“Come, go with me. Go, sirrah, trudge about
Through fair Verona.”
_Romeo and Juliet_, act i. scene 2.
Verona: Campanile of the Palazzo dei Signori--Sta.
Anastasia--Monuments--Piazza dell’ Erbe--The Duomo--The
Baptistery--Sta. Maria l’Antica--Cemetery and Palace of the
Scaligers--Domestic Architecture--Piazza di Brà--The
Austrians--Ponte di Castel-Vecchio--San Zenone--San Fermo
Maggiore--Chapel near the Duomo--Romeo and Juliet--Dwarfs--Wells.
We reached Verona in the evening, and were up early on the next morning,
anxious to get a general idea of the city. But I was no sooner out of my
bed than I saw from my window, over the roofs of the opposite buildings,
the campanile of the Palazzo dei Signori, a lofty, simple, and almost
unbroken piece of brickwork, rising, I suppose, at least three hundred
feet into the air, and pierced with innumerable scaffold-holes, in and
out of which, as I looked, flew countless beautiful doves, whose choice
of a home in the walls of this tall Veronese tower will make me think
kindly of putlog-holes for the future. Certainly, if the Italian and
English principles of tower-building are to be compared with one
another, the Italian need give no fairer example of its power than this
simple and grand erection.
It rises, as we found afterwards, out of a large pile of buildings, and
for a short distance above their roofs is built in alternate courses of
brick and a very warm-coloured stone,
[Illustration: 11.--CAMPANILE, PALAZZO SCALIGERI, VERONA. Page 84.]
and then entirely with brick, pierced with only one or two small
openings, and terminating with a simple belfry-stage; the belfry
windows, with their arches formed without mouldings, and with the sharp
edges only of brick and stone used alternately, are divided into three
lights by shafts of shining marble; the shafts, being coupled one behind
the other, give strength with great lightness, and are very striking in
their effect. These windows have, too, remarkably large balconies, but
without balustrading of any kind. The upper and octangular stage of the
campanile is comparatively modern, but rather improves the whole effect
than otherwise.
I could hardly tear myself away from this noble work; but much more was
to be seen, so I dallied not long before I set forth on a journey of
discovery, giving myself up gladly to sketching and ecclesiology.
The hotels in Verona are both of them near Sta. Anastasia, and at the
eastern end of the long and at first narrow and picturesque Corso. The
Adige separates the city from its eastern suburb, and from the hills
crowned by the Castel San Felice and the picturesquely stepped city
walls. Its yellow waves wash with an angry rush the foundations of the
houses which overhang it all along its course, but the only views of it
are to be obtained from the bridges, and from the open space near the
Castel Vecchio. At the extreme north-western angle of the town stands
the church of San Zenone. One soon finds one’s self constantly on the
Corso, and to the north of this lie the cathedral, Sta. Eufemia, the
Castel Vecchio, and San Zenone, whilst to the south of it are the tombs
of the Scaligers, San Fermo Maggiore, the Roman Amphitheatre, and the
Palazzo Publico. Without further attempt to describe the map let us
visit the buildings, of which the list I have given, though by no means
exhaustive, includes the finest.
The Veronese architects in the Middle Ages were certainly some of the
best in Italy. San Zenone is by very much the finest church of its kind
that I know; Sta. Anastasia is on the whole one of the best churches of
a later date; and San Fermo Maggiore affords some of the best detail of
brickwork, and the tombs of the Scaligers the best examples of monuments
in all Italy.
The first thing seen on turning out of the hotel is the west front of
the church of Sta. Anastasia, looking so beautiful at the end of the
narrow street, whose dark shade contrasts with the bright sunshine which
plays upon its lofty arched marble doorway and frescoed tympanum, and
lights up by some kind of magic the rough brickwork with which the
unfinished church has been left so brightly, that, as you gaze, thoughts
pass across your mind of portions of some lovely painting or some
sweeter dream; you feel as though Fra Angelico might have painted such a
door in a Paradise, and as though it were too fair to be real. There,
however, it is, rich and delicate in colour, shining with all the
delicate tints of the marbles of Verona, pure and simple in its
softly-shadowed mouldings, beautiful in its proportions, and on a nearer
approach revealing through the dark shade of its opening, and over and
beyond the people who early and late throng in and out, the vague and
misty forms of the solemn interior.
Sta. Anastasia is one of the most complete and representative pointed
churches in the North of Italy, and deserves, therefore, a rather
detailed description. Its date is about 1260 to 1290. The ground-plan is
very simple--a nave of six bays, then one which is the crossing of the
transepts, a very short choir of one bay finished with an apse and two
chapels on the east side of each transept. The nave aisles fire narrow,
and the whole design is characterized by intense simplicity of detail
and arrangement. The width of the nave, and the height of the columns
and arches, give, on entering, an idea of vast space and size. The
columns are very simple, cylindrical in section, and support arches
built of brick, and only chamfered at the edge; from the caps of the
columns flat pilasters run up to the commencement of the groining, and
above the nave arcades there are two small circular openings, one in the
place of a triforium, opening into the roof of the aisle, the other
above it and larger, filled in with plate tracery in stone, and forming
the clerestory.
[Illustration: STA. ANASTASIA--VERONA.]
The arrangement of the plan is in several respects unlike that of
northern Gothic buildings, and as most complete Gothic churches in Italy
are very much of the same type, it is as well here to point out the
peculiarity. The most marked features are first the shortness of the
choir, and next, the fact that whereas in northern Europe it is usually
the aisle vaulting bay which is square, whilst the nave bay is oblong
from north to south, here the nave groining bay is square, and the bays
of the aisle oblong in the direction of east and west. The difference of
effect is great, simple as the statement seems. In these Italian
churches there is much greater space between the columns of the nave
arcades, the groining is consequently divided into much larger bays, and
the whole interior has a largeness of treatment which is not common in
the North. On the other hand there is much less of the complexity and
intricacy which are so charming in our interiors, and you see at a
glance the whole of the church.
In Sta. Anastasia the apses on each side of the choir have an even
number of sides, as has also the sacristy, which is a room on a
magnificent scale, to the north of the church. This is a peculiar
feature, producing as it does an angle in the centre of the apse, which
we shall see again at Venice and Vicenza, and which is seldom seen out
of Italy.[13]
The whole is so simple in design and construction that it depends for
its rich effect on the painting which covers almost every part of it,
and which harmonizes well with the architectural lines. The decorations
appear to have been done, or at any rate commenced, within a short
period of the completion of the church, and are therefore very valuable.
The ground of the painting is white, many of the patterns of borders
being very elaborate compositions of flowers and foliage. The main
arches are painted to represent voussoirs of red brick and stone, but I
am inclined to think that they are really entirely of brick; their
soffeits, which are very broad and flat, are all painted with large
scroll patterns of foliage. In the groining the diagonal ribs are
painted at the intersection with stripes of colour alternating with
white, and on each side of all the ribs a wide border of foliage is
painted, whilst in the centre of each groining-cell some large device is
painted in a medallion, some of these being merely ornamental, others
having figures. The detail of much of the painting is cinquecento in its
character, and not valuable as an example to be literally copied,[14]
but its general effect is certainly very beautiful, and it is worthy of
all praise in respect of the strictness with which it is kept
subservient to the architecture, and in some respects, indeed,
[Illustration: 12. SANTA ANASTASIA. VERONA.
Pavements. Page 89.]
even serves to atone for its deficiencies, as, e.g., in the broad
painted horizontal borders, which take the place, very successfully, of
brick or stone string-courses, which in the construction are entirely
omitted.
It surprised me, I confess, very much, to find a church painted
throughout without any use of gold, and yet with good result; so it is,
however; the effect is most solemn and religious, and there is a very
rich effect of colour; the fact is, that the white ground answers the
same purpose in a degree, though of course not to the full extent, that
gold would.
But if the walls are beautiful in their colour, not less so is the
pavement, which, from one end of the church to the other, remains to
this day to all appearance just as it was on the day that the church was
finished. The nave and transepts are all in one pattern; the spaces
between the columns in a variety of beautiful designs, and divided from
the nave and aisle pavements by a strip of white marble on each side;
and the aisles again are on the same scheme throughout. The colours of
the marble used are white, red, and bluish grey, and the patterns very
simple and generally geometrical in outline, and there is a quiet
richness of effect in their arrangement which is exceedingly beautiful.
Such a pavement must unhappily be for ever Italian, and we in England
can scarce hope ever to attain to anything so exquisite; but we do not
well to forget that by the mixture of a small quantity only of marble
with our encaustic tiles we should attain to much greater beauty of
effect than we can by the use of tiles alone, and there are many
towns--as, e.g., Plymouth--the very pavement of whose streets is of a
material which might most advantageously be introduced, more often than
it has yet been, inside the walls of our sanctuaries, as well as under
the feet of every passer along the streets.
There are some monuments and paintings here quite worth looking at. The
Pellegrini Chapel, next to the choir, has two fine trefoil-headed
monuments in red marble with the background painted with subjects of
about the same age (circa 1392); and in the Cavalli Chapel there is an
admirably painted wall, against which has been put a monument which,
though somewhat rude and coarse in its sculpture, nevertheless produces
a very fine effect of colour and architecture combined.[15]
[Illustration: AISLE WINDOW--STA. ANASTASIA, VERONA.]
The window tracery of Sta. Anastasia is rather singular plate tracery,
consisting of mere piercings through the stone with very little
moulding; most of the windows are of two very lofty trefoiled lights
with circles and trefoils pierced above, very simple and severe, and
remarkable for the quaint way in which the cusping is arranged, not with
some reference to vertical lines, as is ordinarily the case with us, but
just as fancy or chance seems to have dictated. The clerestory windows
are circular openings cusped.
There is a curious but not very happily treated arrangement inside--a
step all round the inside walls, projecting some three or four feet from
them, and panelled all round against the riser with a small trefoil
arcading--the whole in red marble.
Externally the church is almost entirely built in red brick with rich
cornices and rather ungainly buttresses and pinnacles of brick; the
windows have brick jambs with stone tracery, and on the north side of
the choir is a fine lofty campanile, finished at the top with a low,
very plain, and octangular capping, and unpierced with openings, except
in the belfry-stage. Of the west front only the doorway has been
completed; this is in courses of red, grey, and white marble, and most
effective; the rest of the front is left in brick, finished exceedingly
roughly, with a view to leaving a key for the marbles with which, no
doubt, it was intended to veneer the entire front. The wooden framework
of this door, of which I give a detail, is very curious; it is of deal,
coëval with the doorway, and the framework is external, not internal.
The west front of the church stands in a small piazza, on the north side
of which is the little church of San Pietro Martire, between the east
end of which and Sta. Anastasia is a wall dividing a small burial-ground
from the Piazzetta; on the top of this wall, and supported upon corbels,
is one of those monuments peculiarly associated with Verona, because so
numerous there, though they are often met with elsewhere in Italy; they
are either large pyramidal
[Illustration: DOOR-FRAME--STA. ANASTASIA.]
canopies supported upon trefoiled arches resting on four marble shafts,
with a kind of sarcophagus or an effigy beneath; or else, when attached
to a wall, they have two detached shafts supporting the same kind of
trefoiled arch and surmounted by a flattish pediment. Their effect is
almost invariably beautiful in the extreme, and their only defect is,
that they all require to be held together by rods of iron connecting the
capitals of the columns. This, however, is soon forgotten when one feels
that there is no pretence ever or anywhere at its concealment; and
notwithstanding this slight defect, one cannot help loving and admiring
them; for there is a grace and beauty about the form and proportion of
the Veronese trefoiled arch, such as is never seen, I think, elsewhere,
and the very flatness of the carving and the absence of deep moulding
seem all adopted in order that nothing may interfere with the simple
beauty of the outline of the arch. In this case the monument is
supported on a large slab of stone corbelled forward and balanced upon
the top of a thin wall over the archway which leads into the churchyard
of San Pietro. Four shafts with sculptured capitals, resting on the
angles of this slab, support four trefoiled arches, (those at the ends
narrower than the others), which are almost destitute of moulding save
that the outer line of the arch has a broad band of delicate sculpture
all round it. The arch terminates in a small cross, and above on each
side is a very flat pediment, moulded and finished on the under side
with one of the favourite Italian arcaded corbel-tables; the finish is a
heavy pyramidal mass of stone rising from behind the pediments. The four
bearing-shafts are of white marble, all the rest of the monument of red.
Within the four supporting shafts stands a sarcophagus, supported on the
backs of couchant lions, very plain, but ornamented at the angles in
very Classic fashion, and bearing a recumbent effigy.
The church of San Pietro has three or four smaller monuments enclosed
within its small courtyard; two of them are on the ground and have round
arches on detached shafts with an Agnus Dei carved in the centre. The
third is corbelled out from the wall, and the face of the monument is
covered with sculpture, that of the figures being very inferior in style
to that of the foliage enrichments. This little group of monuments,
varying in date from 1283 to 1392, is well worth study, and I found it
more than usually interesting owing to its entire unlikeness to any
English work. The church against which these monuments are built is
small but deserves notice; it is of brick with a stone canopy on shafts
corbelled out above the west door; the buttresses are mere pilasters,
and run up without any weathering till they finish in an arcaded
corbel-table at the eaves; the windows have wide brick splays outside,
and trefoil heads of stone without any chamfer or moulding; on the south
side, the church--in point of size a mere chapel--is divided into four
bays, one of which has a monument corbelled out by the side of the
window. It is built entirely of red brick, not relieved in any way,
except that the window arches are in alternate voussoirs of brick and
stone. The wooden framework of the west door deserves notice as being
very unlike the English mode of door-framing, and very good in its
effect. The accompanying sketch will best explain it: and it must be
understood that, instead of being internal, as such framing would
usually be in England, in this example it is external, just as in the
somewhat similar door of Sta. Anastasia, of which I have already made
mention.
[Illustration: DOOR-FRAME--SAN PIETRO MARTIRE.]
Turning back from the Piazzetta of Sta. Anastasia, and traversing again
the narrow and gratefully shady street by which we reached it, we soon
found ourselves at the end of the Piazza dell’ Erbe, the most
picturesque square in the city, and at an early hour in the morning
quite a sight to be seen. The whole open space was as full as it could
be of dealers in vegetables and fruits, all of them protecting
themselves and their stores from the intense glare of the sun under the
shade of prodigious umbrellas, at least five times as large as any of
ordinary size, and certainly five times as bright in their colours, the
prevailing colour being a very bright red. Altogether it was a
thoroughly foreign scene. The houses, some ancient, but all picturesque
and irregular, surrounding the irregularly-shaped Piazza, the
magnificent campanile of the Scaligeri Palace rising proudly behind the
houses on the left, the fountain in the centre, and the great column of
red Veronese marble rising close to us, which at one time bore the
winged lion--mark of the dominion of the Venetians--all combined to
produce a very striking picture. An hour or two later in the day when we
passed, the people, the umbrellas, and the fruit were all gone, and
somewhat of the charm of the place was gone with them.
From the Piazza dell’ Erbe we went to the cathedral, anxious to see and
hear somewhat of a service which we found was to take place. There was a
great throng of people, and we had some difficulty in finding even
standing room among them; we were not at all sorry, however, to have
gone, for we came in for a sermon most energetically preached, and
enforcing in very powerful language the necessity of repentance. The
pulpit was very large, and as the preacher delivered his sermon he
walked from side to side, and often repeated again to those on his left
the substance of what he had already said to those on his right. The
people, who crowded every available place within hearing, were
exceedingly silent and attentive; and at intervals the preacher stopped
for a minute to cough and use his handkerchief, which was a signal for
an immediate general blowing of noses and coughing all over the church.
The “_Ebben infelici!_” with which he commenced his sermon, was a good
index to its whole tone, and makes me remember with pleasure the vast
crowd listening to Christian doctrine in the grand nave of the Duomo.
Would that we could see any prospect of the day when in England our
larger churches may be used in this way, when, with pews and all their
concomitant evils swept away, we may see a vast crowd standing and
sitting, leaving no passage-way and no waste room, anxious only that
they may, by pressing near, join in the services at the altar, and hear
every word of warning and of advice! The nave of Westminster, so
thronged, would soon show how great has been our mistake in leaving our
large churches so long unused.[16]
The Duomo is a really fine church, Romanesque in its shell, but altered
completely internally in the fourteenth century. It has only five bays
in length, but the dimensions are so large that the nave and aisles
alone measure about 225 feet × 97 feet inside. There are slightly
recessed Romanesque apses in the side walls, and a great tomb or shrine
of S. Agatha, which is worth looking at. The columns in the interior are
very lofty, of red marble, and, instead of being plain and cylindrical,
as at Sta. Anastasia, are moulded with very good effect. Their capitals
are, however, heavy, and the carving of the foliage on them not at all
satisfactory. The whole interior is very solemn, and specially beautiful
on this bright September day, with almost all the light excluded by
thick curtains--here and there a stray gleam of the most intensely
bright light finding its way through some chink, lighting up with sudden
brilliancy the deep cool shade, and--reflected from the bright surface
of some great marble shaft--suggesting the grandeur which can hardly
really be seen.
The choir is divided from the nave by a screen of marble, consisting of
detached columns with Ionic capitals and a continuous cornice, the whole
screen semi-circular in plan, and coming forward into the nave. This,
the work of Sanmichele, is certainly about the most effective work of
this kind and age that I have seen.
The west front of the Duomo is still in the main in its original state.
It has a rich porch supported on shafts (whose bases rest on the backs
of lions), and of two stages in height, a flat pediment surmounting the
upper stage. Another flat pedimental cornice is carried over the whole
front at the same level; but out of this a wall rises above the central
portion the width of the nave and height of the clerestory, which is
again surmounted by a third flat pediment--a confused and not very
graceful arrangement, which found an imitator in Palladio, when he built
that ugliest of fronts, the west end of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice.
The windows at the ends of the aisles are very Italian in their
character. They are insertions in the wall of two narrow lights within
an enclosing arch, which is again surrounded by a square line of
moulding. The effect of this not uncommon Italian arrangement is
exceedingly unsatisfactory, as it appears to make the window with its
arch and tracery quite independent, constructively, of the wall in which
it is placed; it appears in fact to be merely veneered on to the face of
the wall.
On the north side of the cathedral is a cloister of good detail, which
was originally of two stages in height, but is now considerably altered
in parts. It is exceedingly similar to the cloister of San Zenone, which
we shall see presently, consisting of a long arcade of pointed arches
carried on marble shafts; it is now in a very ruinous condition.
The Baptistery--San Giovanni in Fonte--is a detached church near the
east end of the cathedral, which does not look as if it had been at
first intended for its present use. It is a building of the twelfth
century, with nave and aisles ending in three apses, lighted by a small
clerestory, and with some columns which are probably Roman. The font,
which stands in the centre, is of enormous size, and is sculptured with
eight subjects beginning with the Annunciation and finishing with the
Baptism of Our Lord. These sculptures are very rude. The bason of the
font is almost seven feet in diameter, and in its centre is another
smaller bason of graceful shape. I do not happen to have seen an
explanation of these inner basons in the fonts in Italian baptisteries.
They look as if they were meant for the priest to stand in whilst he
immersed the catechumens around him.
And now that we have visited two of the great churches, we must no
longer delay our visit to the church of Sta. Maria l’Antica, whose small
burial-ground is fenced from the busy thoroughfares, which on two sides
bound it, by an iron railing of most exquisite design, divided at
intervals by piers of stone on whose summits stand gazing upward as in
prayer, or downwards as in warning to those who pass below, a beautiful
series of saintly figures. Within, a glorious assemblage of monuments
meets the eye--one over the entrance doorway, the others either towering
up in picturesque confusion above the railing which has been their
guardian from all damage for so many centuries, or meekly hiding their
humility behind the larger masses of their companions.
The monuments are all to the members of one family--the Scaligeri--who
rose to power in the thirteenth century, and held sway in Verona until
almost the end of the fourteenth. In this space of time it was,
therefore, that these monuments were erected, and they are consequently
of singular interest, not only for the excessive beauty of the group of
marble and stone which, in the busiest highway of the city, among tall
houses and crowds of people, has made this churchyard, for some five
hundred years, the central point of architectural interest, but because
they give us dated examples of the best pointed work during nearly the
whole time of its prevalence in Verona. In the monument of the first
Duke we see the elements of that beauty which, after ascending to
perfection in that of another, again descends surely and certainly in
the monument of Can Signorio, the largest and most elaborate of all,
and, therefore, I am afraid, the most commonly admired, but the one
which shows most evidence of the rise of the Renaissance spirit, and the
fall of true art. Nor is it, I think, to be forgotten, as an evidence of
the kind of moral turpitude which so often precedes or accompanies the
fall of art, that this Can Signorio first murdered his own brother
Cangrande II. that he might obtain his inheritance, and then, before he
died, erected his own monument, and adorned it with effigies of SS.
Quirinus, Valentine, Martin, George, Sigismund, and Louis, together with
allegorical figures of the Virtues with whom he of all men had least
right to associate himself in death, when in life he had ever despised
them. The inscription, which records the name of the architect on this
monument, does but record the vanity of him who was content thus to
pander to the wretched Can Signorio’s desire to excuse the memory of his
atrocious life by the sight of an immense cenotaph.[17]
The tomb of Cangrande I. forms the portal of the church as well as the
monument of the first and greatest of the family. It is perhaps
altogether the finest of all; the shafts which bear the pyramidal canopy
are supported on corbels; between them is a simple sarcophagus
sculptured with a bas-relief, and upon it lies Cangrande with his arms
crossed in token of his resignation and faith. At the top of the
pyramidal covering is the figure of the brave knight riding forth to war
on his gaily caparisoned steed.
Next to this monument in date, as in merit, is that of Mastino II.,
wanting perhaps in some of the severe simplicity of the other, but even
more striking, as it stands at the angle of the cemetery. It is a
thoroughly grand and noble erection of two stages in height, the lower
unimportant, and only serving as a means of raising the monument
sufficiently high to be well seen from the exterior; upon this stand
four shafts, between which, and supported upon four much smaller shafts,
is the sarcophagus on which lies the recumbent effigy, at whose head
stand angels with expanded wings[18] guarding the deceased. The
sarcophagus is adorned with bas-reliefs--that on the west side being the
Crucifixion--and has engaged angle-shafts. The four main bearing-shafts
at the angles of the monument have finely carved caps with square abaci
from which rise simple trefoiled arches with steep pediments on each
side filled with sculpture in relief, and between these are exquisitely
simple niches, each a miniature reproduction of the entire monument, and
containing between their delicate detached shafts figures of saints. The
whole is finished with a heavy pyramidal capping, crocketed at the
angles with crockets so abominable in their shape and carving that they
go far to spoil the entire work, and surmounted by the figure of the
Capitano del Popolo, spear in hand, riding on his war-horse; the horse
and horseman riding with their faces towards the setting sun, as all in
life must ever ride; the effigy below lying so that at the last day the
beams of the day-star in the East may first meet its view, and awaken
him that sleepeth here in peace.
This contrary position of the figure in life and in death, observed also
in others of these monuments, is an evidence of the care and
thoughtfulness with which every detail of these noble works was wrought
out.
The monument of Can Signorio is not worthy of so long a description; it
is octagonal in its plan, and in many respects below the idea shadowed
out so beautifully in the others; the reduplication of niches and
gables, far from improving, only perplexes the design: and when to this
is added that the carving throughout, as well as the other details, show
strong signs of a leaning towards Renaissance, one may see some reason
why this, the most elaborate and complicated of all the monuments, is
after all far from being the most successful.
Mastino II. died in the year 1351, and we may therefore, I think, look
upon his monument as a fair enough example of Italian architecture just
at the period at which in England it had reached its culminating point,
and a careful examination of it cannot, therefore, be thrown away. In
the first place, I must notice that the sculpture, which has the air of
being rather sparingly used as too sacred a thing to be idly or
profusely employed, is exceedingly good. The foliage is almost always
very closely copied from natural forms, is very thin and delicate in its
texture, and thus really present to the gazer that idealized
petrifaction of nature which it ought always to be the sculptor’s effort
to give, and not, as is, I fear, sometimes the case, even in good
English work, so profusely scattered over the whole surface as to give
one a sense of its lack of great value. The worst part of the carving
is, as I have before said, that of the crockets, which are as bad as the
worst modern Gothic could be. The sculpture of the human figure is
throughout very good; remarkable for simple, bold, deep folds in the
draperies, quite Gothic in spirit, and much more akin to our best
fourteenth-century work than to any Classic examples.
As an example of the science of moulding this work is however valueless;
there is absolutely no moulding upon it; and why should there be? Would
it have been well that the lovely marble, whose brilliant white gloss
was sure ere long to be stained with dark streaks of black by the
beating of rain and the staining of age, whilst here and there the white
would stand out more brilliantly than ever,--would it have been well, I
say, that this should have been still further streaked with deep lines
of many mouldings? Most assuredly not: the architect had to deal with a
material which best takes its polish and exhibits its beauty and purity
when used in flat surfaces and in shallow carving, and he did right
therefore in not moulding it as he would have moulded stone.
There is a sharpness and hardness about the lines of the arches,
however, which perhaps almost verges upon rudeness, and, though I can
see that it may be fairly defended, I could yet wish that it might have
been softened.
[Illustration: CREST OF METAL RAILING--VERONA.]
But the points in which such work is a grand example to us are, first,
the value which it shows that we ought to place upon the simple detached
circular shaft, and, next, the beauty and strength of effect which the
cusping of a large arch in a proper manner gives. In these two points
this monument and most of its class teach us lessons which we ought not
to be unwilling to learn, and which, if we at all wish to develope
beyond the point at which our own ancestors ever arrived, we must not
fail to attend to in our own work.
[Illustration: METAL RAILING--VERONA.]
And now I must bid farewell to this lovely spot, the most attractive
certainly, to me, in Verona. The situation of the monuments, rather
huddled together, with the old church behind them, the archway into the
Piazza dei Signori on the other side, and the beautiful iron grille[19]
which surrounds them, the number of saintly and warlike figures and the
confused mass of pinnacle and shaft, half obscured by the railing, do, I
verily believe, make the cemetery of Sta. Maria l’Antica one of the best
spots in the world for the study of Christian art in perfection. What
either Köln or Regensburg Cathedral, or the Wiesen-Kirche at Söest is to
Germany, the Choir of Westminster Abbey or the Chapter-House at
Southwell to England, Amiens Cathedral or the Sainte Chapelle of Paris
to France, such is the Cemetery of the Scaligeri in Verona to Italy--the
spot where at a glance the whole essence of the system of a school of
artists may be comprehended, lavished on a small but most stately effort
of their genius.
Close to their burial-place stands also the Palace of the Scaligers. The
old portion of this fronts towards the Piazza dei Signori, a small
square used only by foot-passengers, and surrounded by elaborate
Renaissance work. The buildings surround a quadrangle--the Mercato
Vecchio--out of one angle of which rises the immense campanile which I
have already noticed, and which is said to have been erected by Can
Signorio about A.D. 1368, though I should have thought that a rather
earlier date would have tallied better with its style. Besides this the
most striking feature is the external staircase in the courtyard, whose
treatment, of a kind not uncommon in ancient Italian architecture, is
very beautiful, though I fear very weak and unstable, if I may judge by
the number of the iron bars by which it is held together. There are many
windows here of very good detail, and an arcaded cornice all round the
courtyard, and close by and also facing the Piazza dei Signori there is
another fine lofty battlemented tower.
In a street close to the monuments of the Scaligers, whose name I have
forgotten, but in a line with the Viccolo Cavaletto, I found a most
valuable example of domestic work in a very fairly perfect state. As far
as I could make it out, it consisted originally of three sides of a
quadrangle, the fourth side towards the street being enclosed by a wall
and arched gateway. The buildings all had arcades on the ground-level,
forming a kind of cloister, and the staircase to the first floor was
external, and built against the wall on the road side. A great many
alterations have been made in the
[Illustration: 13.--COURT-YARD OF THE PALAZZO SCALIGERI, VERONA. Page
104.]
[Illustration: DOORWAY--OLD HOUSE, VERONA.]
house at various times, but in the sketch which I give I have shewn so
much only of it as appeared to belong to the original foundation. In its
construction pointed and round arches have been used quite
indiscriminately, and in some of the arches the depth of the voussoirs
increases towards the centre of the arch. This is a rather favourite
Italian device, and I was always as much pleased as at the first with
the effect of strength and good proportion which it produces. Most of
the arches are built with alternate voussoirs of brick and stone, but
beyond the outside line of the brick and stone arch there is invariably
a line of very thin bricks laid all round the arch, delicately defining
without pretending to strengthen the main arch, just as a label does
with us. I noticed too, generally, that this thin brick was of a
deeper, better colour than the other bricks, which are seldom any better
than the common English bricks, and are always built with very coarse
joints. This house is finished at the top with the quaint forked or
swallow-tailed Ghibelline battlement, so characteristic of Verona, and
which, as we found afterwards, was in use at Mantua, Cremona, and for
some distance south of Verona, but which I first met with in Verona.
[Illustration: WINDOWS--OLD HOUSE, VERONA.]
[Illustration: BRICK BATTLEMENT--VICCOLO CAVALETTO, VERONA.]
I am not pretending to journalize regularly, but rather
[Illustration: 14.--COURT-YARD OF OLD HOUSE, VERONA. Page 106.]
to note down the remarkable points of the various buildings as they
occur to me, and, before I forget that it was Sunday when I was first
looking at the Veronese churches, I must mention that in the evening we
found our way to the great Piazza di Brà, surrounded by barracks and
public buildings, and containing the vast Roman amphitheatre for which
Verona is so celebrated. Its size is prodigious, and, except in the
outer circuit of wall, it is nearly perfect; indeed, it is impossible to
look upon such a vast structure without a great admiration for the men
who ventured to conceive and carry it into execution.
It is difficult now to conceive how the audience could be found who
would fill so vast a space; and certainly the modern efforts in this
direction are mainly serviceable as shewing the immensity of the
theatre. When I was last in Verona a theatre had been erected in the
arena, and a performance was in progress. The audience might have been
tolerably large in an enclosed theatre, but here it seemed to be the
merest handful; and when we stood on the highest attainable part of the
walls, we found ourselves so far from the stage as to be unable to hear
a single word that was said. There is no need to describe here so
well-known a building as this; suffice it to say, that though the detail
of the architecture is poor, the general design and execution of the
structural arrangements, and the magnificence of the whole scheme cannot
fail to strike one with the same wonder that one feels in the presence
of many of these great Roman works; and it is striking indeed, to see
one of them so perfect as to be still capable of use, and really used.
All the Austrian portion of the inhabitants of Verona crowded the Piazza
di Brà on Sunday evening to hear an Austrian military band, and we
enjoyed not a little a stroll among a crowd of uniforms of all shapes,
kinds, and colours. Verona more than most towns, even in Austrian
Lombardy, seems to be sacrificed entirely to Austrian soldiery. It is
quite melancholy to walk along a street of palaces, some of them
converted into old-furniture stores, others going to ruin; and when
suddenly you do come upon a flourishing and smart palace, if you look in
you are sure to see an Austrian sentinel, and find that it is an
officer’s quarters; and equally when you meet a conveyance, if it is
smart and dashing, with good horses and a stylish coachman, it is quite
certain to be occupied by some dignified-looking military man. So, too,
on the Monday evening, when we went to the French opera (a very pretty,
tastefully got-up theatre by the way) there were absolutely none but
Austrians in the house--in the boxes, officers and their wives, in the
pit, subordinate officers and privates. Who can see this immense staff
of foreigners in occupation of a city like Verona without feeling sadly
for the people who live under such a rule, and for the ruler who is
compelled to maintain such a force to keep his subjects in order?[20]
This, however, is a digression, and I must go on to describe the
remaining architectural features of the old city.
On the way to San Zenone Maggiore, which is quite on the extreme western
verge of the city, one passes the Castello Vecchio, a very grand pile of
simple mediæval fortifications erected in the fourteenth century by
Cangrande II. There are several towers and lofty walls, all topped with
the forked Veronese battlement; and connected with it is the magnificent
Ponte di Castel-Vecchio, a great bridge across the rushing Adige, built
entirely of brick, the parapet of the regular Veronese type, and the
piers between the arches rather large and angular, and finishing with
battlements rather above those of the bridge. The main arch is of great
size--it is said to be not less than one hundred and sixty feet--and one
of the most remarkable points in its appearance is, that, instead of
being in the centre, it is on the side of the river next the castle,
while the other two arches, descending rapidly to the north bank of the
river, give the bridge an odd, irregular, and down-hill kind of look.
The architectural features of this bridge are, however, not the only
objects of interest on this spot; for just after passing the castle the
road bends down to the side of the river, and presents an admirable view
of the campanili, steeples, and spires, with the steep hills on the
opposite bank of the stream, and the mountains in the distance, with the
rapid, turgid, white-looking Adige flowing strongly at one’s feet.
A longish walk through squalid suburbs leads us to the open space in
front of the noble basilica of San Zenone; it is a desolate
waste-looking space, and the poor, old, uncared-for church looks now as
though its day was well-nigh past; as if neglect and apathy were all
that men could give now where once they were wont to lavish so much of
their treasure, and love, and art.
The church, as it now stands, seems to have been entirely rebuilt in the
course of the eleventh or twelfth century, and its proportions are so
very grand, and its detail generally so perfect, that I think it may
certainly be regarded as on the whole the noblest example of its class;
indeed, except the very best Gothic work of the best period, I doubt
whether any work of the Middle Ages so much commands respect and
admiration as this Lombard work. There is a breadth and simplicity about
it, and an expression of such deep thought in the arrangement of
materials and in the delicate sculpture, which with a sparing hand is
introduced, that one cannot sufficiently admire the men who planned and
executed it. Beyond this, the constructive science was so excellent and
so careful, that with ordinary care such a church as San Zenone would
seem still likely to last for ages.
The view of the west front is certainly very striking. The whole church
has been singularly little modernized. By its side to the north is a
fine simple red brick tower, I suppose originally belonging to the city
walls; behind and near the east end of the church, but visible here, the
tall and much-arcaded campanile; and on the other side the little church
of San Procolo with a fourteenth-century painting of Our Lord under a
gabled canopy overhanging the doorway. The west front of San Zenone is
simple but dignified. The nave and aisles are finished with cornices
following the flat pitch of the roofs. The walls are divided by many
vertical lines of pilasters which rise from the plinth to the
eaves-cornice. The main part of this front is stone, but a good deal of
marble is used, e.g., the rose window has tracery of red marble enclosed
within an order of white marble; the doorway and sculpture are in white
marble, once much enriched with colour, and the arcaded band all across
the front is of red marble. Add to this that the stone used is all of an
extremely warm yellow colour, and an idea may be formed of the effort
that was made here in the principal front (as often in Italian churches)
to shew that God’s house was the noblest that could be built.
The doorway well deserves a chapter to itself. Its lintel has
illustrations of the labours of the twelve months, its jambs subjects on
the right from the Old Testament, on the left from the New. In front of
this door there are detached shafts standing on monsters and supporting
a low canopy. An inscription on the façade “Salvet in eternum qui
sculpsit ista Guglielmus,” gives the name of the sculptor, the same man
probably who about the middle of the twelfth century sculptured the
western doorway of the cathedral at Modena.
[Illustration: 15. SAN ZENONE. VERONA.]
No less worthy of study are the bronze doors of this doorway. Here, as
is so often the case in mediæval Italian works, we have the names of the
artists employed--Guglielmo and Nicola da Figarola--with the pious
expression of hope that he who sculptured the work might be saved
eternally. The subjects are very rude in their detail; they illustrate
subjects from the Old Testament, and are executed in thin plates of
bronze nailed on to the wooden doors. A row of small windows, one in
each of the many divisions of the front, extends all across near the top
of the porch; whilst above is a large circular window, filled in with
wheel tracery, and treated as was not uncommon as an illustration of the
Wheel of Fortune. Round this window is an inscription explaining its
symbolism.
We went first into the cloister on the north side of the nave. The
arches are very small, and of brick, supported on coupled shafts of red
Veronese marble, which have marble caps and bases, and rest on a dwarf
wall of stone capped with a thin course of marble. The arch bricks are
of a rich red colour, and contrast well with the brickwork of the
ordinary kind above them; they are used without any kind of moulding or
ornament--and yet I doubt whether I have ever seen a more lovely
cloister than this. The arcades on the north and south sides have round
arches; those on the east and west are pointed; and on the north is a
projecting arcade of the same detail, which once formed the lavatory.
The whole of this cloister is in a very sad state of filth, neglected
and unused, and will, I fear, ere long become ruinous.[21]
From the cloister you enter by a side door into the north aisle of the
choir; much better, however, would it always be to enter from the west,
for it is there, when standing at the top of the flight of ten or
twelve steps which leads down from the door to the floor of the nave,
looking down the great length of the church, scanning its singular
perspective of timber roofing, the great height and simplicity of its
walls, and the mysterious view down into the crypt under the choir
through the recently opened arches, that one feels most deeply the great
and religious effect of the church. To an eye used to northern Gothic
there is something very new in such a building. Its shape, its material,
its arrangement, are all unlike what an English eye is used to, but I
cannot say that I paused for an instant in doubt as to whether I might
really admire or not; for I felt at once how very good the work was, not
only in its general effect, but as much in the treatment of the details,
in its colour, and in its arrangement.
The general plan is very simple--a great parallelogram, divided into a
nave of vast width with northern and southern aisles; the aisles
terminated with square east ends, the choir with an apse of five bays,
which is, however, of later date than the rest of the church. The chief
singularity in the design is the division of the piers of the main
arcades into primary and secondary--the first being large heavy piers
supporting great arches spanning the nave and aisles, which are finished
in a line with the top of the walls; and the latter more delicate
circular marble columns of very Classical character, with finely carved
capitals, and looking almost too slight to support the vast height of
clerestory wall which towers up above the arcade which they carry. The
timber roof, or ceiling, is curious; the framing is all concealed, with
the exception of the collar-beams, which connect the points of the
trefoil which forms the internal line of ceiling. This trefoil outline
is all boarded, divided into panels, and painted. The effect of this
great length of panelled roofing, partly concealed by the great arches
which
[Illustration: 16. SAN ZENONE. VERONA. p. 112.]
cross the nave, is certainly fine. The wooden roofs of the aisles, too,
are original, and their beams are painted very much like the Austrian
sentry-boxes, in zigzag lines of black and buff. Much of this painting,
however, did not appear to me to be old.
At about two-thirds of the length of the church between the west door
and the apse it is cut in two, so to speak, by that which perhaps is now
the greatest charm of the interior--the crypt. When I first visited San
Zenone this crypt existed, but its existence was not realized from the
nave. The only access to it was from the aisles, and even here the
arches were partially blocked up. A flight of steps across the whole
east end of the nave led up to the choir and concealed the old entrance
to it. This, it has lately been found, was originally formed by three
open arches from the nave with a flight of steps descending under them
to the level of the crypt, whilst two arches on either side of these
gave access to it from the aisles. This is the old scheme, and the only
possible approach to the raised choir must originally have been that
which has now been restored, viz., two narrow flights of steps against
the side walls, so contrived as not to interfere with or conceal any
part of the sculpture or other decorations on the western face of the
arches to the crypt. The church as now restored yields to few with which
I am acquainted in the solemn effect which is the result of mysterious
light and shade, multiplied vistas of columns and arches, and
picturesque originality of design. It is evidently rather a result of
growth than of first intentions. The crypt--like our own remarkable
example at Wimborne--seems to be an insertion. The columns and piers of
the choir pass on into the crypt, whose piers and vaults are built
against them. There is an obvious difference too in the style of the
church and of the crypt, showing that at least a hundred years must have
elapsed between the erection of the former and the insertion of the
latter. The choir now occupies the three eastern arches of the old
constructional nave, and beyond this has a square bay and a five sided
apse, the two last divisions being groined and decorated with a good
deal of colour. The apse is of the fourteenth century, but all its
windows have been modernized. The crypt follows exactly the dimensions
of the choir, but is divided into no less than nine bays in width, and
six bays in length, exclusive of the apse. The red marble columns which
support its groined roof are all monoliths, delicate in their
proportions, and many of them probably antique. The vaulting is
quadripartite, and there are considerable remains of wall paintings,
which appear to be nearly coëval with the crypt. In the centre of this
crypt is the shrine of San Zeno, half concealed by the gloomy but
effective lighting, and surrounded by a metal railing made of
quatrefoils, buckled or tied together, very much in the same style as
the railings round the Scaligeri monuments. The altar in this crypt is
worth notice on account of its sculptured front. This has in the centre
a small crucifix with SS. Mary and John, and on either side, under
arches, figures of the Evangelists. The face towards the nave of the
seven arches which form the western part of the crypt is decorated with
extreme care and finish. They are admirable examples of the really
polished work of the Italian artists of the end of the twelfth century.
The arches from the north aisle deserve special notice. They are carried
on coupled shafts which, as well as their capital, are of red Veronese
marble, the archivolt being of stone. The section of both shafts is
circular, but one of them is delicately twisted to a spiral curve on its
upward course. The refinement of this treatment of shafts is very
characteristic of the best Italian work, and this coupled shaft, simple
as its treatment is, and common as are the elements of its design, is so
beautiful that it makes a real sunshine in a shady place. Not less are
the arches above it worthy of admiration. The sculpture here, of a
trailing branch of foliage, is very slightly relieved, but its outline
is so graceful, its imitation of nature so close without being merely
realistic, and its fitness for its position so complete, that I think I
have never seen anything in its way more satisfactory, and certainly
never anything really ornamental in the best sense, the elements of
which were more severely simple.[22]
The colour of the whole interior is, to my mind, charming. It was first
of all built in alternate and very irregularly divided courses of brick
and stone. On this warm-coloured ground, one pious man after another
came and painted what seemed to him best--a Madonna, a crucifixion, a
saint, or a group of figures--with not much thought beyond that of
making the particular work in which he was interested tell its own story
well and produce its own effect. So little did he think of other men’s
previous work that the same subjects are not unfrequently repeated. The
result is that the walls were here sober and there gorgeous, but
everywhere coloured, and everywhere more or less interesting. Yet the
materials of which they are built are just those which we see every day
of our lives, and it was the skill of the workman, not the richness of
his materials, which made his work so worthy of our admiration.
Only one portion of the church is decorated upon a regular system; this
is the eastern part of the choir and the apse, which has part of its
walls and its groining very elaborately painted, though with but little
gold; the groining ribs are richly coloured, and on each side of them is
a wide border, generally subdivided into regular geometrical figures,
and the spaces between these borders are painted blue and powdered with
gold stars. In the south aisle is an altar under a baldachin, supported
at the angles by four clustered shafts knotted together in mid height--a
capricious custom of which Italians seem to have been especially fond,
and the only excuse for which, so far as I can see, is that it proves
that all the shafts were cut out of one block, and therefore of more
value than four plain detached shafts cut out of separate blocks could
be. There is perhaps, also, a relief to the mind, after looking at a
long series of similar shafts, to come at last upon some one or two
marked by capricious singularity such as this. Be this, however, as it
may, the eye certainly always feels inclined to admire them, though the
reason is never quite satisfied; and perhaps some better excuse does
exist for their use than I have as yet been able to discover. It is
probable that these columns belonged originally to the baldachin over
the high altar. The canopy which they now support is not old.
The vestry on the north side of the choir is worth a visit, if only for
the sake of its prettily panelled and painted ceiling. Here the panels
are very small, and left in the natural colour of the pine, and the ribs
are decorated with white, red, and black. There is also in this room a
very good fourteenth-century marble cistern and lavatory under an arch
in the wall; and lastly, in the wardrobes, among many things not worth
seeing, a finely embroidered bishop’s mitre of the twelfth century,
wrought in gold on linen. In front is a figure of Our Lord, at the back
one of the Blessed Virgin, with emblems of two Evangelists on each, and
a band below with figures of the Apostles, the stoles also being adorned
with figures.
The arrangement of the choir shows the common Italian plan of stalls
round the apse behind the altar. They are of early Renaissance
character, with some relic of Gothic feeling in the traceries of the
backs and elbows. There is also a good example of a square choir
lectern, with a large base to contain books, and a revolving gabled
desk.
Until the beginning of this century, there were only two altars in this
church, one in the choir the other in the crypt. The verger told me that
his father remembered the other altars being brought from a suppressed
church, and erected here.
The campanile is well seen from the cloister, where it composes finely
with the coursed walls of the church, and the many-shafted arcades of
the cloister. It is a lofty square tower of several stages, with small
pinnacles, and a low circular brick spire crowning it.
I must not leave San Zenone without mentioning the construction of the
exterior, which--with the exception of the west end, which is of stone
and marble--is entirely of red brick and very warm-coloured stone. The
courses of stone are, as a general rule, of about the same height,
whilst those of brick are very varied, some only of one course, others
of four or five. The cornices at the tops of the walls, too, are very
good, supported upon corbel-tables with round arches resting upon
corbels, and much improved in their effect by the judicious introduction
of thin deep-red bricks between the courses of carved stone, which are
thus thrown out forcibly. It is in this use of red brick, and in the
bold and successful way in which brick and stone are shown in the
interior, that this church is so full of instruction to an English eye;
and I could not see such a work without regretting bitterly the insane
prejudice which some people indulge against anything but the cold,
walls, chilling respectability of our English plastered walls, which to
me seems to be fit only for occupation by savages.
Every time I visit this noble church, I leave it with greater regret;
its exceeding grandeur appears to deserve a better fate than the spare
use to which it seems now to be abandoned. To see all these painted or
coloured walls, all these marble piers, and all this vast expanse of
wall and roof waste and desolate, apparently not half used and never
filled with a throng of worshippers, reminds me too strongly of the sad
and similar fate of some of our own English churches not to awaken a
sigh as I look at it. To some men it is a comfort to find that their
neighbours are no better than themselves in these matters, but I confess
that to my mind a great church disused is a subject only for mournful
recollection, just as a noble church much used and filled with crowds of
worshippers is an object for emulation and admiration. Here, in good
truth, I know not where the worshippers are to come from, so decayed and
forlorn is the neighbourhood.
On the way back from San Zenone into the city a small church is
passed--the oratory of the same Saint--where his body is said to have
rested for a time before it was taken to the Basilica. The only
architectural features are of a long subsequent period, a very good
circular window in the west gable, and a doorway with a pointed canopy
supported on shafts above it, under which of old no doubt there was a
painting.
Beside San Zenone I think the only very grand church as yet unmentioned
is that of San Fermo Maggiore--a vast Romanesque basilica without
aisles, but with small transepts, and a chancel and north and south
chancel-aisles opening into the nave by three arches, which exactly
correspond with its vast width; a not very beautiful arrangement, which
we shall meet with again in the church of the Eremitani at Padua, and in
others of the great churches of the preaching orders of monks.
The fabric of the east end, and the eastern half of the nave appears to
be of very early date--I should be disposed to say the end of the
tenth, or beginning of the eleventh century. A lofty crypt is
constructed under the whole of this part, all the columns of which are
square; some of them mere masses of masonry, others slender monoliths.
The mouldings here are rather Roman in character than Lombard. The
groining is all of brick, and very extensive remains of paintings are
still to be seen throughout, the large columns having single figures
painted on them, one on each face. Access to the crypt is obtained (by
the clergy) from the cloister, south of the church, and by the people
through a very spacious staircase entered from the outside by a door
just west of the north porch. So good indeed are the means of access,
that no doubt the crypt was once extensively used by the laity, for whom
these stairs were specially intended. It is now not used at all--just as
is the case with old crypts all over Europe--but then it is fair to say
that the church is no longer served by the Regular Clergy by whom it was
built, and that their conventual buildings were when first I saw them
occupied by Austrian soldiers, and are now still turned, I believe, to
some equally secular use. I think we may fairly assume that in 1313,
when the church was restored and in part reconstructed, the old crypt
was retained partly on account of its associations, and partly because
of its convenience for those who might at first not quite sympathize
with the novel arrangements of the church above, a great unbroken area
built and contrived for the use and convenience of an order of
preachers, and not for receiving a number of altars.
A monument close to the entrance of the crypt is worth notice. It
represents a professor with his pupils sitting each at a desk. The books
have inscriptions on them. The professor’s has “Vita brevis;” a pupil,
“Ars longā;” another, “judicium difficile;” and another, “tēpus
fugit.”
In the interior of the nave we have, as has been observed, a work which
has been so much altered that it is in fact, as we now see it, a work of
the fourteenth century. It is about fifty feet in width, and covered
with a timber roof, constructed so as to form a ceiling of a number of
cusps boarded and panelled on the under side, and tied with iron ties in
place of collar-beams. Two vertical divisions of the panelling are
arcaded, and filled with paintings of saints, and the whole roof is
darkly stained, and richly painted. Beyond this the only very striking
feature is the pulpit, which is corbelled out from the south wall about
midway in its length. It is old and picturesque, and is surmounted by a
delicately carved and lofty canopy--the whole in marble. It is
surrounded by wall paintings of about the same age, and presents a
fairly unchanged example of what such combined works of the painter and
the architect were in the palmy days of the fourteenth century. These
paintings are of much interest. Behind the pulpit are the four doctors
and the four Evangelists seated, the ascent of Elisha in a chariot of
fire, and twelve prophets with scrolls. Under the canopy is the
Crucifixion.
Going to the exterior one finds on the north side two transepts, and
north of the chancel a tower. East of the eastern transept and of the
tower are small apsidal projections of Romanesque character, both of
them in ruins and unused. The masonry here is different from that of the
later work, being of alternate courses of single brick, and of stone.
The exterior of the principal apse is very remarkable, and belongs to
the fourteenth century. Each side has a steep gable with elaborate
cornices, mouldings, and pinnacles, partly of stone and partly of brick.
The gables are built with circular bricks, and there is a cusped
circular window in each gable. Seen from the bridge which crosses the
Adige close to the church, this picturesque east end is one
[Illustration: 17.--S. FERMO MAGGIORE, VERONA. Page 121]
of the most picturesque things in Verona. Unfortunately the campanile
does not equal in importance the church to which it belongs.
The west end will be best understood by the accompanying sketch. It is
constructed entirely in red brick and warm-coloured stone, and I confess
that it impressed me most pleasantly, as having in its four delicate
lancet windows some sort of affinity to our own English work. The north
porch is very fine of its kind, and the jambs of its doorway are
constructed of black, white, and red marble, used alternately. The
arcading against the walls is noticeable as shewing the use of thin
courses of red brick for the purpose of defining the lines of the
stonework.
The monuments on each side of the west door are good simple examples of
a favourite Italian type. They are, as we shall see, of all dates, and
even when developed to a great size, are still corbelled in the same way
out of the walls. In the North of Europe, we have no analogous treatment
of monumental memorials, and this rather enhances their value. The arch
to the monument on the left of the west doorway is painted in a
charmingly simple Giottesque style, and there is a painting also behind
a modern statue in the door-arch, of Our Lord surrounded by angels. In
the arcades above the monuments there were figures of saints painted,
with imitations of mosaic. All these details are worth mentioning in
order to give some idea to those who have not seen Verona, of the extent
to which everywhere the eye is feasted with remains of early art.
Indeed, one feasts uninterruptedly there on all that can delight the eye
in form and in colour!
With the mention of one more church I believe I may bring my notes in
Verona to an end, and this is a small chapel which stands just opposite
the south side of the Duomo, and whose name I could not learn. It is
much like San Pietro Martire in its general arrangement, but remarkable
for the exquisite beauty of its windows, the arrangement of the bricks
and stonework in which is beyond all praise. These windows are
constructed with trefoiled heads of stone, enclosed within an arch of
mixed stone and brick, round whose outer edge runs a band of delicate
terra-cotta ornament. The spandrels of the trefoils are filled in with
refined sculpture, instead of being pierced with the dark eye usually
found in northern Gothic. There is, too, an entire absence of mouldings,
yet, notwithstanding this, the general effect is one of combined
delicacy and richness of no common kind, so much does carefully-arranged
and contrasted colour do for architecture. A third window is entirely of
brick, save the trefoil head of the opening. The side elevation of this
little chapel is very singular in its whole arrangement; there are three
bays divided by pilasters, which finish at the top in an arcaded cornice
of brick; in each of the two western bays is a lancet window, and the
centre bay has in addition a doorway, and a corbelled out monument above
it; in the eastern bay the window looks just like one of those curious
English low side windows, as to the use of which we have had so many
ingenious theories; the east end has no trace of any window, and is
finished with a flat-pitched roof, and a brick corbel-table running up
the pediment. There is no stone used except in the window-heads and
arches.
There are many other churches in Verona on both sides of the river, and
into several of them we went, but without finding any of equal merit to
those which I have already noticed. Santa Eufemia has a fair west front,
of late pointed, and we found one or two good cloisters just like those
mentioned at Brescia. Other churches have fronts built, and interiors
remodelled, by Sanmichele and his successors, in a style which by no
means approved itself to me; others
[Illustration: 18. ITALIAN BRICKWORK:
1. 2. Windows at Verona.
3. Cornice S. Ambrogio, Milan.
4. Cornice Broletto Brescia.
5. Windows in Broletto, Monza.
6. Wall Arcade S. Fermo Maggiore.]
there which I did not succeed in reaching,[23] and there is one
dedicated in honour of S. Thomas of Canterbury, which is not, however,
otherwise of any interest; it has a very late Gothic west front, of poor
character.
It is impossible to walk about Verona without meeting at every turn with
windows whose design is similar to those so often seen in Venice, but
the execution and arrangement are generally so inferior here to what
they are there, that I shall defer saying much about them until I am
describing the palaces and ancient buildings of Venice. They are almost
always finished with ogeed trefoils at the top, and are arranged singly,
or in couples or more together, and one above the other, the same in
each story of the house; their mouldings are thin and reedy, and the
carving of their finials, when they have any, is very poor. Examples of
these windows will be seen by most travellers in the rooms of the
Albergo delle Due Torre.
[Illustration: DOMESTIC WINDOW--VERONA.]
The views from the bridges across the Adige are very striking. The main
part of the city is on the right bank, and the river describes nearly a
semi-circle round it. The opposite bank is only partially built over,
and has a largish suburb, upon rather rapidly rising ground; beyond this
the walls of the city are seen with occasional towers, and marked all
the way by their serrated battlements climbing the irregular outline of
the hills in the boldest fashion. Then crossing over to the other side
and turning round, you see the thickly-built city full of towers and
churches rising far above the turmoil of the crowd below into the pure
sky, and, by their number and size, making Verona one of the most
striking old cities I know.
Of course no one goes to Verona without thinking of Romeo and Juliet. I
fear, however, that when I was shown the Casa de’ Cappelletti, a small
inn in a narrow street, and asked to connect it in any way for the
future with the creation of Shakespeare’s brain, my fancy refused to be
sufficiently lively to perform the required feat. The simple fact is
that, real relics not existing, the good people of Verona have wisely
met the demand which Shakespeare has created, and have discovered a tomb
for Juliet, and other reminiscences of the fair Veronese, which I dare
say satisfy very well the majority of travellers.
At Verona, as in the other towns through which we passed in Italy, we
were quite astonished at the number of misshapen dwarfs that we saw; we
could not account for this at first, but I suppose it is because
children, until they can walk, are tied up in rolls of linen so stiffly
as to deprive them of all power of motion. The only wonder is how any of
these unfortunate children ever manage to walk at all.
In the courts of the houses at Verona there are generally wells, with
ingeniously contrived arrangements for enabling the occupants of the
various surrounding houses and balconies to let down their buckets for
water without themselves going down to the wells. There are guide-ropes
to the well from each angle of the courts round which the houses are
usually built, along which the buckets run, suspended by rings and held
by ropes from the balconies, until they reach the iron-work over the
well, and then fall perpendicularly down to the water.
I have visited Verona many times, and each visit seems to me to give
greater pleasure than the last. I fear I have given but a faint idea of
the indescribable charm which it has to all who are fond of early art.
There is little which one can compare with the situation and
surroundings of such cities as Venice and Florence, and yet I suppose
most travellers would agree with me in reckoning the interest of these
three towns as not far from equal, and greater in very many ways than
that of any other Italian cities.
On this first journey we were driven away by bad weather which, when it
sets in, generally continues for several days, and we left, inwardly
resolving that no long time should elapse before we returned--a
resolution which has been abundantly and often fulfilled--and as the
waiter at our hotel honestly told us that we should be very likely to
find fine weather at Padua, whither we were next to journey, we took his
advice, and then, getting into an omnibus contrived to hold thirty
persons, and I should say at least twenty feet long, with four horses
harnessed with long drawn-out traces to increase the already prodigious
length, we were soon at the terminus of the Verona and Venice railway.