“‘And whither journeying?--‘To the holy shrine
Of Saint Antonio in the city of Padua.’”
_Rogers._
Neighbourhood of Verona--Vicenza: Cathedral--San Lorenzo--Santa
Corona--Pallazzo della Ragione--Gothic Palaces--Palladio’s
works--Teatro Olympico--Padua: Giotto’s Chapel--The
Eremitani--Sant’Antonio--The Duomo.
Many of the villages near Verona are remarkable for the remains of
castles of the middle ages. I have never, however, been able to find
time for the examination of any of them, and, judging from hurried views
which I have had of three or four castles south of Verona, I suspect
that they would scarcely repay a long _détour_; they seem generally to
be more remarkable for their general contour, and their quaint forked
battlements, than for any of that delicate detail and appliance to
ordinary wants which it was especially my object to see and study.
The railroad from Verona to Vicenza and Padua is not interesting; the
country is beautiful and luxuriant in detail, but rather tame, flat, and
over-green in the general view. The Veronese mountains, however, are in
view on the north, and as one approaches Vicenza the hills throw out
their spurs into the flat country, covered with vineyards, orchards, and
fruit trees; village follows close upon village, each with its white
church and white campanile, contrasting strangely with the rich colour
above and around, and at last the towers and roofs of Vicenza are
descried on our left.
And is it possible, my readers will exclaim, that you, an architect, can
have dared to pass within sight of Vicenza without making long sojourn
there to drink in the lessons which the works of your great master
Palladio are there to instil! Even so, reader; for in this world there
are unhappily two views of art, two schools of artists--armies of men
fighting against each other; the one numerous, working with the
traditions and rules of their masters in the art, exclusive in their
views, narrow in their practice, and conventional in all their
proceedings, to the most painful forgetfulness of reality either in
construction or in ornament; the other young and earnest, fighting for
truth, small in numbers, disciples of nature, revivers of an art to all
appearance but now all but defunct, yet already rising gloriously above
the traditional rules of three centuries. The one class representing no
new idea, breathing no new thought, faithful to no religious rule; the
other rapidly endeavouring to strike out paths for themselves as yet
untrodden, gathering thoughts from nature, life from an intense desire
for reality and practical character, faithful moreover to a religious
belief, whose propagation will be for ever the great touchstone of their
work. The one class, the disciples of Palladio, journeying towards
Vicenza with a shew of reverence to learn how he built palaces of compo
with cornices of lath and plaster, already in two short centuries
falling to decay, wretched and ruinous! the other stopping long at
Verona, dreaming over the everlasting art of the monuments of the
Scaligers, and of the nave of Sta. Anastasia, still, though five
centuries have passed with all their storms about their heads, fresh and
beautiful as ever, fit objects of veneration for the artist in all ages!
A disciple, therefore, of the last of these two schools, I stayed not
longer at Vicenza than was necessary to satisfy myself of the truth of
the charges against Palladio’s work there, and to note the few, but
interesting, mediæval remains. The situation of the city is beautiful.
Near it to the north are mountain ranges, and where these descend into
the plains there are smaller hills covered everywhere with luxurious
vegetation. The first view of it is also very fine. In front is the old
brick tower at the Porta di Castello, with its deep brick machicoulis
sloping boldly outwards, and finished with a square battlement under a
flat roof. Beyond this are seen the steeples of the city, and highest
among them the Torre dell’ Orologio, a tall slender brick tower in the
Piazza dei Signori, in the centre of the town. The most important Gothic
churches are the Cathedral, San Lorenzo, and Santa Corona. They seem all
to be in very much the same style--one derived no doubt from Venice, as
we shall see when we arrive there. The plans usually are of this kind.
The bays of the nave are square in plan, those of the aisles oblong in
the direction of the length of the church, the choirs apsidal, and the
chapels on each side of them also apsidal, but with an equal number of
sides so that there is an angle in the centre. The transepts are
square-ended, the sacristy at the end of one of them, and the tower at
the side of the chancel aisles. The Cathedral departs from the type of
plan just mentioned, but is, I think, the only exception to the rule. It
has a very wide nave without aisles some 55 or 60 feet in the clear, but
it has been so much repaired and altered that it is now very
uninteresting. Good effect is obtained by the very great elevation of
the altar which is raised above a crypt, the entrance to which is by
flights of steps on each side of the steps which lead up to the choir.
The exterior is mainly of brick save at the west end, which has an
arcade of stone with a doorway in the centre division.
[Illustration: 19. PORTA DI CASTELLO. VICENZA. p. 128.]
This kind of west front is repeated in the more interesting church of
San Lorenzo, which is finished with one vast gable in front of nave and
aisles, and has for its lower stage an arcade of seven divisions, with a
fine pointed doorway occupying the three central arches. This part of
the front is mainly of stone, with enriched members round the arches in
brick, and it is divided from the upper stage by a corbel-table. The
gable is of brick with a large stone circular window in the centre, and
five smaller circular windows following the line of the flat gable which
crowns the whole. I was not much impressed by this design, the only
virtue of which is a certain amount of simplicity and breadth.
The interior of San Lorenzo is lofty and spacious. The nave and aisles
alone measure about 150 feet by 90, and there are spacious transepts,
choir, and chapels. The columns are circular, and have capitals so badly
carved that it is somewhat difficult to say whether they have shells or
tufts of foliage for enrichment. Very small circular windows in the
clerestory, and a groined roof, complete the design. The best portion of
the exterior is, I think, the elevation of the bays of the nave aisles.
Here there are two simple trefoiled lancets with a shallow buttress
between them, and a circular window above in each bay. This design is
refreshingly pure and simple. The steeple is on the east side of the
north transept. It is of six stages in height, the stages being marked
by slightly sunk panels, and corbel-tables under string-courses, which
are formed by a pattern in the bricks, not by any projecting moulding,
so that the straight outline of the steeple is not broken. The result is
not particularly good.
Santa Corona has, like the other churches, a single gable in front of
the nave and aisles, with a western doorway and a large circular window
above. I have a recollection of it as of one of the most ungainly of
fronts. The campanile here is much like that of San Lorenzo, but has a
low octagonal belfry-stage finished with a small circular brick spire.
Santa Corona may well be more visited, for a picture by John Bellini
than for its own merits. This is a picture over one of the altars in the
north aisle representing the Baptism of Our Lord--one so quiet and
beautiful in colour, so dignified and solemn in its design, that it is
impossible to admire it too much. Behind the group of angels who hold
Our Lord’s garments, is a mountain landscape such as one sees from
Vicenza. It is a sublime work. The marble reredos is coeval with the
picture: it is furnished with two low screen walls right and left of the
altar, a common and proper arrangement for its protection when, as here,
the altar stands in the aisle itself and not in a chapel.
I did not find any other church worth noticing, and soon made my way to
the Palazzo della Ragione. The great feature of this building is the
enormous hall, no less than 72 feet wide inside, and covered with a
great arched timber roof boarded on the under side, and divided into
vertical panels by bold ribs painted black and white. This roof is held
together by two tiers of iron ties, and being arched and boarded at the
end as well as at the sides, has somewhat the look of the inverted hull
of a great ship. The effect is imposing, though at the same time it is
somewhat gloomy, owing to the absence of all high light.
This great hall was Gothic inside and out until Palladio cased the front
with open arcades, standing out from the walls and entirely concealing
from below the old windows. These were large single lights with moulded
jambs, but not of very good style. The original staircase remains with
good marble shafted balustrades. The old work here is said to have been
done before the year 1444, the hall having been burnt in 1389. This date
is of some importance, as the walls of the upper portion are faced like
the upper stage
[Illustration: 20. CONTRADA PORTO. VICENZA. p. 131]
of the Ducal Palace at Venice, with marble arranged in a diaper.
The slender and lofty tower of brick which rises at one end of the
building, the two Venetian columns (Vicenza became subject to Venice in
1404), and the Palazzo itself, in spite of its small architectural
merit, combine to make a charming picture, rendered more beautiful when
I saw it, by the animated crowd of peasants who filled the Piazza. The
streets here are very picturesque, rather in spite of Palladio and
Scamozzi than in consequence of what they did. Some of them are arcaded,
and the Gothic houses are still very numerous. They are all, however, of
late date--at least I saw none earlier than about 1350. They are of the
same design as some of the well-known Venetian palaces, only here they
rise out of narrow streets, instead of as they do there from the water.
The usual arrangement is to have on the ground floor a single doorway,
not necessarily central, and on the _piano nobile_ a fine traceried
window with balconies in the centre, single windows also with balconies
near the angles, and intermediate windows of the same design but without
balconies. These are always treated in the same way with small shafts,
and with animals seated on their angles, and are supported on bold
corbels. All the carving that I saw was weak and confused in outline,
and poor in detail, and the capitals are generally too large for the
arch mouldings which rest on them--a common fault in Italian Gothic
work.
I give a view in the Contrada Porto which illustrates two of the best of
these houses. Almost the whole of this street happens to consist of
houses of the same age, and one of them has on one side of its internal
courtyard open arcades on each story, the upper one having its
balustrades remaining between the columns, similar in design to those in
window-balconies.
In their original state most of these houses seem to have been left in
red brick, the windows being of stone, with thin white marble slabs
fitted into the spandrels above the arches. Projecting balls of marble
are often fixed in front of this marble lining. Some houses seem,
however, to have been plastered almost from the first with a view to
painting, and I can hardly say a word against such a plan, with the
recollection of the glowing--in spite of their being faded--tints which
one still sees at Brescia, Genoa, and elsewhere in Italy. But where the
house has architectural features, which are at all good of their kind,
the painter is very apt to ignore them entirely in his work, so that
what was meant to be a good piece of architectural work, becomes in the
end a badly cut-up ground for a painting. Where there is no
architectural detail to be spoilt, any amount of painting may be
lavished on an external wall; and I know few examples which better show
with how much good effect it may be done than the great house of the
Fugger family in Augsburg, which many Italian tourists now-a-days may
see and admire on their way to or from Italy. The other objection to
external painting is its evanescent character; but good colour is
beautiful even in its decay, and I suppose the best artist will paint
what will do most good to his own generation, and trust to his
successors for doing as much for their own times!
One of the most fanciful houses in Vicenza is the Casa Rigafetta, below
the Palazzo Pubblico. The ornaments are not pure, and there is too much
straining to make the most of an opportunity by putting everything
possible into a small space, but still the whole is decidedly pretty.
The balconies here are in plan half a quatrefoil. Near this house is one
with carved angle-shafts, a feature which I do not remember to have seen
in Venice.
Palladio’s works are supposed now to be the glory of Vicenza. I cannot
forgive the artist who did not care to give solidity to his work, and
the power of executing a vast amount of enrichment in the cheapest way,
and with the commonest materials, is about the greatest snare into which
an architect can allow himself to fall. I am well aware that Palladio
was not the inventor of trumpery modes of construction. His admirers
might quote the architects of Pompeii fifteen hundred years before him,
as offenders in the same way, and the curious preservation of their
works as the justification of their offence; but Palladio followed after
men of his own kind and craft who for centuries had studiously
endeavoured to do their work honestly, and he deserves, therefore, all
the hostile criticism of those who object to a revival of bad practices
which in our own day and country have done more real damage to
architecture than anything else that can be named.
One only of Palladio’s works interested me, and this rather as a curious
experiment than as a work of art. This is the Teatro Olimpico, a famous
open-air theatre. There is first of all a semi-circular auditorium open
to the sky, and only remarkable for a mean arrangement of pilasters at
the back. The great object of interest is the stage, on which a
permanent scene has been constructed by Palladio. In order to make this
look much larger than it really is, the streets, palaces, and temples
which are represented are built in perspective. To accomplish this the
stage rises very rapidly, the buildings are squeezed up, and built in
sharp perspective, so that in the end a triumphal arch, which is really
forty feet from the front, looks as if it were four hundred. Should an
actor by any chance so far forget himself as to walk into what looks
like a practicable street, in a minute he would find himself able to
shake hands with the statue on the top of the arch, the illusion would
be entirely destroyed, and the scenery would all look like a collection
of dolls’ houses. As an ingenious deception from one point of view, and
under certain conditions, the scheme is successful, and probably this is
as much as Palladio himself would have claimed for it.
We had now seen all that we cared to see in Vicenza, and gladly found
ourselves again _en route_. There was nothing to see on the road, and we
were not sorry when our engine gave token by its whistle of our approach
to Padua. The omnibus discharged us in a few minutes at the hospitable
doors of the Stella d’Oro, and we were soon out again with the view of
making the most of our time.
Padua, when I first saw it, seemed to me to be a most melancholy city;
grass grew in the streets, the footways were all formed under dark and
dismal arcades, and not only the externals of the half-occupied palaces,
but those even of all the houses, looked squalid, dirty, and miserable;
nor was there any relief when one got into the more open spaces, for the
large piazze on either side of the Palazzo della Ragione, or townhall,
looked as squalid and uncared-for, as dirty and unprepossessing, as they
well could; nor was this universal squalor rendered at all less
remarkable by the fact that Padua rejoices in a caffè, which is said to
surpass any other even in Italy, for its smartness; and the array of
well-dressed gentlemen who frequented it, certainly made the
neighbourhood look more wretched by contrast than it otherwise would.
The Caffè Pedrocchi was however soon passed, and our first object was
the Palazzo della Ragione, whose vast and singular hall, about two
hundred and fifty feet long by ninety feet wide, is one of the greatest
architectural curiosities in the city. Its exterior has been modernized,
so that now it is only remarkable for its long expanse of roof, but the
interior is still in its original state. The access to the Hall, which
in this and other respects much resembles that at Vicenza, is from
external arcades on the first floor, to which four staircases lead from
below. The walls are low, and covered with paintings arranged in arcaded
panels; some of these are said to be by Giotto, and the whole of them, I
believe, were at any rate painted in his time, but have probably been
repaired and retouched extensively long since. The windows are small,
low down in the walls, and admit scarcely more than sufficient light for
the lower part of the hall. The roof shews in section a vast pointed
arch of timber, boarded and divided into panels by a succession of heavy
vertical ribs scarcely at all moulded. The construction is obviously so
weak as, from the very first, to have made the iron ties which hold it
all together absolutely necessary. A curious feature in the design is,
that instead of having gable walls the roof is hipped, and shews
therefore at the end just the same section as at the sides. What little
light finds its way into the dark obscurity of the roof is admitted
through some small dormers high up in its framework. The effect of the
hall is gloomy, and, compared to our own great halls, certainly shows
some lack of knowledge of construction on the part of its architect, and
its bald heaviness makes it absurd to compare it to our own noble
Westminster hall, though their very similar dimensions might naturally
tempt us to do so. It dates from about the beginning of the fourteenth
century, and the story runs that it was designed by a certain Frate
Giovanni, who, travelling in India, saw the roof of a great palace the
construction of which so pleased him that he brought back drawings of it
with him, and erected its fellow here in Padua. How much truth there is
in this tradition I cannot say, but this much seems clear, that in some
way Padua has, if not a very beautiful, at any rate a very remarkable
Sala, and one which is quite unlike any other room in Europe, with the
single exception of the corresponding room at Vicenza, which no doubt
copied from it.
It has been burnt and damaged in one way and another repeatedly since it
was first built, and in the course of the restorations the paintings on
the walls have been excessively damaged, in many parts repainted, and in
some obliterated altogether. The work was commenced at any rate, if not
completed, just at the time that Dante and Giotto were together in this
part of Italy. The walls are all divided into four panels in height by
borders, with painted pilasters for vertical divisions, and the panels
are generally arched and cusped. The paintings include the apostles, the
signs of the zodiac, representations of the months, the planets, and the
constellations. The whole scheme is far too complex to be intelligible
without a key. This fortunately is accessible in the very careful and
complete account of all the subjects of the paintings on the walls which
was prepared in 1858 by Mr. W. Burges, and printed in the ‘Annales
Archéologiques.’ With infinite pains he made out the meaning of the
whole of the figures--no light task, as the walls being divided by
painted borders and arcades into several stages in height and an almost
interminable number in length, spaces are provided for some four hundred
subjects.[24]
At one end of the hall was the chapel of San Prodoscimo, formed I
presume by screens. The judges sat round the hall, forming so many
courts in one room. At the opposite end was a cage or prison, so that
here, under one roof, with walls covered with illustrations, sat all the
courts of Padua, without any of those ingenious divisions and
subdivisions which are now necessary for the administration of the very
smallest sort of justice, and it may be hoped with as much honesty as
there certainly was simplicity.
Now-a-days the hall is quite unused save as a receptacle for lumber, of
which the most remarkable example is the remnant of a gigantic horse
made by Donatello to travel on rollers in some old Paduan pageant.
From the Palazzo della Ragione, we found our way to what must, so long
as it lasts, be the great glory, as it is the chief charm, of
Padua--Giotto’s Chapel, founded in 1303.
[Illustration: ARENA CHAPEL--PADUA.]
This stands in private grounds and on one side of a desolate green walk
which leads up to a private house to which it now forms an appendage.
From the first it was a little private chapel, and in no respect
remarkable for size or costliness of material or design. The plan is a
simple oblong nave with an apsidal chancel, and a sacristy on the north
side, and nothing can be simpler than the exterior. The walls are of
brick, divided into bays by narrow pilasters. The west door is round
arched, as are also the windows. The interior is even more simple; the
whole nave has not a moulding, the walls are continued on into the
semicircular ceiling without any cornice, and all the ornament is added
in colour.
The windows all have a deep splay outside, very simple stone traceries,
and glass fitted to wooden frames placed inside against the stonework.
There seem also to have been shutters outside, for which the hooks still
remain. A sort of penthouse, or perhaps a cloister-roof was carried
along in front of the chapel, but of this nought remains but the corbels
which carried it. There is no more to be said about the exterior than
that it is simple and good of its kind--the kind being very humble.
Let us go inside, and we shall pass a very different verdict. Giotto is
to many of us not only a person singularly gifted in a great age, but in
some sort the embodiment of an idea. The idea is that of an artist,
pure, simple, and direct in his work, who should excel equally in all
the arts, and show--even though his work be an exception to all
rules--the consummate success of such a course. The man was fortunate in
his day and in his friends. Here, where we stand to admire, he painted,
whilst probably Dante looked on. For merely human and artistic interest
there is, therefore, no room which more rightly deserves to be the
object of endless pilgrimages; and there is none in which one will find
the artist more faithful to his calling, more full of recollection and
self-restraint than in this.
I know, therefore, no one building, of such very small size and cost,
which can claim the same degree of interest as this small Chapel of the
Arena. It is, indeed, one of the glories of art that the works of its
great masters cannot diminish in value, or even be competed with by
subsequent masters: when once done, they are done for ever; and so the
Pietà of Giotto, in this little chapel at Padua, is now--as it was when
first painted in the commencement of the fourteenth century, and as it
will continue to be so long as the neglect with which it is now treated
allows it to exist--one of the great paintings of the world, one of
those fountains from which school after school and age after age of
artists may drink instruction and knowledge, and never fail to gain
more, the more they study its many excellences, and its intensity of
feeling and conception.
[Illustration: SIDE WINDOW--ARENA CHAPEL.]
The architectural portion of the interior may be first of all described.
The apse is simply a sanctuary, and the chancel is formed by marble
screens on each side of the nave, leaving a broad entrance-way between
them, and enclosing about one-third of its length. Against the west side
of these screens are altars, each with a small carved marble reredos;
whilst on the east of them are steps leading to the two ambons; that on
the north being a book-rest, carved in marble, and fixed with its face
to the east; that on the south of iron, and turning upon a pivot.
Between these screens and the sanctuary arch are modern stalls on each
side. The sanctuary has seats all round the apse (except in the eastern
bay), each with a delicate white marble canopy. The sacristy is groined,
and has a thirteenth-century press of wood of a design rather curious
than beautiful, but very rich in its detail. In the nave, as I have
already said, walls have neither cornices nor string-courses to break
their even surfaces, and their face is continued on in semicircular
waggon vault. There are six lancet windows on the south, none at all on
the north, and a three-light window very high up in the gable at the
west end above the doorway.
The architectural merit of the building is simply, I think, that it
performs satisfactorily the office of giving ample unbroken surfaces of
wall for paintings.
The arrangement of these is very regular. The vault is divided into two
parts by wide coloured borders, the space between which is painted blue,
powdered with gilt stars, and in each bay there are five small
medallions with figures on a gold ground. The side walls are divided by
borders into three divisions in height; the upper division containing
subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin; the central, those
illustrative of the life of Our Blessed Lord; whilst those nearest to
the ground are representations of the Virtues and Vices opposed to each
other; the last division tinted only in one colour, the others richly
painted in bright colours upon a field of blue.
The borders which divide the paintings are very well designed, their
patterns being always very clearly defined with white leading lines, and
a line of red on either side always accompanying each line of white. The
paintings themselves are very wonderful; there is an earnestness of
purpose and expression about them such as one rarely meets with; each
subject is treated with a severe conscientiousness, not always
conventionally where a departure from strict rule is for any reason
necessary, but still, generally speaking, in accordance no doubt with
the ancient traditional treatment. This, illuminated as it is by the
thought and love and earnest intensity of feeling which Giotto lavished
on all that he did, makes his work here the most perfect example of a
series of religious paintings that I have ever seen. Of course in such a
large series of subjects there must be great variety of excellence, and
I am content to agree with the rest of the world in awarding the palm
of excellence to the Pietà, in which the expression of intense feeling
in the face of the mourners over the body of Our Lord is certainly
beyond anything of the kind that I know.
The series is very complete, and, beginning with the history of Joachim
before the birth of the Blessed Virgin (the seventh subject), is
continued down through the leading acts of Our Lord’s life to the
descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost;[25] whilst the west
wall is occupied by a Last Judgment; and throughout the subjects Our
Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the apostles are always represented in
vestments of the same colour.
Most of these paintings are in very perfect condition, and the _tout
ensemble_ is nearly as charming as it was when first painted. I was
sorry, however, to notice some of the paintings lined all over by a
recent copyist, and much damage has been done by damp, especially in the
Last Judgment on the west wall. I do not care very much for the painting
on the lower part of the walls. The figures of Virtues and Vices are
very finely designed, but the imitations of marbles and mouldings
painted in perspective were, I hope--being the last work to be
finished--done after Giotto had completed his work.
Close to Giotto’s Chapel stands the great, and to an English eye,
singular church of the Eremitani. It has a very broad nave of immense
length, unbroken by aisles, and roofed with one of the cusped roofs
already noticed at Verona, in which the real construction is (with the
exception of the tie-beams) entirely concealed by boarding on the under
side; this boarding being generally arranged in a succession of large
cusps or curves; the effect here is, I think, very heavy and
unsatisfactory, but we must bear in mind that the span is prodigious,
and the pitch of the roof very flat. The chancel and an aisle on either
side of it open into the east end of the nave with three arches, and
look so small as to be more like mere recesses than important integral
parts of the plan. There are in this church a great many frescoes and
paintings of much interest--among which are some by Mantegna in a chapel
on the south side of the nave which are worthy of careful study as
being, probably beyond almost any other wall paintings which exist, an
evidence of the fact that interest in treatment of subject, drawing and
design of consummate excellence, perspective and decorative colouring of
the walls, may all be included in a fresco without interference with the
wall surface, or indulgence in tricks of chiaroscuro, without which no
painter now seems willing to do his work. Yet if Mantegna cheerfully
accepted such rules for his wall-painting, would it be beneath modern
painters to do the same for theirs, and could they ask for a better
teacher or guide than this consummate artist?
Less interesting to the artist than these works of Mantegna are the
paintings in the apse executed by Guarienti in the middle of the
fourteenth century. Here are figures of the planets: the Sun, Moon,
Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter, each with allegorical
figures, male and female, of the Seven Ages of Man influenced by the
planets.[26]
At the west end of the nave is a great painted Rood, one of those
curiously shaped crosses meant to receive a painting of the Crucifixion
instead of a carved figure, and cut round with quaintly carved and
crisped indentations, of which so many examples remain, though they are
generally found now in picture galleries. This no doubt stood originally
on a Rood beam, where one sees such a Rood represented in one of the
wall paintings in the upper church of S. Francis at Assisi.
When I was last at Padua the west front of this church was being
repaired--a very dangerous and terrible operation in Italy, where, so
far as I have seen, there is less feeling for, or knowledge of, Gothic
architecture than in any other part of Europe. The interior, too, has
been ruined by the way in which the old ceiling has been painted, in
blue and shaded white. In a building whose characteristic feature is a
certain grand simplicity and austerity, it is especially disgusting to
see light and tawdry colouring introduced, seeing how completely out of
harmony with the whole idea of the church it is.
At the west end are some fine monuments of stone and marble boldly
corbelled out from the wall, adorned with good carving of foliage, and
angels looking out from circles.
The east end is less altered than any part of the exterior of the
building. The immense gable of the nave is divided into four parts, the
outer of which have lancet windows, whilst in the centre is an
insignificant apse, which is almost exactly repeated on the east side of
the south transept. The large sacristy on the north side, and a
campanile of not much interest on the same side redeem to some extent
what would otherwise have been a most uninteresting elevation. The
windows here have a wide external splay, semi-circular arches, and stone
trefoil heads inserted rather clumsily under the arches.
What a grand idea it was on the part of the preaching orders to build
these enormous naves for their congregations! Here, when enthusiasm for
preaching was new born and general, a congregation, numbered rather by
thousands than by hundreds, may have gathered round the preacher, all
within sight of him, and, with the aid, probably, of an awning stretched
across the church over the pulpit, all within sound of his voice.
From the Eremitani we found our way with some difficulty through
miserable streets to the church of Sant’ Antonio, probably the most
remarkable architectural work in many respects in this part of Italy.
It seems that about A.D. 1231 it was determined to erect a great church
in honour of S. Antony, the patron of Padua, and Nicola Pisano, then one
of the most eminent men of his day, was sent for to undertake the
work.[27] The view of the exterior which I give, will best serve to shew
in how singular and original a manner he accomplished his work. S.
Mark’s at Venice must have been in his eye when he designed his church,
and the crowd of cupolas which form its roof remind one forcibly of its
most distinguishing feature.
On first sight Sant’Antonio certainly does not prepossess the beholder
in favour of such a bold departure from every-day rules of art. It is
built almost entirely of a light red brick, not much better than the
common London brick in colour--a poor material wherewith to attempt the
construction of a noble church. Stone is used very sparingly in the
voussoirs of the arches and elsewhere. The cupolas are heavy in their
effect, but relieved by that over the intersection of the nave and
transepts, which rises higher than the others, and is certainly striking
in its design and outline, which is, for the main portion of its height,
that of a simple cone.
[Illustration: GROUND PLAN--SANT’ANTONIO, PADUA.]
Round and pointed arches are used indiscriminately, and the walls are
divided everywhere by pilasters, and surmounted by arcaded
corbel-tables, in all these respects giving the building the appearance
of being much earlier than it is. The west front is very peculiar, and
recalls the fronts of the churches in Vicenza which I have described,
and is entirely unlike any of the churches of Pisa, which would hardly
have been the case had it really been designed by Nicola Pisano. One
great flat gable with an arcaded eaves-cornice finishes the whole, and
out of its apex rises a tall polygonal turret, almost as high as the
dome in front of which it stands. The lower part of the west front has a
central entrance of mean character, and on either side two unequal
arches of construction, the walls within which are pierced with
windows. Above these, and just beneath the great pediment-like gable, is
a long arcade of simple pointed arches, behind which are a passage and
three windows opening into the church. This front is a sham front, and
not excusable on account of its grandeur or its beauty. Indeed, had it
followed the outline of the fabric, it would have been neither ungainly
nor heavy, both of which it most assuredly is now.
The interior is striking from its height, but cold in the extreme in
effect; the domes are all whitewashed in the brightest and freshest
manner. The plan gives three domes to the nave, one and an apse of seven
bays to the choir, and one to the transept. The aisles open into the
nave with pointed arches--two to each dome. The choir aisle is continued
all round the choir, and a chapel is thrown out to the east of this,
which is again crowned with a dome.
The north transept contains the chapel of the patron saint, full of
gorgeous ornaments of all kinds, but not very ancient. Opposite it, in
the south transept, is a curious groined chapel, divided from the church
by five pointed and trefoiled arches of yellow marble, resting upon
Classical-looking columns, and all very richly painted and inlaid. Above
the arches are five statues in niches, and the intermediate wall-surface
is inlaid with white and red marble in a regular pattern, such as we
have seen in the pavement of Sta. Anastasia at Verona, with very good
effect.
The cloister on the south side of the church is very large and good, and
some fine arches occur in it, composed of black and yellow marble with
bricks of varied colour introduced. On its east side three open arches,
filled in with a double iron grille, open into what was, no doubt, the
chapter-house. Going from this into a second cloister to the east of it,
no one can fail to be struck by the extreme picturesqueness and novelty
of the view. In the foreground is the simple
[Illustration: 21. SANT’ANTONIO, PADUA. p. 147.]
pointed-arched and open arcade of the cloister; above this rise the
gable of the south transept and the eastern apse with its surrounding
aisle, and two lofty octagonal brick turrets, on each side of the apse,
which look like minarets from Cairo, and combined with the collections
of domes on the roof give a completely Eastern effect to the whole view.
If, however, the detail of this striking building is examined, one can
hardly be satisfied. There is throughout, as there so often is in Italy,
a sad want of skill and neatness in the adjustment of details as
compared to what is common in northern Gothic buildings. This indeed is
a feature of all the works of the Pisani, and gives them the
character--so common and so fatal in modern works--of being to a great
extent the work of assistants and not of the master. Nothing can be much
more clumsy than the provision for the steps leading to the turrets, nor
weaker than the rectangular tracery inserted in the circular window of
the transept. This, however, is a work of the middle of the fourteenth
century, and Nicola Pisano, even if he were the first architect of the
church, would not be responsible for it. I cannot say that I was at all
satisfied either with the internal or external effect of the
church--though it must be confessed that, when seen from a distance,
there is excessive grandeur in the grouping of the multitude of domes,
with the steep cone rising in the centre, and giving point and emphasis
to the whole.[28] The arrangement of the windows and arches round the
apse, for instance, is confused and weak to a degree; and I do not feel
that Nicola Pisano has fairly settled the question of the adaptation of
the dome to pointed buildings by his treatment of the domes here. The
question is still, I think, an open one; and though it may be doubted
whether with our present opportunities it will soon be satisfactorily
answered, I still feel that it would not be difficult to answer it far
more successfully than has been done here.
In the evening we heard some very fine music of ancient character in
Sant’Antonio, after which there was a sermon; and though it was a
week-day, there was a large congregation, very attentive and quiet.
The Duomo is a cold, unattractive church--said, however, to have been
designed by Michael Angelo--and rather bold in the treatment of the
pendentives under its dome. By its side stands a Lombard baptistery, the
interior of which I did not succeed in getting a sight of; and I believe
that I missed some valuable examples of fresco-painting with which its
walls and domed roof are covered.
We wandered about the melancholy streets of Padua, searching in vain for
objects of any interest to our antiquarian eyes. It is true that the
columns and arcades which support the houses are, many of them, ancient;
but they are of a character very common throughout the north of Italy,
and were not sufficiently novel or striking to draw off our attention
from the melancholy and dilapidated look of the houses and shops which
they half concealed and half supported. We saw also one or two old
monuments at the corners of streets--one of them called the tomb of
Antenor--similar in their idea to those which are so frequent in Verona.
The next morning, therefore, saw us making our way to the railway
station for Venice, sad only in leaving Padua that we could not spend
more time there for the study, more quietly and carefully, of the lovely
little Arena Chapel and the paintings of Giotto.