Part 6 (1/2)

[31] Felice quoque meae sorori ejus tres annulos transmisi due c.u.m jacintis, et unum c.u.m albula.--Gregor. _Epist. ad Teod._ lib. xiv.

[32] Paulus Diaconus, _Sto. Longo._ lib. iv. cap. 20.

[33] _Ibid._ iv. 21.

[34] Ricci, _Architettura d'Italia_, Vol. I. ch. viii. p. 221.

[35] _Paul Diac._ Lib. V. ch. x.x.xiv.

[36] _Antiq. Long. Milanesi_, Tom. I. Dissertation i. p. 46.

[37] There is a very good instance of this in the Baptistery at Florence, which was also a ceremonial church.

[38] This was said to have been built by Agilulf, 591-615, and rebuilt by Luitprand. It was again restored in 1152, when Pope Innocent II.

reconsecrated it.

[39] In the fifteenth century the fine mausoleum, known as the Arco di S. Agostino, was erected over them by a later Comacine Master, Bonino da Campiglione. In the eighteenth century the church, having fallen into disuse, was turned into a hay store for the army, and the Arco was, in 1786, moved into the modern church of Gesu, where it remained till placed in the cathedral, where it now is.

[40] _etudes sur l'histoire de l'art_, vol. ii. p. 157. Paris, 1864.

[41] Paulus Diaconus Warnefridi, _Chron. de gestis Langobardorum_, Lib. V. cap. iii.

[42] _Antiq. Long. Mil._ Tom. I. Dissertation i. p. 68.

[43] ”Prese molti corpi de' santi dai contorni di Roma, fatti poi trasportare a Pavia.”

[44] It seems probable that the sandstone capitals alone belonged to the first eighth-century church, and the marble ones to the eleventh-century restoration. There is now a modern church built over the old crypt.

[45] _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, viii. 257.

[46] _See_ Sacchi, _Antichita Romantiche d'Italia_, p. 98.

[47] Ricci (_Dell' Architettura_, etc.) tells us the spiral column was very anciently used in Asia, and that Rome did not adopt it till Hadrian's return from the East. Under the later Caesars it became usual, but it fell into disuse in the rest of Italy. The Byzantines used it in some buildings, and in these two early Longobardic imitations of the East, we have a curious masonic link with the ancient traditions of Solomon's Temple, which Josephus tells us was adorned with spiral columns. It may be that they were old Roman columns carried up the mountain from some ruin, but I should rather take them as one of the first instances of the use of the spiral column by the Comacines, a form to which they were devoted in later times. There are endless instances of spiral colonnettes on the facades of Romanesque churches of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

[48] I speak of the time when Signor Difendente Sacchi visited the church in 1828, before writing his work.

CHAPTER III

CIVIL ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE LONGOBARDS

Ecclesiastical as was the work of the guild, the Comacine of Lombard times was nevertheless a fine civil architect. He worked as willingly for the prince in palace-building and for the country in fortification, as for the Church in building monasteries and cathedrals. Indeed war of all sorts bore such a large proportion in the life of the Middle Ages that the fortress was of more importance than the home.

In civil architecture the _Magistri Comacini_ of the seventh and eighth centuries followed much the same style as in their ecclesiastical buildings, of course adapting it to its different uses.

In the Lombard palace we find on the upper floor the usual double-light windows, with the two round arches and dividing column enclosed in a larger arch of masonry.

We also find the inevitable Lombard cornice beneath the roof. In civil buildings, instead of a complete gallery with colonnettes, this becomes a row of brackets with carvings in the corbel heads. The windows of the lower floor are square orifices barred with iron, for defence in warlike times. The walls are either of the solid brickwork _opus romanum_, or the great smoothly hewn stones of the _opus gallic.u.m_. In Lombardy there are more of the former, as clay for bricks is easily attainable. In Tuscany and southward the buildings are more frequently of stone. The Florentine Bargello, though later, offers a very fine specimen of this work, in the older portions of wall, where the smooth-cut stones fit solidly together. If the building required an inner courtyard it was of the same Lombard style as their churches--showing the round arch, and the convex capital, often sculptured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOSINGHORUM PALATIUM FLORENTIAE CELEBERRIMUM IN FORO VETERI SITUM LAPIDE DOLATO COMLUMNISQUE MARMOREIS EXTRUCTUM CUI TURRIS ADJACENS ULNAR. 130 PROCERITATE ERIGEBATUR.