gopura, which, had he lived to complete it, would probably have been
the finest edifice of its class in southern India. It measures 174 ft.
from north to south, and 107 ft. in depth. The entrance through it is
21 ft. 9 in. wide; and if it be true that its gateposts are 60 ft.
(Tripe says 57 ft.) in height, that would have been the height of the
opening. It will thus be seen that it was designed on even a larger
scale than that at Seringham, and it certainly far surpasses that
celebrated edifice in the beauty of its details. Its doorposts alone,
whether 57 ft. or 60 ft. in height, are single blocks of granite,
carved with the most exquisite scroll patterns of elaborate foliage,
and all the other carvings are equally beautiful. Being unfinished, and
consequently never consecrated, it has escaped whitewash, and alone, of
all the buildings of Madura, its beauties can still be admired in their
original perfection.
The great temple at Madura is a larger and far more important building
than the choultrie; but, somehow or other, it has not attracted the
attention of travellers to the same extent that the latter has. No one
has ever attempted to make a plan of it, or to describe it in such
detail as would enable others to understand its peculiarities. It
possesses, however, all the characteristics of a first-class Dravidian
temple, and, as its date is perfectly well known, it forms a landmark
of the utmost value in enabling us to fix the relative date of other
temples.
The sanctuary is said to have been built by Viswanath, the first king
of the Nayak dynasty, A. D. 1520, which may possibly be the case; but
the temple itself certainly owes all its magnificence to Tirumulla
Nayak, A. D. 1622–1657, or to his elder brother, Muttu Virappa, who
preceded him, and who built a mantapa, said to be the oldest thing now
existing here. The Kalyana mantapa is said to have been built A. D.
1707, and the Tatta Suddhi in 1770. These, however, are insignificant
parts compared with those which certainly owe their origin to Tirumulla
Nayak.
The temple itself is a nearly regular rectangle, two of its sides
measuring 720 ft. and 729 ft., the other two 834 ft. and 852 ft. It
possessed four gopuras of the first class, and five smaller ones; a
very beautiful tank, surrounded by arcades; and a hall of 1000 columns,
whose sculptures surpass those of any other hall of its class I am
acquainted with. There is a small shrine, dedicated to the goddess
Minakshi, the tutelary deity of the place, which occupies the space of
fifteen columns, so the real number is only 985; but it is not their
number, but their marvellous elaboration that makes it the wonder of
the place, and renders it, in some respects, more remarkable than the
choultrie about which so much has been said and written. I do not feel
sure that this hall alone is not a greater work than the choultrie;
taken in conjunction with the other buildings of the temple, it
certainly forms a far more imposing group.
_History of Indian and Eastern Architecture_ (New York, 1891).
THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
The Cathedral absorbs the attention of every traveller who visits
Milan. It dominates the town, standing in the centre as its chief
attraction and marvel. To it one hastens immediately on arriving,
even on a night when there is no moon, to grasp at least a few of its
outlines.
The _piazza del Duomo_, irregular enough in its form, is bordered
with houses of which it is customary to speak ill; the guide never
omits telling the traveller that these should be razed to make this a
symmetrical square in the Rivoli taste. I am not of this opinion. These
houses with their massive pillars and their saffron-coloured awnings
standing opposite to some irregular buildings of unequal height, make a
very good setting for the Cathedral. Edifices often lose more than they
gain by not being obstructed: I have been convinced of this by several
Gothic monuments, the effect of which was not spoiled by the stalls and
the ruins which had gathered around them, as might have been believed;
this is not, however, the case with the Cathedral, which is perfectly
isolated; but I think that nothing is more favourable to a palace, a
church, or any regularly constructed building than to be surrounded by
heterogeneous buildings which bring out the proportions of the noble
order.
When we look at the Cathedral from the square, the effect is ravishing:
the whiteness of the marble, standing out from the blue of the sky,
strikes you first; one would say that an immense piece of silver lace
had been placed against a background of _lapis lazuli_. This is the
first impression, and it will also be the last memory. Whenever I think
of the Duomo of Milan, it always appears like this. The Cathedral
is one of those rare Gothic churches of Italy, yet this Gothic
resembles ours but little. We do not find here that sombre faith,
that disquieting mystery, those dark depths, those severe forms, that
darting up from earth towards the sky, that character of austerity
which repudiates beauty as too sensual and only selects from a subject
what is necessary to bring you a step nearer to God; this is a Gothic
full of elegance, grace, and brilliancy, which one dreams of for fairy
palaces and with which one could build alcazars and mosques as well as
a Catholic temple. The delicacy in its enormous proportions and its
whiteness make it look like a glacier with its thousand needles, or a
gigantic concretion of stalactites; it is difficult to believe it the
work of man.
The design of the façade is of the simplest: it is an angle sharp as
the gable-end of an ordinary house and bordered with marble lace,
resting upon a wall without any fore-part, of no distinct order of
architecture, pierced by five doors and eight windows and striped
with six groups of columns with fillets, or rather mouldings which
end in hollowed out points surmounted by statues and filled in their
interstices with brackets and niches supporting and sheltering figures
of angels, saints, and patriarchs. Back of these spring out from
innumerable fillets, like the pipes of a basaltic grotto, forests of
little steeples, pinnacles, minarets, and needles of white marble,
while the central spire which resembles frost-work, crystallized in the
air, rises in the azure to a terrific height and places the Virgin,
who is standing upon its tip with her foot on a crescent, within two
steps of Heaven. In the middle of the façade these words are inscribed:
_Mariae nascenti_, the dedication of the Cathedral.
Begun by Jean Galéas Visconti, continued by Ludovico le More, the
basilica of Milan was finished by Napoleon. It is the largest church
known after Saint Peter’s in Rome. The interior is of a majestic
and noble simplicity: rows of columns in pairs form five naves.
Notwithstanding their actual mass, these groups of columns have a
lightness of effect on account of the grace of their shafts. Above the
capitals of the pillars there is a kind of gallery, perforated and
carved, where statues of saints are placed; then the mouldings continue
until they unite at the summit of the vault, which is ornamented with
trefoils and Gothic knots made with such perfection that they would
deceive the eye, if the plaster, which has fallen in places, did not
reveal the naked stone.
In the centre of the cross an opening, surrounded by a balustrade,
allows you to look down into the crypt, where the remains of Saint
Charles Borromeo rest in a crystal coffin covered with plates of
silver. Saint Charles Borromeo is the most revered saint of the
district. His virtues and his conduct during the plague in Milan made
him popular, and his memory is always kept alive.
At the entrance of the choir upon a grille which supports a crucifix,
surrounded by angels in adoration, we read the following inscription
framed in wood: _Attendite ad petram unde excisi estis_. On each side
there are two magnificent pulpits of wood, supported by superb bronze
figures and ornamented with silver bas-reliefs, the subjects of which
are their least value. The organs, placed not far from the pulpits,
have fine paintings by Procacini, if my memory does not deceive me, for
shutters; above the choir there is a _Road to the Cross_, sculptured by
Andrea Biffi and several other Milanese sculptors. The weeping angels,
which mark the stations, have a great variety of attitudes and are
charming, although their grace is somewhat effeminate.
The general impression is simple and religious; a soft light invites
you to reflection; the large pillars spring to the vault with a
movement full of vitality and faith; not a single detail is here to
destroy the majesty of the whole. There is no overcharging and no
surfeit of luxury: the lines follow each other from one end to the
other, and the design of the edifice is understood in a single glance.
The superb elegance of the exterior seems but a veil for mystery and
humility within; the blatant hymn of marble makes you lower your voice
and speak in a hushed tone: the exterior, by reason of its lightness
and whiteness, is, perhaps, Pagan; the interior is, most assuredly,
Christian.
In the corner of a nave, just before ascending the dome, we glance
at a tomb filled with allegorical figures cast in bronze by the
Cavalier Aretin after Michael Angelo in a bold and superb style.
You arrive straightway on the roof of the church after climbing a
stairway decorated at every angle with prohibitive, or threatening
inscriptions, which do not speak well in favour of the Italians’ piety
or sense of propriety.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MILAN: FLYING BUTTRESSES]
This roof all bristling with steeples and ribbed with flying-buttresses
at the sides, which form corridors in perspective, is made of great
slabs of marble, like the rest of the edifice. Even at this point it
is higher than the highest monuments of the city. A bas-relief of the
finest execution is sunk in each buttress; each steeple is peopled
with twenty-five statues. I do not believe there is another place in
the world that holds in the same amount of space so large a number of
sculptured figures. One could make an important city with the marble
population of the Cathedral statues. Six thousand, seven hundred and
sixteen have been counted. I have heard of a church in the Morea
painted in the Byzantine style by the monks of Mount Athos, which did
not contain less than three thousand figures. This is as nothing in
comparison to the Cathedral of Milan. With regard to persons painted
and sculptured, I have often had this dream--that if ever I were
invested with magical power I would animate all the figures created by
art in granite, in stone, in wood, and on canvas and people with them a
country which would be a realization of the landscapes in the pictures.
The sculptured multitude of this Cathedral bring back this fantasy.
Among these statues there is one by Canova, a Saint Sebastian, lodged
in an _aiguille_, and an Eve by Cristoforo Gobi, of such a charming
and sensual grace that it is a little astonishing to see her in such a
place. However, she is very beautiful, and the birds of the sky do not
appear to be scandalized by her Edenesque costume.
From this platform there unfolds an immense panorama: you see the Alps
and the Apennines, the vast plains of Lombardy, and with a glass you
can regulate your watch from the dial of the church of Monza, whose
stripes of black and white stones may be distinguished....
The ascent of the spire, which is perforated and open to the light, is
not at all dangerous, although it may affect people who are subject
to vertigo. Frail stairways wind through the towers and lead you to a
balcony, above which there is nothing but the cap of the spire and the
statue which crowns the edifice.
I will not try to describe this gigantic basilica in detail. A volume
would be needed for its monograph. As a mere artist I must be content
with a general view and a personal impression. After one has descended
into the street and has made the tour of the church one finds on the
lateral façades and apses the same crowd of statues, the same multitude
of bas-reliefs: it is a terrifying debauch of sculpture, an incredible
heap of wonders.
Around the Cathedral all kinds of little industries prosper, stalls of
second-hand booksellers, opticians selling their wares in the open air,
and even a theatre of marionnettes, whose performances I promise myself
not to miss. Human life with its trivialities swarms and stirs at the
foot of this majestic edifice, which, like petrified fireworks, is
bursting its white rockets in the sky; here, as everywhere, we find the
same contrast of sublimity of idea and vulgarity of fact. The temple of
the Saviour throws its shadow across the hut of Punchinello.
_Voyage en Italie_ (Paris, new ed., 1884).
THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN.
AMELIA B. EDWARDS.
The mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most beautiful in Cairo,
is also perhaps the most beautiful in the Moslem world. It was built
at just that happy moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased
merely to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original
architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and
early Christian edifices. The mosques of a few centuries earlier (as,
for instance, that of Tulûn, which marks the first departure from
the old Byzantine model) consisted of little more than a courtyard
with colonnades leading to a hall supported on a forest of pillars. A
little more than a century later, and the national style had already
experienced the beginnings of that prolonged eclipse which finally
resulted in the bastard Neo-Byzantine Renaissance represented by
the mosque of Mehemet Ali. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan, built
ninety-seven years before the taking of Constantinople, may justly be
regarded as the highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after
it had used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and before
its new-born originality became modified by influence from beyond the
Bosphorus. Its pre-eminence is due neither to the greatness of its
dimensions, nor to the splendour of its materials. It is neither so
large as the great mosque at Damascus, nor so rich in costly marbles
as Saint Sophia in Constantinople; but in design, proportion, and a
certain lofty grace impossible to describe, it surpasses these, and
every other mosque, whether original or adapted, with which the writer
is acquainted.
The whole structure is purely national. Every line and curve in it,
and every inch of detail, is in the best style of the best period of
the Arabian school. And above all, it was designed expressly for its
present purpose. The two famous mosques of Damascus and Constantinople
having, on the contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidences of
adaptation. In Saint Sophia, the space once occupied by the figure of
the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the mosaic-work of the apse,
filled in with gold tesseræ of later date; while the magnificent gates
of the great mosque at Damascus are decorated, among other Christian
emblems, with the sacramental chalice. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan
built by En Nasîr Hassan in the high and palmy days of the Memlook
rule, is marred by no discrepancies. For a mosque it was designed, and
a mosque it remains. Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin.
[Illustration: MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN, CAIRO]
A number of small streets having lately been demolished in this
quarter, the approach to the mosque lies across a desolate open space
littered with débris, but destined to be laid out as a public square.
With this desirable end in view, some half dozen workmen were lazily
loading as many camels with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting
rubbish. If they persevere, and the Minister of Public Works continues
to pay their wages with due punctuality, the ground will perhaps get
cleared in eight or ten years’ time.
Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great steps, which
were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, we observed a long and
apparently fast-widening fissure reaching nearly from top to bottom of
the main wall of the building, close against the minaret. It looked
like just such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake, and,
being still new to the East, we wondered the Government had not set to
work to mend it. We had yet to learn that nothing is ever mended in
Cairo. Here, as in Constantinople, new buildings spring up apace, but
the old, no matter how venerable, are allowed to moulder away, inch by
inch, till nothing remains but a heap of ruins.
Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some more steps
and along a gloomy corridor, we came to the great court, before
entering which, however, we had to take off our boots and put on
slippers brought for the purpose. The first sight of this court is
an architectural surprise. It is like nothing that one has seen
before, and its beauty equals its novelty. Imagine an immense marble
quadrangle, open to the sky and enclosed within lofty walls, with, at
each side, a vast recess framed in by a single arch. The quadrangle is
more than 100 feet square, and the walls are more than 100 feet high.
Each recess forms a spacious hall for rest and prayer, and all are
matted; but that at the eastern end is wider and considerably deeper
than the other three, and the noble arch that encloses it like the
proscenium of a splendid stage, measures, according to Fergusson, 69
feet 5 inches in the span. It looks much larger. This principal hall,
the floor of which is raised one step at the upper end, measures 90
feet in depth and 90 in height. The dais is covered with prayer-rugs,
and contains the holy niche and the pulpit of the preacher. We observed
that those who came up here came only to pray. Having prayed, they
either went away or turned aside into one of the other recesses to
rest. There was a charming fountain in the court, with a dome-roof as
light and fragile-looking as a big bubble, at which each worshipper
performed his ablutions on coming in. This done, he left his slippers
on the matting and trod the carpeted dais barefoot....
While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the intricate
Arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custode came up with a big key
and invited us to visit the tomb of the founder. So we followed him
into an enormous vaulted hall a hundred feet square, in the centre of
which stood a plain, railed-off tomb, with an empty iron-bound coffer
at the foot. We afterwards learned that for five hundred years--that is
to say, ever since the death and burial of Sultan Hassan--this coffer
had contained a fine copy of the Koran, traditionally said to have
been written by Sultan Hassan’s own hand; but that the Khedive, who is
collecting choice and antique Arabic MSS., had only the other day sent
an order for its removal.
Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the proportions of this
noble sepulchral hall, the walls of which are covered with tracery
in low relief incrusted with discs and tesseræ of turquoise-coloured
porcelain; while high up, in order to lead off the vaulting of the
roof, the corners are rounded by means of recessed clusters of
exquisite Arabesque woodwork, like pendant stalactites. But the
tesseræ are fast falling out, and most of their places are vacant; and
the beautiful woodwork hangs in fragments, tattered and cobwebbed, like
time-worn banners which the first touch of a brush would bring down.
Going back again from the tomb to the courtyard, we everywhere observed
traces of the same dilapidation. The fountain, once a miracle of
Sarascenic ornament, was fast going to destruction. The rich marbles
of its basement were cracked and discoloured, its stuccoed cupola was
flaking off piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like
wood tracery shredding away by inches.
Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with pretty confidence
on the brink of the basin, and having splashed, and drunk, and preened
its feathers like a true believer at his ablutions, flew up to the top
of the cupola and sang deliciously. All else was profoundly still.
Large spaces of light and shadow divided the quadrangle. The sky showed
overhead as a square opening of burning solid blue; while here and
there, reclining, praying, or quietly occupied, a number of turbaned
figures were picturesquely scattered over the matted floors of the open
halls around. Yonder sat a tailor cross-legged, making a waistcoat;
near him, stretched on his face at full length, sprawled a basket-maker
with his half-woven basket and bundle of rushes beside him; and here,
close against the main entrance, lay a blind man and his dog; the
master asleep, the dog keeping watch. It was, as I have said, our first
mosque, and I well remember the surprise with which we saw that tailor
sewing on his buttons, and the sleepers lying about in the shade. We
did not then know that a Mohammedan mosque is as much a place of rest
and refuge as of prayer; or that the houseless Arab may take shelter
there by night or day as freely as the birds may build their nests in
the cornice, or as the blind man’s dog may share the cool shade with
the sleeping master.
_A Thousand Miles up the Nile_ (London, 2d ed., 1889).
THE CATHEDRAL OF TRÈVES.
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN.
The ancient capital of the Treveri has the privilege of being known by
two modern names, native and foreign, each of which preserves a letter
of the ancient name which is lost in its rival. _Treveris_ is by its
own people contracted into _Trier_, while by its neighbours it is cut
short into _Trèves_. But one who looks out from the amphitheatre beyond
its walls on the city which boasts itself to have stood for thirteen
hundred years longer than Rome, will be inclined to hold that the
beauty of its position and the interest of its long history cannot lose
their charm under any name. It was not without reason that the mythical
Trebetas, son of Ninus, after wandering through all lands, pitched on
the spot by the Mosel as the loveliest and richest site that he could
find for the foundation of the first city which arose on European
soil....
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF TRÈVES.]
Trier holds, north of the Alps, a position which is in some respects
analogous to the position of Ravenna south of the Alps. The points both
of likeness and unlikeness between the two cities may be instructively
compared. In physical position no two cities can well be more opposite.
No two spots can be more unlike than Trier, with its hills, its river,
and its bridge, and Ravenna, forsaken by the sea, left in its marshy
flat, with its streets, which were once canals like those of Venice,
now canals no longer. In their history the two cities have thus much
in common, that each was a seat of the Imperial power of Rome in the
days of its decline. Each too is remarkable for its rich store of
buildings handed on from the days of its greatness, buildings which
stamp upon each city an unique character of its own. But, when we more
minutely compare either the history or the surviving antiquities of the
two cities, when we compare the circumstances under which each city
rose to greatness, we shall find on the whole less of likeness than of
unlikeness. The difference may be summed up when we say that Trier is
the city of Constantine, that Ravenna is the city of Honorius....