“With all its sinful doings, I must say
That Italy’s a pleasant place to me,
Who love to see the sun shine every day,
And vines (not nail’d to walls) from tree to tree
Festoon’d.”
_Beppo._
* * * * *
Venice to Verona--Verona to Mantua--Villa Franca--Mantua: its
Churches and Palaces--The
Theatre--Montenara--Campitello--Casalmaggiore--Longadore--Cremona:
the Cathedral--Churches and Public Buildings--Lodi--Pavia: its
Churches--Castle of the Visconti--The Certosa--Drive to Milan.
Our gondolier, anxious not to be too late for us in the morning, slept
in his gondola beneath our windows, and did his best, when the sun rose,
to rouse the sleepy porter of our hotel, but in vain; and at last, when
I awoke, I found we should have a very narrow escape, if indeed we did
not absolutely lose our train. The thing was, however, to be done, and
was done. We shot rapidly--only too rapidly for the last time--along the
smooth waters on which we had been so pleasantly loitering before, and
soon found ourselves at the railway station. Our journey was much like
what such journeys usually are: as far as Verona we were only retracing
our steps, but now the hot sun had quite cleared away the clouds which,
when we passed before, hid the Tyrolese Alps from our sight, and these,
whenever the high acacia hedges which line the railway allowed us a
sight of them, made the journey so far beautiful.
The names of the engines on this railway are very unlike the kind of
nomenclature indulged in at home; we were drawn to Verona, I believe, by
the Titian, and saw, as we rushed along, engines named after Dante,
Sansovino, and other artistic and literary celebrities.
We reached Verona at ten o’clock; the station, however, is so much out
of the town, and the day was so intensely hot, that we gave up the idea
of again going into it, and, contenting ourselves with the general view
of its quaint and picturesque walls rising over the rugged hills which
girt the city on its northern side, we sat down to a breakfast of iced
lemonade and some of those deliciously light cakes which are never had
in such perfection as in Italy, and amused ourselves by watching the way
in which the guards and drivers of the train by which we had travelled
proceeded to solace themselves with a game at billiards, upon a table
provided, I suppose, by the very considerate directors of the railway
company.
The railway from Verona to Mantua crosses a country which is thoroughly
uninteresting in point of scenery; it carried us on well into the great
plain of Lombardy, rich, teemingly rich, in its produce, but flat, arid,
and sultry to a degree. This was altogether one of our hottest days, and
took us fairly into a kind of district in which the heat is most
oppressively felt.
On the road we passed Villa Franca, a small town which has a rather
striking castle, with battlemented walls and a good many square towers,
still very fairly perfect; the whole built in brick, and with
battlements finished square at the top, and not forked like those at
Verona.
We reached the station at Mantua by twelve o’clock, but, as this was
very far from the city, it was nearly an hour later before we were
fairly landed at one--I forget which--of the abominably dirty and bad
inns to which sojourners
[Illustration: 39.--DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA. Page 255.]
within its walls have to submit with the best grace that they can.
Mantua is nearly surrounded by water; two large shallow and
unwholesome-looking lakes giving it this far from pleasant kind of
isolation. Over a long mediæval bridge between these waters the way into
the city from the terminus lies. One of the lakes is higher than the
other, and accordingly twelve mills, each adorned with a statue of an
apostle, are formed upon the bridge, and give it its name of Ponte
Mulina.
The general aspect of Mantua is very dreary and unpleasing, not less
forlorn in its appearance than Padua, and possessing but little
attraction for an architect. The chief architectural feature of the city
is the Ducal Palace, which contains, in the midst of a mass of
Renaissance work of the poorest and most unsatisfactory kind, some very
good remains of pointed architecture.
The finest portion is a long building of vast height, and retaining more
or less of Gothic work throughout, but especially remarkable for the
range of windows in its upper stage. Its front faces on one side towards
the Piazza di San Pietro, and on the other with a very nearly similar
elevation towards the Piazza del Pallone, one of the courts in the vast
palace of the Gonzagas, of which it forms a part. This building is said
to have been commenced about A.D. 1302 by Guido Buonacolsi, surnamed
Bottigella, third sovereign of Mantua, and this date quite agrees with
the character of all the detail. The interior has been completely
modernized, mainly by Ginlio Romano, who carried out very extensive
works in other parts of the palace. The windows in the upper stage of
this portion of the palace deserve notice as being about the most
exquisite examples of their class that I anywhere met with, though those
in the campanile of Sant’Andrea, hard by, are only second to them. The
main arch is of pure pointed form, and executed in brick with
occasional voussoirs of stone--one of which forms a key-stone--and over
it there is a label of brick effectively notched into a kind of
nail-head. The same kind of label is carried round the arches of the
window-openings, and down the jamb as a portion of the jamb-mould, and
again round a pierced and cusped circle of brick in the tympanum. In the
sub-arches the key-stones and cusps are formed of stone. The whole of
the jambs are of brick, but instead of a monial there is a circular
stone shaft, with square capital and band and base. The whole is so
exceedingly simple as to be constructed with ease of ordinary materials,
and it is quite equal in effect to any stone window of the same size
that I have ever seen.
The accompanying drawings will, I trust, sufficiently explain the merit
of this magnificent piece of brickwork. The arcading upon which it
rests, and the perfectly unbroken face of the whole, are very
characteristic of Italian work.
On the opposite side of the Piazza di San Pietro is the cathedral, the
only ancient portion of which is a small part of the south aisle. It is
of very elaborate character, entirely built in brick, and so far as it
remains appears to have been part of an aisle finished with a succession
of gables, one to each bay, a common arrangement in German and French
churches, where additional aisles are so frequently met with, but
uncommon in Italy, where, as in England, churches have seldom more than
one aisle on either side of the nave.[60] The brickwork in this small
fragment of the cathedral, though elaborate, was not pleasing, being of
rather late date.
On the same side of the Piazza as the cathedral is the Vescovato, a
large pile of ancient building, but very much modernized. There still
remain, however, some good three-light windows in the upper stage,
inclosed within a circular arch, without tracery, and divided by marble
shafts. Some
[Illustration: 40. MANTUA
Window in Ducal Palace.]
[Illustration: 41.--CASTELLO DI CORTE, MANTUA. Page 257]
old arches remain also in the lowest stage, which, though now built up,
are still valuable as examples of the best mode of treating brickwork.
They consist of three orders--the two inner formed of alternate
voussoirs of brick and stone, carefully and regularly counterchanged,
and the outer of a moulded terra-cotta ornament. Between each of these
lines a brick of deep red colour is set edgeways, shewing a dark line of
little more than an inch and a half in width, and valuable as very
clearly defining the lines of the arch. All these courses are on the
same plane; and probably another rim of the arch is concealed by the
walling which has been filled in underneath.[61]
Going on from the Piazza San Pietro, and passing under an archway, we
came upon the Castello di Corte, also a part of the ancient palace of
the Gonzaga family, who were for a long time lords of Mantua. It is
certainly a very remarkable piece of mediæval fortification, but its
effect is much damaged by the erection of walls between the battlements,
which in my view I have thought it much better to shew in their original
state, which is evident enough upon careful inspection. The heavy
machicolations which run round the main building have a peculiar and
rather grand effect, particularly in the flanking towers. This portion
of the palace is said to have been erected just at the close of the
fourteenth century.
Close to the Castello di Corte is the Ponte di San Giorgio, one of the
entrances to the city, and built between the Lago di Mezzo and the Lago
Inferiore.
Retracing our steps, we soon found ourselves at the great Palazzo della
Ragione, or town-hall. It has been very much altered, but one gateway
remains in a very perfect state, and is quite worthy of illustration.
The marble shafts in the upper stage of the building are coupled one
behind the other with very beautiful effect. Brick and stone are used
alternately in the main arch of this gateway, with thin dividing lines
of brick, as in the Vescovato. In a wall close to the gate is a sitting
figure, intended, it is said, to represent Virgil, of whom the Mantuans
are still, as in duty bound, very proud. I cannot say much for the
figure or its canopy, both of which are, however, mediæval.
[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--SANT’ANDREA, MANTUA.]
We found nothing else worthy of notice in this building; but close to it
stands the church of Sant’Andrea, a hideous Renaissance edifice tacked
on to a most beautiful brick campanile.
The detail of this is throughout very fine. The tracery
[Illustration: 42.--GATEWAY, PALAZZO DELLA RAGIONE, MANTUA. Page
258.]
[Illustration: 43.--CAMPANILE, S. ANDREA, MANTUA. Page 259.]
is all of a kind of plate-tracery, consisting, that is to say, of cusped
circles pierced in a tympanum within an inclosing arch; the shafts
between the lights are of polished marble, and coupled one behind the
other. The relative proportion of the cusps in this and in most other
Italian buildings is very good. In trefoils, for instance, the upper
cusp is usually smaller than the lower; and in all good cusping it must
be so. Modern men generally reverse the order, and, at the present day,
so little is the subject really understood that at least ninety-nine out
of every hundred cusped window-openings are designed without feeling,
and quite unlike the best old examples; and this, though apparently a
point of very small importance, is really of great consequence to the
perfection of any pointed work.
The faulty portions of this campanile are the elaborate arcadings in
brick beneath the string-courses, and the awkward and abrupt manner in
which the octagonal stage and the round tile spire are set upon the
square tower. The present appreciation of the building by the good
people of Mantua is shewn by the opening pierced in its lower stage, in
front of which the modestly withdrawn folds of a green curtain disclose
the interior devoted to a barber’s shop, and in which the patient,
seated in the middle of the shop, and looking into the Piazza, submits
to the painful operation of shaving--a common picture in almost every
street of an Italian town, but not pleasant when the place is a portion
of a church.
[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--SANT’ANDREA, MANTUA.]
The guide-books speak of the church of Sant’Andrea as “among the finest
existing specimens of an interior in the revived Roman style.” If it
really is so, I advise all architects interested in the failure of the
said style to venture, notwithstanding the forbidding west front, into
the nave, when they will perhaps find comfort in seeing how miserable a
building “one of the finest” of its class may nevertheless be!
The people at Mantua seemed to be excessively disturbed by my attempts
at sketching, and at Sant’Andrea they mobbed me so thoroughly that I was
really beginning to think of giving up the attempt in despair, when a
kindly-disposed hatmaker, seeing my distress, came down to the rescue,
and gave me and my party seats in a balcony on the first floor of his
house, in which, sitting at my ease above my persecutors and listening
to the good man’s wife and daughters, I finished my sketch with great
comfort.
In Mantua there are two or three other churches with brick campanili,
but they are very inferior in their character to that of Sant’Andrea,
and hardly worth special notice. We owe it to the French that there are
not more interesting churches, for, having succeeded in capturing the
city after a very prolonged siege, they sacked it, and are said to have
destroyed no less than about fifty of them.
Here, as elsewhere in this part of Italy, most of the streets are
arcaded on either side, affording pleasant shelter from the hot sun, but
every twenty yards we come upon one of an unpleasant class of shops, in
which cheese, oil, and the like comestibles are sold, with most
objectionable effects on all people blessed with noses.
In the evening we found an Italian performance going on at the theatre,
and so thither we went, anxious to see how far Italian comedy might be
amusing. I fear our inquiry was not much to our edification, for the
favourite performers were mainly remarkable for the prodigious rapidity
with which they uttered their facetious sayings, and so we lost more
than half the dialogue. The theatre was almost entirely filled with
Austrians, but still there was a sprinkling of Italians among them,
which did away with the absurdly martial appearance of the only other
theatre we had been into--that at Verona.
The next day was Sunday, but we were obliged to push on; and so,
resigning ourselves to the diligence which left Mantua at about nine, we
booked ourselves for Cremona, under the promise that we should be
delivered there punctually by five o’clock.
We lost sight of Mantua almost immediately, for, travelling along a dead
flat and by roads whose sides are lined with high hedges of acacia or
orchards thickly planted, you never see any place or building until you
have absolutely arrived at it. There was not much to interest me on the
road, and the weather, at first cloudy only and sultry, gradually became
worse, and, before we had gone far, settled into a steady pouring rain;
so we read, wrote, and occupied the many hours in the rumbling diligence
as best we might.
At Montenara, which we passed on our road, the church has a brick
campanile, with pilasters at the angles, and in the belfry two-light
windows, with marble central shafts and round arches. It has one of the
usual brick conical spires, with small angle-pinnacles--a finish to
these campanili which certainly does not improve upon acquaintance. They
are constructed of bricks with semicircular ends laid side by side, the
joints being broken in each course, and so making a very jagged kind of
cone.
The only noticeable point about the church at Montenara is that it has
been lately rebuilt in the very worst taste, and at an angle of
forty-five degrees with the old steeple!
At Campitello there are several remains of interest.
There is a small domestic building, with four pointed windows of two
lights at the side; the windows have central shafts of stone, but are
otherwise entirely of rough brickwork. The church has a kind of double
belfry-stage, arcaded similarly in each stage with round arches. There
are also here the remains of a castle by the river, with a fine tower of
the same type as the angle-towers of the Castello di Corte at Mantua,
and covered with a very flat-pitched roof.
[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--CAMPITELLO.]
[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--NEAR CASALMAGGIORE.]
At Casalmaggiore, a town of some importance on the Po, we stopped for
dinner; but it was too wet to attempt to look at the river, and the only
note I made was of a large new church now in course of erection,
Renaissance in style, and with a large dome, and a choir and transepts,
all terminated with circular ends. The redeeming feature about it was
that it was entirely constructed in brick with considerable care, though
probably ere long this will be covered with a coat of plaster, of which
modern Italians are not one whit less enamoured than are modern
Englishmen.
At a village, the name of which I did not learn, between Casalmaggiore
and Cremona, the church had a remarkably good simple brick campanile.
The belfry windows were pointed, of two lights, with a small pierced
circle in the head, the shafts being of stone of course. Beneath the
string-courses there was arcading, and the tower was finished with three
forked battlements of the Veronese type on each face, and behind these
rose a circular brick spire. This tower was to the south-east of the
church.
At Longadore we saw another church with a good early campanile, of which
I made a sketch. This was Romanesque, with angle pilasters, and a
central pilaster carried up as high as the belfry-stage. The belfry
windows were of three lights and shafted. The battlement was most
peculiar--a quarter circle at each angle and a half circle in the centre
of each side, with a narrow space between them; the whole executed in
brick and covered in with a flat modern roof. The angle pilasters
finished under arcaded string-courses. Generally speaking, in these
churches the only ancient features seem to be the campanili, and these
are always of brick and nearly similar in their general design, with
pilasters at the angles, a succession of string-courses--generally
arcaded underneath--and windows in the belfry-stage only.
It was quite six by the time we reached Cremona, and, depositing our
passports at the gate, we trotted on along the smooth granite (which in
these towns is always laid in strips between the rough ordinary paving
for the wheels to travel on), and after traversing a long tortuous
street, and getting a glimpse only of the cathedral as we passed near
its east end, we were soon deposited at the Albergo del Capello. a
comfortable hostelry, which we enjoyed the more by contrast with the
miserable quarters with which we had to put up at Mantua.
Cremona is a city full of interest. The piazza in front of the cathedral
is equal in effect to almost any small piazza I know of. On one side is
the great marble west front of the Duomo, backed by its immense brick
campanile, whose wide fame is proved by the old rhyme, of which the
Cremonese are still so proud--
“Unus Petrus est in Roma,
Una turris in Cremona.”
On another side is the Lombard baptistery, a grand polygonal building;
on the third, a most interesting domestic building--the palace of the
Jurisconsults--and the Gothic Palazzo Publico; whilst on the fourth, a
narrow, busy street makes up, by the diversity of colour and costume of
the crowd which is always passing along it, for what it wants in
architectural beauty.
The cathedral must be first described, and it is rather difficult to do
this clearly; but so far as can now be made out it seems much as though
it had at first been built upon a simple plan, with nave, north and
south aisles, and three semicircular eastern apses; and that then to
this, in the fourteenth century, had been added, with hardly any
disturbance of the original fabric, immense transepts, loftier even than
the nave, and so long and large as to give the impression now that two
naves have been placed by some mistake across each other. The groining
of the nave is original in its outline, but barbarously painted in sham
panelling so as entirely to spoil its effect, but otherwise there is
little to notice in the interior, the whole of the church having been
converted with the plasterers’ help into Renaissance in the most
approved manner. The walls are covered with painting, and round the
columns, when we were there, were hung great tapestries, all of which
gave the building a rich though rather gloomy colour.
The west front (if you can forget that it is a great mask only to the
real structure) is rather grand from its large plain surface of arcaded
wall; it has been grievously damaged by alterations, but the old design
is still not difficult to trace. The doorway is very noble, and the
open porch in front of it is carried up with a second stage, in which,
under open arches, stand a very fine figure of the Blessed Virgin, and
figures of other saints of more modern character on either side of her;
above this is a great circular window, whilst the wall on either side of
the porch and window is nearly covered with small arcading. The marbles
in the wall, where the arcading does not occur, are arranged very
regularly in horizontal lines alternately of red and white, each course
being about ten inches or a foot high, and divided from the next by a
strip of white marble about two or three inches in height. The great
rose window is all of red marble, with the exception of one line of
moulding which looks like green serpentine. There are some round windows
in the lower stage on each side of the entrance, but they are quite
modern.
On the north side of the nave rises the Torrazzo, as the campanile is
called here--the “una turris in Cremona”--rising about four hundred feet
from the pavement of the piazza. Its design is much like that of all the
other brick campanili in this district--a succession of stages of nearly
equal height, divided by arcaded string-courses, and marked with
perpendicular lines by small pilasters, and almost without windows until
near the summit. The dark red outline of this magnificent tower tells
well against the deep blue Italian sky, which shone brightly behind it
when we saw it; and the effect of its immense and almost unbroken
outline, rising to such an extraordinary height, is so utterly unlike
that of any of our Northern steeples that we need not trouble ourselves
to compare them. Both are fine in their way; but the Italian campanili
are made up of the reiteration of features so simple and so generally
similar that we cannot fairly class their builders with the men who
raised in England such a multitude of steeples, all varying one from
another, and yet all so lovely.
A door in the east wall of the north transept leads into a small
courtyard, sacred now to the cathedral clergy, from which the original
scheme of the eastern part of the church may be fairly well seen. It
appears to have been a stone building treated in the common fashion of
Lombard churches, but with buttresses and a passage through them round
the apse in front of the windows. There is a modernized crypt under the
choir. The side walls of the north transept are seen very well from the
same courtyard; they are well arcaded in brick, and entirely concealed
from sight elsewhere by the enormous false transept-fronts, the backs of
which as seen from here are certainly among the most ungainly works ever
erected for the mere sake of being beautiful.
The rest of the exterior of the Duomo is almost all of brick. The most
remarkable features are the two transept fronts, which are certainly
magnificent in their detail, though most unreal and preposterous as
wholes; they are, both of them, vast sham fronts, like the west front,
in that they entirely conceal the structure of the church behind them,
and pierced with numbers of windows which from the very first must have
been built but to be blocked up. They have in fact absolutely nothing to
do with the building against which they are placed, and in themselves,
irrespective of this very grave fault, are, I think, positively ugly in
their outline and mass. And yet there is a breadth and grandeur of scale
about them which does somewhat to redeem their faults, and a beauty
about much of their detail which I cannot but admire extremely. Both
transepts are almost entirely built of brick and very similar in their
general idea; but, whilst only the round arch is used in the south
transept, nothing but the pointed arch is used in the northern, and it
is quite curious to notice how very much more beautiful the latter looks
than does the
[Illustration: 44.--NORTH TRANSEPT, CATHEDRAL, CREMONA. Page 266.]
former. The filling-in of stilted round-arched windows with ogee pointed
tracery and much delicate cusping gives the south transept a singularly
Eastern look, and it is impossible not to feel that some such influence
has been exercized throughout its design. It would indeed be most
interesting to find out what this was, but I am not aware that there is
likely to be any clue to it. The date of the work is in all probability
somewhere about the latter part of the fourteenth century. The detail
and management of the whole of the brickwork are exceedingly delicate
and effective, surpassing in their way anything I have yet seen.
[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--CREMONA CATHEDRAL.]
The putlog-holes are left unfilled, as they almost always are in Italy.
The only stone used is in the doorway and the window-shafts, and these
last are almost always coupled in depth. The windows are elaborately
moulded, and courses of chevrons, quatrefoils, and other ornaments are
introduced occasionally as a relief to what might otherwise be the
tedious succession of mouldings which are necessarily rather similar.
The cusping of brick arches is always managed in the same way; the
bricks all radiate with the arch (not from the centre of the cusp), and
look as though they might have been built, allowing plenty of length of
brick for the cusps, and then cut to the proper outline, the edges of
the cusps being almost invariably left square. Some of the terra-cotta
arch ornaments and diapers are exceedingly good of their kind. The most
remarkable feature, however, about these transepts is the prodigiously
heavy open arcade which runs up the gables under the eaves-cornice--so
heavy and so rude-looking, that, taken by itself, it would probably be
put down as being of much earlier date than it really is. The façade
finishes with three heavy pinnacles arcaded all round, and finished with
conical caps.
To the north transept very nearly the same description would apply, save
that the doorway is much finer, and entirely of marble.[62] It is part
of the original Lombard church, and has no doubt been taken down and
rebuilt where we now see it. The tracery of the rose windows is all
finished in brick, and the detail generally is better and more delicate
in its character than that of the south transept. In both the bricks are
all of a pale red colour, and no dark bricks are anywhere used.
[Illustration: ROSE WINDOW--CREMONA CATHEDRAL.]
The baptistery--which, as has been said, stands south-west of the
Duomo--is entered by a doorway with a projecting porch, whose shafts
rest on the backs of animals. It is
[Illustration: 45.--PALACE OF THE JURISCONSULTS, CREMONA. Page 269.]
octagonal in its plan, built of brick with the exception of the side in
which the door is placed, this being of marble, and is very simple in
all its detail. There are three altars in it, and an immense erection of
masonry in the centre, which, though not open, is evidently a font,
amply large for immersion. Each side has three recessed arches on marble
columns, above which the whole is of red brick with stone string-courses
between the stages. These have corbel-tables under them, which are the
only enrichments in the building. All the brickwork is left to view
inside, and the light is admitted by a pierced arcade very high up in
the walls. The whole is domed over with an octagonal vault of brick, in
the centre of which is a small lantern, and the effect is exceedingly
fine and solemn, and enhanced very much by the grave sombre colour of
the bricks.
[Illustration: WINDOW-JAMB--PALACE OF JURISCONSULTS, CREMONA.]
Close to the baptistery is a building, called in Murray’s Handbook the
Palace of the Jurisconsults, turned when I first saw it into a school
for a not very polite set of children and teachers, who all apparently
felt the most lively interest
[Illustration: CHIMNEY AND BATTLEMENT--CREMONA.]
in my architectural pursuits. It was originally open below, but the
arches on which it stood are now filled up. This upper stage is very
simple and beautiful, and the whole is finished at the top with a
cornice and parapet, with battlements pointed at the top like those in
the Torrazzo, and not forked as we have been lately so accustomed to see
them. At one end of this parapet a chimney rises above the battlement,
which is, so far as I have seen, a unique example of the ancient Italian
contrivance for this very necessary appendage.[63] It is exceedingly
good in its detail, and coeval with the rest of the work. There is a
simplicity and truthfulness of construction about this little building
which make it especially pleasing after the unreal treatment of the
great transept-fronts of the Duomo.[64] By its side stands the Palazzo
Publico, out of one side of which rises one of those singular and very
tall brick towers, without any openings whatever in its walls, which
give such peculiar character to some Italian cities, and of which we
afterwards saw good store at Pavia. The whole of the building shews
either traces of arcades or perfect arcades upon which the upper walls
are supported; they are, however, so much modernized as to be
comparatively uninteresting, though enough remains to shew that their
detail was once very good. The building incloses a quadrangle, which is
rather small, but arcaded on three sides, and opens from the piazza by
open arches under the principal façade, and probably dates from the
middle of the thirteenth century, the date 1245 being given in an
inscription in the courtyard.
There are many churches in Cremona, all more or less appearing to be
founded upon the work in the transepts of the cathedral, but generally
very inferior to them in merit.
San Domenico has a west front singularly like theirs, but debased in its
detail. It has, however, a very fine campanile, lofty, very simple, and
pierced with pointed windows in each stage, one above the other. The
interior is completely modernized, and not worth notice.
SS. Agostino and Giacomo in Breda is another church of the same class,
with a west front which is again a very bad second edition of the
cathedral, and which has been horribly mutilated and modernized inside.
It is, however, to be remembered gratefully for a most lovely picture by
Perugino, representing the Blessed Virgin with Our Lord seated, with
SS. Augustine and James on either side. The Virgin is very calm,
dignified, unearthly, and very simple and stately. Our Blessed Lord, in
her arms, has perhaps rather too much the character of an ordinary
infant; and the two saints have more than is quite pleasant of the bend
in their figures of which he was so fond; the heads stooping forward,
and the knees considerably bent, are a little too evidently straining
towards a reverential posture. Such a criticism is a bold one to venture
upon with the recollection of so glorious a picture fresh in my
mind--one from which I really derived intense pleasure. The date of this
very fine work is A.D. 1494.
Sta. Agata is another church which still has its old campanile intact,
with round-arched windows, very simple and not large. The church which
has been built against it tells its story so well, that at first we all
mistook it for a theatre! So much for Classic symbolism.
Another church, dedicated in honour of Sta. Margherita, is a very poor
erection of brick, with a simple campanile. One or two other churches we
saw with fair brick campanili, which were not otherwise remarkable; and
one there was, San Luca, close to the Milan gate, which seemed to be
very singular in its arrangements. It had a projecting western porch,
with its columns supported on beasts; and at the north-west angle an
octagonal building of brick, of exceedingly late date, which appeared to
be a baptistery.
I enjoyed the architectural remains in Cremona very much indeed: its
rich array of buildings in elaborate brick-work is very striking; and
the campanile of the cathedral, towering up high above the many other
steeples, combines well with them in the general views, and helps to
convert into a fine-looking city what is, perhaps, in its streets and
houses generally, very far from being anything of the kind. The way in
which the old walls and towers of the Palazzo Publico combine with the
steeple of the cathedral is extremely fine, a large piazza a short
distance to the west of the palazzo affording perhaps the best point of
view.
From Cremona we went to Lodi, on our way to Pavia, and had a very
pleasant drive. The heat was intense when we started, and the drivers of
all the carts we passed were prudently ensconcing themselves in the
baskets swung beneath their carts, to escape its effects. Throughout the
Lombardo-Venetian territory there is a great traffic always going on,
and there is a much nearer approach to English arrangements, in the way
of harness and tackle, than it is at all usual to see on the Continent;
though, indeed, it ought in fairness to be said, that their carts are
much more scientific than ours generally are. Any vehicle with more than
two wheels is rarely if ever seen; and these two wheels are sometimes of
prodigious size--I should say quite ten feet in diameter--whilst the
length of the cart from end to end is immense. The extent to which they
are loaded is almost incredible, and of course it requires great care in
order to make the trim exact; but when loaded, the draught must be light
for the weight. It is impossible to talk about horses and carts without
thinking of the magnificent cream-coloured oxen which are everywhere
doing hard work on the roads and in the fields. They have most
magnificent, large, calm eyes; and this, with their great size and slow
and rather dignified motion, makes them look very grand. They are always
yoked to a pole, which rises up above their heads at the end, and has a
carved crosspiece attached to it, against which they press their
foreheads.
At Pizzighettone we crossed the Adda, here a very fine and full stream,
and then, changing horses, went on rapidly towards Lodi. Leaving the
main road, we travelled along a less frequented byroad, infinitely more
pleasant, and in many places very pretty indeed. We followed the course
of a small river, which was turned to good account for irrigation; its
stream being at times divided into no less than three channels, in order
to water the pasture-land on which are fed the cows whose milk is to
produce the far-famed Parmesan cheese. Some part of the road reminded us
pleasantly of English lanes and English scenery, but here and there a
distant glimpse of the Apennines far behind us, and of the Alps beyond
Milan before us, made us aware that we were indeed in Italy.
There is little to be seen in Lodi. It has a large and rather
shabby-looking piazza, at one corner of which is the cathedral, whose
only good feature is its doorway, which is, however, very inferior to
the western doorway of the cathedral at Cremona, to which it bears some
little resemblance.
Another church has a Gothic brick front. The real roof is one of flat
pitch, spanning nave and aisles; but in the façade the central portion
is considerably higher than the sides, so as to give the idea of a
clerestory. This is a foolish sham, and unhappily only too common in
late Gothic work in Italy. The centre division of the front is divided
into three by pilasters, which are semicircular in plan. In the central
division are a door and a circular window, in each side division is a
pointed window, and a brick cornice finishes the gable, crowned with
five circular brick pinnacles.
Another church in Lodi has a very beautifully painted ceiling; this has
been engraved by Mr. Grüner, but unluckily I did not know of its
existence until I returned home; it seems to be an admirable piece of
colour, and to be well worth careful study.
There seemed to be nothing else worthy of notice in Lodi; but, as in
duty-bound we walked down to the bridge,--a rough, unstable-looking
wooden erection over the broad rapid Adda, with nothing about it to
recall to mind the great event in its history, its passage by Napoleon
in 1796.
We left very early in the morning for Pavia: our way led us through a
country most elaborately cultivated, and irrigated with a great display
of science and labour; every field seemed to have some two or three
streams running rapidly in different directions, and the grass
everywhere was most luxuriant. No view, however, was to be had on either
side, as the road found its way through a very flat line of country, and
all the hedges were lined with interminable rows of Lombardy poplars. It
was a country which would have done more good to the heart of a
Lincolnshire farmer than to that of an architect!
The only remarkable building passed on the road was a castle at
Sant’Angelo; a great brick building, with square towers set diagonally
at the angles. The walls were finished with a battlement of the Veronese
kind, and there were several very good early pointed brick windows with
brick monials in place of shafts. A campanile, detached near one angle,
has fine machicolations in stone, now, however, partly destroyed. The
effect of the whole building was very grand.
We soon reached Pavia, and were, as we expected to be, well rewarded by
its churches. The general aspect of the city is singular, owing to the
number of tall slender brick towers which seem to have formed a
necessary appendage to almost every house in the Middle Ages. They are
entirely without openings or ornaments of any kind beyond the
scaffold-holes, and one can compare them to nothing that I know so well
as to the great shot-tower at Waterloo Bridge, save that they are always
square and not circular.
We did our best to see the cathedral, but were unsuccessful; it was
being repaired, and was so full of scaffolding that we could see
nothing. It contains a shrine said to contain the body of S. Augustine,
which I much wanted to see, but seemed in most respects to be an
unprepossessing church.
From the cathedral we found our way to San Michele, a very celebrated
church, and as interesting to an antiquary in search of curiosities as
to an architect in search of the beautiful. The west end is very
curious, and has a succession of sculptures, introduced in the most
eccentric manner, and with but little method in their arrangement. There
are three western doorways, and all of them are elaborately ornamented
with carvings, the central door having above it a very singular figure
of S. Michael.
San Michele, together with San Teodoro and San Pietro, seem all to be of
about the same date, and are of the same character; the most remarkable
feature being in each case the octagonal cupola, which rises above the
crossing of the nave, choir, and transepts: externally these cupolas are
arcaded all round under the eaves, and roofed with flat-pitched roofs,
and are far from being graceful; open arcades are introduced under the
eaves and up the gables, and everywhere there is a profusion of carving.
It is likely enough that this Lombard-Romanesque style, as we see it at
Pavia and elsewhere, did, as has been supposed, set the example which
was very soon after followed in the great churches at Köln and elsewhere
along the borders of the Rhine. In size, however, the children far
exceeded their parents, for San Michele is not remarkable for its
dimensions, except in the width of the transept.
The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, a transept of
great length, a central lantern, and a short choir with circular eastern
apse; small apses are also built in the east walls of the transepts. A
fine crypt is formed under the whole of the eastern arm of the cross,
and is entered by steps on each side of the thirteen steps which lead up
to
[Illustration: 46. SAN MICHELE, PAVIA. p. 276.]
[Illustration: 47. CASTLE OF THE VISCONTI, PAVIA.]
the choir. The nave aisles have a second stage or triforium, groined
throughout; and the whole of the church is vaulted, the transepts having
barrel vaults and the three apses semi-domes. The internal effect of the
lantern is extremely good; the pendentives under the angles are very
simple, and low windows are introduced in a stage between them and the
octagonal cupola or vault. The whole church is still left in its
original state with red brick walls and stone piers and arches, save
where, as in the eastern apse, the vault is painted with a Coronation of
the Blessed Virgin, executed in the fifteenth century. It is very
seldom, consequently, that a church of this age is seen to so much
advantage; and undoubtedly the fine, simple, but well-ordered
arrangement of the plan, and the dignified character of the raised choir
and the central lantern, would, even if the colour were not as
picturesque and agreeable as it is, make this interior one of extreme
interest. One of the best portions of the exterior is the east end. Its
extreme loftiness is enhanced by the groups of shafts which divide it
into bays, and rise from the plinth to the cornice. This part of the
building is mainly of stone, except in the fine gallery below the
eaves-cornice, where brick and stone are used together. In addition to
the west door already mentioned, there are two very elaborate doorways
north and south of the nave in the bay next to the transepts.
San Michele is, on the whole, the most interesting building in the town,
but is hardly superior to the grand remains of the old fortified castle
of the Visconti, which stands just on the outskirts of the city, close
to the Milan gate. This is only a portion of the original erection, only
three sides of a great quadrangle which is inclosed by the building now
remaining. The plan originally was a vast square with lofty square
towers projecting at the angles, and of these only two remain. The whole
front is still very nearly perfect, and is not far from five hundred
feet in length, the main building of two stories in height and the
towers of four, and all the old windows more or less intact. The whole
is crowned with a forked battlement, and the old bridge still remains
opposite the entrance with its outer gate, though the drawbridge has
given way to a fixture. This grand pile is now used as a barrack; its
most valuable architectural features are all towards the internal
quadrangle, which is of grand dimensions, more than three hundred feet
in the clear. Towards this court there is the same sort of arrangement
throughout (though many modifications of detail)--an open arcade of
pointed arches below, and a series of fine windows lighting a corridor
above. The lower arches are of stone, everything else of brick, and the
details everywhere are refined and delicate almost beyond those of any
brickwork that I know elsewhere. The original scheme is best seen on the
south side of the quadrangle, of which I give an illustration. This work
dates, I suppose, from about A.D. 1300, but it was soon found to be
inconvenient to have open traceries for the upper corridor, and the
arches on the other two sides were filled in before the middle of the
fourteenth century with very good two-light windows. Fortunately the
whole of this work is still in very excellent preservation, and deserves
much more notice and study than it has ever, I believe, received.[65]
The ordinary bricks used here measure 10½ in. × 5 in. and are 3 in.
high, whilst in San Pantaleone they are 3½ in. high and as much as 15
in. long. Here (as generally in the centre of Italy) the bricks have all
been dressed with a chisel, with which diagonal lines have been marked
all over the face. I can only assume that this has been done to improve
the texture
[Illustration: 48. CASTLE. PAVIA. p. 278.]
[Illustration: 49.--WEST FRONT, S. PANTALEONE, PAVIA. Page 279.]
of the bricks in appearance, and, perhaps where two bricks are side by
side on the same plane, to make a little distinction between them by
tooling the bricks in opposite directions. Two other features of Pavian
brickwork may also here be mentioned: one, that the depth of the
arch-bricks is almost always increased from the springing line to the
centre--the intrados and extrados not being concentric; the other, that
the arch-bricks do not radiate from a centre, but are arranged so as to
obtain a vertical joint in the centre. The first is a very defensible
practice, the second seems to me to be the contrary.
There are several other churches to be noticed here. The most
interesting to me after San Michele is that of Sta. Maria del Carmine,
or San Pantaleone (for it seems to rejoice in a double dedication),
which, in some respects, is more akin to our northern Gothic work than
any other Italian church I have as yet described. The plan and all the
details of the interior are exceedingly simple. The nave is divided into
four groining bays, each of which has two arches into the aisles; the
transept takes one bay and the choir one, and there are an aisle and a
row of chapels on either side of the nave, and chapels on the east side
of the transept. The only openings between the arches and the groining
are small circles by way of clerestory, ludicrously small as compared
with the immense space of blank wall below them, which seems to call
loudly for decorative painting. The whole of the interior is executed in
red brick, which has, however, been much daubed with a coloured wash;
its effect is, notwithstanding, very fine and well worthy of imitation.
As in Italian churches generally, the choir is very short as compared to
the length of the nave. The exterior is even better worth examination
than the interior; the design of the west end is an exaggerated example
of the mode of finishing west fronts not uncommon in Italian Gothic; it
is to some extent a sham, and therefore bad, but there is much which is
of value in its detail, as it is even more than usually elaborate; and
apart from the general outline of the mass, which pinnacles and
pilasters cannot redeem from ugliness, there is considerable beauty in
the group of windows and doors arranged so as to rise gradually to the
centre. The cornices are very heavy and elaborate, and the whole front
may be looked at as a masterpiece of terra-cotta and brick architecture.
It is purely Italian in its great breadth and general arrangement, and,
I confess, very far from being to my taste, though I could wish that we
had more often some of the same breadth and simplicity in our own
elevations.
It is very curious that this west end is the only elevation in this
church which is at all distinctly Italian in its design; for those of
the transepts and choir might much more reasonably be put down as
imitations of Northern work; they are very similar, and a description of
the latter will therefore suffice. It is flanked by massive buttresses,
and has two large and lofty trefoiled lancets, surmounted by a circular
window of great size; the whole is very richly moulded and executed
entirely in brick. The buttresses and roof finish at the top in a rude
temporary-looking manner, and it is therefore impossible to solve the
interesting question of their original terminations, which must, I
imagine, have been pinnacles. The ordinary bricks used here are about 10
in. × 3 in. in size, and laid with very wide joints of mortar; those
used for window-jambs and arches are of much deeper colour and finer
clay than the others. There is something quite refreshing in coming
suddenly and unexpectedly upon such a simple and English-looking
elevation, after the multitude of thoroughly Italian fronts it has been
our fate to see lately.
[Illustration: 50.--WEST END, S. FRANCESCO, PAVIA. Page 281.]
On the north side of the nave there seems to have been a fine row of
pointed windows, but they have been all destroyed to make way for
Renaissance improvements. There are very large buttresses dividing the
bays in this aisle--a feature which is unusual in Italy, and which, in
addition to the design of the choir and transepts, would seem to show
that this church was not entirely the work of an Italian. In the plan,
too, it is remarkable that, though the general arrangement is quite that
of the large Italian churches, such as the Frari at Venice and Sta.
Anastasia at Verona, in one particular it is unlike them. The groining
bays of the aisles are square, and not oblong; and as two of the aisle
arches make one bay of the nave, the groining compartments in both are
as nearly as possible square. This is an arrangement which occurs often
in German Romanesque, but is not seen so often in Italy.
There is a fine campanile between the south transept and the choir; it
has four stages above the roof of the church, and scarcely any opening
below the belfry windows: these are exceedingly good, of three trefoiled
lights under an inclosing arch, with two plain circles pierced in the
tympanum, the monials being shafts of white marble. A low spire of
circular bricks finishes, but does not improve, this very beautiful
belfry.
There is another brick pointed church at Pavia--San Francesco--which has
a fine west front redeemed from the common Italian character by the
grand window-arch in its central division; and though this has been
filled in with later and barbarous work, to the entire concealment of
the tracery, its effect upon the whole front is astonishingly good. The
detail is very elaborate, and in the arch a great number of terra-cotta
ornaments are introduced. The front is divided by large pilasters into a
centre and wings corresponding with the nave and aisles, but these are
again subdivided by smaller pilasters, each of which is composed of
three circles on plan, and finished rather nicely with a kind of finial
at the top.
San Francesco is lighted by a succession of small clerestory windows,
and the aisles have large buttresses, the greater part of the upper
portion of the west front being a mere mask to make out the desired
outline. I begin really to wonder whether I shall see a west front
before I leave Italy which is not a purely unnecessary and
unprepossessing sham!
Pavia is a busy and a pleasant city, and one that improves on
acquaintance; it is true that it was very hot and sultry, but to this I
have been fairly acclimatized, and so rather enjoyed it, except when a
piazza had to be crossed in the sun, or a walk to be taken along a
street unprotected by arcading, which by the way is much rarer here than
in Padua, Mantua, and other cities which I have been describing. The
main street of the city is very picturesque, with somewhat of a fall
towards the south, so that just a glimpse is obtained between the houses
of the distant Apennines.
From Pavia we went, on our road to Milan, to pay a visit to the renowned
Certosa. The road thither, which is also that to Milan, pursues a
monotonously straight course by the side of a canal, or canalized river,
and between rows of stiff trees, until, about four miles from Pavia, a
turning at right angles out of the main road soon leads to the gateway
of the monastery, and through this--which stands open apparently rather
through carelessness than out of hospitality--we drove into the
courtyard in front of the church. This, grown all over with weeds,
looked certainly very desolate and wretched, and but a poor preface to
the polished marbles of the west front, and the riches and paintings of
the interior of the church.
The west front is of great magnificence of material, though a kind of
design which seems to have proceeded upon the principle of setting all
established architectural styles and customs entirely at defiance. This
indeed may be said of the whole church, which is a kind of mixture of
Lombard-Romanesque features with some Gothic, and no slight dash of the
Renaissance spirit; altogether a most magnificent hybrid, but certainly
a hybrid. The doors stand wide open, and from the decaying and desolate
court in front of the church we enter into the nave, full of everything
that is magnificent in material, and all preserved with jealous care and
in admirable order; we look up to the lofty vault which spans the grand
width of the nave, and find the groining ribs arched overhead in pure
pointed form, and cannot help marvelling how far this one pointed
feature harmonizes--I had almost said sanctifies--the whole interior,
though in fact, save this one point, there is scarcely a single detail
throughout the church which would ever pass muster as really being of
Gothic character.
I think it is hardly possible to scan or criticize the architecture of
such a building; it is better to follow the guidance of the cicerone,
and look at the pictures behind the many altars set around with precious
stones, and inclosed within reredoses made of such an infinite variety
of marbles, that, with some degree of envy, one thinks how precious such
an array would be on this side of the Alps, even if spread through fifty
churches.
The nave and aisles are divided from the side chapels and from the
transepts by high metal grilles, and the transept is again divided by
another screen from the choir: this produces a very singular and unusual
effect, and makes the transept appear somewhat like a nave placed at
right angles to the choir. All the chapels on either side of the nave
communicate with one another, so that the monks are able, without
entering the nave, to obtain access to all of them, whilst females are
carefully excluded both from the chapels and from the transepts and
choir. Except a Perugino in one of the chapels on the north side of the
nave, and one picture in the sacristy, there seemed to be no pictures of
any very great value; in fact, travellers are asked rather to admire the
value of the stones which are used in the altars, and the marbles in the
reredoses behind them, than the paintings which they inclose. The
groining of the church, enhanced as it is in effect by the way in which
it is painted--with a blue ground, powdered very richly with gold
stars--conduces more than anything else to the very fine effect of
colour which the nave produces; and the beautiful pavements, composed
mainly of red and white marbles, laid in elaborate geometrical patterns,
increase not a little the general effect. This is an instance of the
superiority of decorative painting over pictures as far as improvement
of architectural effect is concerned.
South of the church are two cloisters; that nearest to the church of
ordinary size, but the other, to which it leads, prodigious in its
dimensions, and very singular in its effect, being surrounded at regular
intervals by the houses of the monks rising out of and above the regular
line of the cloister roof. I went into one of these houses, and found
its accommodation exceedingly ample; three rooms, closets, and a garden
being provided for each monk. The arches of the cloisters are
exceedingly rich in terra-cotta ornaments, and throughout the exterior
of the church and other buildings it is remarkable how very elaborate
these ornamental mouldings are; they are left in the natural reddish
colour, and, as the walls are whitewashed, they have a very singular
effect. We found here, as at other places, men busily engaged in making
casts for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, whose managers certainly
seemed to have ordered casts of everything that could be modelled
throughout Europe!
[Illustration: 51.--CERTOSA OF PAVIA. Page 284.]
There are now[66] twenty-five monks at the Certosa, and the number
appears to have been gradually on the increase since the reconstitution
of the monastery in 1844; it was certainly very gratifying to see that,
whilst all the rest of the buildings looked forlorn and dilapidated the
church itself was most scrupulously well preserved, presenting in this
respect a great contrast to the fate of monastic churches generally in
the North of Italy.
A tedious drive by the side of a long straight canal, passing on our way
large well-managed farms and other signs of uncommon agricultural
activity, took us from the Certosa to Milan; and long before we arrived
there the white pinnacles of the Duomo, with the Alps in the far
distance, came in sight; certainly, seen thus, the Duomo is one of the
least satisfactory or imposing great churches I have ever seen, and does
but little in the way of imparting character--as most cathedrals do--to
the city which lies at its foot. At last we reached Milan, and entering
through a triumphal arch--the Ticinese Gate--and passing the front of
Sant’Eustorgio, we threaded our way down a very long narrow street, by
the side in one place of a row of Roman columns, still standing
tolerably perfect in the midst of the crowded highway, until at last we
found ourselves housed in a more luxurious hotel than it has been our
fortune to meet with for some days.