justly said,’ contends the already cited Ferrario, ‘that the bodies of
saints are in different places at the same time, when there exists a
holy belief that they are in one place, while they really exist at the
other, having been secretly stolen from the first and carried to the
latter; and he adds that he could cite a great many instances, but he
abstains from doing it, lest he should give offence.’” The writer then
goes on to state that he will not presume to affirm that these bodies
are in Rome only by a holy belief, but he adduces some evidence to prove
that this is the case; nor will he assert that they are wholly and
entirely at Verona; because, as they are only seen by means of a small
hole in the sarcophagus, it is impossible to decide that question. After
this he proceeds to give the more recent history of these bones.
I will spare you the further detail of the author’s arguments; his
position is, that these bones were stolen from Rome about the end of the
twelfth century, and hidden at Verona, where they were found in 1395,
with an inscription on the sarcophagus which pointed out to whom they
had belonged. Unfortunately for this theory, not only there is now no
such inscription on the sarcophagus, but the whole is covered with
figures which bear all the character of the early ages of Christianity,
and yet have no reference to any part of the known, or imagined story,
of St. Simon and St. Jude. To get over this difficulty the author has
recourse to a series of gratuitous hypotheses, which shew his confidence
in the easy faith of his readers; “and thus,” continues he, “having
brought my work to its termination, it is, I believe, useful to observe,
that from the year 1395, when the holy bodies of our apostles were first
discovered, down to the present time, the memory of their existence in
the above-mentioned marble chest, in the crypt of this church, has
always been more or less preserved; and thus more than five
centuries[33] have concurred to consecrate such a tradition; on which
account, I maintain, that it deserves every possible respect, whatever
may have been said, or thought, to the contrary; and it deserves also,
that here the faithful should run together every year to pay their vows
to these great saints; and principally on the Sunday included in their
octave, on the fourth day of Lent, in the triduo which precedes their
festival, and on the 28th of October, which is the day of the festival
itself.” He then laments, that owing to bad times, and continual
revolutions, this festival had not been celebrated as it ought to have
been, and professes his resolution to observe it in future with all
possible magnificence.
One more church and I have done with the Gothic architecture of Verona,
or rather, with the architecture of the middle ages, for which we want a
convenient term; the word Gothic having been appropriated to the
modification of the pointed style, which prevails in our own country.
Many other buildings of these times, well worth examination, might
perhaps be found here; but I have not time to enter more extensively
into the subject. The church I mean is that of San Fermo, built in 1313.
It is of brick with a good deal of ornament, and the rows of little
arches are some of them trefoil-headed. The door of the façade is round
headed, with a profusion of ornamented mouldings. It has no rose in the
front, but instead, are four lancet windows with trefoil heads, and the
parts seem more consistent on this account, as the rose window rarely
unites well with the numerous intersecting lines of this style of
building. Over these is a smaller window, divided by little shafts into
three parts, and a small circular opening on each side of it. There is
no tracery. The building ends in a gable whose cornice is loaded with
ornament, and three pinnacles rise above it. Internally, the ceiling is
of wood and not handsome. When seen from the bridge behind the church, a
little polygonal building, each face of which terminates in a high
gable, composes very richly. As I was about to come away, an old woman
pressed me very earnestly to stay and hear the mass, which was just
about to be performed, as it might contribute to the salvation of my
soul. It does not seem to be considered any sort of intrusion to go
about these churches, even during the performance of the religious
ceremonies. One frequently sees the Italians doing so themselves, and in
the larger churches, the attendants, who hope to make something of your
curiosity, take you about to all parts, and talk as loudly as if there
were not a soul present. In general, however, they are very careful to
bend one knee on passing opposite the high altar, and frequently make a
similar obeisance at some of the side altars. There are people on their
knees at all times in the morning, and though they are much more
numerous during the celebration of the mass, yet they do not then kneel
all together, at particular parts of the service, but some at one time
and some at another. During the whole time of the ceremony, perhaps more
than half the congregation are kneeling, but there is hardly any period
at which many of those who seem to be attending to what is going
forward, as part of their religion, may not be seen standing or sitting.
Before turning to the modern architecture of Verona, I must just mention
to you the three principal tombs of the Scaligers. That of Can Grande,
the second _dog_ of the race, is not a very sumptuous monument; two
square pilasters against the wall of a church, with foliage on the
capitals, support a platform, and over this is a Gothic canopy with
trefoil-heads, but with little other ornament; above the canopy is a
pyramid crowned with a figure on horseback, representing, probably, Can
Grande himself, who is also extended below, under the canopy. The second
is entirely detached, with precisely the same arrangement, but with more
ornament, and higher and more graceful proportion; this contains the
remains of Mastino II. (the Mastiff). The third is of Can Signorio,
which is much more highly ornamented, but the disposition is the same,
except that it forms a hexagon on the plan. The pyramid is disagreeably
truncated in all, in order to admit the equestrian figure on the summit.
These _dogs_ seem to have deserved the name; the first died in 1328, the
second in 1350, and the third, who erected his tomb in his own lifetime,
in 1375. The desire of the Italians to introduce something resembling
the columns and entablatures of the Roman architecture, renders these
monuments much inferior to our own Gothic crosses.
I have already mentioned to you Sanmicheli; in 1525 or 1526, he left the
service of Clement VII. for that of the republic of Venice, and was
immediately employed in fortifying Verona. The works executed prior to
his time have round towers instead of bastions; these and the gates have
most of them inscriptions with dates; the last of the ancient style are
the bastion of St. George, built in 1523, and the gate of St. George,
1525. The bastion of the Magdalen was the first erected by Sanmicheli,
and bears date 1527. He has made it polygonal but small, and perhaps
more like a tower than a modern bastion; but in the succeeding ones, all
the particulars unite to give them the complete character of bastions.
The Porta del Palio, built also by this artist, is very beautiful as a
piece of architecture. It presents internally a range of arches, between
doubled Doric columns; but it was left unfinished at his death, and has
never been completed. I do not know how it is, but though I always
condemn coupled columns in theory, they nevertheless occur in many of
the buildings I most admire. The Porta Nuova was also by Sanmicheli; it
is not so good, nor do any of his palaces equal in grace and purity of
design, this Porta del Palio; yet they are all fine buildings. His usual
defect seems to be in not putting his stories well together, generally
making the lower too high, in relation to the upper, or else putting
under the second order a double pedestal, and thus leaving too much
space between the columns. Taking each order singly the proportions are
beautiful.
Every Englishman who comes to Verona goes to see what he is told is the
tomb of Juliet. It is a plain sarcophagus without a cover, which has
been made use of as a cistern, and now lies neglected in a garden. You
are told on the spot, that she was deposited there after having taken
the sleepy potion; it may be so, but the entire want of internal
evidence, and of all accompaniments, leaves the imagination unsatisfied.
LETTER XVII.
VICENZA—PADUA.
_Padua, 5th November, 1816._
When I engaged my place in the diligence from Verona, I was told, that
as we had to perform a journey of eighty miles in the day, it would be
necessary to start at two o’clock in the morning; but we did not
actually set off till a quarter before four, and arrived at Vicenza at
ten at night. My companions were two Germans, an Irishman, an Italian
lady, and a Venetian woollen draper. The elder German valued himself
highly on his wealth, and boasted of the riches of some of his
countrymen. He declared that one house at Vienna had recently gained
thirty millions of francs in the space of three months; he also
contended that there were many foreigners who could speak French better
than the French themselves, and I have no doubt he thought himself one
of the number. He spoke English pretty well, and talked Polish to two
Polish soldiers who escorted us; but he was what would be called in
Italian, ‘_un gran seccatore_’: Anglicè ‘_a bore_.’ In the journey from
Milan to Verona, we had passed the dead horse of a courier, who had been
robbed the night before. I do not know whether it was on this account
that we were provided on the present occasion with an escort, which
seemed to my English notions rather a ridiculous one. Our two guards
were mounted in a sort of gig, and as their horse could not keep pace
with ours, they were continually quarrelling with the postillions for
driving too fast; and yet our pace on the road could hardly exceed five
miles per hour.
Verona is a handsome city. Vicenza looks miserable; yet there is an
astonishing number of well designed houses, many of which are of very
fine architecture; and even those which do not deserve that praise, from
their number, and the richness of their ornaments, would produce a great
appearance of magnificence in the city, if they were well kept up; but
they appear forlorn, neglected, and half uninhabited. If you ask your
way in the streets, you are answered with the greatest civility, but
your informant expects a few centimes for his trouble; and you are
surprised to find yourself addressed by people of polished manners, and
who, though not well dressed, have all the appearance of having seen
better days, asking if they can do any thing for you, and proffering
their services to shew you the remarkable things in the city, in the
hopes of obtaining a piece of one lira.[34] The money in this part of
Italy is very puzzling; the Milanese lira is worth seventy-six centimes,
or about sevenpence halfpenny English, and they sometimes tell you the
price in these, and sometimes in francs. A bookseller told me the price
of his books in boards, in francs; but if bound, I was to pay an
additional sum in Milanese lire. At Verona, I met with a good deal of
Venetian money, but the reckoning was always by francs and centimes. At
Vicenza, you are told the price of every article, in Venetian lire and
soldi. The Venetian commercial lira is an imaginary money, divided like
the French into twenty soldi. The proportion it bears to the French is
as twenty to forty-one; but in smaller transactions, it is considered
half a French franc. The actual coins however, have no simple relation
with this imaginary money, and though almost all of them have the
nominal value inscribed, yet this serves only to mislead. Thus there are
coins marked half a lira, which instead of twenty-five centimes, are
current for only twenty-one and a half; others of fifteen soldi, worth
twenty-nine centimes; of one lira worth twenty-five centimes; another
coin marked as one lira, passes for forty-four centimes. One lira and a
half worth sixty-six centimes, two lire worth fifty centimes. With a
mode of reckoning so perplexed, it would be easy to cheat a foreigner,
yet I have no reason to suspect that they have ever been given me for
more than their current value. The standard of morals may be lower in
some countries than in others, but there always must be a standard of
some sort not generally transgressed. A man here, who would demand
without any scruple as much again as the least sum he intended to accept
for his goods, would scorn to deceive in the reckoning.
My object in stopping at Vicenza was to examine the buildings of
Palladio, the first of modern architects; but we have no name in
architecture which stands on the same unrivalled eminence as that of
Raphael in painting. Palladio’s buildings are in general very beautiful;
but most of them are at present in a very forlorn condition. The fronts
and even the columns are of brick, the entablatures of wood; and the
stucco, with which both have been covered, is peeling off. I am aware
that this statement of their materials, may lessen your respect for the
palaces which make so fine a display on paper; but the circumstance does
not diminish the merit of the architect, though it does the magnificence
of the city. Palladio’s columns are mostly mere ornaments; but in
contemplating his buildings, it is impossible to feel this to be a
fault. The sculpture which loads the pediments of the windows is
certainly ill placed; and still worse, is the little panel of bas-relief
so frequently introduced over the lower windows; dividing what ought to
be one solid mass, into two miserably weak arches. What is it then that
pleases so much, and so universally, in the works of this artist? It
seems to me to consist entirely in a certain justness of proportion,
with which he has distributed all the parts of his architecture; the
basement being neither too high nor too low for the order above it; the
windows of the right size, and well spaced; and all the parts and
proportions suited to one another. The same excellence is found in his
orders, and the relation of the columns, capitals, entablatures, &c. He
has not adopted the theoretical rules of another, but has drawn them all
from what he felt to be pleasing to himself, and suited to his own style
of art; but they are not good, when united to a more solid and less
ornamental manner. I must, at the risk of being tedious, particularize
some of his most remarkable buildings.
I. The Basilica; this is published pretty correctly by Leoni, except
that the roof is not surrounded by a balustrade. Here we have an
example, though in the adaptation of an old building, of the merits and
defects of the architect; the result is rich and harmonious; although,
without the greatest nicety of tact, the composition is such as would
have been displeasing. Yet to obtain this composition, he has rather
gone against, than complied with, the arrangement of the anterior
building. The columns are independent of the real or apparent strength
of the edifice, and Palladio intended they should be so, for he has made
the entablatures break round them. In this he was right; had the
architrave been continued in a straight line, the columns would have
become essential, and the great space between them would have produced
an appearance of debility. The great roof is not his fault; but as the
point of sight is near, it is never so offensive in fact, as in the
published elevations. Internally, the lower part is a market, the upper
a great hall, which is not handsome. Each intercolumniation of Palladio
is opposed to two arches of the original work. I suspect he would have
produced a finer building, if he had followed the old plan; but I am
better pleased that he did not, because the present forms a more
singular disposition, and shews what may be done when the spaces are
large.
II. The Palazzo Capitanale is not published by Leoni, but it is to be
found in the first volume of Scamozzi’s work. The composition of the
front, if completed, would have exhibited a range of eight half columns,
comprehending two stories in height. The openings of the lower story are
large arches, including almost the whole intercolumniation. Above the
order, is an attic. The effect is rich and magnificent, chiefly, I
believe, from the solidity and bold relief of the parts. On examination,
one cannot but severely condemn the cutting the architrave by the
windows; not merely judging by rule, but by the effect. In its present
state, the brick columns, the stucco of which is half peeled off, have a
forlorn and desolate appearance; yet the colouring thus produced is not
bad: what displeases is merely the associated character of poverty and
ruin. At the end is an elegant doorway, ornamented with a smaller order.
III. Fabbrica Conte Porto al Castello. This fragment is by some
attributed to Palladio, by others to Scamozzi; but the latter disclaimed
it, and it appears to me to be Palladian. Whoever was the architect, we
may certainly pronounce it a noble design, although a very small part
has been executed, and that fragment is nearly in ruins. It would have
consisted of a range of Composite columns placed on high detached
pedestals, and these on high double plinths. The lower range of windows
reaches to the top of the pedestal; the second range, in the spaces
between the columns, is much larger than the others; the upper windows
are in the frieze; these latter have certainly a bad appearance, and the
situation of the lower range is not free from blame; but in these cases,
where the order is merely ornamental, their want of perfect
correspondence with the apparent internal work is of less consequence
than might be imagined.
IV. Palazzo Tiene al Castello. The architect of this is said to have
been the proprietor, Count Marc Antonio Tiene, the cotemporary and
friend of Palladio, from whom, no doubt, he has largely borrowed.
Scamozzi seems to have completed it. It consists of two orders,
Corinthian and Composite, and an attic; the lower order is partly
rusticated, and an impost moulding contracts the heads of the windows,
which are square; this pleases me very well; but the thin flat arch over
them, the sunk panel, and then another thin flat arch, are very
objectionable. The upper windows are smaller at top than at bottom, but
the diminution is slight, and the first time I passed the house I did
not observe it; altogether the building is very beautiful. The back
consists of an open colonnade of two orders, closed at each end; the
middle intercolumniation is wider than the others, and has some masonry
and an arch within it; this variation seems to be introduced merely to
spoil the composition. The front has eight columns in each story; the
back ten.
V. You pass through a triumphal arch to a long covered gallery, which
leads up a hill to the church of Sta. Maria del Monte. This arch is
simple and elegant, imitated in some degree from that of Titus at Rome.
It is crowned with a ridiculous little lion, and the angels represented
on the spandrils have too much projection; but these are not essential
to the architecture. The gallery is remarkable for nothing but its
length: no ingenuity is displayed in overcoming the ill effects of
sloping architecture.
VI. The original church of Sta. Maria del Monte, was small and of
pointed architecture; but a large new part has been added, in the form
of a Greek cross, which internally is very beautiful. What was once the
length of the old church, is thus become the breadth of the whole
building, and the altar has been removed from the recess in the end of
the former building, to a place which was the middle of one of its
sides. They do not pay so much attention in Italy to the eastern
position of the altar as we do in England. The situation of Vicenza is
very pleasant; an agreeable mixture of hill and plain, with rugged
mountains at some distance, and I suppose the snowy Alps beyond these,
but the clouds have prevented me from seeing them. The situation of the
church commands very noble views of these rich and varied scenes; and a
fine natural terrace, which forms part of the same hill, and along which
I walked in my way to the Rotonda, presents them perhaps in still
greater perfection.
VII. The Rotonda. This is certainly Palladio’s design, and must have
been nearly completed by him, though Scamozzi lays claim to the honour
of terminating it _with some alteration_; what this alteration was is
not known. I willingly attribute to him the internal cornices of doors,
chimneys, &c. which are heavy and inharmonious. It is published by
Leoni, but not correctly, as the centre rises in successive frustra of
depressed cones, and there is no external appearance of a dome.
Externally, it partakes of the desolate condition of every thing at
Vicenza, but still it is exquisitely beautiful, and the situation, at
the extremity of a point of hill advancing from the general line, is no
less delightful; no other position could have suited the house so well,
and no other house, either larger or smaller, or with any other
arrangement, would have been so well adapted to the situation.
Internally, it is equally admirable; it looks small, even more so than
it really is. This is probably owing to the preposterously massive
ornaments about the doors. The rooms form altogether one suite of
apartments, four of which are intended for bed-rooms; but this, in the
system of Italian manners, would be no objection to their being all
thrown open to receive company; and here, whatever may be the time of
day, you are sure of shade, air, and beautiful scenery. It would be
difficult to accommodate the design to our climate and manners, without
spoiling it, even if we should find for it a suitable situation. In this
most essential particular, the three imitations which we have, are all
remarkably deficient.
VIII. Palazzo Valmarana. This has been published with sufficient
correctness in Leoni’s Palladio. It is a handsome edifice, and would be
more so, if the angles were better supported, but the small pilaster and
figure over it, instead of the pilaster of the larger order, are as
displeasing in reality as in the drawings; and the change in the size
and number of the windows in the adjoining divisions, is equally
reprehensible. The mouldings of the lesser order project beyond the
pilasters of the larger, and if the panels of sculpture over the lower
windows were somewhat narrower, they would have a better shape
themselves, and the greater space over them would be an advantage. In
other respects the proportions are excellent, and the distribution at
once beautiful and uncommon. The total absence of windows in the height
of the pedestal, I take to be a great advantage.
IX. Palazzo Trissino. This is probably one of the best works of Vincenzo
Scamozzi, and it is a noble edifice, though it wants something of that
undefinable grace of proportion we admire in Palladio, and it stands in
so narrow a street, that one can hardly judge of it fairly. It has a
range of nine windows on the principal floor, with intermediate
pilasters doubled at the angles; but the change of design in the three
middle divisions, the high unmeaning arch of the centre, and the double
pilasters separating the centre from the wings, are so many defects. In
the ground-floor, the large central arched opening is too reasonable to
displease.
X. Palazzo Barbarano. Palladio has given this design with seven openings
in the range; two more have since been added, and I do not know that the
composition has been injured, except that the doorway is no longer in
the centre. It is overloaded with ornament. The sprawling figures over
the pediments of the windows, the husks which run down on each of the
openings, and the trophies in the lower story, ought all to be taken
away: with these exceptions in the decorative parts, the composition is
excellent, and presents in its unbroken entablatures a simplicity not
usual in the Palladian architecture. The house said to be that of
Palladio, but which in fact was built by Sr. Pietro Cogolo, does not
much please me, and I shall therefore not describe it to you; it is
doubtful even whether Palladio was the architect.