may have 
 been altered during the Arian domination, and when the 
 Arian Baptistery was reconsecrated and redecorated in accor- 
 dance with Catholic doftrines after the death of Theodoric. 
 The ornamentation of both domes may have been entrusted 
 to the same master. One thing is certain, they are identical 
 in style. 
 
 The mosaics in the Arian Baptistery are divided into 
 zones. In the lower are the twelve Apostles, dispropor- 
 tionately lengthy figures, divided from each other by con- 
 ventional palm trees instead of tall acanthus stalks. They 
 are advancing carrying crowns, and they surround a represen- 
 tation of the Baptism in the Jordan — if anything slighdy 
 superior to that in the Orthodox Baptistery. The nude figure 
 of our Lord is standing up to the middle in the water, His 
 hands extended into it, and His lower limbs seen through 
 it; and at the side is a mythological representation of the river 
 deity. Instead of a lower zone, divided into compartments, 
 containing thrones and tables supporting the Gospels, which 
 the size of the Arian dome does not permit, the zone con- 
 
 238 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 taining the Apostles has a thirteenth compartment in which 
 there is a throne — exadly the same as those in the Ortho- 
 dox Baptistery — having a rich cushion on the seat and upon 
 it a jewelled cross. 
 
 The neighbouring Church of St Spirito alias St Teodoro, 
 a small but tastefully restored basilica of sombre aspeft, 
 stands a little to the east of the Arian Baptistery, and is one 
 of the churches built in Ravenna for that sed under the 
 auspices of Theodoric. It assumed the name of St Teodoro 
 after its consecration to the Catholic worship of St Agnellus, 
 and afterwards took its present dedication. 
 
 St Spirito has all the basilican charadteristics, viz., two 
 graceful ranges of eight arches on columns of varied 
 marbles, with composite capitals and cross-inscribed entab- 
 lature, and their bases exposed; a series of small, round- 
 headed windows in the clerestory between which and the 
 arcades is a belt of paintings — heads within circles; a roof 
 of wood, flat and panelled; an apse whose conch is richly 
 decorated with a figure of our Lord seated between two 
 saints, beyond whom on either side are three sheep; and 
 an ancient pulpit or ambon of marble, small and with 
 bulging sides. 
 
 There is a western loggia of five arcades with a lean-to 
 roof, and over the west doors are these inscriptions : " Spiri- 
 tum nolite extinguere " ; " Nolite contristari Spiritum " ; and 
 "Implemini Spiritu sancto." 
 
 I attended some devotions in this little church on one 
 of the evenings during my stay in Ravenna, when the 
 singing, to the accompaniment of a feeble litde organ in 
 the west gallery which completely broke down on the per- 
 former's essaying some Mozart-like runs, was very harsh 
 and disagreeable. Let us hope that the hearts of the con- 
 
 239 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 gregation at St Spirito, almost entirely composed of the 
 poor, were the best and most musical performers. 
 
 St ApoUinaris Nuovo, whose mosaic decoration is pro- 
 nounced by critics one of the finest examples of the early 
 Christian school in Italy, was originally built by Theodoric 
 as an Arian cathedral. It was consecrated for Catholic wor- 
 ship by Archbishop St Agnellus at the close of the Gothic 
 kingdom and dedicated to St Martin. It was also called St 
 Martino in Coelo Aureo on account of its magnificent 
 decorations, and Sacellum Arii from its original destination. 
 The present dedication was conferred upon it in the ninth 
 century from the report that the body of St Apollinaris 
 had been tranferred within its walls in order to secure it 
 in its real resting-place at Classe from the attacks of the 
 Saracens. 
 
 It is a basilica 315 feet long, terminating in an apse 
 separated from the nave by a rather deep, aisleless limb, 
 which approaches more nearly to the later chancel than any- 
 thing else I know of so early a date. Unfortunately the 
 whole of the eastern limb of the church was rebuilt in the 
 sixteenth century, and the mosaics, from whose golden 
 backgrounds the church derived its appellation, St Martino 
 in Coelo Aureo, were destroyed. 
 
 Tawdry red and blue hangings edged with silver con- 
 cealed the apse from view on the occasion of my visit, 
 which was the festival of St Anthony of Padua, whose es- 
 pecial attribute seemed to be the white lily, quantities of 
 which were being purchased outside the basilica, which 
 they filled with their perfume, obviating to a considerable 
 extent the damp, earthy smell that pervades almost all these 
 old Ravenna churches. 
 
 The nave of St Apollinaris Nuovo is its noblest part: 
 
 240 
 
Ravenna: View across nave in St. Apollinaris INuovo. 
 
 To face page 240, 
 
RAVENNA 
 it is comparatively unaltered and' retains its roof, which 
 is flat and coffered, unlike those of the generality of the 
 churches in Ravenna, where it is open and of a low-pitched 
 gable form. 
 
 The arches separating the nave from its aisles are sup- 
 ported on ancient monolithic cdlumns, each of which has 
 above the capital proper an additional one inscribed with a 
 cross. The floor of the church has been so much raised 
 that the bases of the columns are hidden eighteen inches 
 below the pavement, considerably to the detriment of the 
 general effect of the elevation, as are the nondescript 
 chapels opening from the north aisle. Within the eighth 
 bay counting from the east is an ancient marble ambon 
 on five shafts, which like that in Sta Agata has no steps.* 
 A wooden door has been inserted into the aperture on the 
 western side. 
 
 The glory of St Apollinaris Nuovo is the mosaic de- 
 coration, not only of the frieze between the arcades and the 
 clerestory on either side of the nave, but the wall spaces 
 between and above the windows, all of which taken in con- 
 junftion with the coffered ceiling presents a specimen of 
 early Christian iconography doubly interesting from the 
 almost entirely unaltered condition in which it has come 
 down to us. The triforium belt on either side is enriched 
 with a processional treatment which struck the keynote for 
 Hippolyte Flandrin's remarkable work in the Church of 
 St Vincent de Paul at Paris. 
 
 On the north is represented the neighbouring town of 
 Classis, whence issues a procession of twenty-two virgins 
 bearing crowns and advancing towards the Blessed Virgin 
 
 * I am inclined to believe that these pulpits in the Ravenna churches 
 are formed out of the ambons originally included in the cancelli. 
 
 241 16 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 enthroned with the Infant Christ in her lap, and between 
 whom and the virgins are the three Magi hurrying forward 
 to present their gifts. 
 
 On the opposite wall is a procession of twenty-six male 
 saints, passing from the Palatium, where the Redeemer, 
 draped only in the imperial purple, as in the apse of St Vi- 
 talis, is enthroned between angels, two on each side. 
 
 While there is much sentiment about the female figures 
 particularly, there is a poverty of design in the sameness of 
 their attitudes, additionally revealed by the obvious effort 
 made to vary them. The proportions, however, are just, and 
 though the drawing is tame it can scarcely be called stiff. 
 
 Between the young faces of the virgins there is a more 
 or less general resemblance, but the attempt to give expres- 
 sion to the general charaders has been more successful in 
 the men, where the difference of ages and the arrangement 
 of the hair and beard afforded more scope for the artist. 
 
 There is, however, a very marked difference in point of 
 art between the Virgin enthroned and the saints who are 
 approaching her. Her figure is disproportionately lengthy, 
 the head very small, the eyes round and staring, and the 
 hands and feet grotesquely small, all peculiarities belonging 
 to so much later a period as to suggest the strong proba- 
 bility of that figure being a restoration made at the time 
 when the Basilica was rededicated to St Apollinaris in 856. 
 
 A not very judicious reparation of these mosaics took 
 place during the early 'sixties of the last century, when the 
 sceptre, originally held by our Lord, was changed to an 
 open book. The colour of the new gold is as unsatisfadtory 
 as we generally find it in modern work. 
 
 Throughout these works at St Apollinaris the colour 
 scheme is very beautiful. The upper robes of the virgins 
 
 242 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 are gold, with red and green spots of ornaments; their 
 dressings white with grey shading; and their shoes red. 
 Above these processions occur the Apostles, in white, on a 
 gold ground, placed between the round-headed windows of 
 the clerestory, which unfortunately retain their miserable 
 nondescript glazing in small panes like that of a London 
 church built under the Million AA. Over these figures 
 again are scenes from the Life of Christ in small oblong 
 compartments. It is curious to observe in these Ravennese 
 mosaics that our Lord is only represented with a beard in 
 the later events depidled. No Crucifixion scene is shown; 
 it was a subjedt to be abhorred. 
 
 Another detail observable in these decorations, not only 
 at St Apollinaris but in the other churches, has yet to be 
 explained. On the corners of the mantles worn by the male 
 figures, whether those of our Lord or of prophets. Apostles 
 or saints, are signs of three or four inches in length. Some 
 resemble the capital letters H.N.C.T.R.O., but the most 
 common forms are like the letter I, and in the shape of a 
 two-sided mason's square, and this sign is on every corner 
 of the cloths which cover the tables in the pidlures of Mel- 
 chisedec in St Vitalis and St Apollinaris in Classe. On the 
 drapery of the figures of the Saviour these signs are made 
 in gold, and on those of the others in black. The portrait 
 of Justinian which occurs in the last chapel on the north was 
 formerly outside the portal. 
 
 St Vitalis, the most complicated and at the same time 
 perhaps the most beautiful of the circular churches of its 
 age, was founded in 526 by Bishop Ecclesius, after a journey 
 which he took to Constantinople with Pope John L Autho- 
 rities seem divided as to what was the original motif for 
 this stru(5lure, but it would appear to be a fusion of western 
 
 243 i6a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 and Oriental ideas as exemplified in the temple of Minerva 
 Medica — a picturesque ruin on the Esquiline near the Porta 
 Maggiore — and the odlagonal church built by Constantine 
 at Antioch. St Vitalis differs from the former in that it is 
 an octagon instead of a decagon, and that it is wholly en- 
 closed by an octagonal wall, besides which its general plan, 
 decorative details and other striking analogies which exist be- 
 tween it and the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus at Con- 
 stantinople, called by its contemporary architedls "the Little 
 Sta Sophia," which preceded the great church of that name, 
 leave little doubt that this remarkable edifice at Ravenna 
 was construded by a Constantinopolitan archited:, and that 
 it was the first appearance of the Byzantine style on the 
 western shores of the Adriatic. 
 
 At Sta Sophia, changed into the temple of another faith, 
 the most charadleristic ornaments have been hidden by white- 
 wash or torn away, while at St Vitalis Hebrew patriarchs, and 
 Christian saints, and the imperial forms of Justinian and his 
 strangely chosen empress, still look down as they did thirteen 
 hundred years ago upon the altars of Christian worship. 
 
 St Vitalis is not a Latin basilica, but an octagon support- 
 ing a dome, a shape which seems to have excited the admi- 
 ration of Charlemagne, who caused it to be copied in the 
 stately tomb-house which he reared for himself in the latter 
 years of the eighth century at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 
 The original chancel of Charlemagne's octagon disappeared 
 during the fourteenth century, when it was replaced by the 
 present elongated, lofty and luminous strudlure which we 
 now see. That it had one is recoverable by analogy with the 
 very interesting and perfed odagonal church at Ottmars- 
 heim in Alsace, which resembles that at Aix-la-Chapelle in 
 so many particulars as to leave little doubt on the subjeft. 
 
 244 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 The shapeless brick outside of St Vitalis gives little pro- 
 mise of its sublime interior, its cupola, columnar tribunes, 
 and the glorious mosaics which encrust its chancel and apse, 
 endowing it with a splendour of which it has to a great 
 extent been deprived. 
 
 The work, commenced in 526, was completed and con- 
 secrated about twenty years later by Maximianus, Arch- 
 bishop of Ravenna from 546 to 556, in the presence of the 
 Emperor Justinian and his consort Theodora,* Julianus, 
 surnamed Argentarius, having direfted the work. 
 
 The plan of St Vitalis is that of a foliated or lobed octa- 
 gon within a straight-sided one, the diameter of the former 
 being but 50 feet, while that of the latter is no, so that 
 the dome here is one-third less jthan what may, to a cer- 
 tain extent, be considered its prototype — that of the Minerva 
 Medica; but so completely had the architect: degenerated 
 from the dome builders of Rome, that instead of the scienti- 
 fic construdtion of the above-named temple, this of Ravenna 
 is wholly composed of earthen pots fixed into very solid 
 mortar. The base of the dome is built of pottery taking the 
 form of antique pitchers fitting one into the other and 
 placed vertically. 
 
 The cap Is similarly construfted, but with smaller pitchers 
 bound by mortar; these earthenware vessels forming a con- 
 tinuous spiral line of great lightness, yet of a solidity proof 
 against all accident. 
 
 The arches on which this central dome rests are supported 
 on massive piers, and rise to the height of the top of the 
 upper surrounding galleries or tribunes. Seven of these 
 arches thus open into the tribune and the aisle below It by 
 
 * This ceremony is depidled in one of the grand mosaics which adorn 
 the sanfluary. 
 
 245 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 a semicircular recessed colonnade in two stories, falling into 
 the arch above by means of a semi-dome and vault. The 
 eighth side protrudes into a quadripartitely vaulted chancel 
 that interrupts the circuit of the aisle and gallery, and is 
 prolonged into a sandtuary terminating in a much ilower 
 semicircular apsis. 
 
 St Vitalis is removed still further than Sta Sophia from 
 the classic architeftural tradition, none of its ornaments 
 having been borrowed from the ancient monuments. Cer- 
 tain capitals are very distindbly reminiscent of the Corin- 
 thian, but the volutes and leafage are very far from being 
 pure. Most of these capitals are square at the top, and 
 assume by insensible gradations the circular form, sculp- 
 tured trelliswork helping to redeem the poverty of the 
 oudine. On the smaller capitals, which are of the Corinthian 
 order, we see sculptured anchors, that have suggested the 
 tradition of their belonging to a temple of Neptune; on 
 the larger, which are Byzantine, are relief monograms, 
 twenty-eight in all, one of which has been read by some 
 abecedarians as Nurses, by others as Nepos, probably the 
 name of the architect. The others are intelligible enough, 
 as, e.g., Ecclesius and Julianus. 
 
 Like all Byzantine constru6tions St Vitalis has, in spite 
 of its limited dimensions, an aspeft of decided grandeur and 
 charader, and although a good deal was done in the baroque 
 epoch to destroy the simplicity of the original eiFe6l of the 
 building, there is a pleasing efFed produced by alternating 
 the piers with circular columns,iand a lightness and elegance 
 about the whole design that renders it unrivalled in the 
 Western world among churches of its class; and it has not 
 only served, as I have already remarked, as the model for 
 Charlemagne's mausoleum at Aix-la-Chapelle, but for many 
 
 246 
 
Ravenna : Interior of St. Vitalis. 
 
 To face page 246. 
 
RAVENNA 
 circular buildings of that age, which have, unfortunately, 
 wholly or in part disappeared. 
 
 At the time of my visit St Vitalis was undergoing re- 
 storation and was, as regards its fittings, etc., in a state of 
 bouklfersement. It is to be hoped that the feeble pseudo- 
 classical decorations with which it had been endowed will 
 in due course disappear, and give place to works in mosaic 
 which shall emulate those glorious sixth-century pictures 
 which render the choir and apsidal sandluary almost a gal- 
 lery of ornamental art. 
 
 Upon the soffit of the chancel arch are fifteen medallions, 
 containing life-size heads of the Apostles, with that of the 
 Saviour on the summit and the martyrs Gervasius and Prota- 
 sius below. Upon the left wall is a large pidlure — the figure 
 almost life-size — of Abraham entertaining the "three men" 
 in front of his tent on the "plains of Mamre." They are 
 represented with wings like angels, and are seated at the 
 table on which the "calf, tender and good," is laid before 
 them. At the side Abraham stands "under the tree," and 
 further to the left, at the tent door" which was behind him," 
 stands Sarah. To the right of this picfture is Abraham about 
 to sacrifice Isaac, and looking up at a hand from the clouds 
 pointing to the ram. An arch encloses these, and in the span- 
 drels and space above there is at one side the Prophet Jere- 
 miah, and at the other Moses receiving the Tables of the 
 Law in the form of a scroll from a hand stretched out from 
 the heavens, while below him stands a group of Israelites. 
 Over the centre of the arch are floating angels bearing a 
 circle containing a Latin cross. Above these again is an open 
 arch, supported by pilasters and divided into three by co- 
 lumns with most exquisitely wrought Byzantine capitals. 
 Upon the face of the right pilaster, and above the Moses 
 
 247 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 on Mount Sinai is St Luke, sitting in a rocky landscape, 
 the ox beside him and the open volume of his Gospel bear- 
 ing the words Secundum Lucam. On the other pilaster, and 
 above the figure of Jeremiah, is St John with the eagle and 
 his open Gospel in like manner. The space above is filled 
 with lovely scroll work, and thence springs, without inter- 
 ruption, the mosaic ornamentation of the vault. 
 
 The central pifture on the opposite wall shows a rocky 
 landscape. In the foreground is a table covered with a white 
 cloth, below which is one of violet extending to the ground, 
 and upon the table a chalice in the centre, with a loaf of 
 bread on either side. On the left of the table stands Abel 
 with his arms extended over it, holding a lamb in both 
 hands; and on the right Melchisedec, holding in the same 
 manner a loaf of bread resembling those on the table. Mel- 
 chisedec is draped in regal vestments of white with gold 
 ornaments, and advances from a palatial edifice behind 
 him. Abel, behind whom is a rustic hut, is clad in a 
 kind of goatskin falling from one shoulder and leaving 
 the limbs and upper part of his body bare. Above, follow- 
 ing the arrangement on the opposite side, are the Prophet 
 Isaiah; Moses taking off his shoes before the burning bush, 
 his flock below him; and, on the upper pilasters, the Evan- 
 gelists St Matthew and St Mark, with the emblematic 
 angel and lion, and their open Gospels. 
 
 Beyond these the walls are occupied by the grand his- 
 torical pidlures of Justinian and Theodora with their suites 
 to the right and left of the apse, wherein there is a grand 
 figure of our Lord seated on the globe. On one side is 
 an angel and the Archbishop Ecclesius, holding a model of 
 a round church — a building with a circular nave, showing 
 alternate windows and buttresses, lean-to roof, round cleres- 
 
 248 
 
To face fage 248, 
 
 Ravenna: 5ta. Maria in Porto Fuori 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 tory with windows and a high conical roof ending in a large 
 cross; on the other hand, an angel leads forward the mar- 
 tyr soldier Vitalis, to whom the church is dedicated. These 
 figures are semi-colossal. In that of the "Majesty" the first 
 objeft of the artist has evidently been to represent the 
 Divinity in simple, solemn grandeur. The face is that of a 
 godlike youth with richly clustered hair. The great globe 
 on which he sits is azure blue. He is draped in an admir- 
 ably arranged tunic and mantle, both of rich purple, with- 
 out ornament, and His left hand rests on a bound volume, 
 closed, with seven black bands and seals. 
 
 After coffee in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, I set oflf 
 one afternoon for St Apollinaris in Classe, visiting on the 
 way the imposing cruciform early classical church of Sta 
 Maria in Porto, whose nave is supported on isolated Tuscan 
 columns tapering at both ends. 
 
 A detour was also made for the purpose of inspecting the 
 charming Sta Maria in Porto Fuori, with its wealth of 
 fresco paintings of the school of Giotto, 
 
 I shall not readily forget the first impression received of 
 St Apollinaris in Classe — that still noble though now for- 
 lorn sixth-century monument — as I approached it on a fine 
 sunny breezy afternoon by a solitary road cleaving a vast 
 marshy plain. 
 
 Mournful was the landscape, bounded westward by the 
 distant Apennines in low but gracefully varied outlines, 
 and to the east by the historic pine forest, extending 
 as far as eye can see, as it separates the level maremma 
 from the sea with its dense growth, and presenting the appa- 
 rent solidity and regularity in form of another mountain 
 chain. 
 
 Although June, yet even that joyous season could not 
 
 249 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 dispel the monotonous melancholy of the scene, thoroughly 
 in harmony as it was with the great lone church. 
 
 When Ravenna was an important naval station, and the 
 sea (now nearly six miles distant) only divided from her 
 walls by the waters of a vast lagoon amidst which they 
 rose, Augustus turned these local advantages to account 
 by construfting a harbour capable of sheltering two hun- 
 dred and fifty ships, called Partus O'^ssis, between which 
 and the city soon sprang up a populous suburb, or rather 
 additional town, known as Cesarea. 
 
 The basilica of St ApoUinaris, about two miles distant 
 from the Ravenna of the present day, is the sole monument 
 that retains merely in its name the records of that populous 
 quarter, never restored after having been devastated by the 
 Lombards in 728. 
 
 In the story of architedlure this once magnificent church 
 fills a conspicuous place, being described by Agincourt as 
 "a new example of the blending of the form of the temple 
 with that of the ancient basilica, in order to its adaptation 
 for the rites and usages of the Church in early Christian 
 periods." Considered the most perfed model of its class in 
 Italy, St ApoUinaris in Classe has, notwithstanding such 
 high claims, been subjeifted to many and grievous outrages, 
 from which it has only of late years emerged by careful 
 restoration. In its negleded state it must have seemed a 
 mournfully impressive type of the decline of that ancient 
 Christian city itself, that pure and apostolic constitution of 
 the Church of the first four centuries, over whose ruins the 
 potent system of the Papacy has been construdted. 
 
 St ApoUinaris — this basilica of Cesarea — was finished 
 about 549 after rapid execution of the works under the 
 diredlion of Julian us, the treasurer {argentarius) who here 
 
 250 
 
ST. APOLLINARIS IN CLASSE, RAVENNA. 
 
 FROM THE NORTH-EAST. FROM A DRAWING BY SCOTSON CLARK. 
 
i ? 
 
RAVENNA 
 represented the government of Justinian, and who had al- 
 ready founded the splendid oftagonal church of St Vitalis 
 within the city's ancient circuit. The atrium, which, with 
 its porticoes, extended in front, has regrettably disappeared. 
 
 The nave, 130 feet long, is divided from its aisles by 
 twenty-fourcolumns of violet marble from Hymettus, form- 
 ing a magnificent prelude to an apse covered with mosaics. 
 Their Corinthian capitals are less elegant than elsewhere in 
 Ravenna, and although based on examples at Thessalonica, 
 the design and execution are due to inferior Greek sculp- 
 tors. The responds of the arcades are decorated with orna- 
 ment in plaster, which, if clumsy, is vigorous in treatment, 
 and may have supplied the motif for the capitals of the 
 court of the Town Hall at Bologna of the fourteenth century. 
 
 A flight of steps in the last bay of the nave leads directly 
 to the apse whose conch retains its mosaics — probably or- 
 dered by the Archbishop Agnellus (553-566), and the 
 most precious among art works still preserved here — in 
 their olden and charafteristic beauty. 
 
 In 596 a monastery was added to the church. In the 
 ninth century restorations were effeded by Pope Leo III, 
 but in later times the work of spoliation began. 
 
 Many valuable mosaics perished; of more than fifty win- 
 dows the greater number were ruthlessly blocked up; the 
 pillared atrium was removed; the walls were stripped of 
 the fine marble with which they were completely clothed, 
 by order of Sigismund Malatesta, lord of Rimini, to which 
 city those spoils were transferred in 145 1. 
 
 The monastery was suppressed, its buildings left desolate 
 from a period not, I believe, certain, some poor tenements 
 occupying the remains of the cloistral appendages. 
 
 On the evening of my visit the only signs of life about 
 
 251 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 the place were some cocks and hens, who, in their own fash- 
 ion, were enjoyingthemselvesmightilyin the unkempt piece 
 of sunken grass land adjoining the church on its north side. 
 
 The exterior, plain and venerably simple, has no very 
 remarkable features left to it save the high cylindrical cam- 
 panile that towers up grandly at the north-east angle, and 
 a vast and lofty western porch once connec3:ed with the now 
 completely vanished atrium. 
 
 Still, the effedl, as one enters the nave, has an almost 
 unearthly grandeur and beauty, not altogether obliterated 
 by the sad vicissitudes the building has passed through. 
 
 The portraits of archbishops in medallions still look down 
 in solemn company from above the arcades ; not more than 
 three altars (probably the usual number, if indeed more 
 than one was admitted in basilicas of the same period) are 
 seen, each surmounted by a richly moulded marble canopy, 
 in the perspedlive beyond the files of pillars — except one 
 other, isolated in the nave, and evidently of more recent 
 date. Small and cubic in form, it bears an inscription telling 
 how St ApoUinaris twice appeared on this spot, and thence 
 proceeded to cense the holy place, visible during his vigils 
 to the youthful St Romuald, and enjoining him to devote 
 himself to a religious life before that step had been taken 
 by the founder of the Camaldulese Order. Eight marble 
 sarcophagi, the tombs of archbishops, in the aisles, present 
 examples of early Christian symbolism in their relief orna- 
 ments. The portraits of those prelates, in the nave of mosaic, in 
 the aisles of fresco painting, have been completed in suc- 
 cession down to recent times, and below, between and in 
 the reveals of the windows, are some fine mosaic pidures 
 representing Constantine Pogonatus and his brother be- 
 stowing a privilegium on Bishop Reparatus about 670, in 
 
 252 
 
RAVENNA 
 
 which the deacons all wear long surplices reaching to the 
 feet, and with wide sleeves. There are also figures of SS. 
 Ecclesius, Severus, Ursus, Urcisinus, all in albs and with 
 pallia. 
 
 On the half-dome of the apse the Transfiguration is re- 
 presented. In the centre is a Latin cross within an ellipsis; 
 at the jundion of the arms is the head of our Lord, and 
 near the ends of the transverse beams are the letters A and 
 Q, and at the footof the cross is the inscription " Salus Mun- 
 di." Above is a hand appearing from the clouds, and at the 
 sides Moses and Elias. Lower down are three sheep, sym- 
 bolical of SS. Peter, James and John. Still lower down is 
 St Apollinaris with his arms extended and six sheep on each 
 side of him. He has a nimbus, and is vested in a long 
 white dalmatic on which are purple clavi, an oval chasuble, 
 a white pallium and white shoes with black crosses on them. 
 He is represented as an aged man with tonsure and beard. 
 
 On the face of the arch are the two cities, Jerusalem 
 and Bethlehem, with twelve sheep ascending from them. 
 Higher up is the half-figure of Christ in a circular me- 
 dallion, nimbed, and with the right hand raised in the adb 
 of blessing according to the Greek form. At His right side 
 are the symbols of SS. John and Matthew, and at His left 
 those of SS. Mark and Luke. 
 
 Opposite the mosaic of the Privilegia are shown the sacri- 
 fices of Abel, Melchisedec and Abraham, and an altar is 
 represented in perspedbive, its most noticeable feature being 
 its table form, covered with a white embroidered cloth and 
 having on it a two-handled cup, and two other ornaments, 
 which, it may not unreasonably be supposed, are meant 
 for patens. 
 
 In these mosaics at St Apollinaris, as well as in those at St 
 
 253 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 Vitalis and the archiepiscopal palace, classic influence, in the 
 common acceptance of the term, is no longer recognizable. 
 It has given place to the realistic, bearing in fa& the im- 
 press of the time when they were executed. Instead of refleft- 
 ing Pagan art traditions, glorified by Christian sentiment, as 
 visible in the pidure of the Good Shepherd in the mauso- 
 leum of Galla Placidia, they demonstrate how fully artists 
 had become imbued with the spirit both of the Old and 
 the New Testament histories, and how completely it had 
 taken the place of that imparted by the earlier myths. 
 The very rare use of silver leaf tesserae occurs in these 
 works. I also learnt that mother-of-pearl, ivory and egg- 
 shell also were used, but for the truth of the last-named I 
 am unable to vouch; certainly I could find no traces of it 
 when at Ravenna twelve months ago. 
 
 Ere my studies at St Apollinaris in Classe were con- 
 cluded, the shades of evening had begun to fall. 
 
 For a few moments I stood watching the last gleam of 
 the setting sun on the Apennines from beneath the western 
 portico, the awful stillness of the environing marshy land- 
 scape being alone broken by the continual croaking of 
 frogs, to whose music, as I retraced my steps along the 
 straight, monotonous road, I wedded Martial's line: 
 
 Meliusque ranae garriunt Ravennates.* 
 
 On approaching the city I fell in with the boys of the 
 Cathedral School, who, in their cassocks, purple sashes and 
 shovel hats, were taking an evening constitutional under 
 the surveillance of several ecclesiastics. All responded very 
 politely to my salutation. 
 
 Having watched the party go by, I struck into some 
 •Ravenna's frogs in better measure croak. 
 254 
 
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RAVENNA 
 meadows on the eastern side of the city commanding a 
 view of the old campanili, from which the last flush of 
 sunset was fading to leave them cold and grey once more; 
 and, throwing myself upon a grassy bank, drew from my 
 pocket an old number of The Dublin Review containing an 
 article by Cardinal Wiseman on Ravenna, a short extradt 
 from which may fitly conclude this chapter: 
 
 "Whoever loves early Christian monuments, whoever 
 desires to see them in greater perfection than the lapse of 
 fourteen centuries would warrant us in expefting, whoever 
 desires to study them unaided by the remains of heathen 
 antiquity, should make every effort to spend some days at 
 least in this noble and imperial city. From Rome it differs 
 mainly in this, that your meditations are not disturbed by 
 the constant recurrence of pagan remains, nor your re- 
 searches perplexed by the necessity of inquiring what was 
 built and what was borrowed by the faithful. Ravenna has 
 only one antiquity, and that is Christian. 
 
 " Seated, like Rome, in the midst of an unhealthy, deso- 
 late plain, except when its unrivalled pine forests cast a 
 shade of deeper solitude and melancholy over it — quiet 
 and lonely, without the sound of wheels upon its grass- 
 grown pavement — it has not merely to lament over the 
 decay of ancient magnificence, but upon its total destruc- 
 tion, except what religion has eredted for herself. She was 
 not in time to apply her saving as well as purifying unction 
 to the basilicas and temples of receding ages; or rather, 
 she seemed to occupy what she could replace, and there- 
 fore, in the strength of imperial favour, raised new build- 
 ings for the Christian worship such as no other city but 
 Rome could boast of." 
 
 255 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Some Lombard Cathedrals and Churches — Modena, 
 
 Parma, Piacenza, Qremona, Pavia 
 
 MANY people start on their travels under the impres- 
 sion that, in leaving England for Italy, they are quit- 
 ting a land of brick for a land of marble; if not morally and 
 spiritually, yet as certainly in the material structure of its 
 houses and churches. 
 
 No sooner do they cross the Alps than they become con- 
 vinced of their mistake. The nature of the country at 
 once explains the cause. Lombardy, that lies stretched 
 across the top of Italy, with the Alps to the north, the 
 Apennines to the south, is, to speak broadly, one rich, 
 flat alluvial plain. With the splendid marble quarries of 
 Carrara, much more accessible to them than were the 
 stone quarries of Normandy to ourselves, the early church 
 builders of North Italy, either with less zeal or more 
 originality than our own ancestors, did not think it worth 
 their while to send to neighbouring countries for the 
 material of their churches. They moulded the native 
 clay under their feet to their purpose, and sanctified the 
 coarseness of the material by the beauty of form into which 
 they worked it. 
 
 One of the earliest Lombard examples, St Michele at 
 Pavia, is indeed altogether stone and marble, at least ex- 
 ternally, and no one who looks upon its rude, sculptured 
 front and massive pillars within can fail to recognize here 
 the source of our own Norman architecture — so much 
 more clearly traceable in this early specimen than in the 
 later and more finished erections of the Lombards. 
 
 256 
 
WEST FRONT OF CREMONA CATHEDRAL. 
 
 FROM A DRAWING BY SCOTSON CLARK. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 But after this early and, if I mistake not, unique ex- 
 ample, the use of brick becomes universally prevalent; at 
 first in alternate stripes of brick and stone as in the Cathe- 
 dral at Verona, then brick with marble columns and orna- 
 ments as in the Campanile of St Gothardo, then entirely of 
 brick as at St Michele, Cremona, and St Ambrose, Milan. 
 
 If we have a doubt that so rude and cheap a material is 
 unsuited to the dignity and costliness becoming the house 
 of God, we are soon convinced that the prejudice is un- 
 founded when we perceive the beauty into which this 
 material has been wrought in Lombard architecture; and 
 those who know, even by pictures only, the leaning towers 
 of Bologna and the cloisters of the Certosa near Pavia, 
 must acknowledge that their picturesqueness of form and 
 beauty of colour have seldom been surpassed by the most 
 elaborate workmanship of stone and marble. 
 
 It is from Lombardy that we have drawn the capabili- 
 ties and development of brick. How exquisitely do those 
 tall red campanili adorn the flat and otherwise mono- 
 tonous plains from which they spring! They are often only 
 receptacles for a single beU, three or four at most — ^for a 
 peal of beUs is peculiar to Merry England — ^and this ac- 
 counts for their exceeding slimness and great height in 
 comparison to the square of their base. The proportions of 
 many of these bell towers are ten times the square of 
 their sides; and up to this height they run in an uninter- 
 rupted plain square tower of panelled brickwork, unbroken 
 either by window or ornament, crowned as a rule by an 
 open arcade and capped by a stunted pyramidal roof. 
 
 Were it my intention to advocate an anachronistic revi- 
 val of any art form, I should unhesitatingly recommend the 
 thorough study of the exquisitely elegant forms of Italian 
 
 257 17 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Romanesque architecture. Then, as at present, the artists 
 of the ecclesiastical Transition style were still seeking, 
 without clear consciousness, some corresponding forms 
 to express the higher spiritual tendencies of Christia- 
 nity. Dissatisfied with the current blending of classic 
 and Byzantine elements, they were inspired by some 
 unknown ideal, by some incomprehensible longing to 
 find a new style. The very language of the Latin race un- 
 derwent a great change. The material was furnished, 
 as in architecture, by the Greeks and Romans. The 
 old roots were kept, but the periods, the inflections, 
 were borrowed from the victorious Teuton spirit. The 
 Latin declensions and conjugations were simplified, or 
 altogether discarded, the weightier sounds changed into 
 softer and more sonorous ones, and an admixture of old 
 Teuton and Roman founded the rapidly developing Italian 
 tongue. 
 
 In perfect analogy with this lingual change, the archi- 
 tects during the ninth and tenth centuries began to con- 
 struct in a different style, altering what was too difficult, 
 and omitting what they did not understand, of the old 
 Christian style, imitating only so much as was strictly 
 suitable. Thus the old basilica of early Christian architec- 
 ture was, by degrees, transformed into the Romanesque 
 church. Capitals and mouldings still bore some reminis- 
 cences of classicism, but the ornamentation was executed 
 more in the spirit of wood carving, and architecture took 
 up forms of construction, rather in harmony with the use 
 of brick and wood than with that of stone. To say that 
 the Romanesque style was purely imitative is fallacious. 
 The Byzantine elements were ignored, and the basilica un- 
 derwent a thorough process of transformation. 
 
 258 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 The change began in the interior. The choir was made 
 more imposing by the addition of a square space before the 
 apse; the plan of the foundation assumed the cruciform 
 one, and crypts, in some instances entered directly from 
 the nave, were constructed, thereby adding greatly to the 
 dignity of the most sacred part of the building. Already 
 in the old basilica the use of arches admitted of greater 
 distances between the pillars, which were placed still fur- 
 ther apart in the Romanesque. The distances of the 
 columns were either exactly or nearly half the breadth of 
 the central nave, thus producing a rhythmical eflFect that 
 created a powerful impression, and bringing the opposite 
 columns into an harmonious union. 
 
 This change brought about another. The flat waU super- 
 structure, the flat wood encoflered ceiling, was in no way 
 connected with the supporting arches. 
 
 In the Italo-Romanesque, the free column was replaced 
 by the massive pillar, and the wall, brought into close con- 
 nexion with the foundation, was broken only by arched 
 openings, so as to connect, through their mighty arches, 
 the side aisles with the central nave. 
 
 The columns were stiU used, not only to ornament the 
 pillars, but as marked supports of the projecting cornices 
 and principal arched mouldings. The columns were doubly 
 necessary, when the aisles became arched. First, only the 
 two side aisles received the cross-vault, but at a later period 
 the central aisle was also vaulted. In France and Italy, and 
 in certain parts of Germany, galleries or " Emporia " were 
 constructed above the side aisles — ^in the last-named 
 country at least to separate the males from the females of 
 the congregation, as is still the custom in the Oriental 
 Church. The plan of the pillars became complex, and was 
 
 259 I7« 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 the root of the deeply moulded arches and the essence of 
 the whole construction. 
 
 The roof rested on lofty attached columns, and formed 
 a vaulted crown. 
 
 These forms are neither classically antique nor Gothic; 
 they constitute the transition from one style to another. 
 
 The Romanesque is not a more or less close imitation 
 of the features of the Roman architecture, nor is there in 
 this style what Dr Whewell termed " a predominance of 
 vertical lines," for one has only to glance at a view of the 
 Church of St ApoUinaris in Classe at Ravenna, and then 
 at one of St Zeno at Verona, or St Michele at Pavia, to 
 see that the striving up vertical lines markedly predo- 
 minate. 
 
 The style of this tenth- to thirteenth-century period has 
 many advantages. 
 
 The forms are simple, and if not always graceful, the 
 expression is clear, decided, and produces a feeling of re- 
 pose perfectly in accordance with the earnest religious 
 sentiment of the day. The solemn strains of a plain song 
 psalm or hymn pervade the architecture of such a struc- 
 ture as St Ambrose at Milan, or of those grouped in this 
 chapter, and to which the above remarks may be taken as 
 prefatory — the Cathedrals of Parma, Piacenza, Modena, 
 Cremona and St Michele at Pavia. 
 
 Like the Rhenish Germans,the Italians of the Lombard 
 plains abandoned this grand transitional style just when it 
 was at its richest and best, yet still capable of fresh deve- 
 lopments, to embrace the complete Gothic style, which 
 they never understood, and which consequently never 
 took root in Italy. Several varieties and distinct schools 
 mav be found, and capable of certain rules and arrange- 
 
 260 
 
riodena: Vest front of the Cathedral, 
 
 To face page 260 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 ments, but they never seem to have succeeded wholly in 
 throwing ofi the influence of classical examples. 
 
 The great Cathedral of Milan, magnificent as it is, will 
 scarcely bear the test of the principles of genuine Gothic; 
 whilst the really pure Gothic church of Assisi — that 
 storehouse of Christian art — is known to have been de- 
 signed by a German, Jacopo Tedesco. 
 
 The influence of the Lombards in Italy and the icono- 
 clastic rupture of the eighth century, by which a multi- 
 tude of Greek artists were scattered over the Continent, 
 gave a new impulse to Western Europe. 
 
 Italy became politically independent of the Byzantine 
 Empire, and the Church of Rome thenceforward inde- 
 pendent of that at Constantinople. A more advanced 
 style of architecture, with a complete and connected 
 system of forms, soon prevailed wherever the Latin Church 
 spread its influence, and an associated body of freemasons 
 powerfully contributed to its diffusion over Europe. 
 
 It has been called Lombardic, or, perhaps more con- 
 veniently, Romanesque. Connected by the basilica of Wes- 
 tern Europe with the buildings destined for the same 
 purpose in the East; it forms a connecting link between 
 the classic and the purely Pointed Gothic styles of archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 Grand as these Romanesque churches of the Lombard 
 plains are in the mass, they are not faultless. Their flat 
 walls are frequently monotonous; their interiors are but 
 ill-lighted, in some places obscure, in others flooded with 
 a glaring light; the distribution of the decorative element 
 is not always happy, porches, pillars and capitals being 
 overcrowded with variegated patterns, intermingled with 
 empty, unadorned walls. They impress us too powerfully 
 
 261 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 with the unsettled state of the minds of those who de- 
 signed them. The cowls of the religious and the heavy- 
 armour of the warrior may be traced in them. 
 
 They reflect likewise the convulsions of the times; a 
 people under the influence of an empty ecclesiastical for- 
 malism, and longing for freedom; pride in the mighty 
 waUs, humility in the compressed pillars; a powerful and 
 unbroken sense of independence in the rich ornamentation, 
 a striving for new forms in the conflicting details, which 
 are half pagan, half Christian. 
 
 Tennyson, who viewed these old Lombardic Romanesque 
 cathedrals and churches under depressing atmospherical 
 conditions, thus alludes to them in his poem The Daisy:* 
 
 But when we crost the Lombard plain 
 Remember what a plague of rain ; 
 Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma, 
 At Lodi rain, Piacenza rain. 
 
 And stern and sad (so rare the smiles 
 Of sunlight) looked the Lombard piles ; 
 Porch-pillars on the lion resting 
 And sombre, old colonnaded aisles. 
 
 It was five o'clock in the morning of the "Corpus 
 Domini," which fell last year on the fourteenth of June, 
 when I set out from Ravenna on a little tour amid that 
 group of old Lombardic Romanesque churches that has 
 
 * A very dainty piece of craftsmanship which gives special character to 
 this exquisite poem. The suggestion for this curious quatrain most prob- 
 ably came from Fitzgerald's famous Persian measure. At any rate we have 
 here the same arrangement of rhyme with the third line blank. But with 
 a fine subtlety Tennyson lightens the movement of that solemn metre by 
 the introduction of a two-syllabled ending in the third verse, which gives 
 to the eight-syllabled iambic a feminine ending, and by altering the run 
 of the fourth line by a dactyl somehow cunningly let in among the iambics. 
 
 262 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 served as a peg whereon to hang the foregoing remarks. 
 The newly risen sun was just gilding the tops of the 
 domes and steeples; few people were abroad; and such 
 outward and visible signs that the day was to be made a 
 high festival of, as banners, festoons, draped balconies 
 and window-sills, and reposoirs for the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment, were nowhere to be seen. Nor did Bologna, where 
 I had a wait of a few hours, before a train could be got for 
 Modena, present a more festive appearance. 
 
 At StPetronio there was High Mass, with orchestral 
 accompaniment, which could not be enjoyed on account 
 of the incessant fidgeting of the congregation, trafiicking 
 in chairs, promenading up and down the aisles, in at one 
 door and out at another, and so on. I therefore repaired to 
 the Cathedral, where numberless guilds and confraternities 
 assembled for the out-door procession, which started 
 forth to a lively air played by a band stationed just outside, 
 as soon as the Cardinal Archbishop had arrived and was 
 vested, which took up a considerable time. To an English 
 eye there were numerous incongruities, and the absence 
 of good, hearty singing made the whole thing fall very flat ; 
 but the prelate carrying the monstrance beneath a silken 
 canopy was a picture in itself. 
 
 •SModena 
 It was at Modena that I got my first glimpse of the 
 genuine Lombard form of the Italian Romanesque, a form 
 quite unlike either the domical or the basilican type, 
 which makes a far nearer approach to the Northern 
 Romanesque of Bamberg and Cologne, of Neuss and 
 Werden; indeed the three eastern apses with their open 
 arcades rising between pinnacled turrets of quite a Nor- 
 
 263 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 thern character transported one to the banks of the Rhine. 
 The Lombards had but little art of their own. Roman and 
 Greek architects built their early churches and ministered 
 to their more primitive tastes. Between the eleventh and 
 thirteenth centuries the dynamic superiority of the 
 Teutons in politics and religion, in architecture and 
 plastic art, quickly developed and spread over Europe; 
 and although Modena Cathedral is, taken in the mass, a 
 strictly Italian church, yet the approaches to Northern 
 forms are so very marked that they suggest the direct 
 imitation of Northern forms in the employment of 
 Teutonic architects. 
 
 The present Cathedral dates from very early in the 
 twelfth century, the old one having fallen, or threatened 
 to fall, towards the close of the eleventh; this date would 
 make it almost contemporary with the other great Roman- 
 esque cathedrals of Cremona, Parma and Piacenza, which, 
 at any rate as regards plan, it greatly resembles. The 
 original architect at Modena was " a certain Lanfrancus, 
 a wonderful builder," who, as the old chronicles inform 
 us, " was at length found to design so great a work." In 
 1 1 06 the crypt was ready to receive the body of St Ge- 
 minianus, but after this the works appear to have hung fire, 
 seventy-eight years elapsing ere the church was com- 
 pleted and consecrated. 
 
 The plan of Modena Cathedral is a paraUel-triapsidal 
 rectangle, a hundred and ninety feet long by about 
 seventy feet broad, and its material is brick faced exter- 
 nally with marble, of a reddish hue, except at the west 
 end, where it is a beautiful greyish white. Longitudinally, 
 the church has five great divisions, the four western ones 
 being marked externally by gables rising a little above the 
 
 264 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 red-tiled roofs, and further accentuated hy the shallow 
 buttress, which, introduced between each pair of round- 
 headed windows in the clerestory, is prolonged down the 
 lean-to roofs of the aisles. 
 
 The other salient points in the southern elevation of 
 Modena Cathedral, which bears a great resemblance to the 
 less well-preserved one at Ferrara, are the tall shallow 
 arcades, enclosing, high up in the wall, three smaller ones, 
 and without which the composition would appear mono- 
 tonous; the porches, one with its pillars resting on the 
 backs of couchant beasts, and each with that peculiar 
 Lombardic feature, the recessed loggia or pronaos, above 
 the entrance; the manner in which the shallow arcades 
 aforesaid are continued alongside the somewhat higher 
 choir, and where the gable which assumes the place of the 
 lean-to roof gives the impression that the architect had 
 not quite made up his mind whether or no to project a 
 transept, and thus halted between two opinions ; - the 
 small windows in the basement of this soidisant transept 
 which light the crypt; the picturesquely corbelled pulpit; 
 the pretty, deeply moulded, and octofoiled circle in the 
 centre of the gable, and the plate-traceried two-light 
 window below it, both indicating a desire for the more 
 sparkling contours of the Pointed Gothic. 
 
 AH these features combine to make up an elevation, 
 which, if of modest dimensions, is as charming as any of 
 its own age and class in Lombardy. 
 
 On the north side of the Cathedral, but separated by the 
 width of a lane, stands the loveliest of North Italian cam- 
 paniles, which has probably earned its title of Ghirlandina 
 from the graceful arcades and balcony curiously intro- 
 duced towards the summit of its octagonal spire. 
 
 265 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 This spire, together with the lantern from which it 
 springs, shows the hand of the fourteenth-century Gothic 
 and of the early Renaissance architects. Each has cer- 
 tainly done his best to make these additions synchronize 
 with the early sub-structure. A wall pierced with an arch- 
 way surmounted by a passage connects the campanile with 
 the body of the Cathedral. Some carving in the doorway 
 on this side of the church, representing the months, will 
 engage the student of iconography, as will those in the 
 western fa9ade, which shows the same system of mural 
 arcuation as the aisles^Unlike the usual Lombard screen- 
 like west front with its low-pitched gable, such as we see at 
 Parma, Piacenza, Pavia, St Ambrose, Milan and elsewhere, 
 this of Modena Cathedral is more truthful as it exposes the 
 clerestory and lean-to aisles. The four orders of moulding 
 in the great central wheel window, which contains some 
 fragments of ancient stained glass, are noteworthy from 
 the variety of their treatment. 
 
 Solemn Vespers of the Corpus Domini were about to 
 commence when I passed from all the glory of the after- 
 noon sunshine into the Cathedral. As I set foot within the 
 nave, where the first thing that attracted my wandering 
 gaze was a black poodle dog, shaved in the most approved 
 fashion, and calmly seated on the steps of one of the side 
 altars^' the organ struck up a solemn piece, and the ofHci- 
 ants-f-three priests and two choir rulers, all in cloth of 
 gold hopes — came slowly forth from the sacristy. 
 
 Advancing up the dusky northern aisle, I mounted the 
 stately escalier at the end of it, and took my station close to 
 the parclose screen of the choir, ready to assist at the ser- 
 vice. A small one-manual organ — the only instrument the 
 Cathedral boasts — ^stood on the floor against the northern 
 
 266 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 wall of the quasi-transept, and about it was stationed a 
 choir of men who sang the psalms in concerted parts under 
 the baton of an ecclesiastic, while the antiphons were 
 chanted to the plain song by the clergy in the apse of the 
 high choir. The latter got a trifle flat, causing the faces of 
 the outside choir, who by the way were in the garb of 
 every-day life, to exhibit tokens of risibility, while sundry' 
 winks and nudges which passed between them had any- 
 thing but an ecclesiastical appearance. The Office hymn, 
 the Lauda Sion Sahatorem sung to its proper ancient 
 melody, was very enjoyable, but at the conclusion of the 
 Magnificat the individuals in plain clothes above men- 
 tioned decamped, leaving the inside choir to get on as best 
 they might, and making a good deal of unnecessary clatter 
 as they descended the steps and went out along the aisle, 
 through whose open west door the sunlight playing on 
 the pavement of the piazza in front of the Cathedral pro- 
 duced a most charming effect. 
 
 To an English Churchman, accustomed to the dignity 
 and reverence of his own services, it was by no means pleas- 
 ing to observe that not one of these people knelt for a few 
 moments in private prayer before retiring, to thank God 
 for that opportunity of attending Him in His holy house 
 and service. 
 
 With this exception, however, the service was a decor- 
 ous and beautiful one, and at its conclusion I turned to 
 enjoy a leisurely inspection of the solemn structure in 
 which it had just been celebrated, and about whose domi- 
 cal vaults the incense wreaths yet lingered. 
 
 It was pleasant, on entering Modena Cathedral, to find 
 an elevation more nearly after the Northern type than 
 anything which I had yet seen in Italy. Pisa has an arcade, 
 
 267 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 triforium and clerestory, but the triforium is not so much 
 of the Northern type itself as the Northern type translated 
 into Italian language. 
 
 , Here, however, I beheld a triforium — somewhat rude 
 and awkward, as if the arch containing the three arcades 
 had been crushed by the loftier clerestory above. Each of 
 the four great Pointed vaulting bays into which the nave 
 at Modena is divided, comprises two lesser round-arched 
 ones, the capitals of their isolated marble columns, and of 
 the attached brick ones, which either form the responds of 
 these coupled nave arcades or support the intermediate 
 arches of the simple quadripartite vaulting, being a curi- 
 ous mingling of classical and barbaric forms. 
 
 There is no floor to the triforium gaUery, nor could I 
 discover any traces of there having been one; consequently 
 the aisles of Modena Cathedral are of unusual height, an 
 arched corbel table dividing their walls at the level of the 
 capitals of the half-columns which support the transverse 
 brick arches. 
 
 This opening of the triforium arcade into the aisles, as 
 at Rochester and Rouen Cathedrals, has a very singular 
 appearance. The Modena arrangement would appear to 
 have furnished the motif for a similar one at the imposing 
 red-brick church of St Columba, Kingsland Road, Lon- 
 don,* where the most westerly clerestory window on the 
 north side of the nave, in lieu of being glazed, looks into a 
 cleverly contrived transept. 
 
 Another noteworthy feature of the interior of Modena 
 Cathedral is the absence of horizontal lines, there being no 
 
 * One of a most remarkable group of churches erected in the north- 
 eastern districts of the metropolis, from the designs of the late James 
 Brooks, between i860 and 1870. 
 
 268 
 
Modena: Nave of the Cathedral, looking East. 
 
 To JAce puge 26S, 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 string-course to either triforium or clerestory. The conse-» 
 quence is, that the arcades and windows appear as though 
 they were merely pierced in the mass of red brickwork. 
 Another detail is the small corbel just above the coupled 
 round-headed windows of the clerestory, from which the 
 two wall arches in each bay spring, pointing to the proba- 
 bility that the vaulting was to have been a sexpartite one, 
 i.e., with six cells, instead of the four we now see. The 
 Cathedral was originally designed with a wooden roof, like 
 St Miniato at Florence and St Zeno at Verona, so that 
 the present vaulting is a subsequent addition, manifest 
 from the awkward way in which it interferes with the 
 clerestory windows, and there being no provision for the 
 diagonal ribs, these corbels were placed for their re- 
 ception. 
 
 The open lantern is wanting at Modena, and the cross- 
 ing is unmarked by any deviation from the vaulting of the 
 nave. 
 
 The choir, from which the shallow transepts open, and ~ 
 the short apsidal recess beyond, have an unusually dignified 
 appearance from their elevation upon the crypt, which ex- 
 tends under the whole of the church beyond the nave. 
 Such is the elevation of this crypt that the capitals of the 
 columns supporting the two easternmost arches of the 
 nave arcade are on a level with the floor of the choir. 
 
 Originally the choir was approached from the nave by 
 a flight of steps as at Parma, but at a later period these 
 were removed, and the present gracefuL-kind of porch 
 with its pillars of varied form supporting a balcony, intro- 
 duced probably with the view of giving additional floor 
 space to the choir. The crypt, hitherto concealed, was now 
 exposed to the nave, and a staircase to the choir con- 
 
 269 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 structed at the east end of either aisle with hand rails sup- 
 ported on gracefully sculptured pillarets. 
 
 Two of the central columns in the outermost range 
 which support this added balcony, are, together with the 
 lintel, rich in sculpture, and rest on the shoulders of men 
 who crouch between the shaft and its base, while the whole 
 is supported by a couchant beast, under which is the 
 crushed and prostrate figure of a helmeted knight with 
 shield and lance. 
 
 Beneath this deep gallery three arches open into the 
 crypt. They are fitted with metal grilles and gates, and on 
 the walls flanking them are two panels of sculptured sub- 
 jects, one illustrating the evangelistic symbols, and the 
 other seated figures of the Latin doctors, while above 
 each panel hovers the figure of an angel. 
 
 The crypt extends under the choir, transepts and aisles, 
 and, although not vast, presents picturesque avenues of 
 slender pillars, which at its widest part form an arcade of 
 nine openings. 
 
 In that portion of the crypt corresponding to the apse 
 are fluted and apparently modern pillars, in all probability 
 introduced to sustain the superincumbent weight of a 
 heavy high altar and altar-piece, which latter has dis- 
 appeared to give place to decorationsin harmony with the 
 environing architecture. The semi-dome of the apse is 
 painted with the Coronation of the Virgin; the frieze con- 
 tains busts, and between the three round-headed windows . 
 are fuU-length figures, the whole forming an impressive 
 comble to the view from the west door. So fascinated was 
 I with the interior of Modena Cathedral that I paid it 
 several enraptured visits, some fresh beauty of form or de- 
 tail presenting itself at every successive one. My last round 
 
 270 
 
a. 
 
 •J 
 
 u 
 
 s 
 a 
 
 u 
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 U 
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 c 
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 •o 
 
 
 T. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 was made as darkness fell, and just about the time of clos- 
 ing, while an earthy-looking old sacristan, and eke a thirsty 
 soul for centimes and liras, made the circuit of the build- 
 ing, snuffing out with his fingers the tapers that had been 
 flaring and guttering aU day before statues and pictures, 
 finally snuffing himself from a box in his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 'Parma 
 From Modena I journeyed to Parma, through those 
 endless Lombardy plains whose fertility nothing can ex- 
 ceed. They are hundreds of miles of uninterrupted garden. 
 The same eternal level road; the same rows of trees and 
 poplars on either side; the same long slimy canals; the 
 same square, vine-laced, stream-intersected and perfectly 
 green pastures and cornfields, where, although only mid- 
 June, harvesting was in operation ; the same shaped houses ; 
 the same shaped churches, with their everlasting cupolas 
 and campanili. But they are wearisome, these Lombard 
 plains, spite of so much luxuriance and the nightingales, 
 — ^who sing by day however, as not specified in poetry; 
 they are up quite as early as the lark, and the green hedges 
 are alive with their gurgling and changeful music till twi- 
 light. At night, the hedges and fields are perfectly illumin- 
 ated by fireflies, whom I found really quite companionable 
 during a subsequent solitary and tedious ride from Parma 
 to Piacenza, when I might as well have tried the poetical 
 impossibility of "reading by the glow-worm's light" as 
 endeavour to see anything by the finger glass which dimly 
 illuminated the long third-class railway carriage. 
 
 As the train passed through Reggio I recollected it was 
 here that Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray, whose com- 
 panionship he had made amid the classic groves of Eton 
 
 271 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 and Cambridge, parted in resentment. They were making 
 the recognized grand tour of France and Italy together, 
 the poet wandering with delight amid the ruins of the 
 great past; the connoisseur ransacking the old curiosity 
 shops of Rome and Florence in search of rare pictures and 
 choice medallions, such as in later days he piled up in 
 dainty confusion under the roof of Strawberry Hill. 
 
 The future author of the Elegy in a Country Church- 
 yard was shy in manners and absorbed in literature, while 
 his more opulent companion lived in society, and only 
 dabbled in antiquities for pleasure's sake. 
 
 Their tastes being dissimilar, it is no wonder that the 
 two friends quarrelled and separated after some time. 
 
 Walpole, in after years, took the blame of the differences 
 on himself, and it is generally believed that the quarrel 
 arose from his laying too much stress on his superiority in 
 position. This was in 1741 ; three years later the two friends 
 were reconciled, but the breach was not cemented. 
 
 Within a few minutes of my arrival at the comfortable 
 Albergo della Posta at Parma, I found myself on the re- 
 tired Piazza, where the Cathedral, Campanile, Baptistery 
 and Renaissance Church of St Giovanni stand clustered in 
 noble and magnificent repose. 
 
 The largest of aU Lombard Romanesque churches, the 
 Duomo of Parma was rebuilt on an old foundation after 
 an earthquake, which laid in ruins a building dating from 
 the sixth century. The present noble structure was begun 
 in io6o, and was sufficiently advanced to be consecrated 
 in 1 106. In plan it is both parallel and transverse apsidal; 
 that is to say, the transepts, which rise to the full height of 
 the nave and choir are apsidal as well as the aisle on either 
 side of the deep eastern limb. In the view from the south- 
 
 272 
 
Parma: The Cathedral and Campanile. 
 
 To t^ce page 272. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 east — ^in which, hy the way, the apse terminating the south 
 aisle of the choir is not visible, having been built into a 
 modern addition — ^nothing can be more imposing than the 
 effect of the east end and the well-developed transept join- 
 ing to support the central octagonal lantern and cupola, 
 all exhibiting the richest and best Lombardic variety of 
 that very protean style, the Romanesque; while the west 
 front, if deficient in the elegance and sculpturesque detail 
 of that at Modena, is grand from its stern simplicity, re- 
 calling the Pavian fafades of St Michele and St Pietro in 
 Cielo d' Oro as its prototypes. As a whole the Cathedral at 
 Parma is more distinctly Italian than Modena. 
 
 The nave has seven bays placed between a greater and a 
 lesser vaulting pier and arch, alternately. The lesser vault- 
 ing shafts are not, however, carried down to the ground, 
 but rest upon the capitals of the compound columns, sup- 
 porting the arches which open into the aisles. Here the 
 triforium consists of four arcades to each bay, all of the 
 same height, and above them are oblong waU spaces, inten- 
 ded by the architect for pictorial enrichment. Some of the 
 piUarets in this triforium arcade at Parma exhibit carving 
 quite classical in feeling. The clerestory windows are single 
 round-headed ones; the arch spanning the nave trans- 
 versely at the distance of each attached pier is round, 
 while the ribs of the quadripartite vaulting are pointed: 
 and the whole is gorgeous in Renaissance fresco painting, 
 which, to the lover of pure early Gothic forms, has a dis- 
 turbing effect. The string-course, a feature absent at 
 Modena in the elevation of the interior, is at Parma a con- 
 spicuous one, being introduced between the pier arches 
 and the triforium arcade, and at the spring of the vault. 
 In the capitals of the columns supporting the nave arcades 
 
 273 18 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 we can discern that grotesqueness mingled with serious 
 realism, of which Ruskin has drawn so vivid a picture in 
 the following passage from his Stones of Venice: 
 
 " The Lombard of early times seems to have been ex- 
 actly what a tigerjwould be if you could give him love of a 
 joke, vigorous imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of 
 hell, knowledge of northern mythology, a stone den and a 
 mallet and chisel. Fancy him pacing up and down the said 
 den to digest his dinner, and striking on the wall with a 
 new fancy in his head at every turn, and you have the 
 Lombard sculptor." 
 
 Yet with all the rudeness which marks them, these sculp- 
 tured capitals in the nave of the Duomo at Parma are 
 instinct with virility, force of imagination and Northern 
 energy and wildness. The people who carved them carved 
 what was in their minds, and the spirit of their work bears 
 a close resemblance to the grotesque sculpture of the 
 twelfth- and thirteenth-century Northern Gothic. 
 
 The whole of the church beyond the western arch of the 
 lantern is raised upon a crypt, the finest in Lombardy, the 
 broad flight of seventeen steps necessitated by such an 
 arrangement, and which occupy the whole of the eastern- 
 most pier arch on either side, imparting much dignity and 
 interest to this noble interior, besides showing us what the 
 original arrangement was like at Modena. Similar flights 
 lead up from the aisles to the transepts, whence the views 
 across the church in any direction are remarkably fine. 
 The whole of the transepts and choir, internally, evince 
 the unsparing hand of an architect of the Renaissance, nor 
 is it possible to praise the painting with which the nave 
 and aisles have been bedaubed. Though aiming at medi- 
 evalism, it is not severe enough to be in harmony with the 
 
 274 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 architectural details. In fact this grand Lombard church 
 has been entirely ruined by these paintings, which have 
 been applied without the slightest thought of the require- 
 ments of the building, and as a matter of course they mili- 
 tate very severely against its effects. 
 
 Correggio's "Assumption of the Virgin," completely 
 covers, but, in its present condition, cannot be said to im- 
 prove the lantern and dome above the four arches of the 
 great crossing. It is chiefly remarkable for its chiaroscuro, 
 for its wonderful foreshortenings, and for the extensive 
 range in the size of the figures, in order to convey, by their 
 perspective diminution, an impression of great space. 
 
 So little was this astonishing effort of Correggio's genius 
 appreciated by the ignorant ecclesiastics who employed 
 him in its execution, that not only was the performance 
 treated with contempt and ridicule — one of their body, 
 in allusion to the fact that many more limbs than bodies 
 are visible from below telling him that he had made un 
 guazzetto di rane, a " hash of frogs " — but the artist him- 
 self with contumely; and what is the more to be lamented, 
 his labours were not only scandalously underpaid, but be- 
 came the very cause of his untimely decease. Not content 
 with verbally depreciating his work, the illiberality of the 
 canons, his employers, showed itself in refusing him the 
 stipulated price, and in compelling him to accept the 
 paltry sum of five hundred crowns, which, the more to 
 hurt his feelings, was paid in copper. Returning with this 
 sum to his starving family, the heat of the weather and the 
 weight of his load, conspired to overcome the unfortunate 
 artist, who imprudently quenching his thirst at a spring 
 of cold water on the road, a pleurisy ensued, which carried 
 him off in his fortieth year. Among those of the profession 
 
 275 i%a 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 who more especially did justice to the genius and execu- 
 tion of Correggio, were Annibal Caracci and Titian; the 
 former about half a century after his decease, not only 
 speaking in the highest terms of his abilities but making 
 him his model, while to the latter we are perhaps indebted 
 for the preservation of the magnificent painting which was 
 the cause of his premature death. Accidentally passing 
 through Parma, he stopped to see and to admire it, at a 
 time when the ecclesiastics, whose taste in the fine arts 
 does not appear to have been improved in the interval, 
 were about to efface it. Titian, who is said to have parodied 
 Alexander's speech to Diogenes, and to have declared that 
 " If he were not Titian, he would desire to be Correggio," 
 diverted these holy Vandals from their intention. 
 
 In this " Assumption " at Parma, Correggio has imagined 
 that the drum of the cupola embraces the space on earth 
 in which stood the sepulchre of the Virgin. 
 
 For this purpose, upon the octagon itself, from which 
 the vault springs, runs a balustrade, above which rises a 
 candelabrum at each of the eight angles, with a number of 
 boys between engaged in lighting tapers or burning in- 
 cense and odoriferous herbs. On the balustrade, as in 
 Guilio Romano's picture of the same subject in the apse 
 of Verona Cathedral, and in front of the base of the cupola, 
 stand the Apostles, looking upwards with astonishment, as 
 if dazzled by the light of the celestial host who transport 
 the Virgin; and above, heaven appears open to receive 
 her. The angel Gabriel descends to meet her, and the 
 several hierarchies of the blessed circle around him. In the 
 pendentives of the cupola — the only portion of the work 
 seen in the accompanying illustration — are represented 
 the four Protectors of the city of Parma — St Hilary, look- 
 
 276 
 
Parma ^ave of the Cathedral, looking East. 
 
 To face page 276. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 ing down upon it with an expression of kindness and pro- 
 tection; St Bernard, kneeling and imploring pity on its 
 behalf; St Thomas, attended by angels, some bearing 
 exotic fruits, emblematical of the Apostle's labours in 
 India; and St John the Baptist, holding a lamb, while 
 angels dart around, as it were, through clouds. 
 
 At first, and seen from below, this work appears ex- 
 tremely confused, but with great amenity of colours. 
 Professor PhiUips attributed this confusion to the destruc- 
 tion of the colours and consequent relief of the parts, and 
 the blotches of white produced where the plaster has 
 fallen, to the insufficient roofing of the dome. 
 
 The Baptistery commenced in 1196 by Benedetto 
 Antelami, stands a little to the south-west of the Duomo, 
 and is perhaps one of the grandest in Italy, its details shew- 
 ing the widest departure from anything to which we are 
 used north of the Alps ; yet it illustrates those false princi- 
 ples of design which protrude themselves in every point of 
 a building of its age in that country. Externally it is an 
 octagon, six stories in height, the four upper ones being 
 merely used to conceal a dome covered by a low-pitched 
 wooden roof. 
 
 In most of the stages, within and without, the orna- 
 mental arcade has been rejected for the ornamental colon- 
 nade, the pillarets supporting an entablature, instead of 
 a range of round or pointed arches, by which means a de- 
 cided air of squareness and horizontality is imparted to 
 the mass. Externally, the material is white marble, while 
 within, the attached shafts supporting the ribs of the 
 dome vault are alone of a costly nature, the walls to a great 
 extent being left in their naked brick. 
 
 In each cardinal side of the octagon except the east is a 
 
 277 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 round-headed doorway, rich in sculpture and most inter- 
 esting iconographically. Within the tympanum of the 
 northern doorway is the Epiphany, while immediately be- 
 low it, in the lintel, are three subjects from the life of St 
 John the Baptist. In the sides of this doorway the Genea- 
 logy of our Lord, or Radix Jesse, is minutely sculptured. 
 The tympanum of the western portal exhibits the Last 
 Judgement, which subject is continued into the lintel, the 
 imposts bearing small groups illustrative of the Miracles 
 and the Corporal Works of Mercy. In the southern door- 
 ways the sculpture, which, as far as I could decipher it, re- 
 presents the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, 
 and a crowned head of our Lord between the Baptist and 
 the Agnus Dei, is confined to the tympanum and lintel. 
 
 Over the entrance to a house opposite this doorway I 
 read, Heic albo inscribuntur nomina neofhytorum. 
 
 Within, the Baptistery has sixteen sides, partly panelled 
 in tall arcades of round arches, and two rows of colonnades 
 similar to those employed externally, and between each of 
 these sixteen sides is a slender shaft from which the ribs of 
 the dome spring with an effect truly graceful from their 
 classic character. 
 
 This Baptistery at Parma is a coUegiate church, having 
 a chapter of six canons and a provost, besides inferior 
 officers, and as it is furnished with an altar and stalls, pre- 
 sents, with its frescoed walls and dome, an appearance of 
 great richness and splendour. The original font is a huge 
 octagon of yellowish red marble, enclosing the usual 
 quatrefoiled compartment for the officiant. A smaller 
 font, or, at least, what is now used as such, and which 
 stands in a corner of the Baptistery, has arabesques in low 
 relief with foliage and small birds on its bowl. About four 
 
 278 
 
Parma: Interior of the Baptistery, 
 
 To face page 2yS. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 feet in diameter, it is supported on the back of a crouching 
 monster with snarling jaws, in the hollow of whose back 
 is perched a small bird, while the head of a nondescript 
 beast, flattened beneath the weight of his body, appears 
 between his forepaws. 
 
 Piacenza 
 Of all the North Italian church interiors with which I 
 am acquainted, I can recall none so grand or so awe- 
 inspiring as that of the cathedral at Piacenza. Doubly so did 
 it appear when, at six o'clock in the morning of the Sun- 
 day after Corpus Christi, I first set foot within its majestic 
 nave, whose sandstone grit columns of enormous height 
 and girth so pleasantly recall Gloucester and Tewkes- 
 bury, only at Piacenza their would-be heaviness is relieved 
 by a narrow band of varied foliage in the capitals. Although 
 the arcades are so lofty, the upper stories are by no means 
 starved. On the contrary, the triforium stage, composed 
 of a triple arcade grouped beneath a pointed arch, beauti- 
 fully moulded in brick, with its tympanum unpierced, is, 
 as well as the clerestory, where we find single lancet lights, 
 extraordinarily well developed. The six round arches com- 
 posing the great arcade are gathered up into pairs by 
 grand half-columns, with boldly foliaged capitals, carrying 
 the arches which span the church transversely, and de- 
 scending to the floor; while from a lesser^shaft which rests 
 upon the capital of each alternate column spring the brick 
 ribs dividing the great domical vaults into six cells. As at 
 Modena, the absence of the horizontal line is very notice- 
 able, there being no string-course below either the trifo- 
 rium or the clerestory. The only relief to the red brickwork 
 between the triforium and the arches separating the nave 
 
 279 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 from its aisles is a small niched figure. The north aisle is 
 lighted by small round-headed windows placed high up in 
 the wall; those in the opposite one are larger, while the 
 arches which span these portions of the church trans- 
 versely spring on the wall side from half-columns, whose 
 capitals recall the Corinthian of older days. 
 
 A curious feature in the nave of Piacenza Cathedral is 
 that the last bay on^ either side is much taller than the rest, 
 the top of its arch being on a level with half the height of 
 of the triforium. These arches open into the western aisles 
 of the transepts, Piacenza being one of the few great Italian 
 churches planned with double aisles to the cross arm. 
 
 Each aisle, as well as the nave of the transept — ^if I may 
 so speak — ^terminates apsidally, and as the choir and its 
 aisles end similarly, the plan of Piacenza Cathedral may be 
 described as both parallel and transverse triapsidal. 
 
 Another singular feature is the manner in which the 
 great octagonal lantern is not carried over all three arches 
 opening from the space beneath it into the transepts, but 
 only over those admitting to their central and eastern 
 divisions. An arcade similar to that employed in the 
 triforium of the nave surmounts these two arches, but 
 corresponding in position to the clerestory. Most grandly 
 developed are these three-bayed transepts of Piacenza. Here 
 the columns of the two bays next the lantern are of the 
 same height as those in the nave, while the remaining 
 bay is lower, and surmounted by a pointed arch enclos- 
 ing three small ones, with the tympanum gracefully pat- 
 terned in red and yellow brick. 
 
 As may be imagined, the views in these transepts at 
 Piacenza, whether looking crosswise or due north and 
 south, are grand beyond description, and I shall never 
 
 280 
 
Piacenza : Nave of the Cathedral, looking East. 
 
 To fact page 2Z0. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 forget the impression they made upon me as I sat in one 
 of the dusky recesses of the northern arm to hear Chapter 
 Mass on the Sunday and Monday mornings of my visit, 
 listening to the organ as it echoed through the long drawn 
 aisles in the interludes to the Gregorian Chant or in 
 the OflFertorium, which, on Sunday, was " The Heavens 
 are Telling," from Haydn's Creation, and watching the 
 clouds of incense as they rose from the thurible of the 
 acolyte, who was waiting at the door of the sacristy until 
 it was time to make his appearance at the altar for the 
 Canon of the Mass, in company with the cerofers. 
 
 I should have said that the organ at Piacenza Cathedral 
 stands with its long array of dull gold pipes unenclosed by 
 a case in the apse, and immediately behind the reredos, a 
 very graceful complete Gothic conception of metal com- 
 posed of seven gabled compartments, each holding two 
 rows of figures, and flanked by octagonal turrets, mount- 
 ing up into crocketed spirelets. The grandly raised choir, 
 rich in frescoes by Ludovico Caracci and Procaccini, has 
 one great vaulting bay subdivided like those of the nave 
 into two lesser ones, and is aisled. Here, however, the tri- 
 forium arcade has two triplets of arcades beneath a semi- 
 circular arch to each bay, while the round-headed cleres- 
 tory windows are pierced eccentrically in the wall, i.e. 
 close to the shaft which runs up from the capital of the 
 great isolated columns of the arcade, separating the choir 
 from its aisles, to the point of the vaulting. 
 
 Such are the most prominent features of the Cathedral 
 at i Piacenza, which, purged as it has been of pseudo-classical 
 disfigurements, stands forth as fine and pure an example 
 of early Gothic as any in all Lombardy. 
 
 281 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Cremona 
 Another cathedral with an aisle on either side of its 
 transept is Cremona, the building of whose nave was 
 spread over the greater part of the twelfth century, owing 
 to constant embroilments of the Cremonese with the in- 
 habitants of neighbouring cities. 
 
 Here the transepts would appear to have been after- 
 thoughts, as they were not commenced until 1342. There 
 is no central lantern, and the upper stories of the nave are 
 carried past the transepts, completely ignoring their ex- 
 istence. Consequently it was only found possible to make 
 the naves of the transepts, if such they may be called, equal 
 in breadth to one bay of the nave arcade. Such a cutting 
 off of the upper parts of the transepts from the rest of the 
 church produces, it is almost needless to observe, a very 
 singular but at the same time very solemn and awe-inspir- 
 ing effect. 
 
 The interior of Cremona Cathedral, which is unusually 
 lofty for its width, has been rather drastically treated by 
 an architect of the Renaissance, who by flutings and 
 capitals painted on them in perspective and gilt has tor- 
 tured what must have originally been an impressive array 
 of ponderous, but not lofty, cylindrical columns into pseudo- 
 Qassical ones.These " beautifyings " are, however, to a great 
 extent concealed by those magnificent tapestries appearing 
 in the accompanying illustration, and which, in combina- 
 tion with lavishly applied wall paintings and sumptuous 
 furniture, produce an ensemble which it is impossible not 
 to admire for the fine and subdued tone of colour which 
 prevails throughout. 
 
 Externally, the Cathedral which soars grandly above the 
 
 282 
 
I 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 houses that so closely environ it, is a truly noble example of 
 brickwork, though the transept fronts, where an enormous 
 screen wall is carried up high above the roofs, and pierced 
 with rose windows of elaborate character, but of no possi- 
 ble use, are an example of that sham construction displayed 
 by so many other buildings of their age and class in Italy, 
 and also in certain parts of Germany,* as I have shown in 
 my volume on the ecclesiastical architecture of that coun- 
 try. 
 
 The four most celebrated towers in Italy are those of 
 Pisa (called the Leaning Tower), of the Duomo at Flor- 
 ence, of Modena (styled the Ghirlandina from the bronze 
 garland which surrounds the weathercock), and that called 
 the Torazzo or Toraccio, which from the boldness dis- 
 played in the design, and the height to which it was car- 
 ried, has obtained for Cremona its architectural celebrity 
 
 Unus Petrus est in Roma 
 Una turris in Cremona. 
 
 This campanile of Cremona Cathedral is said to have 
 been carried up to the square part in the space of two 
 years, and is the highest of all the towers in the North of 
 Italy, reaching the elevation of 396 feet. Four hundred and 
 ninety-eight steps lead to the summit. Of the whole height 
 264 feet are given to the square part, which is six diameters 
 high. This is divided into seven stories by cornices or string- 
 courses of intersecting arches, and the three upper ones are 
 lightened by apertures with columns and pointed arches. 
 
 Above the square tower are two octangular stories, 
 gathered in to support a pyramid, the whole so graduating 
 that it partakes of the character of a spire. Great skill is 
 
 • The "screen fa9ades " of Brunswick, Magdeburg and Halberstadt ex- 
 emplify this. 
 
 283 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 displayed in the construction of the upper octagon, or 
 rather monopteral Temple of sixteen small columns, on 
 which the surmounting pyramid is placed. Two staircases 
 contained in the thickness of the wall lighten the structure 
 without impairing its durability, and four others lead from 
 the last story to the summit. 
 
 This campanile was begun in 1283, in celebration of 
 the peace concluded that year between Cremona, Milan, 
 Piacenza and Brescia, the expense being borne by the 
 Guelphs, or partisans of the Pope, not only of Cremona, 
 but of all Northern Italy. In 15 18 the bells were cast which 
 hang in it, at which time we may conclude the octagonal 
 cupola was added. Once this Torazzo at Cremona had a 
 chance of acquiring a celebrity apart from its architec- 
 tural one. In 1414 the Emperor Sigismund and the Pope 
 visited the city, then subject to the usurped authority of 
 Gabrino Fondulo. The Signore was cruel and treacherous, 
 but wise and talented. The Sovereign and Pontiff con- 
 sulted with him, and, by his advice, Constance was fixed 
 upon as the place where the great Council was to be held 
 for the purpose of restoring peace to Christendom, Sigis- 
 mund, besides other marks of favour, giving to Gabrino 
 the authority of a vicar of the empire in Cremona. Gabrino 
 invited his illustrious guests to mount the Torazzo and 
 enjoy the prospect, he alone accompanying them. They 
 all descended in safety; but when Gabrino was brought to 
 the scaffold at Milan in 1425, he said that only one thing 
 in the course of his life did he regret — that he had not had 
 sufficient courage to push Pope and Emperor over the bat- 
 tlements, in order that he might have profited by the con- 
 fusion which such a catastrophe would have occasioned in 
 Italy. 
 
 284 
 
CREMONA CATHEDRAL. 
 
 FROM THE EAST, FROM A DRAWING BY SCOTSON C;:.ARK. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 The Baptistery, a large plain octagonal building, stands 
 to the south-west of the Cathedral. It is entirely of brick. 
 Inside, each face of the octagon has an arcade of three tall 
 Romanesque arches below two plain corbelled stages 
 pierced with windows. The ribless vault is octagonal, of 
 red brick, and, from its great simplicity, very impressive. 
 It is crowned by a small open lantern. There are three 
 altars, and the font which occupies the centre of the build- 
 ing is hewn out of a single block of red Verona marble. 
 What is very rare in this class of edifices is a fine projecting 
 porch with the shafts standing on lions, which, as is un- 
 usual, are not crushing other animals. 
 
 Opinions differ respecting the date of this Baptistery at 
 Cremona, some assigning it to the eighth, others to the fol- 
 lowing century. 
 
 The Certosa 
 It goes without saying that I broke the railway journey 
 from Milan to Pavia by a visit to the most splendid monas- 
 tery in the world, the Certosa, commonly called that of the 
 Beata Virgine delle Grazie. Alighting at the quiet little 
 station, and walking about a mile, nearly all round the 
 monastic precincts, past irrigating canals and ditches (in- 
 nocently startling many a lizard and frog with which the 
 meadows teem), I reached the entrance gatehouse. 
 
 Casting my eye over the wonderful Renaissance western 
 fafade, commenced in 1473 by Ambrogio da Fossano, 
 otherwise known as the painter, Borgognone, I was lost in 
 wonder at the amount of labour bestowed upon it. But 
 while fascinated by the beauty of the details, it was im- 
 possible not to feel that, considering the labour involved, 
 its real effect is less than that produced by any other style 
 of decoration. It is, in fact, applying to an exterior what 
 
 185 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 really is the true attribute of interior art, and applying to 
 an exterior a hard and durable material appropriate only 
 to the fanciful sketchiness permissible with more perish- 
 able materials. The failure of an attempt to apply this 
 style of decoration to an exterior led to a most unfortunate 
 reaction in the opposite direction. The architect of the 
 day, finding that the desired eflFect failed to be produced, 
 and not perceiving that the failure was in the mode of do- 
 ing it, and not in the thing itself, crowded the interior of 
 the churches with the great Orders which the Romans de- 
 signed and destined chiefly for external decoration; thus, 
 not only was a most oflEensive inappropriateness the result, 
 but these buildings became dwarfed and their designs 
 cramped, to an extent which is often too painfully ap- 
 parent. 
 
 Though it cannot, according to all architectural rules, 
 be considered good as a composition (for a wholesome law 
 is transgressed, as the main part of the decoration and 
 sculpture is confined to the lower stages), yet the detail is 
 so exquisite and refined as to completely disarm criticism; 
 indeed, the whole exterior, with its picturesque assemblage 
 of steeples and graceful arcades, in reminiscence of early 
 Lombard Gothic, carried completely round the upper 
 parts of the structure, is one of infinite charm, particularly 
 as I viewed it under conditions of a cloudless blue sky. 
 
 The body of the church belongs to the last years of the 
 fourteenth century, and, as might be expected, has all the 
 faults of the buildings raised at that time in Italy, yet its 
 faults are overlooked in the rich and elaborate furniture 
 and decorations of the interior, which by their profusion 
 absolutely bewilder the visitor. Indeed, I know nothing 
 more splendid than the coup d'oeil presented by the 
 
 286 
 
s 
 
 lU 
 
 c 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 ■s 
 
 ■LJ 
 
 ((3 
 
 u 
 
 u 
 
 J2 
 
 
 c 
 o 
 
 E 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 choir, seen through those superb mid-seventeenth-century 
 screens, both to the east and west of the crossing, separat- 
 ing the transept from the nave and choir — screens which 
 have given the keynote to those on either side of the sanc- 
 tuary in our St Paul's.* The intarsiatures to the stalls, exe- 
 cuted in i486, and the beautiful carving to them; the ex- 
 traordinary richness of the east end; the altarpieces in the 
 chapels which fringe the nave, almost every one of them 
 containing the production of some great master ;t the 
 statuary on the nave piers; the frescoes which cover the 
 choir; and that rara avis in Italy, the brilliant stained- 
 glass; all exhibit a prodigality and thought of invention 
 which tempt us to overlook the shortcomings in the archi- 
 tectonic details of the building. 
 
 We have then in this Certosa and its cloistral appen- 
 dages, a group of buildings of great richness, with varied 
 details, many of them very beautiful, but with an absence 
 of repose. Its architects borrowed details and features with- 
 out scruple from the rival styles known to them. Thus we 
 find the graceful arcaded galleries surrounding the upper 
 part of the semicircular apses which are familiar to us in 
 the Lombard churches of Bergamo and Pavia, and of 
 which examples may be found, as I have before said, trans- 
 lated into northern language at Bamberg and Gelnhausen, 
 at Limburg and Cologne. 
 
 Circular arches prevail in the windows, but the Pointed 
 form is also represented. The turrets, with their spire-like 
 cappings, impart a considerable effect of verticality, while 
 the enriched cornices assert the horizontal principle. The 
 
 * See Illustration, p. 46. 
 
 + It is worthy of observation that all the altars in the nave chapels of 
 the Certosa are placed on the east side of the chapels, and not north and 
 outh, as usual in Italy. 
 
 287 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 elaborate structure — half tower, half dome — ^which r" ■ 
 at the intersection of the cross, has a special interest, as 
 being one of the few examples by which we are enabled 
 to form an opinion of what might have been the treatment 
 of the dome by the Italian architects of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Taken altogether, it is impossible to praise the Certosa, 
 for it is inconsistent, and purity of style is lacking in its de- 
 tails. Still, parts are entitled to admiration, notably the deli- 
 cate arabesques in the pilasters of the chief fagade, which, 
 though more appropriate to the painter's than to the sculp- 
 tor's art, exhibit a refinement of design and execution 
 which has seldom been surpassed. 
 
 Perhaps no other building illustrates more clearly the 
 confusion of ideas which ushered in the Italian Renais- 
 sance. The movement was one of vigorous individuality 
 in details without the authority of a strict general design. 
 Its originators rejoiced in the belief that their artistic crea- 
 tions were unrivalled, and strove after originality of orna- 
 mentation rather than after that classical correctness so 
 prized and over-estimated by the later architects. At the 
 same time they turned their eyes to the antique as the real 
 shrine of all that was best in art, in their endeavour to 
 engraft classic details on medieval plans. 
 
 It was an intensely hot afternoon when the omnibus 
 which conveyed me from the station to the Albergo Tre 
 Re turned into the main street of Pavia, where Saturday 
 bustle was intensified by Italian vivacity, and by the em- 
 broilments and blockings up of the way, aggravated by the 
 absence of all semblance of footpath; for the Pavanese, 
 like the dwellers in many another old Italian town that has 
 
 288 
 
WEST FRONT OF THE CERTOSA, NEAR PAVIA. 
 
 FROM A PAINTING BY SCOTSON CLARKE. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 not felt " the march of modern improvement," enjoy in 
 perfection what the Frenchman styles " la totalitd de la 
 pav6." 
 
 The principal street of Pavia runs due north and south, 
 from the castle at the former to the covered bridge, which, 
 built late in the fifteenth century by Gian Galeazzo, the 
 founder of the present Duomo, bestrides the Ticino at the 
 latter. This, one of the several great Italian rivers men- 
 tioned by Claudian, is a tributary of the Po, and extremely 
 rapid. It is therefore somewhat difficult to know why Silius 
 Italicus has represented it as so very gentle and still a river 
 in the beautiful description he has left us of it : 
 
 Caeruleas Ticinus aquas, et stagna vadoso 
 Perspicuus servat turbari nescia fundo, 
 Ac nitidum viridi lente trahit amne liquorem: 
 Vix credas labi; ripis tarn mitis opacis 
 Argutos inter volucrum certamina, cantus, 
 Somniferam ducit lucenti gurgite lympham. 
 
 In the quarter of the city which lies to the west of this 
 main street, we find the unfinished and scarcely to be ad- 
 mired Cathedral, and the fourteenth-century Gothic 
 Church of StPantaleone.On the opposite side are the Lom- 
 bardo-Romanesque St Michele, and the Gothic St Fran- 
 cesco, while at the extreme north end of the place is the 
 equally celebrated Romanesque St Pietro in Cielo d' Oro, 
 whose study, together with that of St Michele, engrossed 
 the greater part of my attention during my stay in Pavia. 
 
 The exact date of the construction of St Michele is not 
 
 * St Pantaleone, aSas Sta Maria del Carmine, is a red-brick church with 
 a graceful campanile surmounted by a rather taller spire than usual. The 
 east end is remarkable, being square, and lighted by a rose above two 
 lancets, whose mouldings display a graceful manipulation of brick. St 
 Francesco has a western fa9ade which may be regarded as a model of ele- 
 gant distribution of parts. 
 
 289 19 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 accurately known. Mention is first made of it by Paulus 
 Diaconus, who incidentally relates that, in 66 1, Unulfus 
 sought refuge in this church from the vengeance of King 
 Grimoaldus. The probability is that it had only been re- 
 cently finished at that date ; because the particular venera- 
 tion for the Archangel Michael, which commenced in 
 Apulia in 503, did not reach Lombardy till a century later; 
 in addition'to which we find that, during the whole of the 
 sixth century, the inhabitants of Pavia were engrossed in 
 the construction of their Cathedral, and it is hardly likely 
 they would have carried on two works of similar magnitude 
 simultaneously. 
 
 The fact is, with regard to the age of such structures as 
 St Michele at Pavia and St Ambrose at Milan, we have been 
 as far misled as we were to the so-called Saxon architecture 
 of England; the former has been almost as much ante- 
 dated as the other. GaUy Knight, Hope, Seroux d'Agin- 
 court and other early antiquaries of the last century 
 were all led astray by the documentary lore of Italian ar- 
 chaeologists, just as John Carter and Bishop Milner were 
 before the days of John Henry Parker and the Introduction 
 to Gothic Architecture. 
 
 The nucleus of St Michele at Pavia may date from the 
 middle of the ninth century, but it cannot be said to have 
 assumed its present form until the early part of the twelfth, 
 if as soon as that. In its main portions St Michele is very 
 similar to St Ambrose's at Milan, the arrangement of the 
 arcades and triforium being essentially the same, while the 
 same flatness and squareness is perceptible in the com- 
 pound piers and their capitals. 
 
 It is through such Lombardic works as this that we must 
 trace the connexion with the basilican type of Rhenish 
 
 290 
 
The Certosa near Pavia: View across Transept. 
 
 Tofacf page ago. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 Germany. In Italy this form is naturally reproduced in 
 most of the ecclesiastical edifices of this period, 
 
 St Michele at Pavia dates from between 720 and 750, and 
 St Castor at Coblenz was consecrated in 836, during the 
 reign of Louis the Pious, who lived much at the former 
 city. 
 
 Not to mention that curious example at Lorsch (of 
 which but a fragment now remains), consecrated in 774 
 in the presence of Charlemagne himself, we have in the 
 above-quoted instances sufficient proof of the origin of 
 Rhenish architecture. In my Cathedrals and Churches 
 of Northern Germany I have endeavoured to show how 
 it flourished for the next three centuries, and how at the 
 close of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth 
 centuries, it had attained its full growth under the pro- 
 tecting care of Frederick Barbarossa at the very time he 
 was laying waste the rebellious cities of Lombardy. 
 
 One of the most charming features which the churches 
 of the Rhenish valleys and the Lombard plains have in 
 common is that series of external arcaded galleries which, 
 at first only used under the roofs of the octagonal lanterns 
 with which their architects almost universally crowned the 
 intersections of the four arms of the cross, were subse- 
 quently carried along the sides of the churches under the 
 roof of the nave and aisles, and also — ^where the taste of it 
 is more questionable — under the sloping eaves of the roof 
 of the principal fa9ade. 
 
 In the style of which I am now speaking, there is no- 
 thing so common or so beautiful as these arcaded galleries. 
 They have all the shadow which a cornice imparts with- 
 out its inconvenient projections, and the pillarets, with 
 their elegant capitals and light archivolts, seem to adum- 
 
 291 19^ 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 brate all that sparkle and brilliancy for which the perfected 
 Gothic was destined to become so celebrated. Indeed so 
 beautiful are they that we are not surprised to find them 
 so universally adopted; and their discontinuance when the 
 Pointed Style had become settled was perhaps one of the 
 greatest losses sustained by architectural art in those days. 
 It is true they would have been quite incompatible with 
 the thin walls and light piers of the Pointed styles; but it 
 may be safely asserted that no feature which the perfected 
 Gothic introduced was equally beautiful with these gal- 
 leries which they superseded. 
 
 Few ancient Italian churches surpass this of St Michele 
 at Pavia in interest. If, in common with other churches of 
 its age, it fails from over-heaviness of parts and a certain 
 clumsiness of construction, and a deficiency in that refine- 
 ment requisite for a genuine work of art, it is certainly not 
 without its value as an expression of power. 
 
 Built externally of stone, internally mainly of red brick, 
 St Michele is a cruciform basilica, 189 feet long by 81 feet 
 wide, terminating in a semicircular apse and having a 
 lesser apse on the eastern side of each transept. An octa- 
 gonal lantern, formed by pendentives from the square of 
 the plan, crowns the intersection, and a campanile, of 
 which the greater portion is of very late date, rises between 
 the north transept and the choir. 
 
 The west front, probably the prototype of all the others 
 built in Lombardy down to the extinction of the Pointed 
 style, will be best understood from the accompanying il- 
 lustration. Of exceeding richness and grandeur are the 
 three portals ornamented with carved figures and groups 
 derived from Christian, pagan and Scandinavian sources, 
 which together with some merely introduced for the pur- 
 
 292 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 poses of decoration, afford a good example of their peculiar 
 style. 
 
 The portal of the Northern transept, as well as a 
 blocked doorway on the south side of the nave, will afford 
 the student of sculptured ornament a mine of research, 
 surpassing as they do some of our latest Norman examples in 
 the richness of their decorations and wealth of iconography. 
 
 I have more than once alluded to that most beautiful 
 part of these Lombard churches, their eastern ends. 
 
 At St Michele this apse, with its gallery, the well deve- 
 loped transept, and the octagonal lantern, constitutes a 
 highly artistic and beautiful group. Usually in Italian 
 churches the open gallery under the roof of the apse is a 
 simple range of arcades; here, however, it is broken into 
 three great divisions by coupled shafts rising from the 
 ground, and these again are subdivided by single shafts 
 running in like manner through the whole height of the 
 apse. The gallery thus not only becomes a part of the whole 
 design, instead of looking as if it might have been added 
 as an after-thought, but a pleasing variety is also given, 
 which contributes not a little to the elegance of the en- 
 semble. There is a descent of several steps from the western 
 portals into the nave, which, owing to its greater elevation, 
 is more imposing than that of St Ambrose at Milan.* The 
 grandly raised choir too, vaulted at the same height as the 
 nave, conducts the eye into the apse, where Andrino da 
 Edesia's painting of the "Coronation of the Virgin" in the 
 conch terminates the vista very impressively. 
 
 The nave is divided into three stories of pier arches, 
 
 * Both churches underwent important structural changes about the same 
 time, and their internal elevations have several features in common, not- 
 ably the triforia. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 triforium arcades and small clerestory, and had, when first 
 built, a wooden roof. The great piers which run up between 
 the two pair of bays into which this portion of the church 
 is divided, are late additions rendered necessary when 
 the vault took the place of the wooden ceiling. These two 
 great compartments are vaulted quadripartitely between 
 the transverse arch thrown across from the great piers 
 above mentioned. The transepts have simple barrel-shaped 
 roofs, while that of the bay intermediary, between the 
 lantern and the apse, is quadripartite, having its brick cells 
 concealed by plaster. Both transepts and apse have their , 
 walls relieved by shallow arcades on single shafts with foli- 
 aged capitals, the central and two outer arcades of the 
 latter being pierced with round-headed windows, whose 
 deep splays are lined by piUarets producing an eflFect of 
 much richness. 
 
 The short sturdy compound piers supporting the four 
 arches opening into the nave aisles stand upon rather tall 
 bases, cylindrical, massive and quite plain, and their capi- 
 tals are profusely ornamented with forms taken from the 
 local fauna and flora, the acanthus being used, but less con- 
 ventionally than with the Greeks, and less richly than with 
 the Romans. 
 
 The bases of the piers supporting the eastern arch of the 
 lantern, which is vaulted in brick without any stone ribs, 
 are much raised from the level of the nave, since they 
 stand on the pavement of the choir. This is grandly ele- 
 vated above the crypt upon a podium or raised platform 
 reached by staircases of fourteen steps each, and extending 
 a short way into the space beneath the lantern. The front 
 of the crypt, towards the nave, is relieved by arcade work 
 on piUarets, whose capitals, as well as the lintels they carry, 
 
 294 
 
Pavia : Vest front of St. riichele. 
 
 To face page 2g4, 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 exhibit good foliaged ornament, but the ancient ambon 
 which once surmounted it has been disturbed, though frag- 
 ments of it are preserved in the north transept. 
 
 Late on Saturday evening I paid a second visit to St 
 Michele, when its interior presented an aspect of truly 
 awful solemnity in the fast gathering darkness, the voices 
 of some poor women and children who were gathered 
 about the altar in the south transept singing their Ave 
 Maris Stella and other hymns as they awaited the priest 
 who was to perform the office of Benediction, alone break- 
 ing the stniness which brooded over the pile. 
 
 Such simple hymn-singing I found the custom in many 
 of the churches, which in certain places remain open to as 
 advanced an hour as ten. 
 
 As a rule the parish churches are closed from twelve 
 o'clock, when the Angelus beU is toUed, until about five, 
 though I believe the cathedrals remain open throughout 
 the day. 
 
 Among the more prominent features of Romanesque 
 as exhibited in the other Pavian churches of St Pietro in 
 Cielo d' Oro, St Teodoro, St Giovanni in Borgo, and St 
 Lanfranco, all of which deserve the most careful study at 
 the hands of the ecclesiologist,* it should be noticed that, 
 whether forming actual porticoes and galleries, or closed 
 up and applied merely as decoration, the arcades are, as a 
 rule, small in proportion to the building itself, and instead of 
 occupying the centre width of the front or other elevation, 
 were mostly inserted into distinct compartments of it, 
 slightly recessed within the general face of the wall, so that 
 the plain spaces between them assume the appearance of 
 
 * All these churches are fully described and illustrated in Dartein, 
 Etudes sur P Architecture Lembarde. 
 
 295 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 buttresses, or, when narrow, of plain pilasters continued 
 up to the cornice of the gable or roof, and cutting through 
 whatever string-courses or other horizontal mouldings (if 
 there are any) divide the several stories or stages of the 
 building. 
 
 These buttress-like surfaces are occasionally more or less 
 enriched, sometimes almost to excess, thus producing 
 vertical lines of ornament continued the entire height of 
 the structure, as in the fa9ade of St Michele. 
 
 When, as was not unfrequently done, these surfaces 
 are made wider at the angles of the front than elsewhere, 
 they give an air of repose and of great solidity to it, serving, 
 as it were, as a frame to the architectural decoration. 
 Among the other peculiarities of this style, that arising 
 from small open galleries immediately beneath the eaves 
 of the roof is too remarkable to be overlooked, especially 
 in gabled fronts, where such arcades follow the slope of the 
 roof itself, the columns being successively elevated one 
 above another on steps (so that the base of those support- 
 ing the centre arch are above the lower arches), as at St 
 Michele and St Pietro in Cielo d' Oro, or else by placing 
 the columns on the same horizontal line and gradually in- 
 creasing their height, as in the west front of Pisa Cathedral. 
 
 Then there is that curious localism, the making an upper 
 cornice or border of very small interlacing arches, or rather 
 of mouldings producing that appearance. 
 
 We do not often meet with pinnacles. When they are in- 
 troduced, they have the appearance of being set on the 
 part they rise above, being separated from it by horizon- 
 tal mouldings ; besides which they are generally low, and 
 somewhat resemble pedestals. 
 
 Such pinnacles may be found surmounting the pilaster- 
 
 296 
 
Pavia: West door of St. Flichele. 
 
 To face page 296. 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 like buttresses, and cutting througK either an horizontal 
 cornice or the sloping ones of a gable, as in the front of the 
 Cathedral at Monza. 
 
 The church of St Pietro in Cielo d' Oro, so called be- 
 cause of the magnificence with which its apse was decor- 
 ated, derives a lustre apart from its architectural one, en- 
 shrining as it does the relics of St Augustine. After remain- 
 ing for the greater part of the last century in a state of 
 desecration, St Pietro has been restored, and now takes its 
 place among those numerous examples of Romanesque 
 architecture with which the plains of Lombardy are so 
 richly bestrewn. 
 
 In the annals of Pavia frequent mention is made of this 
 church, whose importance appears to have almost equalled 
 that of St Michele. It was King Luitprandus who brought 
 hither in 725 the relics of St Augustine, and it is from this 
 date that the fame of the church may be said to have com- 
 menced, the transportation of the Saint's remains being an 
 event sufficiently important to at once set in motion the 
 restoration of the older fabric and the installation of a 
 monastery. 
 
 The body of St Augustine, who died in 430, was re- 
 moved from Hippo, a see suffragan to Carthage, during the 
 Arian persecutions, when the Catholic clergy, being ban- 
 ished by King Thrasimund to Sardinia, carried the relic 
 with them. Here it remained until in the eighth century 
 King Luitprandus purchased it from the inhabitants, who, 
 exposed to the constant invasion of the Saracens, could no 
 longer insure safety to the pilgrims who resorted to the 
 shrine. Under the protection of the great Bishop of Hippo 
 the Monastery of St Pietro in Cielo d'Oro seems to have en- 
 tered upon a brilliant career. St Odo, the second abbot of 
 
 297 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Cluny, was lodged in this monastery during his sojourn at 
 Pavia in the retinue of King Hugues. St Mayeul, who came 
 several times to the city, particularly interested himself in 
 the same religious house, at the head of which he placed, 
 acting under the Pope, an abbot of his own choice. Thus 
 the Monastery of St Pietxo in Cielo d' Oro found itself a de- 
 pendency of Cluny. In 978 the Archbishop of Ravenna, 
 Gerbertus, presided at a Council here. Several charters of 
 popes and emperors confirmed the possessions and privi- 
 leges of the monastery, which depended directly upon the 
 sovereign pontiff. 
 
 Like St Michele, St Pietro in Cielo was situated in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of a royal palace, as appears 
 from the following passage in a charter given in 1004 to the 
 Emperor Henry II : " Monasterio Sancti Petri quod dicitur 
 ccelum aureum juxta nostrum papense palatum." A dis- 
 pute which arose between the Pavians and the soldiers of 
 the Emperor, a dispute which terminated in the burning 
 of the city, had at that time obliged the Emperor to take 
 refuge in his suburban palace. 
 
 But of all the historical evidences relating to St Pietro in 
 Cielo the most interesting dates from 11 32. In that year 
 on the 9th of May the church was solemnly consecrated by 
 Pope Innocent II. As its actual structure belongs to an ad- 
 vanced period of Lombard architecture, the consecration 
 of 1 132 marks, without doubt, the time of its completion, 
 a presumption which finds support in the comparative ex- 
 amination of the churches built at Pavia during the course 
 of the twelfth century. Thus we possess, in regard to the 
 completion of one of the chief Lombard churches of the 
 city, a date on which reliance may be placed. 
 
 The value of such a datum is moreover confirmed by the 
 
 298 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 absence of authentic information about St Michele and St 
 Giovanni in Borgo. Also the fact that St Pietro in Cielo was 
 consecrated in 1 132 obliges it to be considered as the basis 
 of a chronological classification of the Pavian churches in 
 the Lombard style. 
 
 The popular opinion, accepted by Sacchi, who rolls the 
 tide of time as far back as the reign of Luitprandus will not 
 now bear examination. 
 
 The same origin was admitted by Robolini in the first 
 volume of his Annals; but later, better informed, this 
 conscientious historian did not hesitate to retract it; he 
 was also the first to express the opinion that St Pietro, con- 
 secrated in 1 132, had only just then been rebuilt. 
 
 St Pietro in Cielo d' Oro is built chiefly of brick, stone 
 being only employed in the isolated piers, buttresses of the 
 fa9ade, doorways, etc. AU the rest — walls, arches, vaults, 
 engaged columns, lateral buttresses — is in brick. The small 
 round-headed clerestory windows have an external archi- 
 volt composed of three rows of bricks, two of them placed 
 flatwise, and one arranged in a series of small lozenges 
 moulded in relief. The same system of construction and 
 decoration appears in the apse windows of St Lazaire near 
 Pavia, a small church whose foundation dates from the 
 middle of the twelfth century. This analogy confirms the 
 date which I have assigned to St Pietro in Cielo, in relying 
 on the fact of its consecration by Pope Innocent IL 
 
 In size this church nearly equals St Ambrose at Milan, 
 and Parma Cathedral, but as in many respects it is very 
 similar in style to St Michele, a detailed description is 
 hardly necessary. One very striking feature is the narthex, 
 which opens into the nave by an arch reaching nearly to 
 the height of the great vaulting ribs, which spring between 
 
 299 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 each bay from flat pilasters with small shafts on either 
 side of them, as in some of the great North German mins- 
 ters. There is no triforium,the plain wall above the arcades, 
 which are loftier than those in St Michele, being alone re- 
 lieved by the small round-headed windows of the cleres- 
 tory. A lantern rises at the intersection of the nave and 
 transepts with the choir, which terminates apsidally anc' 
 contains the shrine of St Augustine, one of those monu- 
 ments of the great which have for ages attracted, and still 
 attract, their crowds of devotees of all faiths, lands and 
 tongues.* 
 
 Perhaps in no country are the illustrious dead more 
 honoured than in Italy, where, besides keeping alive the 
 fame of the dust they enshrine, they have given scope to 
 the genius of the most consummate artists of the golden 
 time, and by reason of their own grace and beauty enjoy a 
 renown greater than that which attaches to them as com- 
 memorative objects. 
 
 The shrine of St Augustine, which has been restored to 
 its rightful place in the apse of St Pietro at Pavia, after a 
 sojourn of nearly a century in the unfinished southern arm 
 of the Cathedral, is one of the richest Italian works of its 
 class, though hardly so well known as the others. 
 
 It was erected in the middle of the fourteenth century, 
 the artists' names being uncertain, though Vasari men- 
 tions it as being the work of Agostino and Agnolo di Siena. 
 
 The figure subjects in the upper part of the shrine re- 
 present the miracles of the Saint, those in the gablets the 
 miracles worked through him after his death. The figure 
 
 * Five of these shrines lie within a moderate radius in Northern and 
 Central Italy, viz., those of St Augustine at Pavia, St Dominic at Bologna, 
 St Peter Martyr at Milan, the Tabernacolo at Florence, and St Donate 
 at Arezzo. 
 
 300 
 
Pavia : The Shrine of St. Augustine. 
 
 (In St. Pietro cielo d'Oro.) 
 
 To Jace page 300, 
 
SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 of St Augustine himself lies nearly hidden from view be- 
 neath the canopy. 
 
 The figures round him and those in panels on the base 
 represent the different saints his Order produced. 
 
 The larger figures standing in brackets represent the 
 liberal arts and the cardinal virtues. The material is white 
 marble, and it now stands on a modern altar of coloured 
 marbles in which the remains of this great Latin doctor 
 are deposited. 
 
 The figures, which number two hundred, are all of the 
 most beautiful and careful workmanship. 
 
 The city of Pavia had formerly, like Brescia and Milan, 
 a double cathedral, formed by the contiguous churches of 
 St Stefano and Sta Maria del Popolo. 
 
 If ^reliance may be placed on an inscription, now lost, 
 the foundation of the latter dated from the reign of King 
 Luitprandus, who died in 744. The origin of St Stephano 
 is less well known. MM. G. and D. Sacchi, in their Anti- 
 chita romantiche iP Italia are of opinion that the primitive 
 cathedral was rebuilt by St Epiphanius after the taking and 
 pillage of Pavia by Odoacer in 471, while Rabolini* only 
 makes it to date from the days of Luitprandus. 
 
 A more recent writer, Signor M. C. Brambilla, has, how- 
 ever, settled that the church existed in 680, and began 
 from that time to serve as the Cathedral. 
 
 At the commencement of the ninth century the transla- 
 tion to St Stefano of the relics of St Sirus, the first Bishop 
 of Pavia, brought about the alteration of the name of the 
 church, or rather the use of a new appellation concur- 
 rently with the old one. From this period the double 
 
 * D^tizie apparienenti alP BtoriadiTaYta (1825-32). Vol. iv, pt i,p. 32, 
 et seq. 
 
 301 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Cathedral was formed by the junction of St Stefano or 
 Sirus with Santa Maria del Popolo. 
 
 This latter, situated to the south, was used in winter, 
 while St Stefano served during the summer months. 
 Twice a year the canons repaired processionaUy from one 
 of these churches to the other. 
 
 Towards the close of the fifteenth century the Pavians, 
 following the example of many other cities, were seized 
 with the desire to rebuild their cathedral, which was in a 
 dangerous condition, on a grand scale. 
 
 Accordingly a structure, in which the great feature was 
 to be a huge central octagon surmounted by a dome, was 
 commenced in 1488 from the designs of Cristoforo Rocchi, 
 a pupil of Bramante, and in that earlier phase of the Re- 
 naissance style which had already taken so firm a root in the 
 land. But the undertaking so severely taxed the resources 
 of the city that, upon the completion of the new choir in 
 1526, they were compelled to relinquish it, merely repair- 
 ing the western portions by encasing the old pillars in rect- 
 angular piers composed of four Corinthian pilasters, sur- 
 mounted by a very tall entablature between the capitals 
 and the spring of the arches. 
 
 At the same time all communication with Sta Maria del 
 Popolo was put an end to. Already it was much ill-treated, 
 being on the point of falling into ruins. 
 
 But slow progress was made with the rebuilding of Pavia 
 Cathedral, the last piers of the great central area not being 
 completed till 1768, while the dome itself, an octagonal 
 one, whose effect can only be described by saying that it 
 is not very good, but might be worse, dates but from the 
 last century. Even now the transept is lacking, the arch, 
 seen in the accompanying illustration, being only tem- 
 
 302 
 

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SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS 
 
 porary. Within it will be seen the shrine of St Augustine, 
 the view having been taken before its restoration to the 
 Church of St Pietro in Cielo d' Oro. 
 
 Here may be seen an enormous wood model of the 
 Cathedral as proposed to have been carried out, and so 
 large that one can stand upright inside it and have a good 
 look at the interior, far more finished in the miniature 
 than in the real building. Though it may be a matter of 
 opinion as to whether the whole of the proposed design is 
 worthy of admiration, yet the conception was undoubted- 
 ly a grand one. 
 
 These great provincial churches in Italy almost rival in 
 scale our own St Paul's, to which, internally, this Duomo 
 at Pavia bears a very striking resemblance either in certair 
 features or when viewed from certain points, more particu- 
 larly when looking across the great octagonal central area 
 towards the choir. The Italian architect, however, has made 
 the abutments to his dome angular, whereas in the London 
 cathedral they are semicircular. Over and over again did I 
 see portions of Renaissance churches that reminded me of 
 St Paul's. Wren, however, never went to Italy, and I am 
 inclined to think that it is as well, on the whole, that he did 
 not. His work would, in all likelihood, have been far more 
 delicate and refined in detail had he done so; but he 
 would have inevitably lost much of the originality and free- 
 dom of treatment which is undoubtedly the great charm 
 of his work, which fits it so admirably for the Northern 
 climate, and particularly for London, where in St Paul's 
 and its satellite City churches he was destined to find the 
 subjects of his chief and happiest efforts. 
 
 A revived style must show changes, and those not for the 
 worse, accommodating it to a new state of existence. The 
 
 303 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 revivers of the classical style never thought of confusing 
 their works with those of the ancients. Michael Angelo, or 
 PaUadiOj or Inigo Jones, or Wren never dreamt of produ- 
 cing structures that might be mistaken for specimens of old 
 Roman art. They took what they wanted from the maga- 
 zines of antiquity, moulded it into new combinations, and 
 enriched it with new additions, so as to make it a real, liv- 
 ing style, suited to the exigencies of the day and likely to 
 receive vigour and refinement from the natural growth of 
 taste and talent which might be looked for in the existing 
 state of society. The artist had not to throw himself alto- 
 gether into the past, but to gain strength and nourishment 
 from the present. 
 
 304 
 
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 aJ'^p* ■^■""■4 *viB--l iwv^» P^i^ 
 
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MILAN 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Milan: St Ambrose and the Qathedral 
 
 THE medieval architecture of Italy has been grie- 
 vously mistaken in regard to its age. With certain 
 remarkable exceptions, the great towns of northern Italy 
 underwent more vicissitudes in feudal times than those of 
 any part of Europe; indeed, the small republics and inde- 
 pendent leagues appear to have been more quarrelsome 
 and mutually jealous than the arbitrary sovereigns of other 
 countries. Then invasions of aU kinds were rife in Italy. 
 In Milan, where one would expect to see in certain build- 
 ings very early work, we find that Frederick Barbarossa has 
 made such clean work of it when he destroyed the city in 
 1 162 that the citizens were constrained to rebuild the 
 whole of the churches with brick, incorporating such frag- 
 ments of stone work as were left standing in their new 
 structures. 
 
 Thus St Ambrose's is but a ra-ffacciamento of the old 
 basilica of the ninth century in the transitional period. 
 Nevertheless, there is much of interest in the city even of 
 the later date, and the Duomo is most assuredly, with all 
 its faults, a marvel of Christian architecture. 
 
 It was at half-past seven on a glorious June morning 
 that I caught my first view of the white marble forest of 
 pinnacles of Milan Cathedral from the top of one of the 
 tramways which ply between the city and Monza, where 
 for reasons of greater quietude I had elected to take up my 
 quarters rather than in the noisy, bustling capital of Lom- 
 bardy. 
 
 305 20 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 An alfresco breakfast having been enjoyed in front of 
 the great apse of the Duomo, I set out in quest of that 
 church which covers the dust of the patron saint of Milan, 
 and that of the most truly Christian emperor Italy had 
 seen since Marjorian, and which boasts, truly or falsely, of 
 containing the resting-place of the one worthy antagonist 
 whom Rome sent forth to withstand the Gothic invader. 
 
 One small portion of the pile lays claim to a date going 
 back to the days of the Saint to whom it is dedicated, but 
 of the present fabric the mass belongs to the days of that 
 worthiest of the Karlings, Louis II, King and Emperor, 
 commonly styled " the Pious." 
 
 A fine example of that early Lombardic Romanesque 
 style, brought perhaps to its perfection in the ninth, and 
 resuscitated, with some modifications, in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, to which period, for the greater part, the actual edi- 
 fice of St Ambrose belongs, its severe and simple grandeur 
 affords a rest for the eye after that splendidly imaginative 
 creation, the Duomo, the marvel and glory of the Lom- 
 bardic metropolis. 
 
 But of far deeper interest than the architectural fea- 
 tures of St Ambrose's are the associations that cluster 
 around this ex-cathedral, and which caU upon us to regard 
 it rather as a type or monumental abstract of a local eccle- 
 siastical history fraught with instructive meanings. 
 
 Of all the parts preserved from the ninth-century archi- 
 tecture of this church, the most important is that vener- 
 able atrium, with quadrangle of round arches resting on 
 square piers, a genuine example of the paradisus, according 
 to the early basilica plan, and indeed the most perfect, as 
 well as most imposing, extant in Italy at this day.* 
 
 *" Had St Ambrose's been erefted on the colder and stormier side of the 
 
 306 
 
MILAN 
 
 What so impresses us in this fine old structure is its 
 character of simple and harmonious dignity; and the basi- 
 lica itself, that stands removed from the busier centres of 
 the city, seems more distinguishingly severed from all pro- 
 fane and frivolous interests by that forecourt, sacred to 
 silence and inviting to solemn meditation. 
 
 This remarkable feature of the more ancient edifice 
 avails also as monumental proof of the maintenance in 
 practice, up to the second half of the ninth century at 
 least, however before this period modified, of that primi- 
 tive discipline that required public penance from grievous 
 offenders, and divided those seeking reconciliation after 
 notorious sin into so many classes, severally assigned their 
 places within the sacred building: the flentes, only per- 
 mitted to frequent the atrium, and there ask for the prayers 
 of those who passed on into the basilica itself; the audientes, 
 who might remain in the narthex during the rites, and in 
 the interior during the sermon; the substrati, who could 
 join the other worshippers, but were confined to the space 
 between the portals and the pulpit, and had to remain 
 prostrate; and the consistentes, who alone among the peni- 
 tents could attend the Consecration, though not yet ad- 
 mitted to the privileges of communicants. 
 
 That such public and systematic enforcement of the 
 Church's power in the world of conscience was still among 
 religious realities at this period is evident from the fact 
 
 Alps, a clerestory would have been added to the atrium, which, on the 
 ground plan, virtually forms the nave, and it would have been roofed 
 over; then the plan would have been nearly identical with that of one of 
 the Northern cathedrals. If, besides this, there had been a baptistery at the 
 western entrance, as at Novara, we should then have had a building with 
 two apses — a complete German Cathedral." — Fergusson, Ancient and 
 Medieval ArckiteSure. 
 
 307 20fl 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 that, in the ninth century, the parochial rectors (curati) 
 first acquired the faculties, hitherto exclusively held by 
 bishops, of receiving reconciled sinners to communion, 
 when such belonged to their respective parishes, after 
 compliance with these expiatorial duties for a penitential 
 season. 
 
 The gradual decay of that ancient discipline and its final 
 extinction are now manifest in the architecture as in the 
 life of the Italian Church, and form a striking exemplifica- 
 tion of the mutability of Latin Catholicism, of the degree 
 in which Rome herself has submitted to the silent process 
 of inevitable change, that seems the Heaven-appointed 
 fate of all institutions where elements of enduring life 
 exist, correspondent to the law of progress that acts in 
 humanity. 
 
 The building of the new St Peter's in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury might be said to supply the last historic proof as to the 
 mind of the modern Church in Rome with regard to these 
 ancient observances, seeing that it was on that occasion 
 deliberately to sweep away the entire hierarchic arrange- 
 ment of the primitive cathedral, and that in not one de- 
 sign presented or approved for the great basilica was the 
 attempt made to restore the old atrium apparent! 
 
 Guide books and custodi point out at St Ambrose's some 
 panels of cypress wood set into the bronze portals of the 
 great western entrance to the church, and said to be a relic 
 of the door from which that Saint repulsed Theodosius 
 after the massacre at Thessalonica; but historic criticism 
 must reject this claim,' seeing that no material and personal 
 opposition to that emperor's entrance into the former 
 cathedral church is borne out by authorities. 
 
 The very curious and various symbolism introduced 
 
 308 
 
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MILAN 
 
 among details of the exterior of this basilica round those 
 portals and on the pier capitals of the atrium, where both 
 human and animal figures, the centaur and the syren, ap- 
 pear in the mystic circle, seem the result, with enlarged 
 and more fantastic application, of the study of that clearer 
 symbolism found in Roman catacombs, still frequented for 
 devotion, though becoming gradually deserted, in the 
 ninth century. 
 
 Among these sculptured symbols in the portals and 
 in the atrium we notice a relief of St Ambrose with a 
 crozier in his hand that terminates in a serpent's head. 
 This singular object suggests analogy with a relic indeed 
 unique and that attracts much notice inside this church. 
 I refer to a bronze serpent placed on the summit of a 
 column near the marble pulpit, once superstitiously re- 
 garded as the very image, or at least made of the material 
 of the image, lifted up by Moses in the wilderness, under 
 which idea it was actually presented to an archbishop, 
 Arnulph, in looi, at Constantinople, whither that prelate 
 had been sent on embassy by Otho III. 
 
 The antiquarian notion that it is no other than the ser- 
 pent of .^sculapius, preserved from the ornaments of a 
 temple to that god upon whose ruins this basilica was 
 reared is now exploded; and strongest of all associations 
 that attach to it is the proof of lingering Paganism, existent 
 in ignorant minds even tiU the sixteenth century, when 
 mothers were in the habit of invoking their idol (for such 
 it had become to the Milanese populace) to cure their chil- 
 dren of the disease of worms, an abuse finally suppressed by 
 St Carlo Borromeo. In fact the " acts " of one of his diocesan 
 visitations bear reference to it: "Est quaedam superstitio ibi 
 mulierum pro infantibus morbo verminum laborantibus." 
 
 309 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 The serpent associated with the Cross as emblematic of 
 the triumph of Christianity over Paganism had indeed an 
 authorized place among sacred pomps, borne together with 
 the banner in the van of processions, as Allegranza tells us 
 that in his time it used so to be displayed before the pro- 
 cessional cross of the clergy at Vicenza; and the cross itself 
 used of old to be emblemized by a serpent, for sanction of 
 which practice the words of St Ambrose in chapter ix of 
 the third volume of his De Spiritu Sancto may be cited: 
 " Imago enim crucis sereus serpens est." 
 
 The whole body of this Church of St Ambrose and its 
 two unequal campanili with their stunted pyramidal roofs 
 of the customary Lombard type are of red brick. The wes- 
 tern gable of the church, which so grandly closes the view 
 across the atrium, is extremely flat with its two tiers of 
 three grand round-headed arches opening into recessed 
 loggi, all richly moulded in brick. The piers which support 
 the arches of the court are formed each of two half -columns 
 attached to an oblong pillar ; these are of stone, but all the 
 rest is of plain or moulded brick. Even a casual glance at 
 this solemn atrium of St Ambrose wiU show the great capa- 
 bilities the latter material offers for the Lombard style. 
 
 The interest of the general traveller to Milan is absorbed 
 in the Cathedral, the marble monster of Italy, yet I do not 
 hesitate to affirm that there is more true architectural prin- 
 ciple displayed in this plain brick basilica of the ninth cen- 
 tury, even more appropriateness (and consequent satisfac- 
 tion to the spectator) in the material employed, than in 
 the vast mass of the white marble Duomo, the work of five 
 hundred years, with its flying buttresses, its attenuated 
 flamboyant windows, its grove of pinnacles, and roof-gar- 
 den of three thousand statues. 
 
 310 
 
MILAN 
 
 I speak now only of the exterior; for the interior of the 
 Cathedral of Milan is inexpressibly grand, though even 
 here I am not disposed to quarrel with those who see more 
 in the ninth-century altar and mosaics of St Ambrogio and 
 the very throne of the primitive Archbishop of Milan in 
 which he sat at the extreme eastern end of the apse, in the 
 midst of his eighteen suffragans, than in the flaunting 
 modern stained glass and false roof (for it is painted in imi- 
 tation of stone groining, a trick which the Italians practised 
 usque ad nauseam) of the more pretending Duomo. 
 
 Whatever beauty may be conceded to these Lombard 
 Churches, it must be allowed that much is owing to their 
 general outline and proportions ;* for the brick used is for 
 the most part of the very commonest and coarsest kind, 
 and it is generally only in the fa9ade that terra-cotta en- 
 richments are introduced. 
 
 Since the ninth century great structural changes have 
 taken place in this old Milanese basilica, but although 
 minutely worked out by some archaeologists, the distinc- 
 tion between the architecture of the earlier and that of 
 the later ages still offers some points difficult of solution. 
 
 The vaulted roof of the nave with its pointed arches, 
 the octagonal dome between the nave and the choir, and 
 the advanced upper story of the west front unquestion- 
 ably belong to the twelfth century, and are the work of 
 Archbishop Galdinus, a zealous prelate who actually died 
 in the pulpit at the Cathedral of St Tecla, after preaching 
 against the heretics called Cathari, and who was extremely 
 active in repairing the basilica after the time when Freder- 
 
 *I must except from this censure the exquisite ancient specimens in 
 the transepts and aisles, most of which have a decided air of the Nurera- 
 burg school about them. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 ick Barbarossa, in his efforts to subjugate the Lombards 
 was ravaging the North Italian cities. 
 
 But in the main arcades of the nave, in the triforia, des- 
 tined for females according to the arrangement seen in 
 Rome at Sta Agnese and the SS. Quattro Coronati, and in 
 that most remarkable feature of St Ambrose the atrium, or 
 cortile, the ninth-century work still survives, where the 
 whole style approaches more nearly our Northern Roman- 
 esque in its Norman variety, though it has throughout an 
 earlier and ruder appearance. 
 
 To the same period there no doubt belong such other 
 characteristic details of the interior — ^which, by the way, 
 underwent a purging from rococoisms between thirty and 
 forty years ago — as the crypt, the massive baldachino, with 
 porphyry columns over the high altar, and, most interest- 
 ing of all, the apse with its mosaics and marble throne, 
 called the Chair of St Ambrose, of an ancient form, decor- 
 ated with lions at the arms and a simple scroll work. This 
 chair is, in fact, the primitive throne of the Archbishops of 
 Milan, on which they sat according to the ancient practice 
 of the Church in the midst of the eighteen suffragans of 
 the province, of whom the most northern was the Bishop 
 of Chur or Coire and the most southern the Bishop of 
 Genoa. The chairs of the bishops were replaced in the six- 
 teenth century by wood stalls for the canons, carved in a 
 rich Flemish style; but students of primitive rituals and 
 local uses must ever regret the loss of such a specimen of 
 antique simplicity. 
 
 The form of the old basilica is here somewhat incon- 
 gruously united with late Romanesque elements. 
 
 The strong and rude pillars, ornamented with half-co- 
 lumns and pilasters, support pointed arched cross vaults, 
 
 312 
 
MILAN 
 
 forming thus a clear transition from Romanesque to 
 Gothic. Round arches, chiefly of brick, but with small ob- 
 longs of stone introduced irregularly by way of relief, 
 support the similarly designed triforium, which is con- 
 tinued across the arches opening north and south from the 
 lantern, where pendentives in the form of niche-like re- 
 cesses conduct the eye from the square to the octagonal 
 portion. 
 
 The fa9ade, constructed of brick, as is the greater part of 
 the building, serves to show us how to produce an imposing 
 architectural composition by a correct use of this material. 
 
 The ground plan, as given by Ferrario, has all the ele- 
 ments of one of the Northern cathedrals, elongated, with a 
 mighty atrium scarcely separated from the nave, and some- 
 what disturbing the proportions, but at the same time pro- 
 ducing a monumental effect almost like that of the Egyp- 
 tian temples, though the vertical line in St Ambrose's 
 powerfully dominates. At the time of my visit the doorway 
 opening from the atrium into the north aisle of the nave 
 chanced to be open, and the effect produced by the long 
 perspective of column and arch seen from the upper end 
 of the basilica was remarkably impressive, for the nave it- 
 self is too low and broad to be really pleasant, however 
 solemn and awe-inspiring it may be as a whole. 
 
 Perhaps this effect of lowness may be partly attributed 
 to the raised crypt which commences at the eastern arch 
 of the lantern, and immediately in front of which stands 
 the baldachino, a pedimental canopy with a gable on each 
 side resting on four porphyry columns, said to have been 
 saved from an ancient temple. Within the gable facing the 
 nave is a gilt bas-relief on a blue ground of our Lord seated 
 between St Peter and St Paul kneeling, and offering to the 
 
 313 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 former two rods with a kind of key, and to the latter a book 
 with the inscription, "Accipe Librum Sapientiae," In the 
 gable turned towards the apse is a mitred saint dominated 
 by a small nimbed figure with extended arms. This is in all 
 likelihood St Ambrose, on either side of whom are St Ger- 
 vasius and St Protasius giving their protection to two other 
 figures, one of whom is presenting an offering in the shape 
 of a miniature baldachino. In the gable facing south a 
 saint in pontificalibus is giving his blessing to two person- 
 ages. He is crowned with a diadem which a hand is seen 
 placing on his brow. A similar subject fills the northern 
 gable with this difference, that in place of three male there 
 are three female figures, and instead of a hand, a bird with 
 out-stretched wings rests on the head of the central figure^ 
 whom the side ones are represented as imploring. 
 
 Touching this ciborium at St Ambrose's, a few remarks 
 on this instrumentum altaris may not be irrelevant. 
 
 By Kt/3w|Oiov, of which the etymology and original mean- 
 ing are variously interpreted by archaeologists, is under- 
 stood the detached canopy of the altar, supported on 
 four columns, and from which hung a vessel of costly 
 material, containing the Sacred Elements, used especially 
 for the Communion of the sick.* This ciborium besides 
 having a symbolical meaning, was intended to shield the 
 Holy Sacrifice and the mensa from the falling dust or any 
 other possible impurity. 
 
 * In the Cathedral at Ratisbon are several very fine examples of four- 
 teenth-century ciboria. Since the great Church Revival in England this 
 dignified and imposing feature of Christian architefture has been placed 
 with considerable success in our churches, notably in Peterborough Cathe- 
 dral, and in two churches built on the basilican model — St Barnabas, Ox- 
 ford, and the Holy Nativity at Knowle, near Bristol. Such a canopy would 
 form an extremely noble feature in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral. 
 
 3H 
 
MILAN 
 
 This erection over the Holy Sacrifice had been in use 
 from a very early period of ecclesiastical art, and fashioned 
 variously, according to the prevailing style of the time. 
 The roof of the ciborium altar reposed on four columns, 
 standing round the altar at a short distance from its cor- 
 ners, and their richly decorated capitals and shafts were 
 often moulded in metal. In the early period of Christian 
 art, when it still clung to the classical forms of antiquity, 
 these columns were simply united by architraves and 
 covered by a rather flat ceiling, generally finished by four 
 gables. In this case the horizontal band of the architrave 
 often served as a support for the tapers which on festivals 
 were sometimes used in great numbers to illuminate the 
 upper part of the altar. Besides the one now under con- 
 sideration, the most ancient ciborium altars still preserved 
 in this form are in the churches of St Clemente and St 
 Giorgio in Velabro at Rome, at St Mark's, Venice, at the 
 Cathedral of the Patriarchate of Aquileia in Friuli, and in 
 the Cathedral church of Parenzo in Istria. These, as well 
 as most of the ciborium altars from the earliest Christian 
 times until about the twelfth century, were furnished be- 
 tween the four columns with fuU curtains, which closed 
 in the detached altar-table on its four sides. 
 
 This decoration of churches in the earlier part of the 
 Middle Ages, when textile fabrics were preferably em- 
 ployed, differs from that of the three last centuries, chiefly 
 because, in the former period, a number of costly hangings 
 were applied to cover and veil various parts of the altar 
 and choir, as well as some of the objects used, which were 
 calculated to contribute to the solemnity of Divine Wor- 
 ship and to a devout frame of mind in the congregation; 
 whereas, on the contrary, from the beginning of the Re- 
 
 3^5 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 naissance period the many vela, with other decorative fab- 
 rics, fell into desuetude, in order that the eyes of the faith- 
 ful might penetrate into the innermost sanctuary. Hence 
 also the disuse or removal in Southern churches of the jube. 
 From this time not only from the detached high altars 
 were the hangings by degrees laid aside, and which had 
 separated the altar from the narrow presbytery, but in the 
 last centuries were also discontinued the hangings of the 
 side altars, which had served to turn aside the wandering 
 glances of the congregation assembled about the altar in 
 the middle of the church. 
 
 These tetravela, as Anastasius always calls them, were 
 fastened under the architrave of the flat-roofed ciborium 
 altars; if the ceiling were arched (round or pointed), the 
 tetravela were fastened to iron rings run upon a rod fixed 
 between the columns, and so could be drawn backwards 
 and forwards at pleasure. 
 
 Both sides of the altar were draped with vela, consisting, 
 as a rule, of large square curtains, which were never drawn 
 aside during the celebration of the Eucharist; but the hang- 
 ings at the front and back of the altar, as many old pictures 
 represent, were generally divided in two, like long window 
 curtains, and could be folded together below and fastened 
 to the columns, in order to afford a view of the altar-table 
 and the officiating priest. 
 
 The division of the hangings at the back of the ciborium 
 altar was necessary in the earlier centuries after the con- 
 cession of the free Christian worship, it having been an 
 ancient usage of the Church, which was for a long time 
 afterwards maintained, that at the celebration of the Holy 
 Mysteries the bishop, rising from his cathedra in the apse, 
 should approach the back of the altar and turn his face to 
 
 316 
 
MILAN 
 
 the congregation. The four draperies of the ancient cibor- 
 ium explain further that a literal interpretation was to be 
 given to the words of the priest's prayer, " Introibo ad 
 altare Dei," now pronounced on the altar steps, but which 
 prior to the tenth century he repeated beyond the bounds 
 of the ciborium and its vela ; and in like manner the oratio 
 veil of the Latins, " Aufer a nobis, Domine, iniquitates 
 nostras, ut ad Sancta Sanctorum puris mereamur menti- 
 bus introire," was to be literally understood. 
 
 In the remaining liturgies of the most ancient Churches 
 is often to be found a similar so-caUed oratio veli, or vela- 
 minis, i.e., a prayer which the officiant said after he had 
 finished the introductory prayers of the Mass on the outer 
 side of the veiled altar, and was on the point of quitting 
 the apse to enter the Sancta Sanctorum, of which the cur- 
 tains at the front and back were drawn aide by the assis- 
 tants, so that the Most Holy should be visible to the con- 
 gregation.* 
 
 During the secret portion of the ceremonies of the Holy 
 Sacrifice, therefore, from the Sanctus to the Communion, 
 the tetravela were closed, so that then the priest was en- 
 tirely withdrawn from the view of the congregation. In 
 order, however, to give notice how far the ceremonies had 
 proceeded, it was the usage of the celebrant, at certain 
 leading portions of the Holy Mass, to make a signal with a 
 little hand-bell, a custom which has survived the disuse of 
 the tetravela for many centuries until the present time. 
 
 * Such an oratio veli is to be found, for example, in the Liturgy of St 
 James (printed in Binterim's tsatholischen T>enkyitt.rdig)(fiten, iv, s. 148- 
 212; and the prayer in question on the same page, 176 IF.), and in the 
 Liturgy of St Gregory. Also the altar prayer, at present in use, commen- 
 cing liufer a nobis, etc., is, as observed above, to be considered as such an 
 oratio veli belonging to the most ancient Latin liturgies. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Whenever coronations took place at Milan, they were 
 held within the walls of St Ambrose's, as in the^first instance 
 that of Otho I in 961 ; and either here or at Pa via did nine 
 " Kings of the Romans " receive the crown at the hands of 
 the Milanese Archbishops. This was the corona di ferro, so 
 called from the iron circlet set within the golden one, and 
 said to be formed from a nail of the Crucifixion.* 
 
 The ancient liturgy for these coronations attests in a 
 very striking manner the admixture of the democratic ele- 
 ment in the then constitution of Milan. Two bishops, at a 
 certain passage in the ceremonial, were to ask the people 
 whether they desired such a prince and would submit to 
 him as King ? and if no response were made these prelates 
 offered thanks to God for the acceptable election, while all 
 present joined in the Kyrie eleison. 
 
 It was before that rebuilding ordered by Archbishop 
 Anaspertus that his munificent predecessor, Angilbertus, 
 bestowed on the Basilica of St Ambrose that splendid 
 shrine for the relics of the great Doctor of the Western 
 Church which still encases the high altar, though no 
 longer visible save on three high festivals, or with permis- 
 sion from the authorities on payment of a prescribed fee. 
 Formerly, it seems, that this magnificent piece of the 
 goldsmiths' art was exposed at all times; for we are told 
 
 •This iron crown is now preserved in the neighbouring cathedral of 
 Monza, chiefly remarkable as the possessor of one of those faf ades in marbles 
 of different shapes and colours, more commonly met with in central than 
 Northern Italy. As a specimen of complete Gothic I hardly know its equal; 
 thetrelliswork introduced above and on either side ofthe great rose window, 
 and the tracery of those lighting the compartment of the fa9ade on either 
 side of the porch, being in my opinion as beautiful as anything at Orvieto or 
 Siena. By those who love quiet, Monza will be preferred to Milan, of 
 which it is now to all intents and purposes a suburb pleasantly accessible 
 by the electric car. See Illustration, p. 305. 
 
u 
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 E 
 
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 in 
 
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 «3 
 
 Id 
 
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MILAN 
 that in 1333 a Cardinal Legate ordered it to be surrounded 
 by a railing for a protection against danger of robbery. 
 As it is, the heads of the three Magi in the group of the 
 Epiphany are wanting. 
 
 At the front of solid gold, at the sides and back of silver 
 gilt and adorned with enamels, the entire surface pro- 
 fusely studded with gems, this exquisite specimen of metal- 
 lurgy is surrounded by reliefs on panels representing scenes 
 from Gospel history, figures of the Saviour, the Evange- 
 lists, archangels, the principal saints of Milan, and twelve 
 scenes from the life of St Ambrose, historic and legendary. 
 Ughelli, gives the estimate of its cost at 30,000 gold solidi, 
 or 80,000 sequins; and the diploma of Angilbertus for 
 appointing the new abbot confides to his custody and that 
 of his monastic successors this superb altar-tomb, qualified 
 with just complacency as the work, " quod inibi noviter 
 mirifice hedificari " {sic). 
 
 As an art production of the ninth century it is indeed 
 still more precious than for its intrinsic costliness. In exe- 
 cution the illustrations of the life of St Ambrose are the 
 most admirable, as well as interesting for the testimony 
 they bear to ancient ecclesiastical usages. We see here the 
 simple altar of the early Milanese church, without candles 
 or ornaments on its mensa, but only the plain cross, a two- 
 handled chalice, round loaves cross-marked for consecra- 
 tion, and a scroll instead of a volume for either the Liturgy 
 or the Gospels ; while, as to costume, the comparative sim- 
 plicity of the pontifical attire in two figures is observable 
 St Ambrose is receiving a model of this shrine from Angil- 
 bertus, who receives in reward a jewelled crown (or rather 
 cap) upon his head; and both are vested in the alb, chas- 
 uble and long pallium of Greek fashion, but neither wears 
 the mitre. 
 
 319 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 In another curious group we see the episcopal donor 
 placing a similar, but less precious, ornament on the head 
 of the artist, whose name and qualification are inscribed, 
 " Wolfinus, magister phaber " (sic), apparently Teutonic, 
 though classed with Italian metallurgists by Italian art 
 historians.* The baptism by immersion, with the use of 
 the affusion on the head at the same time, is another note- 
 worthy detail in the relief, of the exceptional administra- 
 tion of that Sacrament to Ambrose after the popular act 
 that raised him, by unanimous suffrages, to the bishopric. 
 
 Another curious and interesting item in the instrumenta 
 of St Ambrose's is the pulpit or ambon, a low stone gallery 
 standing on columns with three arches in its longest or 
 north and south sides, and two on its east and west ones. 
 
 The capitals of the shafts are carved in eagles, and the 
 spandrel spaces between the arcades have pelicans and vari- 
 ous animals. On the south side of the ambon an ancient 
 brass eagle bearing a book desk projects from the front, be- 
 low which is a seated figure. The bases of the shafts are 
 early and rest on tortoises. Just under the ambon is a carved 
 sarcophagus, which has been styled the tomb of Stilicho, 
 but this is an antiquarian whim, there not being the 
 slightest foundation for the belief. On its back are eleven 
 figures seated at a table, said to represent an Agape, or 
 Love Feast; besides which there are the monograms XP 
 AO and two birds drinking from a cup. This pulpit is said 
 to have been rebuilt in 1201 ; but most of the ornaments 
 are so evidently of the earliest Lombard period that it can 
 then only have been repaired. 
 
 *CicogaAis, Storia della Scultura. An excellent coloured plate of this shrine 
 is given in Ferrano, Mmumenti sacri e profani dell' imperiak e reale Basilica di 
 Saut' Jmirozio in Milam (1824). 
 
 320 
 
MILAN 
 The mosaic work in the apse is a magnificent specimen 
 of Byzantine art, ordered by the Abbot Gaudentius, the 
 same nominated to office at this monastery by Archbishop 
 Angilbertus in 835. The central subject here represented 
 on a field of gold is the Saviour enthroned, holding a book 
 open at the words, " Ego sum lux mundi," a grand and ex- 
 pressive figure, which Venturi is of opinion is in the twelfth- 
 century Greek manner when the whole work was restored, 
 but stiU in conformity with early types.* Above the throne 
 we see the floating forms of the archangels Michael and 
 Gabriel, with names in Greek; beside it are SS. Gervasius 
 and Protasius, richly vested, the former crowned; beneath 
 appear medallions of SS. Satyrus and Marcellina (brother 
 and sister to St Ambrose), and St Candida. In addition 
 there are eighteen seated figures, each with an open book, 
 supposed to be the suffragan bishops of the province, and 
 two scenes in church interiors — St Ambrose celebrating 
 Mass before the people, and the story told by Gregory the 
 Great of the soul of St Ambrose attending the obsequies 
 of St Martin of Tours while his body remained asleep in 
 the basilica during the Mass. Laterally, on a larger scale, 
 is the representation of another Mass celebrated by St 
 Ambrose at a circular altar, without ornament save a plain 
 cross upon it, and St Martin chanting the gospel at an 
 ambon. These last subjects are intended to illustrate the 
 legend of the Milanese prelate being translated in ecstasy, 
 while at the rites in his Cathedral, to attend (a case of bi- 
 location) that funeral at Tours — a legend Baroriius shows 
 to be quite untenable. At an angle beneath the principal 
 compartment of this mosaic is a curious monogram in 
 
 * The palms have become mere ornaments, and the way in which the 
 small scenes invade the field betray the inexperienced designer. 
 
 321 21 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Gothic letters, which may be read : " Angilberto Karoli 
 Ludovico fecit frater Gaudentius." 
 
 In the apse vault of the chapel of St Satyrus, which, like 
 the domes of the Baptistery and St Vitalis at Ravenna, is 
 constructed of pots, are some mosaics of the eighth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Excavations madeini859disclosedsubstructions of a small 
 parallel-triapsidal basilica, of which this chapel occupied the 
 centre. It is believed to have formed part of the ancient Ba- 
 silica Fausta, and dates from the fifth century. The cupola 
 and pendentives are encrusted with gold mosaic, upon which 
 are placed a central disc with a bust of St Victor (to whom 
 this chapel was originally dedicated), and a border at the 
 base of the dome. On the walls between the windows on 
 the two sides are six standing figures in groups of three : 
 St Ambrose with SS. Gervasius and Protasius, the three 
 saints whose memory has ever been attached to this vener- 
 able church; and St Maternus betvveen SS. Delicius and 
 Nabor. All are costumed as Romans, and are standing on 
 a blue ground. On the pedentives are the Evangelistic 
 symbols, and inside the lunettes medallions of Apostles. 
 The arrangement points to the probability that the centre 
 medallion was once occupied by a bust of our Lord. 
 
 Although it is desirable that the differences between 
 Gothic and classic architecture should be understood, it is 
 possible to overestimate the opposition there may be be- 
 tween their principles, and to the disadvantage of the art 
 of architecture. Those who devote themselves to the eluci- 
 dation of theory rather than practice are apt to dwell too 
 strongly upon the opposition without sufficiently bearing 
 in mind that the one style actually grew out of the other, 
 and that the history of architecture, so long as it was a real 
 
 322 
 
MILAN 
 
 and living art, was one of progress and development. The 
 first links in this great chain were as valuable as the last, 
 and not one can be dispensed with. Because the general 
 tendency of classic architecture was to breadth and hori- 
 zontality, therefore it is generally thought that to be pure 
 all vertical lines must be avoided; and, vice versa, it is 
 usually supposed that, because height and verticality are 
 the main principles affected in the Gothic style, therefore 
 any approach to horizontal lines is to be scrupulously 
 avoided. Following out this view of the matter Professor 
 Freeman came to the conclusion that the Perpendicular 
 style, as in our English Gothic, is the highest and only 
 complete style ; and that those preceding it were compara- 
 tively conditions of transition, unsatisfactory in so far that 
 the opposite element to its perpendicularity and con- 
 tinuity of lines had not been wholly overcome. 
 
 From this point of view the Gothic of Italy might claim 
 pre-eminence over all others. The struggle there between 
 the two principles, was short, sharp and decisive. We see 
 in it the gradual victory of verticalism over horizontality, 
 till, at last, the latter is wholly eliminated, and a reedy 
 weakness of effect is the result. Perhaps this is rather a 
 strained view of the question, but there are few practical 
 architects who will not endorse it. 
 
 In the eyes of the best judges the Gothic of Italy never 
 rose to the excellence of the countries beyond the Alps. 
 Even if the supposed principles of the style were most 
 thoroughly exhibited in it, yet it always seemed to lack 
 something of the true spirit. I have dwelt upon some of 
 these failings in earlier chapters, particularly in that deal- 
 ing with the vast church of St Petronio at Bologna, a 
 contemporary with the Cathedral of Milan, usually consid- 
 
 323 2I« 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 ered one of the glories of Italian Gothic architecture, in 
 which we are struck almost with surprise that such a forest 
 of pinnacles can fail to convey the true feeling of the aspir- 
 ing Gothic style. 
 
 In this sumptuous work, constructed in white marble 
 with the utmost elaboration, the flat pitch of the roofs 
 seems to restrain the efforts to carry the eye upward, which 
 otherwise their elegant outline would seem calculated to 
 do. Though such ornaments, in subordination to other up- 
 right masses, are quite consistent with the Gothic spirit, 
 they are felt, in the present instance, to transgress this 
 condition. The numerical strength of this marble army 
 makes it the governing power; the statuary domineers over 
 the architecture, and we collect out of all this host of per- 
 sonages and attitudes no definite lines and regular forms, 
 such as alone can give architectural effect. 
 
 The general design of the Cathedral at Milan belongs to 
 the latter part of the fourteenth century, but much doubt 
 exists as to the exact date of the commencement of the 
 work. It is clear, however, that the capitals of the great piers 
 were being prepared in 1394-5, and that the piers them- 
 selves were being erected in 1401. The records of the war- 
 dens of the church are deficient until 1387, in which year 
 an official paper speaks of the building which " Multis 
 retro temporibus initiata est, et quae nunc fabricatur." 
 Chronicles and an inscription concur in fixing March 15, 
 1386, as the date of commencement; but Simone da Orse- 
 nigo, probably an eyewitness of the facts to which he is 
 evidence, states that the work was begun May 23, 1386, 
 but was destroyed, and that the existing structure was 
 commenced May 7, 1387. He was employed as one of the 
 architects at least as early as December 6 in that year, so 
 
 324 
 

 3 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 «3 
 
 c 
 
 R5 
 
MILAN 
 
 that the date, 1386-87, usually given, is possibly the period 
 of attempts to begin the work, and explains the phrase 
 "multis temporibus." 
 
 The Duomo of Milan has been much belauded as a 
 specimen of Northern art modifying itself to suit the 
 Southern climate under the hands of a German, or, at all 
 events, of a foreigner rather than of a native; but facts 
 seem to destroy this imputed credit. 
 
 The official list of the " ingegneri," as the chief artists 
 who laboured at the Duomo were called, show the earli- 
 est employment of foreigners in the case of Nicolas Bona- 
 venture of Paris, from< July 6, 1388, till his dismissal, July 
 31, 1 391 ; and the same evidence seems to divide the merit 
 of the earliest direction of the works between Marco and 
 Jacopo, both of Campiona, a village between the lakes of 
 Lugano and Como. 
 
 The first name in the records of 1387 is that of Marco, 
 supposed to be the Marco da Frisona, who was buried 
 July 8, 1390, with great honours; Jacopo occurs March 20, 
 1388, having apparently been engaged from 1378 as one of 
 the architects to the Church of the Certosa near Pavia ; he 
 died 1398. 
 
 The official notes of the disputes that were constantly 
 arising between the contemporaneous " ingegneri-gene- 
 rali " and their subordinates, and the foreign artists, even 
 record the fact that the Italian combatants disagreed on 
 the great question of proportioning the building by the 
 foreign system of squares, or by the native theory of tri- 
 angles. If there be any merit in a work that was the off- 
 spring of so many minds, much of it must be due to the 
 wardens, who seem to have ordered the execution of so 
 little that was not recommended by the majority of their 
 
 325 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 artists, or, in case of an equal division, by an umpire of re- 
 putation from some other city. 
 
 From 1430 the names of Filippo Brunelleschi and six or 
 seven other artists precede the notice, 1483, of Johann von 
 Gratz, who appears to have been invited for the purpose 
 of constructing the central tiburio or lantern. As usual, the 
 foreigner's work was condemned; and on April 13, 1490, 
 Giovanni Antonio Omodeo* began his long rule over the 
 other artists, which lasted until August 27, 1522, by exe- 
 cuting the present work. 
 
 It is needless to give the names of his colleagues and suc- 
 cessors until the appointment of Carlo Amati, 1806, under 
 whom the completion of the works, including the three 
 pointed windows of the western fa9ade, was resumed, and 
 of his successor, P. Pastagalli, 181 3. 
 'Milan Cathedral is constructed of white marble. The 
 plan is that of a Latin cross, the transepts projecting to 
 the depth of one of their three bays beyond the aisles, of 
 which there are two on either side of the nave, but one 
 only on either side of the choir and transepts. From west 
 to east the length of the Duomo is 490 feet, and its ex- 
 treme breadth, i.e., at the transepts, 295 feet. The length 
 of the nave is 279 feet, and its width, inclusive of the 
 double aisles, is 197 feet. 
 
 The east end is formed of three sides of a nonagon, the 
 choir aisles being continued round the apse as a procession 
 path, but without any chapels, as in some German ex- 
 amples.t The architecture of the doors and windows of 
 
 * Heinrich von GmUnden, employed so early as from December 1 1 ' 
 1 391, to May 31, 1392, was confused with Omodeo by M. Millin' 
 whence the repute of Heinrich as " Zamodia." 
 
 t St Laurence and St Sebald, Nuremburg, the Cathedral at Munich, 
 the Marien Kirche at Lippstadt, and the Dom at Verden. 
 
 326 
 
MILAN 
 
 the western fa?ade is in the Renaissance style, and was 
 "executed about 1658, for the first three bays of the nave 
 were an addition in front of the original facade, and were 
 not vaulted until 1651-69. 
 
 About 1790 it was determined to Gothicize the west 
 front, keeping the doors and windows, by Picchini, from 
 designs by Pelligrini, on account of the richness of their 
 workmanship. Its apex is 170 feet from the pavement. 
 
 The central buttresses are 195 feet high. The unsatisfac- 
 tory central pinnacle, which terminates the lantern, was 
 completed shortly after the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury by F. Croce; it rises 400 feet from the floor of the 
 church, and features those of the fafade. All the turrets, 
 buttresses and pinnacles are surmounted with statues, and 
 the roof is entirely covered with blocks of marble, fitted 
 together with the greatest exactness, 
 
 /'^The Cathedral of Milan has been wonderfully contrived 
 to bury millions of money in ornaments which are never to 
 be seen. Whole quarries of marble have been manufac- 
 tured here into statues, rilievos, niches and notches, and 
 
 ; high sculpture has been expended on objects which vanish 
 
 i individually in the mass. 
 
 ^ *. Were two or three hundred of those statues removed, 
 the rest would regain their due importance, and the fabric 
 itself become more intelligible. These figures stand in 
 rows, which cross and confound the vertical direction of 
 the architecture; for here the eye naturally runs up the 
 channelled buttresses, the lofty windows with their long 
 mullions and flamboyant tracery, and the lateral spires, 
 and can never keep in the horizontal line of the Greek en- 
 tablature. This rage for sculpture has encircled the very 
 tops of the great internal piers with statues, which tend 
 
 327 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 to conceal the groinings, just where they spring so finely 
 into the vault, interrupting the immeasurable plumb-line 
 
 I and lessening the apparent height and exility admired in a 
 
 h Gothic pillar. 
 
 j*" From its size, and the sumptuousness of its materials 
 and adornment, the exterior of the Duomo at Milan will 
 always appeal to the masses, while to the true artist with 
 the beautiful proportions and studied simplicity of Amiens, 
 Bourges, Chartres and Rheims fresh in his mind, it must 
 appear vulgar and unsatisfactory. How this is accounted 
 for I need not here recapitulate, having already dwelt 
 upon the reason of the unsatisfactory nature of complete 
 Italian Pointed in the introductory chapter. It is worthy 
 of remark that, notwithstanding the changes to which I 
 have alluded in the history of its erection, Milan Cathe- 
 dral has a marvellously homogeneous character, and to 
 those unversed in its chronology it would appear to be a 
 
 tFlgwing Decorated work, the offspring of one mind.* 
 ^Within, there resides a solemnity which, in spite of cer- 
 tain defects, collects the soul and inspires devotion; in- 
 deed, I may go so far as to say that no work of men's hands 
 so fills and elevates the mind with infinite awe, and, if I 
 may so express it, sublime humility, as [the interior of 
 Milan Cathedral, with its calm holy twilightT^hich veils 
 its lofty vaultings and dims its distant vistas. Again and 
 again has the artist striven to embody all this, none per- 
 
 * The exterior pf Milan Cathedral wears its most impressive aspeft by 
 moonlight. It was during a solitary midnight walk through the city that 
 Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley came suddenly upon the huge marble Cathe- 
 dral under this condition. The sight made a profound impression upon 
 the distinguished English church composer, and the words, " How goodly 
 are thy tents," instantly occurred to him. There and then he conceived 
 the idea of setting them to music, and it is to this circumstance that we 
 owe one of the most expressive and beautiful of Ouseley's anthems. 
 
 328 
 
MILAN 
 
 haps more successfully than Samuel Read in that view of 
 the interior looking across the choir from the south tran- 
 sept which elicited such admiration at the Exhibition of 
 the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1857. 
 
 ^A rich tone is diffused over the interior of the Duomo 
 at Milan by its being entirely composed of a particular 
 description of marble brought from above the Lago Mag- 
 giore, to which time gives a fine yellow tint; and the pave- 
 ment being laid in a mosaic pattern of red, white and blue 
 marble, an ensemble of rich yet subdued colour is pro- 
 duced. 
 
 ^he great feature of the interior is its quadruple row of 
 gigantic clustered pillars with their nine intercolumnations. 
 Fifty-two pillars support the vaultings of the roof, which, 
 springing diredlly from them, gives an appearance of even 
 greaterloftiness than they would otherwise convey, although 
 each pillar measures, capital and base included, no less than 
 eighty fe^^The capitals, designed by Filippino of Modena, 
 are beautiful in themselves, but they are^jnly a compromise 
 between a form occurring in Germa^^as, for instance, in 
 the Church of Our Lady at NurfernMrg, and the great, 
 deep capitals with their three rows of leafage in the Cathe- 
 drals of Florence and Verona, and in St Petronio at Bologna, 
 ad the ornamentation of the capitals been extended to the 
 spring of the vault, they would have been unexceptionable; 
 as it is, wUh all their richness, their effed: is somewhat un- 
 meaningi^aken by themselves, these capitals at Milan, to 
 say notfhmg of their unique character, are unparalleled in 
 their workmanship and in the manner in which It is intro- 
 duced. 
 
 fXhe lowest part of the capitals is formed by a wreath of 
 foliage, mixed with figures of children and animals; above 
 
 329 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 is a circle of eight niches corresponding to the intervals 
 between the eight shafts of the clustered pillar, each equipped 
 with a canopied statue. The bases and plans of the pillars 
 are equally anomalous. The diameter of the four enormous 
 pillars which support the lantern is one-fifth greater than 
 that of the others. Two of these colossal supports are en- 
 circled by pulpits of bronze and silver, begun by the direc- 
 tions of the exemplary St Carlo, and completed by his ne- 
 phew, Cardinal Frederigo Borromeo.* These are covered 
 by basso-rilievos by Andrea Pellizone, and rest on colossal 
 caryatid figures of the four Evangelists and the four Latin 
 dodors — Gregory, Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine, mo- 
 delled by Brambilla and cast by Busca. In the first bay on 
 either side of the choir is an organ case commensurate in 
 size with its colossal surroundings, and of that rich Re- 
 n'aissance type so common throughout Italy. The general 
 efFe<ft of the choir, with its pendent lamps, the great rood 
 placed upon a beam extending across the eastern arch of the 
 lantern, and the richly carved stalls representing scenes from 
 the history of St Augustine and St Ambrose, is solemn and 
 grand, and in every way calculated to set oflF the impressive 
 ritual observed he^Tj 
 
 In 1699 Addison, having obtained a pension from the 
 Whig ministers for the purpose of enabling him to travel,! 
 left England for Italy. After spending over a year in France, 
 in order to acquire a sufficient knowledge of the language 
 to qualify him for diplomatic employment, he set out from 
 Marseilles to Genoa in a small tartane. He encountered 
 danger in one of the Mediterranean squalls, and was com- 
 
 * From the northern of these pulpits the Epistle and Gospel are sung, 
 agreeably to the Ambrosian ritual at High Mass. 
 t See page 132. 
 
o 
 E 
 
 u 
 
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 ff3 
 
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MILAN 
 
 pelled to land at Monaco. The voyagers tried to creep along 
 the shore in a little boat, but the roughness of the sea 
 made them land at Savona. From thence they travelled over 
 very rugged mountains and precipices to Genoa, whence 
 they travelled by road to Milan, stopping on the way at 
 Pavia. 
 
 At that time everything Gothic was held in disesteem, 
 and, as will be seen from the following description, Addison 
 was not impressed by the Cathedral: 
 
 "I could not stay long in Milan without going to see 
 the great church that I had heard so much of, but was never 
 more deceived in my expectations than at my first entering; 
 for the front, which was all I had seen of the outside, is not 
 half finished, and the inside is so smutted with dust and 
 the smoke of lamps that neither the marble nor the silver 
 nor brasswork show themselves to an advantage. This vast 
 Gothic pile of building is all of marble, except the roof, 
 which would have been of the same matter with the rest 
 had not its weight rendered it improper for that part of the 
 building. But for the reason I have just now mentioned, the 
 outside of the church looks much whiter and fresher than 
 inside; for where the marble is so often washed with rains it 
 preserves itself more beautiful and unsullied than in those 
 parts that are not at all exposed to the weather. That side 
 of the church, indeed, which faces the Tramontane wind is 
 much more unsightly than the rest, by reason of the dust 
 and smoke that are driven against it. This profusion of 
 marble, though astonishing to strangers, is not very won- 
 derfvd in a country that has so many veins of it within its 
 bowels. But though the stones are cheap, the working of 
 them is very expensive. It is generally said there are eleven 
 thousand statues about the church; but they reckon into 
 
 33^ 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 the account every particular figure in the history pieces and 
 
 several little images which make up the equipage of those 
 
 that are larger. There are, indeed, a great multitude of such 
 
 as are bigger than life. I reckoned about two hundred and 
 
 fifty on the outside of the church, though I only told three 
 
 sides of it, and these are not half so thick set as they intend 
 
 them. The statues are all of marble, and generally well cut; 
 
 but the most valuable one they have is a <$"/ Bartholomew^ 
 
 new flayed, with his skin hanging over his shoulders. It 
 
 is esteemed worth its weight in gold. They have inscribed 
 
 this verse on its pedestal, to show the value they have for 
 
 the workman: 
 
 " Non me Praxiteles, sed Marcus finxit Agrati. 
 
 (Lest at the sculptor doubtfully you guess, 
 'Tis Marc Agrati, not Praxiteles.") 
 
 The floor of Milan Cathedral was of a uniform level 
 till the time of St Carlo Borromeo, who by the aid of the 
 architedl Pellegrini raised the choir considerably, and con- 
 strudled an undercroft or winter choir of Renaissance style. 
 From it the chapel containing the remains of St Charles is 
 entered. 
 
 Bishop of Milan from 1560 to 1584, Carlo Borromeo is 
 a saint whom the most bigoted Protestant must reverence, 
 for his life was made up of the noblest Christian virtues: 
 benevolence, humility, self-sacrifice, courage and disinter- 
 estedness. Unostentatious as he was benevolent, such an ex- 
 hibition as is presented by the disposition of his remains 
 amid silver, gems and crystal, would be most distasteful to 
 one whose motto was Humilitas^ and who, could he reap- 
 pear on earth, would order his bones to be buried and the 
 jewels to be sold and given to the poor. 
 
 Probably few of my readers are aware that St Charles 
 
 332 
 
MILAN 
 Borromeo was a writer on Ecclesiology in the stridest 
 sense of the term; but I can assure them that he was so. 
 Among the various writings of that sainted prelate are two 
 treatises (intended, like everything which he produced, 
 for the pradbical good of his people) on Ecclesiastical Build- 
 ings and on Ecclesiastical Furniture, of which the first- 
 named was introduced to the English public fifty-five 
 years ago in a translation, as both works had already been 
 given to learned readers in a reprint of the original text, in 
 a cheap form, by L'Abb6 Van Drival of Arras two years 
 previously. 
 
 One cannot better describe the particularity with which St 
 Charles deals with his subjed than by saying that the writing 
 which most nearly resembles his compositions in the me- 
 thod of treatment, although falling short of them in the 
 minuteness of its prescriptions, is the Hints to Church Buil- 
 ders, published early in the days of the great Vidorian High 
 Church Revival by the Cambridge Camden Society, Indeed, 
 had the latter work emanated from strangers, one would 
 have been tempted to suppose that the hint came from 
 Milan. The main difference (the needs of the two com- 
 munions apart) consists — as might be supposed, consider- 
 ing the circumstances under which in the sixteenth and 
 the nineteenth centuries the subjed was undertaken — in 
 the Camden Society's volume dealing with hints, the Pre- 
 late's with requirements; and in the former's accordingly 
 abounding with references to particular precedents, which 
 are wanting in the more authoritative codex. 
 
 As a link in the catena of Ecclesiology opposed to Ora- 
 torianism, or — as it might with equal propriety be styled 
 — Jesuitism, these writings possess a peculiar value. Indeed, 
 under the guise of a corpus of enadments, they form a 
 
 333 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 protest against that growing negleft of traditionary wor- 
 ship, which, in a later age and another country, called forth 
 the more copious, though of course less magisterial, denun- 
 ciations of a Thiers and a Le Brun Desmarettes, Accord- 
 ingly, in spite of the fame of their writer, they lay dor- 
 mant till the modern revival again brought their teaching 
 into fashion. 
 
 There is much in this fascinating contribution to eccle- 
 siological literature that I should like to quote, did space 
 permit, but one or two matters, chiefly bearing upon the 
 great church which forms one of the subjefts of this chap- 
 ter, I cannot forbear touching upon, 
 
 St Charles Borromeo was not a medievalist. The basilica 
 pure and simple (except in so far as it does not involve the 
 celebrant facing the people) was his dominant ideal, and 
 his entire architedtural tradate was a scheme, very masterly 
 in its treatment, of accommodating that type to the adual 
 requirements of the Roman and Ambrosian rituals respec- 
 tively. 
 
 It may safely be said that the church of St Ambrogio 
 was present to his mind during every page which he wrote. 
 As for an instance, he takes occasion to proscribe side doors 
 for the admission of the laity, and to order doors of an 
 unequal number at the west end. This limitation does not 
 arise out of the Gothic churches of Italy, nor the Renais- 
 sance, while it curiously illustrates St Charles's own pro- 
 ceedings in his Cathedral, where it is well known that he 
 stopped up the transept doors, throwing out apsidal chapels 
 in their place. So too, he enjoins, what in his day had be- 
 come an obsolete arrangement, the atrium. Who can doubt 
 what example he was thinking of when he penned this in- 
 jundion? Moreover, he holds up the circular and detached 
 
 334 
 
MILAN 
 
 baptistery as not only the highest but the most desirable 
 form of that portion of the church. 
 
 Accordingly it is clear thoughout the treatise, that the 
 last thing which its writer dreamed of was prescribing the 
 construftion of a pointed church. The style present to his 
 eye throughout was such a grave modification of Italian as 
 a basilica built under his superintendence would naturally 
 exhibit. As an instance of one of the prescriptions, I quote 
 the short Chapter XII, de Choro: 
 
 " Chori praeterea locus, a populi statione, ut vetus stru- 
 dura et disciplinae ratio obstendit, seclusus, cancellisque 
 septus, cum ad altare majus esse debeat, sive ab interiori 
 parte (ut antiqui instituti est) iUud circumdet ; sive a poste- 
 riori sit (quia vel Ecclesiae situs, vel altaris positio, vel re- 
 gionis consuetude sic postulat) usque adeo late, longeque, 
 ubi pro situs spatio potest, patere, etiam in hemicycli, vel 
 in alterius formae, pro ratione capellae Ecclesiaeve, modum, 
 architedti judicio debet, ut et amplitudine, et ornatu item 
 decenti, Ecclesiae dignitati, clerique multitudini apte re- 
 spondeat." 
 
 If in this Duomo at Milan we do not feel the poetry of 
 architedlure to its full extent, we can understand the won- 
 drous effeds produced by the arrangement of light and 
 shadow to perfection, which, during the daily course of 
 the sun, is seen here in the most enchanting manner, every 
 moment producing a fresh efFecft. First, there is the burst 
 of light at the eastern end, when the whole choir and 
 apse are illuminated from the rising sun; then the southern 
 transept and aisles receive the refleftion of noonday; the light 
 gradually passing round, till the classical western windows 
 with their not very felicitous stained glass are lighted up 
 with the glowing tints of sunset, every capital with its 
 
 335 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 coronal of niched figures catching the warm light which 
 penetrates up to the choir, now wrapt in sombre shade; 
 till, imperceptibly fading as twilight comes stealing on, 
 each detail becoming less and less distind:, the whole per- 
 spedive is lost in general obscurity relieved only by the 
 six great candles on the high altarjj* the pair of seven 
 lamps pendent at the entrance to the choir, the lamp high 
 up on the rood-beam marking the presence of the Nail of 
 the Crucifixion, and by the four burning at the sepulchre 
 of St Carlo Borromeo beneath the great dome. 
 
 Then the five vast aisles of this stupendous fabric pro- 
 duce such a wonderful variety of outline and perspedive 
 that they assume a new asped at every step; indeed the 
 same strudure, seen from different situations, appears like 
 a totally different edifice. 
 
 O Milan, O the chanting quires; 
 
 The giant windows' blazon'd fires; 
 
 The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! 
 
 A mount of marble, a hundred spires. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 While awaiting the commencement of the Divine Offices 
 within the dusky choir of the Duomo on this beautiful 
 June morning, the angels of architedlure had many lovely 
 and curious things to tell, and unfolded the inner mean- 
 ings of pillars and arches, roof and windows, lights and 
 shadows. 
 
 And, as I listened, every now and then it seemed as if 
 they were telling things that I had always known before, 
 and I saw that the whole building was, as it were, a Sacra- 
 ment, and that every outward and visible form had an 
 
 •There being an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament on the occasion 
 of my visit, these were kept burning all day. 
 
MILAN 
 
 inward and spiritual meaning which gave new dignity and 
 power. And when a solemn introdudtory piece was played 
 upon the organ, I felt that the angels of music too were 
 there as witnesses to the consecration of the beauty of 
 melody and harmony to the service of the temple, and by 
 their presence adding a solemnity and pathos which would 
 not be found in such a degree without them. 
 
 It is impossible to leave the study of Christian antiqui- 
 ties at Milan without considering what may be styled a 
 monument, and that among the most venerable in charader 
 and claim : that Ambrosian liturgy, now confined to this sole 
 archdiocese, but once, as Durandus reports, in use, whose 
 extensiveness surpassed even that of the Roman, and till 
 so late as the sixteenth century retained at the altars of 
 Bologna and Capua. Nor is it one of the least benefits secured 
 to this illustrious Church by the great and good St Carlo 
 Borromeo, to have maintained, as he did, the place and prac- 
 tice of this primitive ritual against the aggressive attempt 
 of the Papacy, which in his day aimed at its suppression. 
 Both St Carlo and his nephew, the Cardinal Federigo Bor- 
 romeo, published the Milanese Missal, with declaration of 
 their resolve to preserve the Ambrosian rite incorrupt. 
 Referred by some writers to St Barnabas and to the Bishop 
 St Mirocletus, — to St Ambrose himself only in respedl to the 
 numerous additions of antiphons, hymns and arrangements 
 of psalms for chanting, due to him, as well as the system of 
 vocal music he introduced, from Oriental example, — it is 
 generally acknowledged to be, in its main composition, of 
 higher antiquity than the great saint whose name it bears; 
 perhaps to a considerable extent modified and reordered 
 after the See of Milan had been restored from the suppres- 
 sion it underwent at the hands of the Longobards. 
 
 337 22 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 At the Solemn High Mass which I attended on the morn- 
 ing of Friday, June 22, 1 had opportunities for noticing the 
 several peculiarities in the Ambrosian ritual, placed as 1 was 
 in the benches arranged chorus-wise just within the low 
 screen which separates the choir from the crossing. 
 
 Among them were the ConfraSforium, an anthem sung 
 whilst the celebrant breaks the consecrated species; the 
 covering of the head, evidently of Oriental origin, in mark 
 of reverence, the mitre being worn by the priest, deacon, 
 subdeacon and ceremoniarius ; the chanting of tne Epistle 
 and Gospel in peculiar tones from the northern ambon, and 
 the kneeling of the deacon and subdeacon at the north and 
 south ends of the altar during the prayers, their hands being 
 folded on the mensa. 
 
 I also observed that peculiar Ambrosian use for censing 
 the altar, the deacon going all round it for this purpose 
 attended by the subordinates. At the Lavabo the deacon 
 stood at the priest's right hand with the towel, the sub- 
 deacon at his left hand with the ewer, and the acolyte be- 
 tween them with the bason. At the consecration they all 
 knelt in a row behind the celebrant in this order, counting 
 from the north: subdeacon, thurifers, acolyte, deacon; while 
 behind them knelt four taper-bearers. Immediately after the 
 Communion the subdeacon veiled and carried out the 
 chalice. 
 
 The censers used at Milan are open and shallow; con- 
 sequently they cannot be swung high like the common 
 covered ones. 
 
 But the most interesting usage that obtains in Milan 
 Cathedral is the offering of the sacramental elements by 
 some members of a confraternity known as the Scuola di 
 St Ambrogio. 
 
 338 
 
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MILAN 
 
 It consists of ten aged people of both sexes, certain of 
 whom appear at every High Mass in grave costume of 
 monastic fashion, bearing, in silver and glass vessels, the 
 bread and wine for sacred use. This well-known primitive 
 and once medieval observance takes place at the OfFertori- 
 um, the males slowly passing up to the altar and the females 
 halting just without the rails to the choir. 
 
 These Vecchioni^ as they are styled, are maintained from 
 the revenues of the Cathedral for the purpose of making 
 the offertory diredly after the Oratio super Sindonem, which 
 answers to the prayer of the Greek Church, jxtTa to atrXtD- 
 drivai TO EiXrjTov; and Milan Cathedral is the only church in 
 Europe where the old oblation alluded to so innumerable 
 times by the Fathers is retained.* 
 
 When I witnessed this ceremonial — accompanied by 
 music commensurate in grandeur and solemnity — in the 
 glorious cathedral, it impressed me as a touching and deeply 
 significant accessory to dignified worship, forming a link 
 that unites the ancient with the modern Church, not well 
 laid aside by the more extended practice of our time, and 
 also of avail to neutralize that charader of ritual exclusive- 
 ness often obje<5ted to in the Latin Catholic celebrations as 
 the cause of absolute severance between the officiating clergy 
 and the people. 
 
 There was an immense concourse of persons present, but 
 there was no impression of a crowd. The church was not 
 thronged, not even full; there still seemed room for a nation 
 to come in. In ordinary buildings, when they are filled to 
 their utmost capacity, the architedure disappears and the 
 mind and eye are occupied only with the men and women. 
 But the Duomo at Milan can never be thus put down. 
 * Vide Muratori, Jntij. Ital. iv, 854. 
 339 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Fill it full of human life, it would still be something 
 greater than them all. Men, however numerous they might 
 be, would be but appendages to its mountainous bulk. As 
 the sky is more than the stars, and the wooded valley more 
 than the trees, so is Milan Cathedral more than any amount 
 of humanity that can be gathered within its arms. 
 
 340 
 
341 
 
 A LIST OF SOME OF THE MOST REMARKABLE 
 PICTURES AND WALL-PAINTINGS IN THE 
 CHURCHES DESCRIBED OR ALLUDED TO IN 
 THIS WORK 
 
 NEXT to their architefture the most interesting fea- 
 ture of the Italian Cathedrals and Churches is their 
 adornment with paintings, either in the form of frescoes 
 covering vast spaces of wall and roof, or of pictures on wood 
 and canvas fixed into altarpieces or suspended against the 
 walls. Indeed one may say that, in not a few instances, 
 where a fine Lombardo-Romanesque or Pointed Gothic 
 church has had its interior tampered with during the era 
 of classicism, the work of the architect will be regarded by 
 most people with but languid interest beside that of the 
 artist. 
 
 In the foregoing chapters I have abstained almost en- 
 tirely from mentioning the piftures and wall-paintings with 
 which the greater number of the churches described are so 
 richly endowed, for the reason that such constant reference 
 would become wearisome upon repetition. It has, therefore, 
 been deemed expedient to present the most interesting and 
 important of these works of art in catalogue form, a few 
 notes — brief ones only, from exigencies of space — being 
 here and there given. 
 
 The recurrence of one or more painters' names in the 
 churches of some particular city is accounted for by the 
 fadl that these persons were natives of the surrounding 
 distria, or that they formed a school of painting which 
 flourished in that particular city. 
 
 Thus at Verona we have Giolfino, Domenico and Fran- 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 cesco Morone, Girolamo dai Libri, Felice Brusasorzi and 
 Caroto; at Padua, Andrea Mantegna and Giotto; at Ve- 
 nice, Cima da Conegliano, Tintoretto and Titian, Paolo 
 Veronese, Vivarini and the Bellini ; at Ferrara, Dosso Dossi, 
 Garofalo, Cosima Tura, Bastianino, Carlo Bononi and 
 Niccolo Rosselli; at Bologna, Annibale and Lodovico 
 Caracci, Franceschini, Guido Reni, Tiarini, the Francias, 
 Guercino and Innocenza da Imola; at Parma, Correggio 
 and Parmegianino; at Brescia, Pietro Rosa, Bernardino 
 Gandini, Moretto, Romanino and Foppa the younger; 
 and at Novara, Vercelli and Milan, Gaudenzio Ferrari, 
 Lanini, Borgognone and the Luini. 
 
 The sacred painting of Italy is so full of the. traces of 
 legendary literature, that unless we travel with such fasci- 
 nating companions as Cicognara, Kilgler, Crowe and Caval- 
 caselle, and Mrs Jameson, it is vain to think of fully 
 entering into its spirit, or even of merely comprehending its 
 literal meaning without having some knowledge of that vast 
 storehouse of romantic fiction which the Church accumu- 
 lated around its ancient heroes. Much of it is absurd, not 
 a little profane, irreligious and even repellent; but a great 
 deal is beautiful, pathetic, practical and touching in the 
 highest degree. 
 
 VERONA 
 
 The Cathedral 
 Liberale, The Adoration of the Three Kings. Giolfinoy SS. Roch, 
 Anthony the Hermit, Bartholomew and Sebastian (second altar on 
 right). CMorone, SS. James and John, with head of the painter be- 
 low. Qiolfino, The Last Supper (fourth altar on right). Titian, The 
 Assumption (first altar on left). In the sacristy: Morone, SS. Peter 
 and Paul. In semi-dome of apse: Giulio ^ewasfl, The Assumption. 
 
 342 
 
PICTURES AT VERONA 
 
 Sia Anastasia 
 
 Girolamodai Libri,The Blessed Virgin with SS. Thomas Aquinas, 
 Augustine, a Kneeling Friar and Two Donors (in the south tran- 
 sept). Giolfim, The Pentecost. Michele da Verona, the same subjeft 
 (fourth chapel on left). Giolfino, SS. George and Erasmus (second 
 chapel on left). High altar: Torelli, The Death of St Peter Martyr, 
 imitated from Titian. 
 
 Cappella Pellegrini 
 
 (One of Sanmichele's most successful produdlions). Left-hand 
 side of choir: Benaglio, The Blessed Virgin Mary and Child with 
 Saints. On shutters of the organ: Morane, SS. Francesco and Ber- 
 nardino. 
 
 Sta Elena 
 
 (Adjoining the Baptistery of the Cathedral) Felice Brusasorzi, St 
 Helen and other Saints. 
 
 5/ Fermo JUaggiore 
 Caroto, Madonna with Infant and St Anne and other Saints. 
 Domenico Morone, SS. Anthony of Padua, Biagio and Nicholas (left 
 of choir). Orbetto, The Nativity (third chapel left). Giov. Batt. del 
 Mora, SS. Nicholas, Augustine, Anthony the Hermit (first chapel 
 on left). Torbido, Virgin and Child with Archangel Raphael, Tobias, 
 and St Catherine (third chapel on right). 
 
 St Giorgio in Braida 
 Paolo Veronese, The Martyrdom of St George, a large and vigor- 
 ous pifture in which the painter has represented himself on horse- 
 back, to the right, forms the high-altar-piece. Farinati, Miracle of 
 the Loaves and Fishes (1603). Felice Brusasorzi, The Fall of the 
 Manna (completed by his pupils, Ottici and Orbetto). 
 
 Sta tMaria in Organo 
 Cavazzolo and Brusasorzi, Small Landscapes in Panels of Stalls. 
 Guercino, Sta Francesca Romana (in south transept). Qirolamo dai 
 Libri, Blessed Virgin Mary and Child with SS. Catherine and Stephen 
 (in sacristy). 
 
 343 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 SS. Nazario e C^lso 
 Brusasorzi, Choir of Angels on shutters of organ. Bonsignori, SS. 
 Biagio and Sebastian, with (above) the Blessed Virgin Mary and 
 Child. Girolamo dai Libri, Martyrdom of several Saints (forming the 
 high-altar-piece with its predella). 
 
 Si Paolo 
 Girolamo dai Libri, Holy Family and St Paul and Two Donors 
 (third altar on right). C^roto, Blessed Virgin Mary and Child with 
 SS. Peter and Paul (at high altar). // iMoretto^ Blessed Virgin Mary 
 and Child and four female Saints (fifth altar, left). Girolamo dai Libri, 
 Blessed Virgin Mary with SS. Zeno, Lorenzo and Giustiniani, a 
 masterpiece in delicacy of work and beauty of design (fourth altar 
 on left). Caroto, SS. Sebastian and Rosco (third altar on left). 
 Caroto, St Ursula and Virgins. Brusasorzi, Blessed Virgin Mary 
 and Archangels (first altar on left). Jacopo Tintoretto, The Baptism 
 of our Lord (over west door). 
 
 St Lorenzo 
 Brusasorzi, B.V.M. and Child with St John Baptist and a Bishop. 
 
 St Tomasso Cantuariense 
 Brusasorzi, B.V.M. and Child with SS. Catherine, Thomas ^ 
 Becket, Francis, Cyril, Bernard and John Baptist. 
 
 St Stefano 
 Caroto, B.V.M. between SS. Andrew and Peter (in south transept). 
 Giolfino, B.V.M. with SS. Placida, Maur and Simplicio. Bru- 
 sasorzi, The Epiphany (to right and left of high altar). 
 Brusasorzi, St Stephen preceded by the Holy Innocents. 
 
 St Zeno 
 Andrea Mantegna, The Madonna enthroned with eight Angels, 
 and SS. Peter, Paul, John Evan., Augustine, Benedidt, Lawrence, 
 Gregory and John Bapt (over high altar). The painting in the 
 predella is a copy of the original. 
 
 344 
 
PICTURES AT VICENZA 
 
 VICENZA 
 
 The Cathedral 
 
 Montagna, B.V.M. and Child with SS. Mary Magdalene and 
 Lucia (in fourth chapel left). Our Lord with SS. Sebastian and John 
 Baptist (in same chapel). 
 
 Lorenzo, B.V.M. and Child with Saints in thirty-one compart- 
 ments on gold ground (1366) (in chapel five, right). The frescoes 
 in this chapel are attributed to Mantegna. 
 
 St Lorenzo 
 
 Mantegna, fresco of martyrdom of St Paul (in chapel left of 
 choir). 
 
 Montagna, a Pieta, between SS. Francis and Bernardino (above 
 altar in south transept). SS. Lorenzo and Vincenzo, with view of 
 a church in background (over altar in third chapel right). 
 
 La Santa Corona 
 
 Bart. Montagna, The Magdalene enthroned with saints (in second 
 chapel left). 
 
 Bassano, St Anthony giving alms (third chapel left). 
 
 Verda, a fourteenth-century Madonna crowned (in fourth chapel 
 left). 
 
 GidHanni Bellini, The Baptism (fifth chapel left). 
 
 Speranza, a fresco of B.V.M. and Donors (to left of entrance). 
 
 St Rocco 
 Buonconsiglio, B.V.M. and Child with SS. Peter and Paul, Vin- 
 cent Ferrer, and Sebastian (high-altar-piece). 
 
 St Stefano 
 Palma Vecchio, B.V.M. and Child with SS. George and Lucian 
 (in north transept) highly extolled by Cicognara. 
 
 Tintoretto, St Paul; restored from "abjedt squalor" by the Parish 
 Priest in 1804 (first chapel, left). 
 
 345 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 PADUA 
 
 The frescoes and paintings in the Baptistery of the Cathedral, 
 in the Arena Chapel and the Church of the Eremitani are described 
 on pp. 117 et seq. 
 
 Cathedral 
 
 Francesco Bassano, The Flight into Egypt and the Epiphany (in 
 sacristy), Sassoferrato, Head of the Madonna. Padovanino, B.V.M. 
 and Child (copied from Titian). 
 
 Si Antonio 
 Jacopo Avanzi and Altichieri da 7,evo, series of frescoes in 
 Chapel of St Felix (1376). J. Montagnano, The Crucifixion, with 
 SS. Sebastian, Gregory, Ursula, Bonaventura and twelve heads of 
 Prophets fon fifth pier, south). By an unknown Artist^ B.V.M. 
 and Child, with SS, Joseph and Chiara and a Franciscan Donor (on 
 second pier, north). 
 
 Chapel of St Giorgio 
 
 Altichieri and Jacopo del Avanzi, frescoes. 
 
 St Francesco 
 Girelamo da Santa Croce (i53o)> frescoes in second chapel on 
 south. 
 
 St Gaetano 
 Titian, a small half-figure of the B.V.M. (in chapel of Holy 
 Sepulchre). 
 
 Sta Giustina 
 Paolo Veronese, Martyrdom of the Patron (high-altar-piece). Luca 
 Giordano, Death of St Scolastica (chapel four, south). Palma Gio- 
 vane, St Benedift with SS. Placidus and Maurus (chapel five, 
 south). Tarodi, Dead Christ with B.V.M. (south) and St John 
 (chapel south of choir). 
 
 Sta Maria in Vanzo 
 Bartolommeo Montagna, B.V.M. and Child, with SS. Peter, 
 John Baptist, Catherine and Paul (high altar). Jacopo Bassano, The 
 
 346 
 
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PICTURES AT VENICE 
 Entombment (chapel to south of choir). Maganza, The Madonna, 
 with the Virgin Martyrs, Barbara, Agnes, Giustina, Catherine, 
 Lucia, ApoUonia and Cecilia (fourth chapel, south). 
 
 5/ Michele 
 Jacopo da Veronoy The Adoration of the Magi (1397). 
 
 VENICE 
 
 AFTER the churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo and 
 Sta Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, both described on page 
 33, the finest Pointed church in Venice is that of St 
 Stefano. As in the two churches above-named, the influ- 
 ence of the chief Order of Friars in the style of ecclesias- 
 tical architedlure is strongly shewn, not only in St Stefano, 
 but in many others, especially in the frequent use of the 
 apse as a termination for both choir and side chapels. St 
 Stefano, built about 1360 by a monastery of Austin 
 Friars, has a rich west front decorated with very delicate 
 ornaments in terra-cotta. The eastern apse extends over a 
 small canal, and is supported on a wide bridge-like arch. 
 Of the same type are St Gregorio and Sta Maria della 
 Carit^, both now desecrated. St Gregorio has a very beauti- 
 ful cloister of mid-fourteenth-century date, the columns of 
 which support, not a series of arches, but flat wooden lin- 
 tels. On the capital of each column rests a moulded 
 wooden corbel to diminish the bearing of the lintel — a 
 very charadteristic Venetian mode of construction, used, 
 not only for cloisters, but also for ground floors of houses, 
 upper loggias and other places, especially during the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 
 One of the most interesting early churches is that of St 
 Giacomo dall' Orio, built early in the thirteenth century 
 
 347 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 with a complicated many-columned plan, the aisles being 
 carried along the transepts as well as the nave. The roof is 
 a very good example of the wooden coved type, of which 
 the finest are at St Zeno and St Fermo at Verona, and 
 SS. Philip and James at Padua. One of the columns in the 
 south transept is a monolith of the precious Verde-antico, 
 of marvellous size and beauty, probably brought from 
 some Byzantine church. 
 
 Of the Early Renaissance, Venice exhibits some beauti- 
 ful examples in the western fa9ade of St Zaccaria, and the 
 little church of Sta Maria dei Miracoli. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, and even later, some very 
 noble churches of the Later Renaissance were built in 
 Venice by Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio and their 
 school. One of Sansovino's best churches — that of St 
 Geminiano — was destroyed at the beginning of the last 
 century in order to complete the west side of the Piazza 
 San Marco. The large church of St Giorgio Maggiore, on 
 an island opposite the Ducal Palace, was built by Palladio, 
 and may be taken as a fair example of the faults and 
 merits of his style. This church, and that of Sta Maria 
 della Salute, magnificently situated on a triangular piece of 
 ground at the junction of the Canal Grande with the 
 Canal della Giudecca, are, perhaps, the most familiar to us, 
 from their appearance in the general views of Venice. The 
 Salute church was built by Baldassare Longhena,in 1632, as 
 a thank-ofiering of the Venetian senate for the cessation of 
 the great plague in 1630. Though dull and heavy in de- 
 tail, it has a well-designed dome, and the ensemble of the 
 building is pleasing from its skilful arrangement. 
 
 Of the other churches built in Venice between the fif- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries, the following are the 
 
 348 
 
PICTURES AT VENICE 
 
 most remarkable: St Francesco della Vigna, begun in 1554 
 by Sansovino, and completed by Palladio; St Giorgio de' 
 Greci (the church of the Greek rite in Venice), by Sanso- 
 vino ; St Giovanni Crisostomo, by TuUio Lombardo (1489); 
 The Madonna dei Miracoli, a fusion of the Byzantine and 
 Italian styles, by Pietro Lombardo (1480-89); St Pietro 
 di Castello, by Smeraldi and Grapiglia (i 594-1 621); 
 II Redentore, considered one of Palladio's finest efforts 
 (begun 1577); St Salvatore,by TuUio Lombardo and San- 
 sovino (c. 1534); and St Sebastiano, by F. Castiglione, of 
 Cremona (1506). 
 
 Most of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century churches 
 in Venice are in the worst possible taste, extravagantly pre- 
 tentious in style, and become very tiresome upon repetition. 
 
 A large number of the Venetian churches still possess 
 campanili of great beauty, and ranging from the eleventh 
 to the sixteenth centuries. Of these the fourteenth century 
 ones attached to St Giacomo di Rialto, and Sta Maria 
 Gloriosa dei Frari may be singled out for special admi- 
 ration. 
 
 Almost every church in Venice contains one or more 
 specimens of the work of some great artist, those men- 
 tioned in the annexed list being the most worthy of 
 attention: 
 
 Sta Maria del Carmine 
 Cima da Conegliano, The Nativity (at second altar, right). Tin- 
 toretto, The Presentation in the Temple (at last altar, right). Lor. 
 Lotto, St Nicholas (at second altar, left). 
 
 St Cassiano 
 Tintoretto, The Crucifixion, Descent into Hades and Resurrec- 
 tion (in apse). Palma Vecchio, St John Baptist and four Saints (at 
 first altar, right). 
 
 349 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Sfa Caterina 
 
 Paolo Veronese, The Marriage of St Catherine, St Francesco della 
 Vigna. Paolo Veronese, The Resurreftion (in fourth chapel, right). 
 Giovanni Bellini, The B.V.M. and Child, with four Saints and a 
 Worshipper, said to be the painter's portrait, (altar-piece of the 
 Cappella Santa). 
 
 fac. del Fiore, altarpiece in sacristy. 
 
 Sta tMaria Assunta del Gesuiti 
 Titian, The Martyrdom of St Lawrence'(in first chapel, left); 
 The Assumption (in north transept). Tintoretto, The Circumcision 
 (in sacristy). 
 
 St Giacomo di 'Rialto 
 Titian, The Martyrdom of St Lawrence (in first chapel, left). 
 Tintoretto, The Assumption (in second chapel, on left). Marriage 
 of the Virgin and Annunciation, in first chapel on right. 
 
 SS. Giolpanni e Paolo 
 
 Carpaccio or Giovanni Bellini, The B.V.M. and Saints (above 
 first altar, to right). Vivarini, St Augustine, seated (north transept). 
 T^cco Marconi, Christ between SS. Peter and Andrew (to right of 
 entrance). Lorenzo Lotto, St Antonio, Abp of Florence, distributing 
 alms (to left of entrance). Paolo Veronese, Adoration of the Shep- 
 herds (second chapel, left of altar). Carpaccio, restored by Qirolamo 
 da Udine, The Coronation of the Virgin, with many figures (first 
 chapel on left;. 
 
 St Giobbe 
 
 Gentile Bellini, The Doge, Crist. Moro. 
 
 Giovanni 'Bellini, B.V.M. with SS. John Baptist and Catherine. 
 
 Vivarini, The Annunciation (all in the sacristy). 
 
 St Giorgio Maggiore 
 Bassano, The Nativity (first altar, right). 
 
 Tintoretto, The martyrdom of Saints; the Virgin crowned (at 
 third and fourth altars); the Falling of the Manna, and the Last 
 Supper (in central chapel). 
 
 350 
 
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PICTURES AT VENICE 
 
 St GiolDanni in Bragola 
 Fharini, SS. Martin, Jerome and Andrew- Paris fordone. The 
 Last Supper. Ctma da Conegliano, SS. Helena and Constantina (in 
 the sacristy); the Baptism of our Lord (high altar). 
 
 St Giovanni Crisostomo 
 Qiov. Bellini, St Jerome and two Saints (first altar, right). Seb. 
 del Piombo, St John Chrysostom and other Saints (high altar). 
 
 Sta Maria dei Fran 
 
 Salviati, Presentation in the Temple with SS. Paul, Helen, 
 Bernardino, Augustine, Mark and two others. Vivarini, B.V.M. 
 and Child with SS. Andrew, Nicholas, Paul and Peter (1482). 
 Qiovanni Bellini. B.V.M. and Child with SS. Ambrose, Augustine, 
 James and Benedift (1488) (over altar in sacristy). Salviati, The 
 Assumption (over high altar), Bernardino Licinio. B.V.M. and 
 Child and saints (over altar of chapel left of high altar). Vivarini, 
 SS. Mark, John Baptist, Jerome, Augustine and Matthew (1474), 
 (altarpiece on west wall of north transept). Titian, The Pala dei Pesari. 
 The Virgin, seated on an elevated situation within noble archi- 
 tefture, holding the Divine Infant, who is regarding St Francis ; 
 below are St Peter with a book, and St George, bearing a stan- 
 dard on which is displayed the Pesaro arms, with those of the 
 Pope Alexander VL The Donatorio, a bishop, and five other 
 members of the Pesaro family are introduced. 
 
 The coUeftion of tombs in this church, of all dates from the 
 thirteenth century downwards, is perhaps unrivalled in Europe. 
 
 La Jitadonna delF Orto 
 Tintoretto, The Last Judgement; The Worshipping of the Gol- 
 den Calf; The Martyrdom of St Agnes. Cima da Conegliano, 
 St John Baptist and other saints. Vandyke, The Martyrdom of 
 St Lawrence. 
 
 351 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Sta tMaria della Misericordia 
 Cima da Cawf^f/MBa, Tobias and the Angel. 
 
 St Louis of Toulouse 
 Tintoretto, The Epiphany. Palma GitfVane, The Raising of 
 Lazarus. 
 
 Sia Maria Formosa 
 Palma il Vecchio, St Barbara and other Saints (first altar, right). 
 
 Sta Maria della Salute 
 
 Luca Giordano, The Purification, Assumption and Nativity of 
 the B.V.M. (in three first chapels, right). Titian, The eight 
 smaller compartments on vault of choir; the evangelists and 
 dodlors. // Padovino, The Madonna della Salute. Tintoretto, The 
 Marriage at Cana. Palma Giovane, Samson and Jonas (all in 
 sacristy). 
 
 St Pantaleone 
 
 Paolo Veronese, St Pantaleone holding a Child (in second chapel, 
 right). G. and J. da Murano, The Coronation of the Virgin (chapel, 
 left of high altar). 
 
 11 Redentore 
 
 F. Bassam, The Nativity (first altar, right). r?«/or««». The Flagel- 
 lation (third altar, right); The Ascension (first on left). Giov. Bellini, 
 B.V.M. and Child with tvi^o Angels; The Madonna between SB. 
 John Evan, and Catherine; The Madonna between SS. Jerome 
 and Francis. 
 
 St Sahatore 
 
 Titian, The Annunciation (at high altar). Qiov. Bellini, The 
 Supper at Emmaus (in chapel, left of high altar). 
 
 St Sebashano 
 Taolo Veronese, The roof of this church is almost covered with 
 his paintings, of which the principal subjefts are taken from the 
 Book of Esther. This church is the burial-place of the painter 
 (d. May 14, 1588). The paintings in the Cappella Maggiore are 
 entirely the work of Veronese; also those on the shutters of the 
 organ. 
 
 352 
 
PICTURES AT BOLOGNA 
 
 St Zaccaria 
 
 Qievanni 'Bellini^ The Virgin and Child, with four Saints 
 (second altar, left); The Circumcision (in the choir). Tintoretto, 
 Birth of John the Baptist (third altar, left). 
 
 Jacopo Bellini, Frescoes on semi-dome of apse (third altar, left). 
 
 FERRARA 
 
 The Qathedral 
 
 Qarofah, B.V .M. Jsf Child £sf two female saints (third chapel,right). 
 Qosimo Tura, Martyrdoms of Saints (fourth chapel, right). 
 Bastianino, The Last Judgement (in semi-dome of apse). Cosimo 
 Tura, The Annunciation (chapel to right of choir). Francia, Coro- 
 nation of B.V.M. with ten Saints and an Innocent (sixth chapel, 
 to left). Garofalo, Madonna with SS. Paul, Giustina, Catherine 
 and another. 
 
 St Benedetto 
 
 ^osso ©MH, A Crucifixion. Scarsellino. Martyrdom of St Catherine; 
 Assumption; Luca Longhi, The Circumcision. 
 
 St Cristoforo 
 O^colo ^sselli, The Mysteries, in twelve chapels. 
 
 St Paolo 
 Scarsellino, The Descent of the Holy Ghost. "Bastianino, The 
 Resurrection. 
 
 BOLOGNA 
 TJbe Cathedral 
 Fiorini and Aretusi, Christ's Charge to St Peter (in vault of apse). 
 Lodovico Caracci, The Annunciation (on arch above high altar). 
 Donato Creti, B.V.M. with Infant Saviour in clouds surrounded by 
 Angels, with St Ignatius before her (in Chapel of the Sacrament). 
 Ercole Grazini, The Baptism of our Lord (in Baptistery). 
 
 St Bartolommeo di Porta 
 Led. Caracci, St Carlo Borrommeo (second chapel, right). Albania, 
 The Annunciation "del bell'Angelo" (in fourth chapel right); by the 
 
 353 23 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 same, The Nativity; Dream of St Joseph, Franceschini, The Mar- 
 tyrdom of St Bartholomew (over high altar). Quide Reni, B.V.M. 
 and Child (in north transept). 
 
 St Bartolommeo di Reno 
 Lod. Caracci, The Circumcision and Adoration of the Magi. 
 
 Sfa Cecilia 
 Frescoes, by early Bolognese Artists^ F. Francia, Lor. Costa, Q. 
 Francia, C^iodarolo and Amico Aspertini. 
 
 The Celestini Church 
 Lucio Massari, The Saviour appearing to the Magdalene in form 
 of a Dove. 
 
 Corpus Domini 
 tM. Franceschini and L. Quaint, Frescoes in Cupola; Death of 
 St Joseph. Lod, Caracci, Burial of the Virgin. 
 
 St Domenico 
 Tiarini, The Child brought to Life (in sixth chapel, right). Quido, 
 The Glory of Paradise (fresco in apse). Leonello Spada, St Dominic 
 Burning the Heretical Books (on left nearest the iron gate). Quer- 
 cino, St Thomas Aquinas writing on subjeft of the Eucharist (tenth 
 chapel, right). Luca Cangiasi, The Nativity (in sacristy). Leonelh 
 Spada, St Jerome (in sacristy). Filippino Lippi, Marriage of St 
 Catherine (chapel right of choir). Gia. Francia, altarpiece with SS. 
 Michael, Dominic, Francis and our Lord (in chapel adjoining north 
 transept). Lod. Caracci, Guido and B. Cesi (a series of small paint- 
 ings over altar in chapel of the Madonna del Rosario). 
 
 St Giacomo tMaggiore 
 Cavedoni, Christ appearing to Giov. da Facondo (fifth chapel, 
 right). B. Passerotti, B.V.M. and Saints (in sixth chapel, right). 
 Innocenzo da Imola, The Marriage of St Catherine (in eighth chapel, 
 right). F. Francia, B.V.M. and Child with four Angels and four 
 Saints (altarpiece of chapel behind choir). 
 
 St Giovanni in Monte 
 Quercino, St Joseph with the In&nt Christ; St Jerome (third 
 chapel, right). Lor. Costa, The Virgin enthroned with Saints. 
 
 354 
 
PICTURES AT RAVENNA 
 
 Sf Stefano 
 Jacopo Tintoretto, Christ washing the feet of the Disciples; St 
 John the Baptist with St Jerome; The Last Supper (all in sacristy). 
 Angels playing on musical instruments, (seventh chapel, right); 
 B.V.M. with the Almighty and the Saviour above, and Saints 
 below (in choir). 
 
 St Gregorio 
 Annibale Caracci, Baptism of our Lord. 
 
 Sta Maria de' Sef>>i 
 Quidoy St Carlo (a fresco — painted gratuitously in one day; in 
 ninth chapel, left). Innocenzo da Imola, The Annunciation (in the 
 seventh chapel, left). 
 
 St Paolo 
 Quercino, St Gregory showing the Souls in Purgatory to the 
 Almighty (above altar in south transept). 
 
 St Petronio 
 Costa, The Madonna and Saints (in seventh chapel, left). Tiarini, 
 St Barbara (over altar in tenth chapel, left). 
 
 5/ Sahatore 
 Tiarini, The Nativity (in sixth chapel, right). Innocenzo da 
 Imola, The Crucifixion with Saints (in seventh chapel, right). 
 Qarofalo, St John Baptist kneeling before Zacharias (in first chapel, 
 left). 
 
 SS. Vitale e Agricola 
 F. Francia, The Madonna surrounded by Angels playing on 
 musical instruments (in first chapel, left). 
 
 RAVENNA 
 
 Cathedral 
 
 Guido, The Fall of the Manna; The Meeting of Melchisedec 
 
 and Abraham (in chapel of the Holy Sacrament). The Angel 
 
 bringing food to Elijah (a fresco at entrance of sacristy). Carlo 
 
 Bonone, The Grand Banquet of Ahasuerus (over great entrance). 
 
 355 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Benevenuti, Death of St Peter Chrysologus; Camuccini, Consecration 
 of the Church bjr Ursus (both in choir). 
 
 Sfa Agata 
 Francesco da Cotignola,The Crucifixion. Luca LonghifSS. Agatha, 
 Catherine and Cecilia (one of his best works). 
 
 St Domenico 
 D^colo Rondinelloy The Virgin and Child with SS. Jerome, Do- 
 minic, Joseph, Francis of Assisi; The Annunciation; SS. Dominic 
 and Peter; The Virgin and Child with the Magdalene and other 
 Saints. Luca Longhi, The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary; The 
 Invention of the Cross. Benedictus Jrmtni, B.V.M. and Child 
 with Saints. 
 
 St Francesco 
 Sacchi d* Inula, The Madonna with the Donatoria. 
 
 St Giolfanni Battista 
 Francesco Lenghi, B.V.M. and Child with SS. Clement and 
 Jerome; B.V.M. with SS. Matthew and Francis of Assisi. 
 
 Sta Maria in Porto 
 Palma Gievane, The Martyrdom of St Mark (third chapel, right). 
 Luca Longhi, B.V.M. with St Augustine and other Saints (fifth 
 chapel, left). 
 
 St Romualdo 
 (Chapel of the College of Ravenna) 
 Qiambattista Barbini, frescoes in cupola; St Romualdo (in choir); 
 frescoes in first chapel left of entrance. Quercino, St Romualdo 
 (second chapel, left). Franceschini, SS. Bartholomew and Severus 
 (first chapel, right). Carb Cignani, St Benedift (second chapel, 
 right). Francesco da Cotignola, The Raising of Lazarus (in sacristy). 
 Luca Longhi, The Marriage at Cana (in refedlory of adjoining 
 convent). 
 
 St Vitalis 
 Francesco Qessi, St Benedidl. Andrea Barbiani, St Gertrude. Luca 
 Longhi, B.V.M. enthroned (in sacristy). Barbara Longhi, Sta 
 Agata(in sacristy). Francesco Longhi, The Annunciation (in sacristy). 
 
 356 
 
PICTURES AT MODENA AND PARMA 
 
 Qiambattista Barbiani, Martyrdom of St Erasmus (in sacristy). 
 Camillo Procauini, Martyrdom of SS. Philip and James (in sacristy). 
 
 Sia Maria in Porto Fuori 
 Pupils ofQiottOy many frescoes. 
 
 MODENA 
 
 The Cathedral 
 
 'Dosso ^ossi. The Madonna with Saints (in fourth chapel left). 
 
 St Pietro 
 Dosso Dossi, The Assumption (at third altar south). 
 
 PARMA 
 Tbe Cathedral 
 Correggio, Fresco of the Assumption in the dome; others by 
 Lattanzio Qatnbara, J. Loschi and B. Qrassi (fifteenth century). 
 
 St Giovanni E^angelista 
 Correggio, Fresco of a Vision of St John in the cupola. G. Fran- 
 da, The Infant Saviour adored by the B.V.M. and St Joseph 
 second chapel, right). G. Mazzola, St James at the feet of the 
 Virgin (in fourth chapel, right). Parmegianino, The Transfigu- 
 ration (at extremity of choir) } The Virgin offering a Palm Branch 
 to SS. Catherine and Nicholas (in fourth chapel, left). 
 
 La tMadonna delta Steccata 
 Parmegianino, Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law (to left 
 of entrance to choir) ; Adam and Eve and the Sybils, and The 
 Virtues (over the organ). Anselmi, The Coronation of the Virgin 
 (on vault over high altar). 
 
 St Alessandro 
 Parmegianino, The Virgin giving the Palm of Martyrdom to 
 Sta Giustina (over high altar). 
 
 <y/ Lodovico 
 Correggio, Mythological subjedts in the dome of the Camera di 
 San Paolo. 
 
 357 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 PIACENZA 
 
 ^he Cathedral 
 Guercino and Morazzone, frescoes in the dome. Ludovici Caracci, 
 frescoes in choir and on vault of apse; St Martin dividing his cloak 
 with the Beggar (in chapel left of choir). 
 
 Sta Maria di Campagna 
 Pordenone, frescoes in cupola and other parts. 
 
 CREMONA 
 Sia Agata 
 Qervasio Qatti, St Sebastian (1574). Bernardino Campi, The 
 Assumption (1542) and four frescoes from Life of St Agatha. 
 
 Cathedral 
 Boccaccino, frescoes in north side of nave, eight scenes from Life 
 of B.V.M. (1514). 5f»zi», The Epiphany and Presentation (1515). 
 Altohello Mehne, The Flight into Egypt and Massacre of the Inno- 
 cents (15 1 7). Boccaccino, Christ disputing with the Doftors 
 (1518); A Madonna of the fourteenth century. Boccaccino, Christ 
 and Four Patron Saints of Cremona (i 506) (on vault of choir); The 
 Annunciation (on front of easternmost arch). Mekne, Romanino and 
 Pordenone, frescoes on south wall of nave. Luca Cattapani, Gregory 
 XIV with SS. Anthony of Padua and Paul before the Madonna (in 
 chapel three, left). Pordenone, Madonna and Saints with Donor (in 
 chapel one, right). Cattapani, Crucifixion with SS. Fermo and 
 Jerome (1593), (chapel three, right). Bernardino and Qiulio Campi, 
 several paintings in Chapel of Blessed Sacrament. Qiorgie Caselli, 
 frescoes of Old Testament subjefts in south transept (c. 1383). 
 
 St Abbondio 
 tMahsio and Sammachini, frescoes in chief cupola from designs ot 
 Qiulio Campi. 
 
 358 
 
PICTURES AT BRESCIA 
 
 BERGAMO 
 
 Sla JUaria Maggiore 
 
 Lorenzo Lotto, B.V.M. and Child with ten Saints (1516). This 
 is the largest picture painted by him, and includes portraits of the 
 founder of the church, Alessandro and Barbara Martinego. Borgo- 
 gnone, a Pieta. 
 
 5/ Spirito 
 
 Lotto, B.V.M. and iChild with Saints (1521). Previtali, The 
 same subjedt. Agostino da Caversegno, The Resurrection. Previtali, 
 SS. John Baptist, Nicholas, Bartholomew, Joseph and Dominic. 
 Scipio Landensis, B.V.M. and Child and SS. Peter and Paul. Bor- 
 gognone. The Descent of the Holy Spirit (1508). 
 
 St Bernardino 
 Lotto, B.V.M. and Saints (1521). 
 
 St Alessandro della Qroce 
 IMoroni, Coronation of the Virgin. Lotto, The Holy Trinity (in 
 sacristy). Moroni, The Crucifixion (in sacristy). Previtali, Six Fran- 
 ciscan Saints (in sacristy). Qirolamo da St Croce, Coronation of the 
 Virgin (in sacristy). 
 
 The Cathedral 
 g. Bellini, a small Madonna. Moroni, B.V.M. and Saints (1576). 
 Marco d" Oggiono, Head of our Lord. 
 
 BRESCIA 
 
 Old Qathedral 
 Pietro Rosa, St Martin dividing his Cloak with the Beggar. 
 Bernardino Qandini, Guardian Angels. Moretto, Abraham and Mel- 
 chisedec, Last Supper, SS. Mark and Luke, Elijah Asleep, Abra- 
 ham and Isaac. Romanino, Descent of the Manna, Visitation and 
 Nativity of B.V.M. Moretto, The Assumption. Moronei, The 
 Flagellation. Qossali and Gaudini, Miraculous Apparition of our 
 Lord to Constantine. 
 
 359 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 New Cathedral 
 Palma Giovane, B.V.M. and SS. Carlo Borromeo and Fran 
 cesco and Bp Marinzorzi as donor. 
 
 Sta tAjira 
 
 Titian (?), The Woman taken in Adultery. Paolo Veronese, 
 
 Martyrdom of Sta Afra. Tintoretto, The Transfiguration. Palma 
 
 Giovane, SS. Faustina and Jovita. Bassano, Baptism of Sta Afra. 
 
 Procaccini, B.V.M. and Child, with SS. Carlo Borromeo and Latinus. 
 
 Sta Agata 
 Foppa the Tounger, Nativity and Adoration of the Magi. C^Ssto 
 da Lodi, Martyrdom of St Agatha. 
 
 St Alessandro 
 Fra Angelica da Fiesole, The Annunciation (1432), Vincenzo 
 Civerchioy Scenes from Life of B.V.M. in a predella. 
 
 St Clemente 
 ^Moretto, five paintings. 
 
 St Faustina Maggiore 
 Giambara, The Nativity. 
 
 St Francesco 
 Romanino, B.V.M. and Child, with St Francis, Anthony of 
 Padua, Bonaventura and Louis (1502). Moretto, SS. Jerome, 
 Margaretjiand Francis (1530). Francesco da Prato di Caravaggio, 
 The Marriage of the Virgin (1547). 
 
 St Gio')>anni Elpangelista 
 iMoretto, Massacre of the Innocents; B.V.M. and Child with 
 Saints (at high altar). CMaganza, Two Prophets and Two Scenes 
 from Life of St John Baptist. Giovanni Bellini, The Maries weep- 
 ing over the Body of the Saviour, ^gmanino. The Marriage of the 
 Virgin. Lorenzo C^sta, SS. Biagio, Margaret, Peter Martyr, Mary 
 Magdalene and Barbara. 
 
 360 
 
PICTURES AT PAVIA 
 
 Sta Maria Calchera 
 3toretto, SS. Jerome and Catherine. Romanino, St ApoUinaris 
 at Mass, attended by SS. Faustinus and Jovita. CoHsto da Lodi^ The 
 Visitation. 
 
 Sta tMaria delle Grazie 
 Pietro Rosa, St Barbara kneeling before her Father in expedation 
 of Death (1574 . Procaccini, Nativity of B.V.M. Ferramoh, The 
 Virgin and Child. 
 
 Sta Maria dei Miracoli 
 Sidoretto, St Nicholas leading four Children before the Throne of 
 the Madonna. 
 
 SS. Nazario e Qe/so 
 Titian, The high-altar-piece. 3\doretto, Coronation of the Virgin 
 and the Transfiguration. Foppa the Younger, Martyrdom of SS. 
 Nazario e Celso. 
 
 PAVIA 
 St 3\darim 
 C'sare da Sesto, B.V.M. with SS. Jerome and John Baptist. 
 
 The Certosa 
 Camillo Procaccini, St Veronica (1605) (first chapel right). 3Ia- 
 crino d'Alba, B.V.M. and Child with four Angels adoring Infant 
 Saviour; and The Resurredtion (second chapel right, dedicated to 
 St Hugh of Lincoln). Borgognone, The Evangelists. Qarlo Cornara, 
 Vision of St Benedidt (third chapel right). Borgognone, The Cruci- 
 fixion, with the Maries (1490) (fourth chapel right). Borgognone, 
 St Sirus enthroned with SS. Stephen, Lawrence and two Bishops 
 (fifth chapel to right). Guercino, SS. Peter and Paul adoring the 
 In&nt Saviour (sixth chapel to right). Pietro Perugino, The 
 Eternal Father holding a globe, surmounted by Cherubim. Bor- 
 gognone, The four Latin Doftors (second chapel, left). Crespi, 
 The B.V.M. and Child, with SS. Carlo, Borromeo and Bruno (at 
 end of south transept). Bramantino, The Family of Gian Galeazzo 
 Visconti, the founder. Borgognone, Coronation of the B.V.M. (in 
 apse of north transept). Crespi, frescoes in choir. 
 
 361 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 NOVARA 
 The Cathedral 
 Gaudenmo Ferrari. The Holy Family with SS. Catherine, 
 Gaudentins and Agabio. Below is a Pieti. Lanini, Crucifixion 
 with SS. Mary Magdalene, Benedidl and Gaudentius. 
 
 St Gaudenzio 
 Gaudenuo Ferrari (1515), The Nativity and Annunciation; 
 the B.V.M. and Child, with SS. Ambrose, Gaudenzio, Agabio and 
 a canonized Portrait of the Painter; SS. Edelcesio and Paul; SS. 
 Peter and John Baptist. Morazzone, The Deposition. Moncalvo, 
 The Circumcision. Ribera (?)> St Jerome (in sacristy). 
 
 ASTI 
 
 The Cathedral 
 A large and imposing cruciform strudlure almost entirely oT 
 red brick. There is a low odlagonal lantern at the crossing and a 
 fine massive campanile on the south side of the choir. The struc- 
 ture dates from between 1323 and 1348, but although presenting 
 some fine portions, as e.g., the south porch, it cannot as a whole 
 compare for a moment with contemporary churches in England, 
 France and Germany. The interior is spoilt by the painting with 
 which it is completely bedaubed, but the ensemble is grand and 
 imposing. Macrino d^ Alba. The Virgin and Child with SS. John 
 Baptist, John Evangelist, Paul and another; The Marriage of 
 the Virgin. 
 
 CASALE MONFERRATO 
 Cathedral 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Baptism of our Lord. 
 
 VERCELLI 
 
 5/ Cristofero 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari, Frescoes, in some of which he was assisted 
 by his pupil, Lanini. Perhaps the most remarkable series of such 
 works in Northern Italy (i 532-1 534). The Madonna enthroned 
 
 362 
 
lU 
 
 
 T. 
 
 u 
 
 £. 
 
 E 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 r. 
 
PICTURES AT MILAN 
 on panel, attended by saints, amongst whom St Christopher, as 
 patron of the church, is conspicuous in front. Lanini, The Virgin 
 enthroned with St Peter Martyr (in sacristy). 
 
 Sta Caterina 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari^ The Marriage of St Catherine. 
 
 MILAN 
 5t ^Ambrose 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Deposition. Luini, The Three Marys 
 and our Lord bearing His Cross. Luini (?), The B.V.M. and 
 Child, with SS. Ambrosei and Jerome; and with SS. Joachim and 
 John the Baptist. "Bdrgognone, Christ disputing with the Doftors. 
 Luini, Ecce Homo with Angels. 
 
 StEustorgio 
 ^orgognone. The Virgin with Infant Saviour and Two Saints 
 (in first chapel, right). 
 
 St Giorgio in Plazzo 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari, St Jerome (in first chapel, right). S. Luini, 
 The Deposition (over the altar), and The Ecce Homo (on one of 
 the piers of the third chapel, right). 
 
 St Lorenzo 
 
 A. Luini, The Baptism of our Lord (over first altar, right). 
 
 St Marco 
 Lomazzo, The Virgin and Child with Saints (in third chapel, 
 right). 
 
 Sta tMaria del Carmine 
 
 B. Luini, Fresco of the Madonna with SS. Roch and Sebastian. 
 
 Sta Maria presso San C^lso 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Baptism of our Lord (in fourth recess, 
 right). Paris Bordone, St Jerome, kneeling before the In&nt 
 Saviour (in principal chapel of south transept). Borgognone, The 
 Madonna and Child (in first chapel, left). 
 
 St Maria delle Grazie 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari, Frescoes (in fourth chapel, on the right). 
 Leonardo da Vinci, the world-renowned Cenacolo, or Last 
 
 363 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Supper, on the wall of the refeftory of the Convent (begun 1493). 
 Montorfano^ A fresco of the Crucifixion (l495)> at opposite end 
 of refedlorjr. 
 
 Sta Maria della Passione 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari^ The Last Supper (in chapel of north tran- 
 sept). Salmeggia, Christ in the Garden (in same chapel). B. Luini, 
 The Pieti (over high altar). Crespt and Carlo Urbini, Shutters 
 of the organ. Crespt, The Four Doctors, and the eight piftures 
 fixed to the great piers representing scenes in the Passion. 
 
 St Maurizio CMag^ore 
 B, Luini, Paintings on the great screen which divides the church 
 into two parts; a most remarkable and almost unique example of 
 such treatment. Other works of A. and B. Luini are the frescoes 
 in the second and third chapels on the right hand side. 
 
 St Sebastiano 
 Bramantinoy The Martyrdom of St Sebastian. 
 
 St Sepokro 
 Bramantino, The Dead Christ, mourned by the Marys. 
 
 St SimpHciano 
 Borgognone, The Coronation of the Virgin (on vault of choir). 
 
 St Tomaso in terra mala 
 A. Luini, The Magdalene. G. C. Trocaccini, St Carlo Borro- 
 meo. Sabatelli the Younger, St Anthony. 
 
 364 
 
365 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Agincourt. Histoire de I'Art par les Monuments depuis sa Deca- 
 dence au IV Siicle, jusqu'^ son Renouvellement au XVI (1812- 
 1823). £»0»amin. Metropolitana di Ravenna Architettura (1768). 
 Chapuy. Le Moyen Age Monumental et Arch&logique (1843- 
 1847). Chiese Principal! di Europa. Ciampini. Vetera Monu- 
 menta,3vols (i757).C/«jwara.Storia della Scultura in Italia. 3 vols 
 (i8i3).X'flrf««. Etudes surl'ArchitedtureLombarde(i865-i882). 
 Du Sommerard. Les Arts au Moyen Age (1838-1846). Ferrark. 
 Monument! sacri e profeni dell' imperiale e reale Basilica de Sant' 
 Ambrogio in Milano (1824). Gailhabaud. Monuments anciens ct 
 modernes {1850). Gutensohn und Kjiapp- Die Basiliken des 
 Christlichen Roms (1823-1842). Heider und Eitelberger. Mittel- 
 alterliche Kunstdenkmale des Osterreichischen Kaiserstaates 
 (i860.) Isabelle. Les Edifices Circulaires et les D6mes, dassds 
 par ordre chronologique (1855). Knight [H. Gaily). Ecclesiastical 
 Architedlure of Italy (i 842-1 844). Osten. Die Bauwerke in der 
 Lombardei, vom bis VII zum XIV Jahrh* (1846). Selvatico. 
 Architettura e Scultura in Venezia (1847). JViebeking. Analyse 
 descriptive des Monuments de I'Antiquit^ (1838). 
 
 The anthoris much indebted to Mr Rudolph Dircks, librarian to the 
 Royal Institute of British Architefts, for the unvarying courtesy with 
 which he has facilitated his researches. 
 
367 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Addison, Joseph, on Sta Giustina, 
 Padua, 132, and Milan Cathe- 
 dral, 330. 
 
 Agata, Sta, Ravenna, 229. 
 
 Alberti, Leon Battista, 43. 
 
 Ambrose, St, Milan, 305. 
 
 Ambrosian Rite, The, 338. 
 
 Anastasia, Sta, Verona, 83. 
 
 Andrea, St,Vercelli,3 j ; Mantua,44. 
 
 Antonio, St, Padua, 127. 
 
 Apollinaris, St, in Classe, Ravenna, 
 250. 
 
 Apollinaris Nuovo, St, Ravenna, 
 240. 
 
 Arena, Chapel of the, Padua, 120. 
 
 Arians, The, 210; churches built 
 for at Ravenna, 237, 239, 240. 
 
 Assisi, St Francis at, 33, 88, 261. 
 
 Asti, Baptistery at, 40; Cathedral, 
 362 
 
 Augustine, St, Shrine of, at Pavia, 
 300. 
 
 Bamberg Cathedral, 4. 
 
 Baptisteries, 2 1 6; at Asti, 40; Cre- 
 mona, 285; Novara, 39; Padua, 
 116; Parma, 227; Ravenna, 212, 
 238; Verona, 78. 
 
 Basilica, The, its origin and develop- 
 ment, 17. 
 
 Bells, 6t. 
 
 Bergamo,27 ;ColleoniChapelat,42 ; 
 St Tomaso in Limine, near, 40. 
 
 Bologna, 176; Leaning Towers, 
 176; St Stefano, 178; St Sepol- 
 cro, 179; SS. Pietro e Paolo, 
 180; the Atrio di Pilato, 18 1 ; 
 cloisters, 1 8 1 ; St Domenico, 1 84; 
 St Francesco, 186; reredos in. 
 
 188; St Petronio, 189; western 
 fa9ade of, 190; external fea- 
 tures of 192; interior, 193; 
 stained glass, 196; the Cathe- 
 dral, 200. 
 
 Borromeo, St Carlo, 332. 
 
 Borromini, 185. 
 
 Brescia, Old and new Cathedrals at, 
 
 Brick and marble architefiure, 33, 
 
 62,95, 256. 
 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 43. 
 Burges,W., 38. 
 Butterfield, W., 9, 23 1. 
 Byzantine Art, influence of in Italy, 
 
 21, 146, 206, 222, 244. 
 
 Campanili, 63, 107, 257; at Ve- 
 rona, 66; Vicenza, 107; Mo- 
 dena, 265; Cremona, 283. 
 
 Casale Montferrato, 26. 
 
 Cathedrals — Bamberg, 4; Bologna, 
 200; Cremona, 282; Ferrara, 
 169; Milan, 310, 323;Modena, 
 263; Monza, 318; Novara, 39; 
 Padua, 116; Parma, 272; Pavia, 
 301; Piacenza, 279; Ratisbon, 
 5; Ravenna, 217. 
 
 Certosa, The, near Pavia, 285. 
 
 Chrysostom, St John, 99. 
 
 Churches — ^at Asti, 40; Bergamo, 
 27; Bologna, 178; Milan, 305; 
 Novara, 39; Padua, 120; Pavia, 
 289; Ravenna, 204; Venice, 33 ; 
 Vercelli, 34; Verona, 83 ; Vicen- 
 za, III. 
 
 Ciborium, The, 314; at St Mark's, 
 Venice, i63;atStAmbrose's,Mi- 
 lan, 313. 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Circular churches, 39. 
 
 Classical style in Italy, its revival 
 
 and ascendancy, 42. 
 CoUeoni Chapel, The, at Bergamo, 
 
 +2. 
 Cologne, 3, 
 
 Corona, La Santa, Vicenza, iii. 
 Correggio, 275. 
 Cremona Cathedral, 282; The Tor- 
 
 razzo, 283; The Baptistery, 285. 
 Croce, Giovanni, 161. 
 Crypts, 94, 96, 270. 
 
 Dies IrsE, The, J. 
 
 Domenico, St, Bologna, 184. 
 
 Domes, 13 s, 148. 
 
 Dominican Order and its influence 
 
 on ecclesiastical art, 1 8 2 ; churches 
 
 of the, at Bologna, 1 84; Venice, 
 
 33; and Verona, 85. 
 Doorways and porches at Bologna, 
 
 190; Ferrara, 169; Milan, 308; 
 
 Parma, 277; Ravenna, 227; 
 
 Trent, 50; and Verona, 90, 
 
 91. 97- 
 Dragonetti, Domenico, 1 10, 1 34. 
 
 Eremitani, Church of the, Padua, 
 124; frescoes and altarpiece in, 
 124. 
 
 Fa;ades, 89, 90, 97, 106, 1 1 1, 1 5 1, 
 169, 266, 285, 292, 296. 
 
 Fermo, St, Verona, 96. 
 
 Ferrara Cathedral, 169. 
 
 Florence, St Miniato, 93. 
 
 Fonts, 217; at Parma, 278; Ra- 
 venna, 215; Verona, 79. 
 
 Fosca, Sta, Torcello, 141. 
 
 Francesco St, Bologna, 186; Ra- 
 venna, 233. 
 
 Frari church at Venice, 33,96. 
 
 Frescoes and wall-paintings, 118; 
 
 341-364; at Padua, 118, 124; 
 Parma, 275 ; Verona, 88, 94, 97. 
 
 Gall StjSchool of church music at,7 5 . 
 Galla Flacidia, Empress, 210, 221, 
 
 22$; tomb of, at Ravenna, 222. 
 Gaudenzio, St, Novara, 39, 44. 
 German and Italian church archi- 
 
 teflure, their connexion, 260, 
 
 263, 290. 
 Ghirlandina, The, Modena, 265. 
 Giocondo, Fra, 61. 
 Giotto, works by, at Padua, 121, 
 Giovanni e Paolo, SS., Venice, 33. 
 Giustina, Sta, Padua, 131. 
 Gray and Walpole at Reggio, 27 1. 
 Gregorian Chant, The, 75. 
 Guido, 185. 
 
 Italian Church Architeflure, sketch 
 of, 8-47; various schools of, 13; 
 Oriental influence upon, 2 1 ; 
 the Ravennese style, 22; the 
 Lombardic, 24, 256; the Vene- 
 tian, 29, 33; the Veronese, 29; 
 the Complete Gothic, 30 ; charac- 
 teristics of Italian Gothic, 41; 
 the Renaissance, 42, 81 ; the 
 Baroque, 45 ; Campanili, 63 ; 
 grouping, 80; planning, 83; 
 brick constru£lion, 95; defefts of 
 Italian Gothic, 195; Teutonic 
 influence upon, 258, 260, 263, 
 290. 
 
 Italy, pleasurable reminiscences of, 
 46. 
 
 Leaning towers at Bologna, 1 76. 
 Lombardy, architedhire of, 24, 256, 
 
 271, 291, 295. 
 Lorenzo, St, Verona, 100; Vicenza, 
 
 112. 
 
 368 
 
INDEX 
 
 Luitprandus, King, 297. 
 
 Mantegna, Andrea, frescoes by, at 
 
 Padua, 124. 
 Mantua, St Andrea, 44. 
 Marbles at Verona, 60; at Venice, 
 
 154- 
 
 Maria in Cosmedin, Sta, Ravenna, 
 238. 
 
 Mark's, St, Venice, 136. 
 
 Mark, St, translation of his remains, 
 142. 
 
 Michele, St, Pavia, 289. 
 
 Milan, 305; St Ambrose, 306; the 
 atrium of, 307; interior, 311; 
 struflural changes in, 312; cibo- 
 rium, 313; altar j&ontal, 318; 
 pulpit, 320; Mosaics, 321; Ca- 
 thedral, 323 ; history, 324; archi- 
 tefts employed upon, 325; plan, 
 326; exterior, 327; interior, 
 328; columns, 329; ambons, 
 330; choir, 330; Addison on, 
 331; St Carlo Borromeo, 332; 
 pi£lorial eifefls, 335; High Mass 
 in, 336; the Ambrosian Rite, 
 
 337- 
 
 Miniato, St, Florence, 93. 
 
 Modena Cathedral, 263; history 
 andcharadleristics, 264; exterior, 
 265; campanile, 265; interior, 
 267; Solemn Vespers at, 266; 
 triforia, 268; vaulting, 269; 
 crypt, 270. 
 
 Monza Cathedral, 318. 
 
 Mosaics, 158, zio;at Milan, 321; 
 Ravenna, 209, 214, 220, 222, 
 232, 238, 241, 247, 252; Tor- 
 cello, 140; Venice, 154. 
 
 Music, Church, 71, 202; at Bam- 
 berg, 4; Bologna, 202; Milan, 
 336; Modena, 266; Piacenza, 
 281; Ratisbon, 6; Trent, 55; 
 
 Venice, 161 ; Verona, 69; Vi- 
 cenza, 109. 
 
 Nanini, Giovanni, 70. 
 Nazario e Celso, SS., Ravenna, 221. 
 Novara, Cathedral, 39; baptistery, 
 39; St Gaudenzio, 39, 44. 
 
 Padua, 115; Palazzo della Ra- 
 gione, 115; Cathedral, 116; 
 baptistery and frescoes in, 116; 
 works by Giotto, 118; Chapel 
 of the Arena, 120; frescoes in, 
 122; Church of the Eremitani, 
 124; altarpiece and frescoes in, 
 124; Mantegna, 125; St An- 
 tonio, 127; Sta Giustina, 131. 
 
 Paintings and piflutes, 341-364. 
 
 Palladio, 104. 
 
 Palla d' Oro, The, at Venice, 165. 
 
 Parma Cathedral, 272; interior, 
 273 ; sculpture, 274; Correggio's 
 Assumption, 275; Baptistery, 
 277 ; sculptured portals, 278 ; in- 
 terior, 278. 
 
 Pavement of St Mark's, Venice, 158. 
 
 Pavia, 288; situation, 289; St 
 Michele, 256, 289; Romanesque 
 of Pavia, 291, 295; St Pietroin 
 Cielo, 297; shrine of St Augus- 
 tine, 300; Cathedral, 301; the 
 Certosa, 285. 
 
 Petronio, St, Bologna, 189; Tomb 
 of, in St Sepolcro, 180; history, 
 189; doorways, 190; exterior, 
 192; interior, 193; remarks 
 upon, 194; stained glass in, 196. 
 
 Piacenza Cathedral, 279. 
 
 Pietro in Concava, St, Asti, 40. 
 
 Pietro in Cielo, St, Pavia, 297. 
 
 Pietro e Paolo, SS., Bologna, 1 80. 
 
 Pisa, Giovanni da, 1 24. 
 
 Pisanello, 89, 98 
 
 369 
 
 24 
 
CATHEDRALS OF NORTHERN ITALY 
 
 Pisano, Niccola, 127, I70' 
 
 Plain Song, 75. 
 
 Porches and doorways, 50, 89, 90, 
 
 97, 152, 169, 190, 227, 277, 
 
 292. 
 Preaching Orders, Churches built 
 
 by the, 33, 88; their influence 
 
 on ecclesiastical art, 182. 
 Psalms, Chanting of, 69, 267. 
 
 Quercia, Jacopo della, portals by, 
 at Bologna, 190. 
 
 Ratisbon, 5. 
 
 Ravenna, 22, 204; history, 205; 
 present aspe£t of, 208 ; a Raven- 
 nese basilica, 209; mosaics, 210; 
 orthodox baptistery, 212; cathe- 
 dral, 217; medieval relics in, 
 218; SS. Nazario e Celso, 221; 
 St Giovanni Evangelista, 228; 
 Legend of Galla Placidia, 226; 
 Sta Agata, 229; archbishop's 
 chapel, 232; St Francesco, 233; 
 mausoleum of Theodoric, 236; 
 Sta Maria in Cosmedin, 238; 
 St Spirito, 239; St Apollinaris 
 Nuovo, 240; St Vitalis, 243; St 
 Apollinaris in Classe, 249; Car- 
 dinal Wiseman on Ravenna, 255. 
 
 Reggie, W^jlpole and Gray at, 271. 
 
 Renaissance of classical architefture, 
 42, 81, 285, 303. 
 
 Rhenish and Lombardic architec- 
 ture, their connexion, 260, 263, 
 290. 
 
 Romanesque, The, of Lombardy, 
 261, 291, 295, 312. 
 
 Rome, Absence of Gothic churches 
 from, 12. 
 
 Roofs, groined, 86, 269; curious 
 wooden, at Verona and Padua, 
 92,98, 124. 
 
 Sanmichele, 62. 
 
 Scaligers, Tombs of the, Verona, 
 
 102. 
 Screens, 28, 159, 287. 
 Sculpture, 152, 171, 273, 292, 
 
 309- 
 Serpent, Curious image of, at Milan, 
 
 309- 
 Sequence, The, 73. 
 
 Services at Bamberg, 5; Bologna, 
 
 263 ; Milan, 3 36; Modena, 266; 
 
 Piacenza, 281; Ratisbon, 5; 
 
 Trent, J 5 ; Venice, 161; Verona, 
 
 69; Vicenza, 109. 
 Shrines of Saints, 300. 
 Spirito, St, Ravenna, 239. 
 Stained Glass, 32, 186, 196. 
 Stefano, St, Bologna, 178; Verona, 
 
 100. 
 SteiFani, Agostino, 161, 162. 
 Street, G.E., 10, 62, 153. 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, on the Lombard 
 churches, 262; on Milan Cathe- 
 dral, 336. 
 
 Theodoric the Arian, 206, 235; 
 Mausoleum of, at Ravenna, 236. 
 
 Thrones, Episcopal, at Ravenna, 
 2i8; Venice, 164. 
 
 Ticino, river, 289. 
 
 Tomaso in Limine, St, near Ber- 
 gamo, 40. 
 
 Torcello Cathedral, 139. 
 
 Torazzo, The, Cremona, 283. 
 
 Towers, 63, 80, 283; Leaning, at 
 Bologna, 176. 
 
 Tracery, 86, 195. 
 
 Trent, 48; Cathedral, 7, 48; ex- 
 terior, 49, interior, jz, service 
 
 at, 5S- 
 
 Triforia, 273, 279; peculiar ar- 
 rangement of, at Modena, 268. 
 
 Tuscany, Architeflure of, 28. 
 
 370 
 
INDEX 
 
 Ulmo, Giacomo da, 194. 
 
 Vaulted Roofs, 86, 269. 
 
 Veni Sanfte Spiritus, jz. 
 
 Venice, 28, 136; SS. Giovanni e 
 Paolo, 33; Frari church, 34; 
 St Mark's, 136; history, 138; 
 translation of the Saints' re- 
 mains, 142; plan and design of 
 Cathedral, 145 ; its development, 
 147; the domes, 148; exterior, 
 150; portals, 15 1; pillars, 152; 
 interior, 153; marbles and mo- 
 saics, 154; iconography, 155; 
 pavement, 158; rood screen, 
 159; High Mass, 161; musical 
 composers associated with, 161; 
 high altar and ciborium, 163; 
 crypt, 164; treasury, 164; the 
 Palla d' Oro, 165; concluding 
 remarks, 1 67; notes on churches, 
 
 347- 
 
 Vercelli, St Andrea, 34. 
 
 Verona, 29, 58; situation, 58; ar- 
 rival at, 59; architedtural charac- 
 teristics and materials, 60; Whit- 
 Sunday at, 68; services in the 
 Duomo, 69 ; the Dottrina Cristi- 
 ana, TJ; architecture of Duomo, 
 80; cloisters and baptistery, 78; 
 
 Sta Anastasia, 83; interior, 85; 
 scheme of decoration, 1 8 ; west- 
 ern doorway, 90; chapel of St 
 Pietro Martyri, 90; St Zeno, 
 90; west front and exterior, 91 ; 
 campanile, 91 ; interior, 92 ; roof, 
 92; choir and crypt, 94; St 
 Fermo Maggiore, 96; exterior, 
 97; frescoes, 97; roof, 98; even- 
 ing service at, 99; St Stefano, 
 100; St Giorgio, 100; St Loren- 
 zo, 100; St . Bernardino, 10 1 ; 
 Oratory of St Zeno, 10 1 ; tombs 
 of the Scaligers, 102. 
 
 Vicenza,i04; Cathedral, 1 05; cam- 
 panile, 107; La Sta Corona,! 1 1 ; 
 St Lorenzo, 1 1 2 ; St Stefano, 113. 
 
 Vitalis, St, Ravenna, 243. 
 
 Wall and roof paintings, 32, 88, 
 
 94, 118,274, 341-364. 
 Walpole and Gray at Reggio, 271. 
 Whit-Sunday at Verona, 68. 
 Windows, 196. 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, on Ravenna, 
 
 ass- 
 Wren, Sir C, 303. 
 Wtirzburg, 3. 
 
 Zeno, St, Verona, 90. 
 
 371 
 
RESS 
 
 LEAMINGTON