“Am I in Italy? Is this the Mincius?
Are those the distant turrets of Verona?
And shall I sup where Juliet at the masque
Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him?”
_Rogers._
Palazzuolo--Coccaglio--Brescia: new and old Cathedrals,
Broletto--Churches--Donato--Desenzano--Lago di
Garda--Riva--Trent--Verona.
Our drive from Bergamo to Brescia was strikingly unlike what we had
hitherto been so much enjoying. Mile after mile of straight roads,
between fields so closely planted with fruit-trees that one never sees
more than the merest glimpse of anything beyond them, are certainly not
pleasant; and the hot sun above us, and the thirsty and dry beds of
rivers which we crossed on our way, made us feel glad when evening drew
on, and we found ourselves rapidly nearing Brescia.
I made notes at two or three places on the way. At Palazzuolo is a great
circular belfry, ornamented with a large figure at the top and divers
others about its base, built of brick rusticated to look like stone, and
altogether about as base a piece of architecture as could well be found,
but pardoned here because of the pure blue of the sky I saw behind it,
and partly on account of the view which it commands, reaching, it is
said, as far as Milan, and including the great plain out of which, upon
a slight hill, it rises. Palazzuolo is nicely situated, and upon the
first of the many rivers which we had passed from Bergamo which had any
water in its bed. The houses, too, were almost all supported on arcades,
giving pleasant shelter from the sun.
Beyond this we came to Coccaglio, a small village with a wretchedly bad
modern church, glorying in a glaringly sham front, and faced on the
opposite side of the street by the remains of a mediæval church--whose
place it has taken--and which is now shut up and rapidly going to ruin.
The new church is built north and south--the old one orientating
properly; but then the west front was the great feature of the new
church, and therefore it was necessary, of course, to place it towards
the road!
[Illustration: WINDOW--COCCAGLIO.]
Coccaglio still has, however, some very valuable remains of mediæval
domestic work in its houses, of which I was able
[Illustration: 7.--HOUSE AT COCCAGLIO. Page 65.]
to obtain some sketches. They were entirely executed in brick and
terra-cotta, except, of course, the capitals and shafts of the windows,
and appeared to be of the fourteenth century.
[Illustration: DETAIL OF WINDOWS AND CORBELLING FOR
CHIMNEYS--COCCAGLIO.]
The upper portion of the house of which I give a sketch remains very
fairly perfect, though its lower story has been entirely modernized. It
will be seen that it is very uniform in its design, the large and small
windows alternating regularly; and that semi-circular arches are used in
the windows in connection with ogee trefoils. This is one of the
apparent inconsistencies which occur in almost all Italian Gothic work;
and might seem to give us ancient authority for any amount of licence in
our combination of the elements of what we ordinarily consider to be
thoroughly different styles. The windows are marked by the same
elaboration of their sills which we noticed in the Broletto at Bergamo,
and the detail of these, as also of the corbelling out from the wall of
several chimney-breasts, is exceedingly good.
In a back street in the village I found a house the balconies around
which were corbelled forward on finely moulded beams, which, judging by
the moulding, could hardly be of later date than the commencement of the
fourteenth century.
[Illustration: WOODEN BALCONY--COCCAGLIO.]
Wooden mouldings of this kind are much rarer in Italy than they are in
the North, and I particularly notice this little relic, therefore, which
still remains to show how well the science of moulding was sometimes
understood even there.
Such a village as Coccaglio is, as I found afterwards, a place to be
made much of; for generally, except in public or important buildings in
large towns, one sees very little trace of any mediæval domestic work
beyond the perpetually recurring arcading under the houses which is so
general a feature in all the towns in the North of Italy.
There is nothing further of any interest on the road, and just after
sunset we reached Brescia, too late to see anything of the general
effect of the city.
Brescia is mainly famous, I believe, first for its connection with a
story of the generosity of Bayard, the “chevalier sans peur et sans
reproche,” and next for the large discoveries of Roman remains which
have from time to time been made there. It is one of those towns,
moreover, of which guide-books, with an immense list of churches and the
pictures they contain, give perhaps too grand an idea before they have
been seen. It is, however, undoubtedly a place of much interest, not
only for the antiquary, but also for the student of mediæval art, since,
though its churches are generally uninteresting, it has in the Broletto,
sadly mutilated and modernized as it is, the remains of one of the most
extensive and grand of these buildings, and to a considerable extent
executed in very excellent brickwork.
Our first visit in the morning was to the Piazza, in which stand the two
cathedrals--the old and the new--side by side, and just beyond them the
front of the Broletto, stretching its great length up a slight hill and
along a narrow lane beyond the Piazza, whilst at its angle, towering up
between it and the cathedrals, stands a tall and rugged stone campanile,
without break or window until at the top, where, just as in the
corresponding tower at Bergamo, great rudely-arched openings are left,
through which appear the wheels and works of the bells.
The new cathedral, approached by a flight of steps from the Piazza, has
a great sham front. It has, moreover, a large dome, said to be inferior
only in size to those of S. Peter’s and the cathedral at Florence, but
not prepossessing in its effect; nor did the church seem to contain any
pictures of value. By a descent of some twenty steps from the south
transept the old cathedral is reached. This is of very early date, and
constructed partly in stone and partly in brick. The most remarkable
feature is the nave, which is circular in plan, with an aisle round it;
the central portion, divided by eight arches from the aisles, being
carried up into a dome. The choir and transepts are projected on the
east side of the dome, and the former is groined and has a five-sided
apse. The walls retain some fair mediæval monuments, and beneath the
church is a large crypt. The old stone altar in the choir is a fine
example of the thirteenth century. The mensa is, as so often is the
case, carried on shafts, no less than sixteen in front and six at the
ends, with carved capitals. The stalls are in the apse, and a fine
lectern stands behind the altar.
The whole air of the Duomo Vecchio is chill and dismal to a degree; it
is neglected and dirty, and apparently shut up except for occasional
services, and left no pleasant impressions on our minds of our first
Lombard cathedral; and yet undoubtedly there is both here and at
Aachen--where the plan of the cathedral is so very similar--much to
admire in the idea of the plan, and I can quite imagine that a very
noble and useful church might in any age have been founded upon this old
Lombard type.[10]
Those who know anything of Spanish churches will be reminded here of the
two cathedrals at Salamanca, the relative positions of which are just
the same, a steep flight of steps in either case, leading down from the
south aisle of the new cathedral into the old and deserted one.
From the cathedral we went at once to the Broletto, which
[Illustration: 8.--BROLETTO. BRESCIA. Page 69.]
stands in the same Piazza. The main portion of this immense building
appears to have been built rather early in the thirteenth century. The
arches throughout are both round and pointed, used indifferently; but
this mixture does not betoken any diversity of date, as it would in
England.
[Illustration: CLOISTER--BROLETTO, BRESCIA.]
A large quadrangle is formed by the buildings, which has a cloister on
two sides, and traces of another cloister on a third side now built up.
The cloister still remaining on the cast side is ancient and on a large
scale; it opens to the quadrangle with simple pointed arches resting
upon heavy piers, and a row of piers running down the centre divides it
into two portions, so that it may be judged that its size is very
considerable. The groining has transverse and diagonal ribs, the former
being very remarkable, and, as not unfrequently seen in good Italian
work, slightly ogeed; not, that is to say, regular ogee arches, but
ordinary arches with the slightest suggestion only of an ogee curve in
the centre. Of the external portion of the building the west front is
the most perfect, and must always have been the finest; it consists of a
building containing in the upper story five windows, the centre being
the largest, and possibly once the Ringhiera, to the south of which
rises the great belfry of rough stone, and beyond that a wide building
with traces--but no more--of many of the original windows; north of the
building with the five windows is a very beautiful composition executed
almost entirely in finely-moulded bricks; it has an exquisite door with
some traces of fresco in its tympanum, executed mainly in stone, of
which I give a drawing, and a magnificent brick rose window, above which
is a brick cornice, which continues over the remainder of the west front
and along the whole of the north side.
[Illustration: DETAIL OF CIRCULAR WINDOW--BROLETTO, BRESCIA.]
[Illustration: DOORWAY--BROLETTO, BRESCIA.]
[Illustration: BRICK CORNICE--BROLETTO, BRESCIA.]
The size of the building is prodigious, and certainly the detail of all
the parts (excepting perhaps the cornice, which is of the common arcaded
kind) is most beautiful and valuable. The brickwork is so good and
characteristic that I have given several sketches of it. All the arches
have occasional voussoirs of stone, and the centre of the arch is always
marked by a key-stone, and these are sometimes slightly carved to
distinguish them from the other stone voussoirs. The abaci are of brick,
moulded and very varied. The doorway given in the woodcut on the
preceding page has stone jambs, caps and bases, lintel and outer arch,
the label and cusps being of terra-cotta; above this the whole of this
portion of the front is of brick, and very admirably built.
[Illustration: SAN FRANCESCO--BRESCIA.]
Of the churches of Brescia there seem to be but few of any interest;
that of San Francesco, of whose west front I give a sketch, is the best,
and, though not of uncommon design, is worth notice; the mixture of
white and black
[Illustration: 9. BROLETTO--BRESCIA.
Details of Archivolts]
marble and brick is very judicious; but I must protest once more against
the arcaded eaves-cornices, which are very elaborate and heavy; nor can
I bring myself to like the great flat gable, covering both nave and
aisles, and divided only by pilaster strips, which characterizes so many
mediæval Italian churches. In this west front of San Francesco the
cornices and the mouldings of the small circular windows are all of
brick, and the rest of the front of stone, the rose window having
voussoirs of black and white marble. The only other part of the church
which appeared to be of any interest was a campanile on the south side
of the choir: this had stone belfry windows, well treated with simple
plate tracery, and there is a singular and lofty lantern over one of the
chapels on the north side of the church, all of rich brickwork dating
from about 1480.
The sun was at its hottest as we wandered about the streets of Brescia;
but there was so much pleasure in the examination of the busy people who
thronged its narrow tortuous streets, that we enjoyed it very much. In
Italian towns, too, there is not much difficulty in finding the way; we
ask the road to some church, and forthwith, in place of a long and not
very intelligible direction, in which we are sure entirely to confuse
our right hand with our left, the person we ask turns round with us,
walks by our side, shews us our object, and, politely taking off his hat
and bowing, takes leave of us. It was by such aid as this that we found
the church of the Carmine, which is another very late Gothic church. The
west front is most fantastic and unpleasing, and the pinnacles composed
of round bricks, disposed alternately over each other, and common in
most Italian brick buildings, are very ugly; there is, however, a good
simple cloister attached to the church on the north; it is of the same
design as almost all in this part of the world, having simple round
shafts with carved caps and circular arches. An inner
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF THE CARMINE CONVENT--BRESCIA.]
cloister which I remember of old as occupied by the ever present
Austrian soldiers, is now (1872) open to all the world, and neither
cared for nor used. Here the south side of the cloister is of two
stories in height, the lower similar to the our just mentioned, the
upper having two arches to one arch of that below, and the arches
picturesquely shaped, being cinquefoils, with the central division of
ogee form, and with moulded terminations to the cusps. There is a fair
campanile here, with brick traceries and strings, but with a modern
belfry-stage.
A little bit of cloister, or gallery, on the north side of Sta. Afra,
has arcading of similar character in its upper gallery, but the arches
are trefoiled.
In the Contrada della Pace there remains a very bold fragment of a
castle tower. It is built of very roughly-jointed stone, and is
perfectly plain till near the top, where it has a bold machicolation
with tall square angle-turrets, the whole battlemented with a forked
battlement. Out of the centre of the tower a tall thin tower rises to
some height above the battlements.
One of the most picturesque spots in the city is the Piazza, at the end
of which stands the Palazzo della Loggia; the effect on coming into it
from the narrow streets in which we had been wandering was very
pleasant, the large open space being surrounded with rather elaborate
Renaissance work with rich coloured sun-blinds projecting from the
windows over the sunny pavement, which in its turn was thronged with
people in picturesque attire selling fruit and vegetables. The streets
are all arcaded, and some of them have very considerable remains of
frescoes on the exterior, giving much interest to the otherwise ugly
walls; they have, however, suffered very greatly from exposure, and are
only in places intelligible; still they give traces of brilliant
external colour, and are therefore much valued in my recollections of
Brescia.
Compared with Bergamo, Brescia has the air of a smart and busy place;
its streets are wider and better paved, and the smells which still
greeted us were not quite so bad as there. The staple manufacture of the
city seems to be that of copper vessels; shop after shop, indeed street
after street, is full of coppersmiths’ shops; the men all sitting at
work, and keeping up a ceaseless din of hammering, in open shops, so
that all the world may see them. Nor is the coppersmiths’ the only trade
that loves publicity, for here as elsewhere the barbers’ shops are very
amusing, quite open in front, with perhaps a yellow curtain hanging down
half way, affecting only to conceal the inviting interior, which however
is always sufficiently visible, occupied in the centre by a chair, on
which sits the customer gravely holding a soapdish to his chin whilst
the barber operates; and this going on all day makes one think that
shaving is, after all, one of the great works of an Italian’s time!
When we left Brescia the heat was intense; the road, too, was deep in
dust to an extent not to be understood in England. There had been a
drought of some weeks’ duration, and the much-travelled road from Milan
to Verona, along which our way now lay, plainly told the tale which the
dry, parched, cracked-looking earth on each side of our way, and the sad
faces of every one as they talked about the failure of the vintage,
amply confirmed. Unluckily for ourselves we had not taken the advice of
our driver to have a close vehicle, but had insisted upon having an open
carriage, the consequence of which piece of self-will was that we had
hard work, even with the aid of umbrellas, to protect ourselves from
_coups de soleil_. We now learnt that in hot weather in Italy it is not
always the best plan to have as much of the sun as one can get. In
England it always is, but he who acts on his English experience in Italy
will surely repent his mistake.
We managed, however, to exist through the clouds of dust, relieved
perhaps by the sight of a regiment of swarthy and unpleasant looking
Austrian soldiers marching through the sun and dust, many of them with
their knapsacks and arms, but all with great-coats on to preserve their
white uniforms. When we saw them we could not help contrasting our
relative lots, and then, feeling how much worse off they were than
ourselves, we went on a little more contentedly than before. The road,
too, became slightly more interesting; instead of miles upon miles of
straight lines, we had a more winding way, and after a time occasional
beautiful glimpses of the mountains which marked to us the situation of
the Lago di Garda.
We drove without stopping through Donato, a place of no interest
apparently save for the huge dome of its church, and then passing under
a very fine viaduct resting upon a long range of pointed arches, (which
carries the railway which soon after our return was opened, and now
whisks only too many travellers from Milan to Venice and back without a
halt on the way,) we commenced the descent towards the town of
Desenzano, beyond and above whose roofs stretched the beautiful expanse
of fair Lago di Garda, with its great calm surface, and fine group of
distant mountains hemming in with picturesque and irregular outline, its
upper end.
We soon reached the poor and desolate streets of the town, and diving
into the dark court of the not over-clean looking hotel, gave ourselves
up for a time to the contemplation of the quiet loveliness of the scene.
The contrast between the flat shores of the lower part of the lake and
the mountains which crowd around its head is very striking, and to this
it is that Desenzano owes all that it has of interest. We strolled out
for a short time, looked at washerwomen kneeling in small tubs on the
edge of the lake, and washing their linen upon the smooth face of the
stones which pave its shore, and then went on, as in duty bound, to look
into the church. This we found to be neither very old nor very
interesting, but curious as illustrating the extent to which, in Italy,
the practice is sometimes carried of putting altars in every direction
without reference to their orientation. Here the high altar and some
others faced due south, whilst most of the remainder faced east, and I
think scarcely one turned to the west.
The remains of an old castle rise picturesquely above the little
harbour, from which steamboats sail for the tour of the lake, and
bidding farewell for a time to dusty roads, let us embark on one of
these for Riva at the head of the lake on our way to Trent, which is,
artistically speaking, the northernmost really national city and
cathedral in Italy.
Our steamboat kept to the west side of the lake, touching at a few
villages and towns, and for the most part ploughing its way along
beneath some of the highest and most precipitous rocks that I know. We
took a band on board on the way, and discharged them into a big barge
under a cliff, on the top of which was being held a village festa, at
which they were to perform; and we all looked with no little compassion
upon the heavily weighted performers as we saw the people who had
preceded them climbing the steep mountain sides above us.
The Lago di Garda seems to me to be in its upper reach one of the most
beautiful of Italian lakes. But it should always be taken in the way we
went, for the contrast between the sublimity of the upper end and the
tameness of the lower end is so great that nothing but disappointment
would be felt by those who saw the head of the lake first.
One or two of the towns on the western shore have churches of some
interest. At Salo there is a Gothic church with windows which have a
wide external splay and an enriched brick moulding or label all round
them. The windows are of one light, and have ogee-cusped heads. Another
church, at (I think) Gargnano, is of much more importance. It is
cruciform, with a domical lantern at the crossing. The nave has a simple
clerestory and aisles, and the west end, built in black and white
courses, has one great arch which encloses the doorway, above this a
lancet window, and above this again a circular window without tracery.
From Riva--one of the most pleasant resting-places on the Italian
lakes--a good road through fine scenery leads to Trent, a journey of
some six or eight hours. The descent upon Trent is very fine. The town
standing by itself well away from the fine mountains which form the
background to the view, the old walls and towers around it, and the
interest of the cathedral and other buildings behind them, combine to
give a sense of the importance and grandeur of the city which the facts
of the case hardly justify. Perhaps, too, there is something in the
historical importance of the place which, without one’s knowledge, sways
the judgment.
There is in fact only one building of great architectural
importance--the cathedral; but, as I shall shew, it has the greatest
interest, not only on account of its real merit, but also because it is
a startling example of the way in which, in the thirteenth century,[11]
the Lombard architects adhered to their old lessons and habits in spite
of all the developments which were then universally accepted on the
northern side of the Alps.
The church is a round-arched building throughout, but the mouldings and
details everywhere show a knowledge of thirteenth-century work, and have
none of the character of true Romanesque or Lombard art. Yet at the same
time there is in many respects a most close imitation of Lombard
features. There are arcades under the cornices of the aisles, arcades
under the eaves of the apses, open porches supported on shafts whose
bases rest on monsters, and other features which, looked at apart from
the sections of mouldings and details of sculpture, might well warrant a
much earlier date being fixed on for the execution of the work than I
have named. An inscription which fixes the date of some works here in
1212[12] may fairly, I think, be assumed to give the date of the greater
part of the fabric, though some portions, as e.g. the western wheel
window and the northern porch, are probably not so early by at least a
hundred years. But I am not concerned to deal with the question only
from an archæological point of view, and will at once therefore go on to
give some description of the building.
The ground-plan is in the shape of a Latin cross--with an eastern apse,
two small apses to the east of the transepts, and a nave and aisles of
seven bays. There is an octagonal lantern over the crossing, and the
whole church is groined. The doors are, two in the east walls of the
transepts, one at the west end (of marble), and one with a projecting
open porch over it near the east end of the north aisle. Two western
towers were intended to be built, and the staircases to them are carried
up in the western and southern aisle walls in a very unusual and
picturesque fashion. They commence in the third bay east of the towers,
and are carried up in a continuous rise, opening to the church with a
series of arches stepping up to suit the level of the staircases. The
western bay to which these stairs lead is groined at a lower level, as
well as at the nave level, so as to form a very lofty gallery open to
the church.
The clerestory consists of very small windows, and there is no
triforium; the main portion of the columns goes up to
[Illustration: 10. DUOMO. TRENT. p. 81.]
and carries the groining, and though the main arches are all
semi-circular, there is nevertheless an evident attempt--and it is
successful--to give an impression of height to the interior. The
continuous arcades under the eaves are carried also across the front of
the transepts, and give a great effect of richness to the external
architecture. Of the two towers only one is complete, and this was built
in the sixteenth century. The northern porch is the only place in which
the pointed arch appears, and it seemed to me to be of the fourteenth
century, though the doorway is of Lombard character, with very quaint
but poor carving in its tympanum, of Our Lord with the four Evangelists.
The whole church is built of stone, and has a Classical want of life and
vigour which one notices only too often in the best Lombard work. Were
it not for the building attached to its north-east angle, I suspect the
general impression would be much less agreeable than it is. This is a
lofty erection with two square turrets and a small apse at the east,
parts of which seem to be earlier than the date I have given to the
cathedral. It is connected with the north-east angle, but its axis is
not parallel with that of the cathedral, and there is consequently a
good deal of picturesqueness in the perspective, besides which it
prevents the otherwise insipid outline of the whole building being
perceived.
The porch on the east side of the south transept, of which I give an
illustration, is one of the most interesting portions of detail in the
building. Its front is supported on two shafts, one of which is an
octagon, resting on the back of a lion, the other four shafts cut out of
a single block and ingeniously knotted together in the centre, and
resting on the shoulders of four sitting figures--altogether about as
strong an illustration of mediæval 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
architectural scheme of the cathedral.
I found little else to see in Trent. Sta. Maria Maggiore has a
Romanesque steeple, quite plain below, but with its two upper stages
arcaded, the arcades resting in the lower stage on shafts coupled one
behind the other, and in the upper tripled in the same way. I do not
remember before to have seen this last arrangement. A tower in the walls
between this church and the cathedral is a rhomboid in plan, and was, I
suppose, built of this strange shape to suit some necessity arising out
of the position of streets and walls. Considerable portions of the walls
remain; they are of stone, finished on the top with the forked Italian
battlement, and having square projecting towers at short intervals.
Trent Cathedral and the fine church at Innichen in the Pusterthal, are
quoted frequently as the two finest churches in Tyrol. That at Innichen
has not the same entirely Italian character which marks that at Trent.
In the latter I always feel that climate, people, and town are all in
concert to make one suppose oneself in Italy, which certainly is not the
case at Innichen. North of Trent the architecture of the Tyrol (as at
Botzen and Meran) is entirely German, whilst in Trent itself, were it
not for a steep roof here and there covered with bright glazed tiles,
and a few such slight indications, no one would suspect the presence of
any German influence whatever.
I have travelled so frequently from Trent to Verona by the railway that
I always regard it as one of the most natural and obvious roads of
approach to Italy for Englishmen. It takes its course through so fine a
country that one does not easily tire of the journey, and finally, it
sets travellers down in the city which, perhaps more than any other in
northern Italy, charms the cultivated traveller by the beauty, interest,
and grandeur of its buildings. Who that has taken this way to Verona
does not remember with pleasure the last quarter of an hour of his
journey, as the railway, making a circuit round two-thirds of the city,
reveals first a mixed group of lofty steeples, presently the great
church of San Zenone, then Sta. Anastasia, anon San Fermo, then crosses
the swift-flowing Adige, and at last lands one at the station, full of
anxiety to make the nearer acquaintance of the buildings of “Verona la
degna,” which from afar look so wondrous brave and fine?