“In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods are everywhere.”
_Longfellow._
Drive from Padua to Ferrara--Monselice--Rovigo--Ferrara:
Cathedral--Castle--Gallery--Road to Bologna--Altedo--Bologna:
Cathedral--San Petronio--San Domenico--San Giacomo--Sta. Maria
Maggiore--San Francesco--San Stefano--Leaning Towers--Casa dei
Mercanti--Domestic Remains--Academy--Modena: Cathedral--Parma:
Cathedral--Correggio--The Baptistery--Piacenza: The Palazzo
Publico--Cathedral--San Francesco--Sant’Antonino--San Giovanni in
Canale--Asti: Cathedral--San Secondo--Campanili.
Any one who has followed the route from Venice to Milan described in the
last chapter will do well, instead of following it on a subsequent
visit, to make a _détour_ from Padua to Ferrara and Bologna and thence
by Parma, Modena, and Piacenza to Milan. I shall give some notes of such
a journey in this chapter, the towns visited on the road completing the
subject which I have set before me in this volume, and leaving no
important city north of the Apennines, save Ravenna, undescribed. This
exception is serious; but the omission will be remedied naturally when,
as I hope I soon shall, I ask my readers to go with me to the towns on
the east coast of Italy.
The journey from Padua to Bologna is now, and I suppose always was,
extremely uninteresting. The only objects on the road which possess much
attraction for the artist are the towns I have mentioned, and these
certainly much more repay a visit than do those on the parallel line of
road which we have just travelled. Scenery there is none to speak of,
and fortunately a railway makes the journey a quick one now; but when I
first travelled it I retained no recollection at the end of the route
save of long straight and dusty roads lined on either side with tall
poplars, and wearisome to the last degree. At Monselice we found a
picturesque town domineered over by the ruins of a large castle, whose
walls climb the steep sides of the hill on which it stands. Here I saw a
good and little altered Romanesque church, with pilasters in place of
buttresses, and walls crowned with the usual eaves-arcade. At Rovigo,
further on, there is one of the tall brick towers so common here, with
its Ghibelline battlement perfect. Just before reaching Ferrara we
crossed the Po--here a large, unbridged, and dreary-looking river,
flowing rapidly between high artificial banks to the sea. Its bed is, I
suppose, now quite above the level of the plain, and year by year the
question becomes more urgent and yet more difficult of answer, what is
to be done with it? Certainly there are rivers and rivers; and this
great stream left none but painful and disagreeable impressions on my
mind. At length, after ten hours and a half of the slowest of drivers
and worst of vehicles, we reached Ferrara--a _trajet_ now performed by
railway in about an hour and a half, with advantage to every one’s time
and temper, and no counter-balancing loss.
The entrance to the city through a dirty suburb of tumble-down houses
was not prepossessing. I knew nothing of what I had to see, and my
delight was therefore all the greater when we drove into the piazza in
front of the Duomo, and I found myself gazing at a building which at
first sight looked as though it had been brought straight from the North
of Europe, and planted here in the thirteenth century as a warning
against Italian fashions! Further examination proved that I was not far
wrong in my first estimate of the west front; but it revealed also, I am
sorry to say, that this and part of the south side were the only parts
of the old cathedral which had been spared, when in the seventeenth
century the whole of the church was gutted and converted into about as
bad a Renaissance building as one could wish not to see.
The west front is a great screen, and does not and never did follow the
line of the roofs. It has three gables of about equal height covered
with arcading, which increases in depth and richness of moulding and
shadow to the top, where there are very fine open arched galleries,
stepped up to suit the raking lines of the gables. I know no Italian
work which imitates so closely as this does the extreme richness which
some of the Norman and English churches of the same period exhibit. The
arches of the arcades are carried upon clusters of columns which are set
with extraordinary profusion one behind the other. The centre of the
three divisions of the west front is almost wholly filled with a very
fine porch of three stages in height, and finished with gables on its
front and sides. The lower stage of this porch, as indeed of the whole
church, is round-arched, and belongs probably to the church consecrated
here in 1135. The knotted shafts which carry the front wall rest on
figures sitting on lions. The doorway is deeply recessed, and has
figures of saints with scrolls.[67] The tympanum of the arch has a
sculpture of S. George and the Dragon, and the lintel below it eight
subjects, beginning with the Salutation, and ending with the Baptism, of
Our Lord. At the top of this stage is an inscription which contains the
date given above.
[Illustration: 52. DUOMO. FERRARA. p. 288.]
The next stage is later, and has three arches with traceries carried
upon chevroned and twisted shafts, with a statue of the Virgin and Child
in the centre. This stage forms a sort of balcony. The upper stages are
covered with sculpture. In the gable is Our Lord as Judge in a
vesica-shaped aureole; around and above Him are saints and angels, and
below a group of angels dividing the good from the bad. The subject is
continued on to the wall on each side of the porch, where on one side
are represented the souls of the just in the lap of God, and on the
other the descent of the wicked into the jaws of Hell. The whole scheme
is a picturesque and unusually disposed treatment of the Last Judgment.
There is, however, not much merit in the sculpture as a work of art,
though as an enrichment of the buildings it is most effective. The
statue in the centre is said to be by Nicola Pisano. The south front of
the cathedral has a long range of arcading carried on engaged columns,
each arch inclosing a small arcade of three divisions. Above this, below
the eaves, is a very fine arcade of later date all carried on groups of
shafts, and treated in the Venetian manner with ogee-arched labels above
round arches. This stage is built of red marble; the lower part of the
wall, of brick and stone.
A large font of white marble is the only relic of the original church
which is still to be seen inside.
There is not much more to see here. The castle is remarkable as standing
surrounded by its moat in the very midst of the city. The old portions
of it are much like the castle at Mantua, and present the same boldly
battered base, and the same heavy machicoulis and battlements. I saw
also two or three old churches here, but of no interest; they were of
the latest phase of Gothic--bordering on Renaissance--and very poor in
their detail.
The picture-gallery is in a rather magnificent palace of the D’Este
family. Garofalo--the best of Ferrarese painters--is represented by a
fine Adoration of the Magi, and other works. But the collection
generally is not interesting. There are also in the churches a great
number of works of other Ferrarese painters, and most travellers go also
to see the house of Ariosto and the prison of Tasso. But on the whole
the attractions of the city are not great. The streets are grass-grown
and deserted, lined with palaces of coarse and bold but uninteresting
design, and I was in no way sorry to leave it for Bologna, expecting to
find there much more to interest and occupy me.
The drive from one city to the other was very wearisome. The land was
rich with vines, mulberry-trees, and rice-fields. The grapes were being
gathered, and everywhere along the road we met vast casks borne in grand
waggons drawn by white oxen, carrying home the grapes to the wine-press.
These waggons have an elaborately carved tree from back to front, and
the wheels and casks are also similarly adorned. They are really very
handsome, and quite carry one back to those old times when even in
utilitarian England the adornment of a carriage was not thought beneath
the notice of an artist.
On the road we changed horses at Altedo, where I sketched the good brick
campanile of the church, which has windows much like the example figured
at page 262.
Bologna is, I fear, only known to many Englishmen at the present day as
the one station in Italy at which you may always depend on getting some
food, and not less as a station which seems to be on the road to and
from every part of the peninsula. There is no excuse, therefore, for not
visiting it; and if the general feeling is not one of enthusiasm for
what one sees, there is still very much that is worth seeing, and in San
Petronio a fragment of a church which, had it been completed on the
scale intended, would have been one of the finest and, I suppose, almost
the largest in Italy.
[Illustration: 53. SAN PETRONIO. BOLOGNA. p. 291.]
The streets are not of the best. They are very narrow, and often arcaded
with pointed arches supported on circular columns, but contain few
houses of any interest, whilst the churches have been a good deal
altered and damaged in modern times.
The cathedral is a recent building of no beauty. Two lions which once
supported the columns of a Lombard doorway now carry the holy-water
stoups; and in a passage near the sacristy is a carved, painted, and
gilded rood of the twelfth century--a piece of furniture which is rarely
found remaining in Italian churches. The grandest church in Bologna is
undoubtedly San Petronio, which is well placed on one side of the Piazza
Maggiore. It was not commenced until 1390, so that we must not be
surprized to find the faults in detail which mark the period. But the
general scheme of the church is so magnificent that these faults do not
strike the eye at all offensively. As it stands even now, with only its
nave and aisles finished, it gives a vast idea of size and space, though
this is hardly appreciated at first, owing to the enormous dimensions,
the fewness of the parts, and the extreme simplicity of all the details.
The west front is of immense size and width, but its only finished parts
are the plinth and doorways, the whole of the rest being left in rough
brick. The detail of this finished part is of poor character, and later
than the fabric. It is rather richly carved with figures, which are
sometimes much praised, but which seemed to me (with the exception of a
Pietà over the south-west doorway) to be of poor style and character.
Going round to the side of the building, the design is of earlier date
and much more interesting. The aisle-windows are noble designs of
four-lights in each bay, separated by buttresses and surmounted by
steep-pitched gables. The detail is an extremely good combination of
brick and stone, whilst a magnificent plinth of stone and marble gives
great force to the work. The transept was never built; but at the point
where it was intended to be connected with the aisle, there is a curious
conceit--a window at a projecting corner with half its arch and tracery
facing south, and the other half facing west. It is, so far as I
remember, a unique example in a church, but is just a little like the
angle-windows in some of the Venetian palaces, though these never
indulge in such an absurdity as is the construction of two halves of
pointed arches over such an opening.
[Illustration: PLAN--SAN PETRONIO, BOLOGNA.]
[Illustration: SECTION--SAN PETRONIO, BOLOGNA.]
The interior is very magnificent. The columns, arches, and walls
generally are of brick, now coloured and whitewashed (but originally
intended to be seen, as is evident from parts of the incomplete work
where the internal brickwork is still exposed and is executed with the
greatest care), the capitals and bases being all of stone. The columns
of the nave are bold clusters; they are about sixty feet from centre to
centre, rather short in proportion to the height of their capitals,
which are carved with stiff foliage. Above these is a large pier running
up to carry the groining, and there are pointed arches opening to the
aisles of very lofty pitch, but which, owing to their great size,
certainly look very attenuated. Two chapels open into each bay of the
aisles: these are lighted by the large four-light windows already
mentioned, whilst both nave and aisles have no windows except cusped
circular ones of no great size, placed as near as possible to the
groining, which is very simple throughout the church. There is scarcely
a horizontal string-course or a label to be seen, and the mouldings are
few and simple; yet, nevertheless, the effect is grand. Such a church
may well trouble the mind of the English student who thinks that no
building is complete which has not its arcade, its triforium, and its
clerestory. One of our puny churches would stand--nave, aisles, chancel,
tower, and spire and all--within one of the bays of the nave and aisles
here; and there is a grand sense of restraint and simplicity about this
work which impresses me more each time I see it. At the same time the
interest is of this grand kind--there is a sense of the immense and
infinite, but no condescension to the love of detail and delight in
dainty variety which undoubtedly strikes us in most good Gothic works,
and makes them so enjoyable.
The church which inspired the design of this was, no doubt, the
cathedral at Florence. But of the two the design of San Petronio seems
to me to be the more beautiful. The addition of chapels beyond the
aisles and the traceries in their windows make the design a little less
bald and insipid, and also give a somewhat truer impression of the real
scale than one has at Florence. But at the best such work does not
create enthusiasm. The principal effort of the architect was to build
something very big, and he succeeded; unfortunately he so contrived as
very nearly to prevent one from quite realizing how vast his work is,
and I hardly know a more serious charge that can be made against an
architect than this.[68]
[Illustration: 54. SAN PETRONIO. BOLOGNA. p. 294.]
From this church I went to San Domenico, famous for a very elaborate
tomb or shrine of the saint by Nicola Pisano. This is not a work that
entirely pleases me. It is a high coped tomb covered with sculpture on
the sides, erected behind the altar. The history of its erection by
Nicola Pisano in 1265 gives it value as a dated work by a great artist.
He seems to have been a good deal assisted by his scholar, Fra Guglielmo
Agnelli, whose work is by no means equal to his master’s. The tomb alone
is the work of these artists, the rest of the work about the altar
having been frequently added to and altered in later days, and each
sculptor employed having done his best to glorify his own skill and
dexterity instead of thinking, as Nicola Pisano evidently did, simply of
telling his story in the most straightforward way.
The stories represented in the bas-reliefs had more than common value
for a sculptor of original power. In the centre is the Madonna; on one
side the resuscitation by S. Dominic of a youth who had been thrown from
his horse, and on the other the saint disputing with heretics and
burning their books. At the angles are the four Doctors, and at the back
two more subjects from the Life of S. Dominic, probably designed but
certainly not executed by Nicola Pisano.
The church which contains this tomb has been ruthlessly modernized; but
in the open piazza on the north side of it are two monuments of much
interest. One of these has a square basement of brick, supporting
detached shafts, above which are round arches, the whole being finished
with a brick pyramid. Under the canopy thus formed is placed the
sarcophagus, marked with a cross at the end, and finished at the top
with a steep gabled covering. The detail of this is all of late
Romanesque style. The other monument is of later date and much finer
design, though keeping to the same general outline. In place of the
brick basement of the first this has three rows of three shafts, which
support a large slab. On this are arcades of pointed arches, three at
the sides and two at the ends, carried on coupled shafts, and within
this upper arcade is seen the stone coffin carved at the top, and with a
stiff effigy of the deceased carved as if lying on one of the
perpendicular sides. This monument is also finished with a brick
pyramid. The whole design is certainly striking; it has none of the
exquisite skill that marks the best Veronese monuments, but it is a very
good example of the considerable success which may be achieved by an
architectural design without any help from the sculptor, without the use
of any costly materials, and with only moderate dimensions. The upper
tier of arches is kept in position by an iron tie, and, in spite of its
slender look, still stands after five hundred years’ exposure, in
perfect condition.
San Giacomo is another example of a modernized church, which has,
however, some interesting features. On the exterior there is a rather
good treatment of the polygonal apse, with steep gables and pinnacles
over the windows on each side. This is somewhat like the apse of San
Fermo, at Verona. The campanile on the south-east of the nave is a very
lofty late Gothic erection, finished with an incomplete Renaissance
belfry-stage. The old portion is divided into a succession of stages of
equal height, and is mainly striking on account of its good
colour--being all of red brick--and simple outline. The west front is,
as is usual here, a great gable divided into three parts by pilasters
and half columns; the doorway is of the thirteenth century, and its
columns rest on lions’ backs. The detail of the windows at the ends of
the aisles is extremely good, and seemed to me to be of the same date.
The windows are of two-lights, with shafts for monials, and a broad
transome of plate tracery; the tympanum of the arch at the top is
similarly filled: here, though the jambs are of brick, the whole of the
rest of the
[Illustration: 55. MONUMENT. BOLOGNA. p. 296.]
design is executed in stone, and the likeness to some of the later
Venetian church windows in the Madonna dell’Orto and SS. Giovanni e
Paolo is too great not to be observed. The cornices here are very good.
I noticed not only bricks of unusual shapes, very well arranged for
effect, but also disks of earthenware, set with the convex side in view,
and of brilliant glazed colour, generally blue or green. Their effect is
extremely good.
The church of Sta. Maria Maggiore is less altered internally than the
rest. It is of great length, groined throughout, and in general effect
and proportions seemed to me to have a somewhat less Italian air than
the other churches. The apse has an aisle and chapels round it of which
the brick detail externally is effective. Here there are large tiles cut
to a trefoil shape placed flat against the wall-face as an ornament.
They are good-looking, but have not stood well.
In front of this church there is a court or atrium, surrounded with a
perfectly open arcade, which is continued all along the north side of
the church next the road and over the public footpath. The columns are
very slender and of marble; and though the arches which they carry are
segments of circles (not an agreeable form), the whole effect is
extremely light and graceful.
San Francesco _was_ one of the finest churches in the city. It is now so
shabby and decayed outside, and so covered with painters’ and
decorators’ work inside, that all its good effect is ruined. Its
interior was the victim of what was, I daresay, a very well-meant
restoration some years ago, and little of it has been left in its
original condition. It has a chevet with aisles and chapels, and
externally the rare feature (in Italy) of flying buttresses to support
the choir vault. They were built by men who had never seen one before, I
suppose, and are as crude and misshapen as they well could be.
Two campanili close to each other, south of the choir,
[Illustration: CLOISTER--SAN STEFANO, BOLOGNA.]
group strangely with it in the perspective view. They are unlike in size
and design, and illustrate the perfect indifference with which all
mediæval architects viewed the gravest departures from laws of symmetry.
The larger of the two has rather rich Gothic details, the belfry-stage
having traceried windows of three lights with spiral shafts for monials.
The gables in this church have large white marble crosses let into them;
these are rounded at the ends, and each end has a bright green tile disk
inserted. The west front is of the usual description--a great sham front
of hideous outline. Most of its windows are lancets, new, but probably
copied from old examples, and the doorway under a canopy is of good
character.
I have left to the last what, I suppose, is in fact the oldest of the
Bolognese churches--San Stefano. It is a collection of seven churches,
rather than one church, and, in spite of modernization without end, it
is still a most curious and interesting jumble of old buildings. The
churches are dedicated to--1, San Stefano; 2, San Lorenzo; 3, San
Sepolcro (a circular church); 4, The Corte di Pilato (a cloister); 5,
Sta. Trinità; 6, SS. Pietro e Paolo (with three Romanesque apses); and
7, San Giovanni. No. 3 has an aisle round the circular portion, and was
probably a baptistery, and there is still an old ambon in it. One gets
fairly puzzled in this nest of queer little churches or parts of
churches, and I found but little of architectural--as distinguished from
antiquarian--interest in them. The brickwork in the cloister and in some
of the external walls is extremely good. Some of the latter are diapered
or reticulated on the face with square yellow tiles with dividing lines
of red brick, and the cornices are of the same two colours also. In the
cloister the columns and inner order of the arches are of stone, the
rest of the walls and cornices being of red and yellow bricks, and in
one part there is a course of red, green, and yellow tiles alternated.
The effect of this work is extremely pretty.
Probably travellers remember Bologna more by its two leaning towers than
by any other feature. One comes here however, from either side, after
rather a surfeit of this sort of thing. On the one side is Pisa, with
its leaning tower, and on the other we may see them at Rovigo, Ferrara,
and elsewhere. The soil here is generally bad for foundations, I
suppose, and these plain brick towers without any projection at the base
are the most ill-contrived constructions for such foundations that one
can conceive. In this case it is possible to get views of the two towers
which shew an apparently impossible amount of overhanging on the part of
the smaller one, and I confess to a strong preference for walking to
what one may call the windward side of such an erection! There is no
beauty in these towers, their only features being the vast array of
putlog holes in their walls, and the machicolated battlement of the
higher of the two.
Of domestic buildings of the Middle Ages there are not many remains. The
Casa dei Mercanti, though it dates from the end of the fourteenth
century, is not pleasing. The front has two lofty pointed arches on the
ground story, and a canopied Ringhiera of very poor design above. But as
the whole front has been restored, the bricks painted bright red, and
the stonework cleaned and repaired, I am disposed to believe very little
in the antiquity of any of the details. Certainly I found it not worth
sketching, which was the more disappointing as I had heard of it always
as a fine building. The Pepoli Palace has some old brickwork and a
Ghibelline battlement of unusually picturesque outline. The Piazza
Maggiore in front of San Petronio is certainly the best feature in this
not very striking city. As always in Italian towns, it must be visited
early in the day if it is to be seen to advantage. In the morning it is
crowded with fruit and vegetable dealers, sitting under bright-coloured
umbrellas; in the afternoon it is _triste_ and deserted, save by the
cabmen, who pursue the stranger with their importunities. One side of
this piazza is occupied by the Palazzo Publico--a large pile of building
altogether Gothic in its inclosing walls, I fancy, but they have been so
much altered from time to time that not much detail remains. It seems,
however, to have been much like the Castle at Mantua in its character,
with bold machicoulis at the top of the walls, and a well battered-out
base to the whole building. In a tower here there is a window which I
engrave, because it shews well how good an effect may be produced by the
skilful use of the very simplest materials. The combination of stone
with brick adds much to the effect; and though this is in itself a very
small and unimportant work, it appears to me to be exceedingly
suggestive.
[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--PALAZZO PUBLICO, BOLOGNA.]
The Academy of the Fine Arts will be visited by every one who cares for
Francia, and by many who fancy they care for the Caracci. As one of the
former class, I recommend it very heartily. It contains a large
collection, gathered in papal times from convents and churches, and
mainly by painters of the Bolognese school. This school has the
redeeming virtue of counting Francia on its list of painters, which may
atone for much. He is seen here to advantage; and one trio, consisting
of two of his pictures on either side of one of Perugino’s, forms the
noblest group in the gallery. Here one sees how much in common the two
men had in spite of Francia’s more forcible character. The same love of
pure and rich colour, the same well-defined grouping, the same religious
feeling mark them both. And never, I think, has the Madonna--pensive,
lowly, and simple--been more beautifully represented than here by
Francia. It is a face that one hopes to remember. Here, too, is
Raffaelle’s S. Cecilia, no doubt a very great work, but not great quite
in the sense one wishes to understand the word at his hand. S. Cecilia
and S. John are very fine, but S. Paul is a sort of burly ruffian. The
heavenly choir is very mundane, and the whole work somewhat academical
in its design and treatment. The earlier pictures here are very
disappointing. The early Bolognese painters seem to have painted
coarsely and heavily, and to have drawn badly, and there is no
comparison for a moment between their work and that of the early Sienese
and Florentine painters on the one hand, and those of Padua and Verona
on the other. One has indeed in their works a sort of foretaste of what
one has from their followers--the Caracci, Domenichino, Bagna-Cavallo,
and to some extent Guido. Dismal colour, great striving after
chiaroscuro, violent and distorted attitudes, and a purely conventional
and academical style, are not great recommendations of any school, but
they are things which must be accepted if one is to enjoy these works at
all heartily.
A very short railway journey takes one from Bologna to Modena. The one
object of interest here is the cathedral, but this is a building of
extreme historical and architectural value, and has fortunately been
left with so few alterations that we can make out its history with fair
certainty. At Bologna everything was built of brick--here at a short
distance we find our eyes rejoicing again in the sight of stone and
marble.
The ground-plan of the cathedral consists of a nave with aisles
terminated at the east end by three semicircular apses. There are a
sacristy on the north of the choir-aisle, and a tower to the north of
this. There are two doorways on the south side, three at the west end,
and one on the north side. A grand crypt with arches on slender shafts
occupies the whole space under the eastern part of the church. The
access to the choir from the nave is by stairs against the aisle walls
in the same position as at San Zenone, Verona. Here the stairs and their
handrails are not later than the thirteenth century, and the choir is
divided from the aisles by screens of the same age; solid below, and
with a continuous cornice carried on coupled shafts above. The cathedral
is said to have been founded in 1099, but an inscription on the south
wall gives the date of the consecration of the building by Pope Lucius
III. in July 1184. I believe that the former date represents the age of
the plan, and of most of the interior columns and arches still
remaining, but that before the later date the whole exterior of the
cathedral had been modified, and the groining added inside. The work of
both periods is extremely good and characteristic. The columns of the
nave are alternately great piers and smaller circular columns of red
marble. The great piers carry cross arches between the groining bays,
and each of these in the nave is equal to two of those in the aisles.
The capitals here are very close imitations of Classical work, with the
abaci frequently concave on plan. The main arches and the triforium
openings of three lights above them are seen both in the nave and aisle,
the vaulting of the latter being unusually raised. There is also a plain
clerestory, and the vaults are now everywhere quadripartite. The outside
elevation of the side walls is very interesting. Here we seem to have
the old aisle wall with its eaves-arcade added to and raised in the
twelfth century, and adorned with a fine deep arcade in each bay,
inclosed under round arches, which are carried on half columns in front
of the buttresses or pilasters. These arches shew exactly what the
original intention was at Ferrara, where it will be recollected they
still in part remain. Certainly they would have made the side walls very
rich in their effect, even if there had not also been two porches, a
projecting pulpit, and various bas-reliefs inserted in them.
All the doorways deserve special mention. The eastern of the two on the
south side, with the porch of two stages in front of it, is remarkable
for the extreme skill and delicacy of its enrichment. The shafts are of
white marble, and the mouldings which separate them of red, while the
former are all carved in the most delicate manner. The porch is mainly
built of red marble, and is carried on detached shafts, cut out of one
block knotted together and resting on lions. The whole of this work is
evidently an addition to the aisle, and dates from about A.D. 1180. The
other doorway on the same side may probably be a work of the original
foundation in 1099. It has the twelve Apostles on the jambs, and rude
shafts carrying a canopy in front of it. The west doorway has also a
porch, and sculptures of the twelve months on its jambs. It is covered
with carving of foliage and figures executed by the same Wiligelmus who
was employed on the western doorway of San Zenone, Verona. Among other
figures are those of King Arthur and his knights, inscribed with his
name,[69] “Artus de Bretania,” above his head. The west front is very
remarkable. The ends of the aisles have two arches inclosing small
arcades similar to those in the bays of the side walls, and the end of
the nave has the same arcade on each side of a porch of two stages in
height, the lower of which is carried on detached
[Illustration: 56. DUOMO. MODENA. p. 304.]
shafts resting on lions’ backs. The upper part of the porch was altered
in order that a great wheel window might be inserted, sometime in the
fourteenth century.
This rose window fills the whole upper part of the western gable, and
is, like many Italian examples, very unskilful in its design. The vast
number of divisions or spokes, and the very slight prominence of the
arcuated part of the filling-in, make it look in very truth a wheel
window and nothing better. Above it are an insignificant figure of Our
Lord and the Emblems of the four Evangelists sculptured in low relief.
The lower portion of the walls is covered in the most promiscuous manner
with bas-reliefs, and a medley of mural tablets, the number of which
would delight the eyes of an English parish clerk; but nevertheless the
rich character given to the work by the fine shadows of the arcades in
the lower half of the front, is worthy of special notice and
recollection. The tower and spire are very lofty. The former has six
stages of nearly equal height, all round-arched, and on the top of this
two octagonal stages crowned with a modern spire. The lower stage of the
octagon is old, and was finished in 1317 by Enrico da Campione, one of
the family of architects of whom I have before spoken. The tower has
pilasters at the angles, and two intermediate on each face, so that
there is a triple division in elevation, and all the horizontal
string-courses are marked by arched corbel-tables. The repetition of
these very simple features, and the absence of all openings in the lower
part of the steeple, shew how simple the elements of a good work may be.
I found nothing else of any interest in Modena, and made my way from
thence to Parma, impatient to see not only the cathedral and the
baptistery, but also Correggio’s treatment of the decoration of the
former. In spite of the great fame of these works, I fear I must at once
confess that they took away most of the pleasure which I had
anticipated from my visit to the cathedral at Parma. This is a grand
Lombard church, fairly perfect in its architectural details and
arrangements, but entirely ruined in its architectural effect by the
frescoes with which most of its walls and roof have been covered. These
have been painted without the slightest thought of the requirements of
the building, and as a matter of course they have entirely ruined its
effect. The frescoes in the dome are by Correggio, and are amongst his
most celebrated works. Like all the rest of the paintings here, they
present, when regarded from below without the assistance of a glass, a
confused mass of distorted figures and limbs, not at all relieved by the
dark and dismal colouring in which they are executed, and which
doubtless is not what it once was. It is true that when examined in
detail, and still more when examined in Toschi’s careful engravings,
they are full of beautiful drawing and skilful chiaroscuro, but the
impression they have left on my mind is mainly one of the extreme risk
of attempting to decorate a building without previous training in and
knowledge of the requirements of architecture. As an example of Lombard
architecture the cathedral at Parma is almost ruined, whilst it would be
difficult to conceive a worse-fitted building for the display of
Correggio’s fancy and skill. The ill-assorted union, in itself ruinous
to both, has been aggravated by the bad state of repair which has
damaged and no doubt altered the colour of the frescoes; and the
impression now produced is that of simply the gloomiest interior in
Italy.
The church is cruciform, with a central cupola and apses to the three
eastern arms of the cross. The nave and aisles of seven bays are
vaulted, and there is a large and striking crypt under the whole eastern
part of the church which goes far to redeem its otherwise barren
character. The effect here is remarkable, owing to the complex
perspective and great number of single slender marble shafts carrying
the vaulted roofs, and in part also to its unusual height. The capitals
are all carved--frequently with coarse volutes; the church was founded
in 1058, and no doubt this crypt is of about that age.
Very near to the cathedral on the south-west is the now much more
interesting baptistery. This is on the exterior a large and lofty
octangular building, adorned in a succession of stages by small detached
shafts carrying the cornices and strings which divide the elevation.
Internally the scheme is very different. The eight-sided interior is
subdivided, so that sixteen shallow apses are set around the inside face
of the walls. These are separated by columns, and above them on each
side are two stages in height, each subdivided into three divisions,
which are again subdivided by smaller columns. A great vault or cupola
covers the whole, and from its height gives an air of solemnity to the
interior. It seems never to have been treated as a real dome, being
covered with a flat roof, resting on the external walls, which are
carried up far above the vault. The paintings with which the walls are
covered are arranged without any order or general scheme of design. They
seem to have been given by various donors, and each gave what best
pleased his fancy; but owing to the early date of most of the work,
there is in parts--especially in the vault--a fine effect of colour.
[Illustration: PLAN OF BAPTISTERY.]
[Illustration: SECTION OF BAPTISTERY.]
This baptistery is said to have been commenced by the architect
Benedetto di Antelamo in A.D. 1196,[70] who is also credited with many
other works here, and specially with much of the early sculpture in the
Duomo and baptistery; it was not completed until 1260.
There are three great doors to the baptistery. On the northern is
sculptured the Tree of Life, and over this twelve prophets carrying
medallions with half figures of the Apostles. Below are subjects from
the lives of Our Lord and S. John Baptist. The western door has a
sculpture of the Last Judgment, and the southern a not very
intelligible, though no doubt symbolical, figure of a man seated in a
tree and gathering honey. Inside there are various sculptures, and among
them a series of illustrations of the labours of the months.
My day in Parma was pleasantly concluded with a visit to the Gallery,
and then, finding no more mediæval remains, I pushed on to Piacenza.
This is a city of no small interest, and remarkable above everything
else in the possession of a Palazzo Publico of unusual and striking
design--a building of special value and interest to me, since it is a
capital example of the use of brick and marble together. Before looking
at any of the churches I devoted myself to this building with the more
satisfaction when I found that it was really, in some respects, one of
the very best works of the sort that I had ever seen.
An inscription carved under a banner on a square stone, in the front,
records the commencement of the work in 1281, and I think we may assume
that no part of it is of much later date than this. It consists, as do
most of these buildings, of a lofty open ground story, and a principal
story
[Illustration: 57. PALAZZO PUBLICO. PIACENZA. p. 308.]
above this. The façade is very dignified in effect. On the ground level
are five lofty arches, very slightly moulded, and resting on square
piers just rounded at the corners. The material of this stage is marble,
mainly white, but with just a line of red and another of grey near the
string-course which divides this from the next stage. From this point up
almost the whole work is executed in brickwork of very elaborate and
delicate detail. The two stages have no kind of uniformity or connection
with each other, six windows being arranged above the five arches. In
the centre of the first floor is the old doorway to the Ringhiera (which
was altered in the seventeenth century); the windows on each side are of
three lights, inclosed under a round arch with a deep archivolt very
slightly recessed--all the enrichments being on very nearly the same
face as the wall. These windows agree in size, but vary very much in all
their details. Some of the subordinate arches are pointed, some round,
and the tympana are everywhere filled with fine brick diapers. Above
this stage the walls finish with a good marble cornice of intersecting
arches, and then with a forked battlement. At the four angles of this
are raised turrets, and the ends are finished with battlemented gables,
very quaint and picturesque, as will be seen by the illustration which I
give. The niches between the two arches in the principal story seem to
have been intended for paintings. The marbles used here are red and
white. Red is used for the arcades under the cornices, for the middle
order of the rose window, and the inner order of the main arches.
Elsewhere the marble is white, except the one grey course below the
principal string. The whole of the lower stage is open below on all
sides and groined--in brick, I think--though it is now plastered;
indeed, save the parts already described as being of marble in the
principal fronts, the whole of this building is built of red brick.
Behind the open ground story there remains a portion of an internal
quadrangle, which, incomplete as it is, shews, nevertheless, the same
delicate attention to detail which is conspicuous on the façades. I know
hardly any detail of Italian brickwork which is so refined and good as
that in the arches and some cusped circles between them in this
quadrangle.
[Illustration: BRICKWORK--PALAZZO PUBLICO, PIACENZA.]
I have seen this building, full as it is of eccentric departures from
ordinary rules and customs--piers being placed over openings, and round
and pointed arches used indifferently--quoted for our benefit as a
remarkable example of a public building erected in the Middle Ages in
the most regular and formal fashion! It is, on the contrary, if the
plain truth is to be spoken, an example of a very bold disregard of such
fashions indulged in without any detrimental effect.
Piacenza cannot boast of any very fine churches. They have been much
ruined internally by modern alterations, and externally they do not
seem ever to have been very attractive. The cathedral is a Lombard
church of fine size, and with some good points. There are three western
porches of two stages in height, according to the usual Lombard fashion.
The doors are rudely sculptured; that in the centre with the signs of
the Zodiac, and the northern door with the Annunciation, Salutation, and
other subjects on its lintel. The columns rest on monsters, griffins,
and men. The whole front is now finished with one large low-pitched
gable, which has an arcade stepped up to suit its cornice. This is,
however, a fourteenth-century alteration of the older church, as is also
a rose window in the centre. A brick tower of late date rises at the
north-west angle of the church, and is finished with a circular spire
built of round-ended bricks. The external walls of the Lombard church
were all built of stone or marble with shallow buttresses; the windows
were very simple, and the effect was mainly due to the fine open arcade
below the eaves, carried now on shafts, now on figures. The north-east
view is very picturesque, owing to the number of angles and apsidal
terminations which are seen together. These are produced by a plan of
most unusual character, the transepts as well as the choir being
finished with three apses, and an octagonal brick lantern rising out of
the centre. Internally the cathedral, in spite of alterations, is still
very interesting. The nave opens with eight arches to the aisles and
transepts; but the three arches which open to the latter are much
loftier than the five western arches, so as to allow of the transepts
opening to the nave to nearly its full height. The groining of the nave
is divided into three bays of sexpartite vaults--each bay being equal to
two bays of the aisles, and there is a lantern over the two eastern
bays. The transepts and aisles have quadripartite vaulting.
Under the choir is a crypt of great interest and beauty, owing to the
vast number of delicate columns which carry the vault. It is planned on
a cruciform arrangement, with the principal altar in an octagonal
central compartment. Here the priest celebrates on the eastern side with
his back to the choir stalls in the apse, and his face toward the west.
The access to this crypt is by two staircases at its south-west and
north-west angles.
[Illustration: PLAN--SANT’ANTONINO.]
The large brick church of San Francesco is of the fourteenth century; it
is very simple, but not striking in effect. The east end has been
planned irregularly--to suit the site, no doubt--with an apse and aisle
round it, and irregularly shaped chapels beyond the apse. The effect is
bad, owing to the unskilful way in which the work has been done. The
west front has the favourite sham gable adorned with circular windows,
some of which are absolutely above the roofs of the aisles! San Giovanni
in Canale is another church which has nothing of interest, save a few
remnants of old brickwork.
Sant’Antonino is a remarkable church, hopelessly modernized with plaster
enrichments. Like the cathedral, it has a lantern in the centre
crossing, carried on eight columns from the ground, which produce
internally a very new and really striking effect. The lantern is
finished above the roof with three stages, each of which is lighted with
a two-light window in each face. There is a fine early marble doorway to
the north transept, with men and monsters supporting the shafts, and
some delicate carving. In front of this, at the end of the fourteenth
century, was built a lofty porch with a great open archway to the
north. It is finished with brick pinnacles and cornices, and is higher
than the transept. The hinges on the west door here are very good, and
the windows in the aisles--lancets with seven cusps in the head--are
quite worth notice. Piacenza struck me, both in its churches and Palazzo
Publico, as a town which had possessed a very distinctly developed
school of architecture of its own. The churches are peculiar, not to say
eccentric, in their planning, and the Palazzo Publico is quite unique in
its design and general treatment.
[Illustration: SECTION--SANT’ANTONINO, PIACENZA.]
The only other old work I noticed here was a house in the Strada San
Marco. This is all of brick, and has arches of slightly horse-shoe
shape. The bricks are all axed on the face, and are of large
size--11¼ inches long by about 2¾ inches high.
Not very far to the east of Piacenza is Asti, a dull city,
distinguished, however, by some remarkable features in its churches. The
most important of these are the Cathedral and San Secondo. They are
extremely similar in general design: they have naves with short choirs,
transepts, low octagonal vaulted lanterns over the crossing, and apsidal
chapels in front of the transept gables, and at San Secondo to the
several bays of the aisle. Their towers are on the east side of the
transepts. The peculiar feature of their detail is the very elaborate
way in which brick and stone are counterchanged in the jambs and arches
of windows and doorways. The moulded members of a jamb are alternately
of brick and stone, and in each course stone comes above the brick of
the courses below. San Secondo cannot, I think, be earlier than circa
1400, but at first sight looks like a building of 1200. The cathedral is
probably somewhat though not very much earlier. Its plan was evidently
derived from that of the cathedral at Piacenza. Its proportions are bad,
and it is only redeemed by the picturesqueness of some of its details.
Another church has an octagonal campanile; and another, one of sixteen
sides. This is of brick, except the upper stage, which is coursed in
brick and stone. Its sixteen sides have alternately a window and a shaft
running up to the cornice, and in the stage below it there are eight
windows below the shafted sides of the belfry. The composition of this
tower is certainly very good. Another fine lofty tower with bold cornice
and Ghibelline parapet recalls the Veronese towers to mind, and there
are besides not a few remains of mediæval domestic work, so that a day
may be well spent at Asti by an architect.