prodigally employed. Indeed, the eye does not know which of the marvels
to select, and if this stupendous whole has been preserved to us by
a miracle, nothing in the world can be compared to it. The brilliant
series of windows, one of the most complete and beautiful in existence;
the pavement, with its labyrinth and countless mortuary tombs; the rich
altars and chapel paintings; the tomb of St. Nicaise; the pulpit of St.
Remi; the rood-screen, a master work by Colard de Givry, made in 1417;
the railings of the choir, with precious hangings and stalls; the high
altar charged with relics, and presents from the Kings of France; its
golden retable and its splendid ciborium of the Thirteenth Century,
in silver gilt; the sacrarium, the fonts, and the sepulchres;--form a
great mass of treasure.
And how greatly is the feeling increased by memories when you
reconstruct the public life of Notre-Dame of Rheims, and the events of
which she was the theatre during the long course of centuries; when you
dream of all the coronations, councils, and meetings that have taken
place beneath its vaults! No edifice, in truth, is, in this respect,
more worthy of our honour and admiration.
Notre-Dame of Rheims measures in round numbers one hundred and
thirty-nine metres long and thirty-eight metres high beneath the
vault; it is not surpassed in length by the Cathedral of Mans, thanks
to the unusual dimensions of its absidal chapel, nor in height by
Beauvais, Cologne, Metz, Amiens, or Saint-Quentin. The great divisions
of the whole, founded upon a triple scale, in height and breadth, are
clearly accentuated. From the lower part of the nave the view is one
of striking grandeur and harmony; the dazzled glance loses itself in
these vast depths, under the luminous sheets of light which spread out
from the lateral bays, while the large vault, clouded in the mysterious
penumbra of the high windows, ornamented with their glass, invites you
to meditation. No cathedral offers so powerful an opposition to light.
The arrangement of the great piers cantoned by four half-columns bound
together also increases the fleeting perspective.
Of the whole building, I have only to criticize the composition of the
triforium, which is truly not of the first order; it demands more
elegance and firmness; the arches of that gallery, the decorative
function of which is so important in a Gothic church, seem heavy and as
if crushed between the robust piers of the ground-floor and the large
bays of the upper story.
In all that belongs to the Thirteenth Century, the execution bears
witness to an extreme care and luxury. The Cathedral of Rheims,
principally in its interior work, is a model that has never been
surpassed from the point of view of technique, of show and of the
judicious use of material. The carving is of the first order. The
capitals of Rheims are celebrated, and very justly. The independence
of the _Style champenois_ has introduced some elements of life
and fantasy which give them a character of their own. Some of the
most beautiful, notably the capital of the _Vendanges_ (The
Vintages), have been made popular by the mouldings in the Musée of the
Trocadéro; but all of them are remarkable on account of the variety
of the motives that decorate them. Viollet-le-Duc has justly observed
that the capitals of Rheims present a decisive progress in the union of
the capital of the principal column with the capitals of the connected
columns: a very great difficulty which Gothic architects did not solve
until after numerous groupings. Here the monotony has been avoided by
a division of the bound columns into two segments, separated by an
astragal. The effect of this division is most happy and constitutes one
of the most striking peculiarities of the Cathedral of Rheims.
The choir is unanimously admired. However, it has not the breadth
nor the spring of the great choirs of Bourges, Amiens and Mans; but
it derives its originality from its depth and its radiating chapels;
and to the preservation of its most exquisite windows it owes a poetic
charm that very few interiors can equal. The windows of Rheims are,
in reality, the most perfect we have seen after those of Chartres,
Bourges, Mans and Auxerre. In purity of expression they surpass the
windows of Soissons, Troyes, and Châlons. The windows in the apsis are
masterpieces; their sweet intensity, in the scale of blue, is truly
enchanting. They were executed from 1227 to 1240 under the episcopate
of Henri de Braisne, whose figure appears in the principal window, in
the centre of nine large, high windows, between the twelve suffragans
of Rheims, arranged in order, according to their rank in the province:
Soissons, Laon, Beauvais, Noyon, Senlis, Tournai, Cambrai, Châlons,
Thérouanne, Amiens, etc., each having at his side a Gothic cathedral.
These figures of bishops of gigantic proportions have a majesty that
cannot be described. But in the midst of these splendours, it is
the rose of the western window which is perhaps the most worthy of
everything to hold your attention. Composition, brilliancy, harmony and
elegance of position,--it possesses all these qualities. It would be
difficult to find a more admirable witness of the decorative sense of
the old glass-workers. When across the network of the immense surface,
the light from the setting sun is thrown, the whole interior of the
church is illuminated as if by a conflagration. The preservation of
this masterpiece is unfortunately greatly compromised by the crack like
a sabre cut which crosses the façade near the rose. The high windows in
the nave represent the Kings, just as in the Cathedral of Sacres; they
are still more beautiful, however, of deep rich colours, but of a less
careful execution than the great rose and the windows in the choir.
All these marvels, however, pale before the carved decoration that
surrounds on the inside the lower part of the three doors of the
façade, a kind of drapery in relief, as unique by the character of its
invention as by the perfection of its workmanship.
This extraordinary decoration envelops up to their summits the three
ogival windows that open upon the porch. It goes up as high as the
triforium, by a succession of seven rows of niches closed by trefoil
arches, and separated from them by panels and corner-pieces of leaves
borrowed from the flora of the country and divinely carved. You see
in turn: the laurel, the vine, the pear, the apple, the holly, the
oak, the ivy, the water-lily, the bulrush, the peony, the clover,
the chestnut, the liverwort, and the olive. A hundred and twenty-two
statues of incomparable beauty, rivalling the most beautiful
productions of sculpture of former times, occupy the niches, and,
deliciously set off by the floral decoration of the plain surfaces,
stand out like living personages from the dark background of the niches.
Each one of these figures is a most precious work, studied from nature
with a sovereign knowledge of drapery and movement. Here is a priest
officiating in his chasuble and holding the Eucharist; there, is a
warrior in coat-of-mail, who seems to have just returned from the
Crusades; moreover, there are some prophets of heroic mien, noble
virgins with trailing robes, and martyrs, illuminated with ecstasy.
All this mural decoration was made in the spirit of the architecture,
intended to complete the iconography of the great door and to amplify
still further the cyclic character,--the general theme being the
history of Christ and the glorification of the Virgin, with the
accessory scenes that belong to it.
Let us cross the threshold: we are outside, before the façade. We must
walk farther away in order to embrace all the lines and take in the
masterly idea of the whole. It is most celebrated, that is well-known;
for a long time, its richness has been a synonym of beauty in mediæval
art. I have already said that the general conception is of the highest
order, the upward movement is magnificent, the statues blossom with a
bewildering luxuriance, and the infinite multiplication of the details,
which--miraculous fact--do not obliterate the majestic section of
the lower stages, so happily cut by the tall bays scattered in the
bell-towers. Nevertheless, when you come nearer, you are surprised at
finding so much uncertainty in the conduct of this terrible enterprise!
How much weakness and lassitude in the highest parts! You perceive both
haste and economy there. All that dates from the end of the Fourteenth
and the beginning of the Fifteenth Century is mediocre; the sculpture,
cut in bad materials that are injured by the frost, is coarse and
flabby: the nobility of the contours is lost beneath the excessive
ornamentation, and the absence of the spires deprives this aërial
building of its necessary finish.
To be satisfied, the eye must rest below the row of Kings made during
the reign of Charles V.
While the upper stories have been made of soft stone of a bad quality,
the lower parts, built of hard stone, have acquired in the course of
time the hues of Florentine bronze. It is here that the Champagne
sculptor has lavishly exhibited the treasures of his spirit, his
audacity and his genius. When the great statues of the portals of
Rheims are mentioned, everybody is of one accord.
The Queen of the basilica, the Virgin, is the soul of this cosmos, the
centre from which everything radiates.
She is crowned by Christ beneath the daïs of the great gable, and this
composition, which is still brightened by the remains of the gold
background from which it stands out, is one of the most exquisite
creations of Christian Art; the Virgin is also on the pier; she is
directly or indirectly in every scene of the life of Jesus. Her memory,
her legend, her poetry are everywhere: she is at once the culminating
point and the humble pretext of all this magnificence. At Paris, at
Bourges and at Amiens, it is Christ; here, it is the Virgin; and
around this admirable theme a powerful thought has quickened into
being a race of statues, a people in whom life, movement and fantasy
circulate, beneath the compassionate gaze of the Mother of God and
under the influence of her adorable grace. Charm is really the special
characteristic of the sculpture at Rheims,--a special charm that is
always evident, a charm carried to the point of _morbidezza_ which
in certain figures has been compared, and not without reason, to the
mysterious charm of Leonardo da Vinci.
All these personages of high stature, blackened and polished by time,
possess an indescribable grace, smiling and familiar, an indescribable
and eloquent gravity that puts them into communion with the spectator;
they are indeed of our country and of our race; their idealism, always
youthful despite the centuries, is not too far removed from earth to
respond even now to the secret aspirations of our souls; they are the
glory of the portals of Rheims, the glory of French sculpture.
Beautiful as these figures are, they must not let us forget the
population of two thousand five hundred statues that make the Cathedral
of Rheims a unique monument of decorative and monumental sculpture.
All the images of this old basilica deserve attentive study. An entire
volume would scarcely suffice to enumerate them. It is necessary to
take a trip to the roof to measure fully this incredible wealth:
giants of stone, angels with spread wings, apostles, saints and royal
figures, fantastic animals, more than forty metres high, which occupy
the pinnacles of the buttresses, are lined along the galleries of
the transepts or fortify the balustrade of the roof; figures full of
vitality that project from the corners, the springs of the arches, the
junction of curves, as crowns, supports, caryatides, mascarons, and
gargoyles; capricious, expressive and energetic figures, to execute
which the Champagne chisel, the freest and most supple of Gothic
chisels, has given itself full scope, with an exuberant joy.
Despite the devastations of the rococo period, to which was added that
of the Revolutionary period, the Cathedral of Rheims has not been
entirely stripped of her incomparable artistic treasures. She has
preserved a great portion of her tapestry hangings, and her Treasury is
still one of the richest in France.
The tapestries of Rheims have been very learnedly described by M.
Ch. Loriquet. Before the Revolution the collection was unique.
Hincmar, Hérivée, Regnault de Chartres, Juvénal des Ursins, Robert de
Lenoncourt, the great Cardinal of Lorraine, the Cardinal of Guise,
Henri de Lorraine, the Kings of France and the Chapter were the
principal donators.
These tapestries were used to decorate the cathedral on days of special
solemnity. Of the magnificent collection there only remain the fifteen
pieces by Lenoncourt, two of the six tapestries of the _Grand Roi
Clovis_, given by the Cardinal of Lorraine, fifteen tapestries
executed by Pepersack, at the order of Henri de Lorraine, the four
pieces ordered from Lombart d’ Aubusson by the Chapter, four tapestries
called the _Cantiques_ and two Gobelins after Raphael’s Cartoons.
The most remarkable are certainly those by Lenoncourt and those of the
Clovis set. The first were offered to the cathedral by the Archbishop
Robert de Lenoncourt; one of them bears the dedication of 1530. They
represent the _Life of the Virgin_. They are of Flemish origin
and of a very fine execution. The composition is rich, spirited and of
an extremely graceful style. Some of them have not lost the freshness
of their colours and can still be counted among the best specimens of
the art of tapestry at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. These
precious hangings occupy the wall surfaces of the side-aisles of the
nave, where they produce a sumptuous effect.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO, ITALY.]
THE CASTLE OF S. ANGELO
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
The Ponte S. Angelo is the Pons Elius of Hadrian, built as an approach
to his mausoleum, and only intended for this, as another public bridge
existed close by, at the time of its construction. It is almost
entirely ancient, except the parapets. The statues of St. Peter and
St. Paul, at the extremity, were erected by Clement VII., in the place
of two chapels, in 1530, and the angels, by Clement IX., in 1688. The
pedestal of the third angel on the right is a relic of the siege of
Rome in 1849, and bears the impress of a cannon-ball.
These angels, which have been called the “breezy maniacs” of Bernini,
are only from his designs. The two angels which he executed himself,
and intended for this bridge, are now at S. Andrea della Fratte. The
idea of Clement IX. was a fine one, that “an avenue of the heavenly
host should be assembled to welcome the pilgrim to the shrine of the
great apostle.”
From the Ponte S. Angelo, when the Tiber is low, are visible the
remains of the bridge by which the ancient Via Triumphalis crossed
the river. Close by, where Santo Spirito now stands, was the Porta
Triumphalis, by which victors entered the city in triumph.
Facing the bridge, is the famous Castle of S. Angelo, built by the
Emperor Hadrian as his family tomb, because the last niche in the
imperial mausoleum of Augustus was filled when the ashes of Nerva were
laid there. The first funeral here was that of Elius Verus, the first
adopted son of Hadrian, who died before him. The Emperor himself died
at Baiæ, but his remains were transported hither from a temporary tomb
at Pozzuoli by his successor Antoninus Pius, by whom the mausoleum was
completed in A.D., 140. Here also were buried, Antoninus
Pius, A.D., 161; Marcus Aurelius, 180; Commodus, 192; and
Septimius Severus, in an urn of gold, enclosed in one of alabaster,
A.D., 211; Caracalla, in 217, was the last Emperor interred
here. The well-known lines of Byron:
“Turn to the mole which Hadrian rear’d on high,
Imperial mimic of old Egypt’s piles,
Colossal copyist of deformity,
Whose travell’d phantasy from the far Nile’s
Enormous model, doom’d the artist’s toils
To build for giants, and for his vain earth,
His shrunken ashes, raise this dome! How smiles
The gazer’s eye with philosophic mirth,
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth,
seem rather applicable to the Pyramid of Caius Cestius than to this
mausoleum.
The Castle, as it now appears, is but the skeleton of the magnificent
tomb of the Emperors. Procopius, writing in the Sixth Century,
describes its appearance in his time. “It was built,” he says, “of
Parian marble; the square blocks fit closely to each other without
any cement. It has four equal sides, each a stone’s throw in length.
In height it rises above the walls of the city. On the summit are
statues of men and horses, of admirable workmanship in Parian marble.”
Canina, in his _Architectura Romana_, gives a restoration of
the mausoleum, which shows how it consisted of three stories: 1, A
quadrangular basement, the upper part intersected with Doric pillars,
between which were spaces for epitaphs of the dead within, and
surmounted at the corners by marble equestrian statues; 2, a circular
story, with fluted Ionic colonnades; 3, circular story, surrounded
by Corinthian columns, between which were statues. The whole was
surmounted by a pyramidal roof, ending in a bronze fir-cone.
The history of the Mausoleum, in the Middle Ages is almost the
history of Rome. It was probably first turned into a fortress by
Honorius, A.D., 423. From Theodoric it derives the name of
“Carcer Theodorici.” In 537, it was besieged by Vitiges, when the
defending garrison, reduced to the last extremity, hurled down all the
magnificent statues which decorated the cornice, upon the besiegers. In
A.D., 498, Pope Symmachus removed the bronze fir-cone at the
apex of the roof to the court of St. Peter’s, whence it was afterwards
transferred to the Vatican garden, where it is still to be seen between
two bronze peacocks, which probably stood on either side of the
entrance.
Belisarius defended the castle against Totila, whose Gothic troops
captured and held it for three years, after which it was taken by
Narses.
It was in 530 that the event occurred which gave the building its
present name. Pope Gregory the Great was leading a penitential
procession to St. Peter’s, in order to offer up prayers for the
staying of the great pestilence which followed the inundation of
589; when, as he was crossing the bridge, even while the people were
falling dead around him, he looked up at the Mausoleum and saw an
angel on its summit, sheathing a bloody sword, while a choir of angels
around chaunted with celestial voices, the anthem, since adopted by
the church in her vesper service--“_Regina cœli, lætare--quia quem
meruisti portare--resurrexit, sicut dixit, Alleluja_.”--To which the
earthly voice of the Pope solemnly responded: “_Ora pro nobis Deum,
Alleluja_.”[10]
In the Tenth Century the fortress was occupied by the infamous Marozia,
who, in turn, brought her three husbands (Alberic, Count of Tusculum;
Guido, Marquis of Tuscany; and Hugo, King of Italy), thither, to
tyrannize with her over Rome. It was within the walls of this building
that Alberic, her son by her first husband, waiting upon his royal
stepfather at table, threw a bowl of water over him, when Hugo retorted
by a blow, which was the signal for an insurrection, the people taking
part with Alberic, putting the King to flight, and imprisoning Marozia.
Shut up within these walls, Pope John XI. (931–936), son of Marozia
by her first husband, ruled under the guidance of his stronger-minded
brother Alberic; here, also, Octavian, son of Alberic and grandson
of Marozia, succeeded in forcing his election as John XII. (being the
first Pope who took a new name), and scandalized Christendom by a life
of murder, robbery, adultery and incest.
In 974, the Castle was seized by Cencio (Crescenzio Nomentano), the
consul, who raised up an anti-pope (Boniface VII.) here, with the
determination of destroying the temporal power of the popes and
imprisoned and murdered two popes, Benedict VI. (972), and John XIV.
(984), within these walls. In 996, another lawful pope, Gregory V.,
calling in the Emperor Otho to his assistance, took the Castle and
beheaded Cencio, though he had promised him life if he would surrender.
From this governor the fortress long held the name of Castello de
Crescenzio, or Turris Crescentii, by which it is described in mediæval
writings. A second Cencio supported another anti-pope, Cadolaus, here
in 1063, against Pope Alexander II. A third Cencio imprisoned Gregory
VII. here in 1084. From this time the possession of the Castle was
a constant point of contest between popes and anti-popes. In 1313,
Arlotto degli Stefaneschi, having demolished most of the other towers
in the city, arranged the same fate for S. Angelo, but it was saved by
cession to the Orsini. It was from hence, on December 15, 1347, that
Rienzi fled to Bohemia, at the end of his first period of power, his
wife having previously made her escape disguised as a friar.
“The cause of final ruin to this monument,” is described by Nibby to
have been the resentment of the citizens against a French governor who
espoused the cause of the anti-pope (Clement VII.) against Urban VI. in
1378. It was then that the marble casings were all torn from the walls
and used as street pavements.
A drawing of Sangallo of 1465 shows the upper part of the fortress
crowned with high square towers and turreted buildings; a cincture of
bastions and massive square towers girding the whole; two square-built
bulwarks flanking the extremity of the bridge, which was then so
connected with these outworks that passengers would have immediately
found themselves inside the fortress after crossing the river.
Marlianus, 1588, describes its double cincture of fortifications,--“a
large round tower at the inner extremity of the bridge; two towers with
high pinnacles, and the cross on their summits, the river flowing all
around.”
The Castle began to assume its present aspect under Boniface IX. in
1395. John XXIII., 1411, commenced the covered way to the Vatican,
which was finished by Alexander VI.; and roofed by Urban VIII., in
1630. By the last named pope the great outworks of the fortress were
built under Bernini, and furnished with cannon made from the bronze
roof of the Pantheon. Under Paul III. the interior was decorated with
frescoes, and a colossal marble angel erected on the summit, in place
of a chapel (S. Angelo inter Nubes), built by Boniface XIV. for the
existing angel of bronze, by a Dutch artist, Verschaffelt.
Of the Castle, as we now see it externally, only the quadrangular
basement is of the time of Hadrian; the round tower is of that of
Urban VIII., its top added by Paul III. The four round towers of the
outworks, called after the four Evangelists, are of Nicholas V., 1447.
The interior of the fortress can be visited by an order. Excavations
made in 1825 have laid open the sepulchral chamber in the midst of
the basement. Here, stood in the centre, the porphyry sarcophagus of
Hadrian, which was stolen by Pope Innocent II. to be used as his own
tomb in the Lateran, where it was destroyed by the fire of 1360, the
cover alone escaping, which was used for the tomb of Otho II., in
the atrium of St. Peter’s, and which, after filling this office for
seven centuries, is now the baptismal font of that basilica. A spiral
passage, thirty feet high and eleven wide, up which a chariot could be
driven, gradually ascends through the solid mass of masonry. There is
wonderfully little to be seen. A saloon of the time of Paul III. is
adorned with frescoes of the life of Alexander the Great, by Pierino
del Vaga. This room would be used by the pope in case of his having
to take refuge in S. Angelo. An adjoining room, adorned with a stucco
frieze of Tritons and Nereids, is that in which Cardinal Caraffa was
strangled (1561) under Pius IV., for alleged abuses of authority under
his uncle, Paul IV.--his brother, the Marquis Caraffa, being beheaded
in the castle the same night. The reputed prison of Beatrice Cenci is
shown, but it is very uncertain that she was ever confined here,--also
the prison of Cagliostro, and that of Benvenuto Cellini, who escaped,
and broke his leg in trying to let himself down by a rope from the
ramparts. The statue of the angel by Montelupo is to be seen stowed
away in a dark corner. Several horrible trabocchette (oubliettes) are
shown.