ART IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
During the Venetian period, with the increasing wealth and consequence
of Ragusa, the city itself was beautified by the erection of numerous
handsome buildings, both lay and ecclesiastical, and by 1358 it was
almost entirely reconstructed. In its early days the walls, the castle,
and one or two churches were the only stone edifices; all the rest
of the town was of timber. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries the defences were increased, new bastions erected, and the
older walls strengthened. The city now occupied both the seaward ridge
and the slopes of Monte Sergio. The walls by which it was surrounded
climbed painfully over the rocky eminences on each side, and dropped
down almost to the sea-level in between. The fortifications did not
acquire their present aspect until the sixteenth century, but parts of
them were begun much earlier. Four towers were erected at the entrance
of the harbour on the south-east side of the town, of which two—San
Luca and San Giovanni—still survive. The latter, which is now called
the Forte Molo, a huge round bastion, has been considerably altered in
later times; San Luca has preserved more of its original character.
Of the tower called the _Campana Morta_ (the dead bell),[261] few
traces beyond the name survives. The sea-tower which occupies its site
is evidently of a much later date. These towers were garrisoned by
the town guard of 127 men, who were chosen by lot from the citizens
every month, and increased in times of danger.[262] Other towers were
built at intervals along the walls, and their defence was entrusted
to the private families whose houses they adjoined. Of these the most
important was the Torre Menze or Minćeta, one of the most beautiful
features of the city. Its erection was decreed on July 3, 1319, but it
was entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and considerably altered
in the sixteenth. It stands on one of the highest points of the town on
the Monte Sergio.
Of the other buildings of this time there are some important remains,
from which we may resume a fair idea of Ragusan architecture under the
Venetians. Its characteristic note at all times is the fact that early
forms were preserved here, as in other parts of Dalmatia, down to a
much later date than in the rest of Europe. The style is a mixture
of Italian with an Oriental touch, and occasionally, according to
Mr. Jackson, even a German element. During the Venetian age traces
of Byzantine art still survive, and in buildings of the fourteenth
century, a time when Italian Gothic was most flourishing, we find
the round arch of Romanesque art. But Ragusan builders did not follow
any very distinct system. The various styles were no more than tapped
by them. None were fully developed; and in every building, from
whichever point of view we regard it, we find many deviations from
strict orthodoxy. Some of the Ragusan architects and master-masons
had been educated in Italy, others perhaps at Constantinople, but no
part of their work shows an absolute grasp over any definite style.
Nevertheless it is extremely interesting, and proves them by no means
deficient in artistic sense. Many of the buildings of this little
Republic are of great beauty, and the whole _ensemble_ of edifices
compares favourably with many a more famous Italian town.
The principal buildings erected or completed between 1200 and 1350
are the following: The cathedral church of Santa Maria (1206-1250),
San Biagio (1348), the church and monastery of the Franciscans (begun
1319), the Dominican church and monastery (1254-1306), the _Castello_
(1350, on the site of an earlier building), and the _Sponza_ or custom
house, begun early in the fourteenth century. The cathedral was
destroyed by the earthquake of 1667, San Biagio by fire in 1706, the
_Castello_ supplanted by another building in 1388. The Franciscan and
Dominican churches were almost entirely rebuilt in later times, but of
their monasteries much remains, and the cloisters are in their original
state. The Sponza, too, survives, although the top story, the façade,
and the portico were added subsequently.
[Illustration: CAPITAL IN THE FRANCISCAN CLOISTER]
What the Duomo was like we can only discover from the somewhat confused
account of De Diversis, and from the model of the town in the hands
of the silver statuette of San Biagio. According to local tradition,
it was erected through the munificence of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King
of England, who on returning from the Holy Land encountered a terrible
storm off Corfu, and made a vow that he would build a church to the
Virgin on the spot where he should first touch land in safety. After
being tossed about for several days he was able to land on the island
of Lacroma, near Ragusa. In fulfilment of his vow he built the church,
at the request of the citizens, in Ragusa itself, as well as a small
chapel on the island. There is, however, no evidence of the truth
of this story, and none of the contemporary accounts of Richard’s
peregrinations even mention Ragusa, while the entries in the Ragusan
archives state that the church was built with the contributions of
the nobles. According to De Diversis, it was the most beautiful
church in Dalmatia. It consisted of a nave and side aisles separated
by great columns; and from the above-mentioned model of the city we
see that it had a cupola mounted on a drum pierced with windows and a
clerestory. De Diversis also speaks of a curious ambulatory formed by
small columns outside the church, the walls of which were ornamented
with figures of animals. In the choir was the high altar, with a pala
of silver under a beautiful ciborium supported on four pillars. The
floors were of mosaic, and the windows all filled with stained glass.
On the walls were depicted scenes from the Old Testament and the New.
All this bespeaks a Romanesque building with traces of Byzantine art.
But alas! nothing remains of this exquisite piece of architecture; the
present church (1671-1713) is a large classical edifice with barocco
ornamentation.
[Illustration: CAPITAL IN THE FRANCISCAN CLOISTER]
The original church of San Biagio was begun in 1348 as a votive
offering after the plague of that year. From De Diversis’s description
it was very similar to the Duomo, but on a smaller scale. It suffered
little damage from the earthquake, but was burnt down in 1706. Both
this church and the Duomo are fairly good examples of an unattractive
style, and the stone of which they are built is of a rich mellow tone.
The two stately piles at each end of the town—the Franciscan and
Dominican monasteries—have fortunately preserved much of their original
character. The latter was begun after the destruction of the first
Franciscan house outside the Porta Pile by the Slaves in 1319, and
the new building was erected just within the gate, which its inmates
were to guard in times of danger. The church and a large part of the
monastery have been rebuilt since the earthquake, although here and
there a few interesting details remain. Thus on the south side, opening
on to the Stradone, there is a handsome doorway in the Venetian Gothic
style, surmounted by a _Pietà_, a very fair piece of sculpture; the
date is probably the end of the fifteenth century. In the sacristy we
find a Renaissance lavabo of carved stone. The campanile marks the
transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic. The east window of the
lower story and those on the second story are Venetian Gothic, while
the south window of the lower story is round-arched. The top story
with the cupola was rebuilt after the earthquake. But it is in the
cloister that the chief interest of the building lies, a cloister
which Mr. T. G. Jackson calls “one of the most singular pieces of
architecture I have ever seen.”[263] Here we observe the most notable
feature of Dalmatian architecture in all its force, for although its
date is later than 1319 it is thoroughly Romanesque in character, and
all the arches are round. It consists of a courtyard with three bays
opening out into it on each side; the openings are divided into six
round-headed lights, each head being pierced by a large circular light.
A series of coupled octagonal shafts standing one behind the other,
with a common base and common abacus, but separate capitals, serve as
mullions to the arches. The capitals are extremely quaint and curious.
Each one is different from its fellows, and the architect seems to
have let his fancy run riot in designing them, “recalling the wildest
and most grotesque fancies of early Romanesque work.”[264] Some are
adorned with simple foliage, spiral volutes, and block leaves, but
on others we find hideous grinning faces, dragons, strange uncouth
monsters, masks, dogs, and all manner of fanciful ornaments. Judged by
ordinary standards, we should take them to be work of the twelfth or
thirteenth century, but as a matter of fact they are of a much later
date. According to Eitelberger, these early forms were preserved in
most of the monasteries of the East when they had given place to Gothic
in Western Europe.[265] The workmanship of these capitals, like much
Ragusan carving, is somewhat rough and unfinished, but for this the
material, which is not sufficiently hard, may be partly responsible.
Of the open circles in the heads of the opening, the centre one on
each side of the cloister is larger, and ornamented with a rich border
of acanthus leaves; the others are cusped. Possibly it was intended
that they should all contain some ornamentation, and indeed the large
round openings look somewhat bare. Above the cloister is an elegant
balustrade, of which only one side survived the earthquake, but a few
years ago it was restored according to the original design. The name
of the architect has been preserved in an inscription in the cloister
itself:
☩ S · DE · MAGIST
ER MYCHA PETRAR
DANTIVAR QVIPPE
CITCLAVSTRVM
CVM OMNIBVS SVIS.
He was one Mycha of Antivari, a town where Byzantine influence was
stronger than at Ragusa. The inscription has no date, but it is
close to two others of 1363 and 1428, and the style of the lettering,
according to Jackson, is even earlier than 1363. The building was
not begun until after 1319, when the former Franciscan monastery was
destroyed, so that the date is somewhere between 1319 and 1363. Within
the enclosure are orange trees and evergreen shrubs, and a graceful
little fountain is placed in the centre; the whole scene forms a most
charming picture of mediæval monastic life. A second cloister higher
up the hillside served as a garden where the simples for the monks’
pharmacy were grown. This, too, is a delightful old-world nook.
At the opposite end of the town, just inside the Porta Ploce, stands
the massive group of the Dominican church and monastery. These
buildings originally formed the southern bulwark of the town, the monks
themselves, like the Franciscans, being entrusted with the defence of
the gate; but later a second wall was built outside it. The church,
which was begun in 1245 and completed in 1360, consists of a vast
nave separated from a polygonal choir by a high arch. The building is
extremely bare; the traces of Gothic arches and clustered pillars form
a sort of skeleton, around which the existing church was constructed
in the seventeenth century. In the sacristy there are a few more
fragments of early work, and the south doorway, with a round arch of
many receding orders under an ogee crocketed hood mould, also belongs
to the original church. Jackson notices a strong flavour of German
Gothic in it. There are several pointed windows of extreme simplicity,
and a large round one decorated with an outside frill of small
Venetian arches. The campanile was begun in 1424[266] by Fra Stefano,
a Dominican, but it was not completed in 1440, for De Diversis says of
it, “nondum perfectum, in dies crescit.” It has round arches and shafts
set back to the centre of the wall.
But as in the Franciscan monastery, the cloister is almost untouched.
It is an irregular square, with five bays on each side, each bay being
divided by three lights, the head pierced by two irregular lights
above. The style is a curious medley “of Gothic and Renaissance,
of forms understood and otherwise, as indeed could only occur in a
land which, being on the borders of Eastern and Western culture,
did not possess the power to create and execute the various styles
correctly.”[267] The arches of the bays are round, but the inside work
has more the character of Venetian Gothic, especially in the foliage.
The shield of the semicircular head is pierced by quatrefoil lights
encircled alternately with an ornament of interlacing circles almost
Byzantine in character. The Dalmatian architect had doubtless seen
Gothic work in Italy, but “had failed to grasp the idea of receding
orders in the arch, or consistent mouldings in his tracery.”[268] The
columns with their caps and bases are of a severely antique character.
But in spite of all deviations from architectural orthodoxy this
cloister, set off by cherry and orange trees and evergreen shrubs, is,
after the Franciscan cloister, one of the loveliest monastic buildings
in Dalmatia.
The secular buildings, with one notable exception, belong to a later
period. The exception is the Sponza[269] or custom house, a large
part of which was built in the early fourteenth century. It stands at
the end of the Stradone, opposite the Piazza and the church of San
Biagio, and consists of three stories built round a courtyard. The
ground floor and first floor were probably built in the first years
of the thirteenth century.[270] The top story, the façade, and the
portico belong to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The oblong
courtyard is surrounded on the lower story by vaulted arcades of round
arches with square soffits supported on short plain solid octagonal
columns, without bases (like those of the Ducal Palace at Venice), and
short capitals opening out into square abaci. The second story is also
arcaded, and has twice as many window openings as the lower story has
arches, round at the two ends and pointed on the sides, with square
piers over the columns below and round columns over the centres of the
arches; their capitals are adorned with foliage, some _à crochet_,
and some with deflected leaves at the angles. According to Jackson,
all this part is of the same period, in spite of the fact that some
of the openings are round and some pointed. The general effect is one
of extreme simplicity and sobriety; it is, as Jackson says truly, “an
admirable piece of plain, useful, and not ungraceful architecture, not
too showy for the commonplace purposes of the building, and yet well
proportioned and carefully built.”[271] Round the courtyard are the
various warehouses, over the doors of which are the names of different
saints. Above the end arch is the inscription:—
___
FALLERE NRA VETANT ET FALLI PONDERA MEQ.
PONDERO CVM MERCES PONDERAT IPSE DEVS.
The early work ends with the moulded stringcourse above the second
story; the third story, which has plain square windows, bears the
date 1520 and the monogram IHS, found on so many houses in Ragusa, to
commemorate the earthquake of that year. The façade has a portico of
five handsome round arches in the Renaissance style, the columns of
which are adorned with elaborate capitals; many of these have been
renewed. Above is a row of windows in the purest Venetian style of the
fifteenth century. The central window is a three-light aperture, the
two side ones are of a single light. The windows of the third story are
square like those looking on the courtyard. In the centre is a niche
with a statue of St. Blaize, while the row of pinnacles on the roof
call to mind many a Venetian palazzo. In spite of all incongruities the
Sponza is a very attractive building, full of quaint grace and good
work.
It has many interesting associations with Ragusan history. It was here
that the caravans about to start on their perilous journeys through the
wild Balkan lands formed up, and those which arrived at Ragusa first
stopped. Every bale of goods arriving at or departing from the city, by
sea or land, had to be first examined at the Sponza, where the proper
amount of duty was assessed and paid. All business was transacted at
or around this building. To this day it serves as a custom-house,
and still forms a picturesque background for the crowds of peasants
and traders from all parts of Dalmatia, the Herzegovina, Montenegro,
and Albania who congregate here on market days, although the traffic
has declined both in bulk and in value since the palmy days of the
Republic. The first floor was used in later years for literary and
learned societies and entertainments. The second floor was the mint.
Of the _Castello_ no traces now remain, its place having been taken by
the Rector’s Palace, with which we shall deal later on. The buildings
we have described were almost the only stone edifices in the town.
All the rest, including the convent of the Clarisse, founded in 1290,
were of timber.[272] Ragusa was in great part destroyed by fire in
1292, and rebuilt shortly afterwards, mostly of wood, as before. In
a _Reformatio_ of 1320 the Government published a decree against the
excessive use of timber in construction. But the city was improving in
various ways. The streets were wider and more regular, and stone steps
were built on either side of the _Stradone_ to make the higher quarters
more accessible. Elaborate rules were issued to ensure the solidity of
the roofs and chimneys, and by 1355 the town was paved with brick.[273]
The steep streets on the seaward ridge and on the eight slopes of Monte
Sergio began to assume their present aspect, although but few details
of fourteenth-century domestic architecture have remained. There are
several houses in the Venetian Gothic style, but these were built
during the Hungarian occupation, the artistic influence of Venice
outlasting her political suzerainty.
Of the plastic arts we find as yet only slight beginnings, but we may
mention a few early paintings in the Dominican church. A large crucifix
in the Byzantine style, which hangs over the choir arch, was vowed
during the black death of 1348. In the sacristy there is a polyptych
in ten sections, with the Baptism of Christ in the centre of the lower
row, and St. Michael, St. Nicholas, St. Blaize, and St. Stephen; the
Virgin, with St. Peter, St. Dominic, St. Peter Martyr, and St. Francis
above. The work is very primitive; but if it be by a local master, it
is probably of a later date than the style suggests. The robes are
very rich and profusely gilt, but the effect is garish rather than
brilliant, although restoration may perhaps be responsible for this. A
Byzantine Madonna and Child in red is in the same church between the
nave and the transept.
In the city records there are occasional entries alluding to the
engagement of painters, and in 1344 a certain Magister Bernardus was
commissioned to paint the new hall of the communal palace, which he
was to decorate “pomis et stellis auratis.” No trace of this work has
survived.
An interesting piece of sculpture is the bas-relief of St. Blaize on a
wall near the Porta Ploce. The figure is seen in profile, and carries
a crozier with a Lamb in the crook. It is somewhat stiff and Oriental
in pose, but full of character. Curiously enough, it is the only really
good statue of the city’s patron saint at Ragusa. Other images may be
seen over the gates, on the fortifications, and on various buildings,
but they are all colourless and of very rough workmanship. A plaque of
marble, with figures in high relief, in the sacristy of the Franciscan
church, deserves notice. It is said to be thirteenth-century work of
the Isola di Mezzo.
During the next two hundred years architecture attains to its full
development, and at least one painter arises whose work is of
considerable value, while the goldsmith’s and silversmith’s art come to
occupy an important place.