Part 23 (1/2)
[188] Marchese Ricci, _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, Vol. I. cap. ii.
p. 485, note 40.
[189] The name of this councillor of the _Opera_ still exists in Lucca, where are more than one family of Pagni.
[190] Tolomei, _Guida di Pistoja per gli amanti delle belle arti_, 1821.--Pistoja, p. 38 (note).
[191] S. Paolo was destroyed by fire in 1896, only the outer walls having escaped.
CHAPTER IV
ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ORNAMENTATION
When the romantic style of building, which the Comacine Masters had imbibed in Sicily, came in, their serious set-by-rule building went out. The first use they made of their new ideas was to increase the richness of decoration, and this they did by the almost childish expedient of multiplying their old ornaments. Instead of one little pillared gallery on the top of a facade, they now put whole rows of galleries, or covered the fronts all over with them, as in Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo. There is a very early instance of this in the church of Santa Maria at Ancona, of which we give an ill.u.s.tration. Here the network of arches are not real galleries, but only sculpturesque simulations; each arch is simply placed on the top of the other, without architrave or frieze. The doorway has the usual Comacine interlaced knots and no lions, so the facade may stand as an early sample of the transition into Romanesque, dating about the eleventh century.
The style shows a much further advance in Magister Marchionni's facade to the church of Santa Maria della Pieve at Arezzo, which is a fine sample of Romanesque. It was done in 1216. The facade has four rows of arches, one on the other, ”growing small by degrees and beautifully less” as they ascend. Of all the hundred columns which support them, no two are alike. They are round, square, octagonal, s.e.xagonal, pentagonal, multi-angular, fluted, twisted, grotesque, crooked, Byzantine, Corinthian, Ionic, Doric, Gothic, Egyptian, Babylonian, caryatid, black, green, white, striped, or inlaid. Some have single bases, a round on a square, or _vice versa_, and so on _ad infinitum_.
Yet with all this variety there is a certain unity of design, which bespeaks a mult.i.tude of Masters, each one using his own fancy in his particular part of the work, but one chief to whose general design the masters of the parts are subservient. Ruskin realized the beauty of this variety of idea, though he had not perceived that it came from a mult.i.tude of minds working together, when he said--”The more conspicuous the irregularities are, the greater the chance of its being a good style.” And again--”The traceries, capitals, and other ornaments must be of perpetually varied designs.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF S. MARIA, ANCONA.
_See page 242._]
The very same style and variety, showing a multiplex manufacture, is displayed by the cathedral, and the church of San Michele at Lucca, and the old church of San Michele in Borgo at Pisa. The two Lucca ones are extremely enriched by friezes of the symbolic animals above each row of arches. The cathedral and tower of Pisa show greater unity of conception.
The next great change was, that after the eleventh century, the interlaced work, or Solomon's knot, was no longer the secret sign of the Comacine work. They probably found that there was a limit even to the combinations of the interlaced line, or that it did not give enough relief. Certain it is, that on the rise of Romanesque architecture, the _intreccio_ faded away into mere mouldings, or got changed into foliaged scrolls for architraves; but the mystic knot with neither beginning nor end was no more used with special significance. The rounded sculpture of figures was everywhere replacing low relief, and the Comacine sign and seal of this epoch, was the Lion of Judah. From this time forward for the 400 years that Romanesque and Gothic architecture lasted, there is, I believe, scarcely a church built by the great Masonic Guild in which the Lion of Judah was not prominent.
My own observations have led me to the opinion that in Romanesque or Transition architecture, _i.e._ between A.D. 1000 and 1200, the lion is to be found between the columns and the arch--the arch resting upon it. In Italian Gothic, _i.e._ from A.D. 1200 to 1500, it is placed beneath the column. In either position its significance is evident. In the first, it points to Christ as the door of the Church. In the second, to Christ the pillar of faith springing from the tribe of Judah. Thus at Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo, where the guild worked in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the lion is always above the column.
In Verona, Como, Modena, and where Italian Gothic porches were added in the thirteenth century, and in Florence, Siena, Orvieto, where the cathedrals date from the fourteenth century, you find the lion beneath the column. And in minor works of sculpture there is the same difference. In the pulpit of Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, the lions are beneath the spring of the arches; in the pulpits of Niccol Pisano at Siena and Guido di Como (thirteenth century) at Pistoja, they are beneath the column.
A most beautiful instance of the transition between Lombard and Romanesque is in the door of the church of San Giusto at Lucca, dating from the twelfth century. The architrave is a grand _intreccio_ of oak branches while the pilasters, which form the door-jambs, have richly-carved capitals of mixed acanthus leaves and Ionic volutes, with a mystic beast clinging to each. The arch superimposed on the architrave has a rich scroll of cherubs and foliage, and it rests on two huge lions. It is altogether a perfect Comacine design.
The next change in the sculpture of the Comacine Masters was the humanization of their sculpture. The rude old carvings of symbolical beasts no longer satisfied them. Christianity had now endured a thousand years and was understood, so that it was no longer needful to use parables and mystic signs. They still made the fronts of their churches Bibles in stone, as they had done before; only the Bible was in a language all could read, _i.e._ the sculptured story. From Adam and Eve to Christ and the Virgin, and even the least of the Saints, the Comacine put all Scripture upon his church. His Bible lay open that all might read.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DOOR OF S. GIUSTO AT LUCCA, 12TH CENTURY.
_See page 244._]
The representation of the human figure was at first heavy and disproportionate, but as the centuries pa.s.sed on, it grew in grace; and sculptors were able to express their conceptions more completely.
The animal symbolism did not, however, entirely disappear. It is seen in every quaint fancy of the Gothic artist of the north, in every nave bit of church ornamentation in the south; but it is no longer the object and end of design. It had become subservient; the human figure now took the first place.
In the earlier transition stage, even this actual representation was more or less allegorical. As an interesting instance of the allegorical nature of Comacine sculpture, we may take the relief of the Crucifixion in the cathedral at Parma (third chapel on the right), carved by Benedetto da Antelamo in 1178. In this almost mediaeval relief, the artist has managed to put a symbolical history of the greatest events of his own times--the defeat of Barbarossa, the fall of Victor Antipope, the triumph of Pope Alexander III., the cessation of schism, and the gleams of coming peace on Italy. Around the cross where Christ hangs, he represents the Church as a symbolic personage waving the flag of victory; and the schismatic enemy with his banner broken. Every figure in the composition has its meaning, and the whole displays a thinking mind, even though the hand be still a little heavy and mediaeval. That this is a veritable Comacine work the sculptor himself has chronicled. On the top of the relief is written in the Lombard Gothic characters--
”Anno milleno centeno septuageno Octavo scultor patravit M?se secundo Antelami dictus scultor fuit, hic Benedictus.”
An old chronicler of the sixteenth century tells us that this relief once ornamented an ambone or pulpit supported on four columns, which was destroyed in 1566.
Another very interesting work is the font for immersion in S. Frediano at Lucca, sculptured by Maestro Roberto in the twelfth century. The figures which surround it are as usual full of meaning but grotesque in proportion; though one can see in the draperies a foreshadowing of that return to cla.s.sicality which Niccol Pisano afterwards advanced towards perfection. We have here a queer representation of Adam and Eve, both clad in cla.s.sical garments and standing by a conventional fig tree, out of which looks the head of the Eternal Father in a cloud like a medallion. Eve is clutching the tail of a monstrous serpent. In the next compartment the four Evangelists carry their emblems on their shoulders. St. Mark, with his lion, sits in a curule chair, and looks like a Roman Prefect, mediaevalized. St. John has his eagle standing on a Roman altar beside him, while St. Matthew carries the child on his shoulder like a St. Christopher. As the work of a forerunner of Niccol Pisano in the same brotherhood, the font is intensely interesting.
The cathedral at Beneventum (one of the Lombard dukedoms) has some beautiful Comacine arabesques on the pilasters of the great door. We give an ill.u.s.tration from one of them. The interlaced maze is formed by a conventional vine, in the branches of which are symbolical animals. Here is the Lamb of G.o.d, signed as divine and eternal by numberless circles all over it. The eagle, symbol of faith, is strangling sin in the form of a serpent; above, is a calf, emblem of the Christian, overcoming evil in the form of a bird of prey. In meaning, the intention is the same as the old sculptures on San Michele, executed six centuries previously; but speaking technically, sculpture as an art has advanced greatly. There is rich and clear relief, and intelligibility of design in this work.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PILASTER OF THE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF BENEVENTUM, 12TH CENTURY.
_See page 246._]