The Cathedral Builders Part 17

To find the origin of the pointed arch would be difficult. Was it evolved from the arching trees in the German forest? or was it from the rich Arabian mosque or ancient Indian temple? or did the Comacines find it, just as they acquired their Basilican forms, on Italian soil?

Germany, it is pretty well proved, got the seed of her glorious Gothic from France or Italy, and nourished it right royally. But the pointed arch is much more ancient than German Gothic. It is to be seen in the tomb of Atreus at Mycenae, in an Etruscan tomb at Tarquinii, and even in the subterranean gallery at Antequere in Mexico.[129] The pointed arches in the Mosque El Haram on Monte Morea date from Caliph Omar's time, between 637 and 640. The Mosque of Amrou, with its curious combination of pointed and horse-shoe arches, dates from 640.

The church of St. Francis at a.s.sisi (1226) has generally been accepted as the first instance in Italy, and it was soon followed in the design for the church of S. Antonio at Padua five years later; but there are two little churches annexed to the monastery of Subiaco on Monte Telaso, which were built, so say the chroniclers, one in A.D. 981, the other in 1053, in which some arches are round and others acute.[130] Hope[131] quotes examples of this mixture of round and acute arches in the ninth and tenth centuries at Cluny, 1093-1134; the Abbey of Malmesbury in England, which is in Lombard style; St. Mark's at Venice, 976-1071; Subiaco, 847, and others.

"But," as Selvatico remarks,[132] "these are isolated instances determined by static reasons, and do not point to a system." The Arab used the pointed arch as a decorative principle, as well as for stability. As the style spread in Europe it got modified, some countries keeping to the ancient type, and others changing its proportions. So the Arab arch became in the eleventh century the germ of the ogival arch, and in the twelfth expanded in the North into the most glorious forms of ecclesiastical Gothic architecture.

The Comacines made their first steps towards a more florid style, about the end of the eleventh century. The change, as in all such growths of circ.u.mstance, was a gradual one. First, a little more ornamentation, then a slight change in the forms of arches; next, a less fixed ground-plan of the churches, a mingling of the Greek cross with the square-walled Basilica. After these slight trials of their wings, came flights of imagination, and endless variety of form and ornamentation; that variety which could only spring from the ideas of many minds, united in one work.

To see the earliest signs of a wider scheme of design we must go to the region of Parma. Here in a little town called Borgo S.

Donnino--the ancient "Fidentia Julia"--about fifteen miles north of Parma, is one of the finest early Romanesque churches in Italy. It was a great place for pilgrimages in the Middle Ages, as it contained the tomb of S. Domninus, who was martyred in the persecutions of Maximian. Great miracles were worked at his shrine, and religious fervour rose to such a height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that the devotees collected money enough to build a church, which they desired should be the finest and most majestic of those times.

The work was finished before 1195. An ancient doc.u.ment shows that the _Rettori_ (civil governors) of Milan, Verona, Mantua, Modena, Brescia, Faenza, Bologna, Reggio, Gravedone, Piacenza, and Padua, with their suites, all met there in that year to form a league against Henry VI., son of Frederic Barbarossa, who seemed likely to carry on the hostility of his father.[133] We have no doc.u.ments to show who was the architect of the fine Basilica of S. Donnino, but as the Comacines had their _laborerium_ at Parma, and as the work is clearly and distinctly Romanesque, we may believe the old authors who say that it arose _per lo scarpello dei Comacini_.[134] If internal evidence is wanting, the three lion portals of the ornate facade bear witness to the hand of the Comacines of the Romanesque epoch.

Another of their buildings which shows a marked advance, was the cathedral of Trent--the gate of Italy leading into Germany. This had been built in the first Lombard style between 1124 and 1149, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch of Aquileja. In 1207 the Bishop Federigo Manga, Chancellor of the Emperor Otho IV., formed a design to enlarge and almost rebuild it. He commissioned a _Magistro Comacino_ to superintend the works, as appears from an inscription in Gothic letters on the tomb of that very _Magister_. Anglicized it would run--"In the year of our Lord 1212, the last day of February, Master Adam of Arogno, of the diocese and district of Como (_Magister Adam de Arognio c.u.manae diocesis et circuito_), began the work of this church and constructed it. He with his sons and his _abbiatici_ (underlings) built the interior and exterior of this church with its adjoining parts. He and his sons lie below in this sepulchre. Pray for them."

Prof. Cipolla, in an article in _Arte e Storia di Firenze_, quotes a poem written in 1309, in honour of the Duomo of Trent and of the Comacine Master who had achieved so much with his potent and clever hands (_c.u.mani Magistri qui potenti manu non inani complevit_).

The church has since then undergone several restorations, but in none of them has its plan been materially altered. There is still the octagonal dome, the circular apse at one end of the building, and the narthex at the other. The facade still honestly follows the lines of the roof, and has its little rows of pillared galleries across. The outside of the apse shows the new tendency to Romanesque more than the facade does; here arches and friezes in horizontal circles around it, take the place of the perpendicular shafts, and the single row of archlets on the top. It is more in the style of the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Lucca churches. The arch of the north door rests on lions, which we may take as the secret sign of Romanesque Comacine work between the tenth and twelfth centuries, as the _intreccio_ or Solomon's knot had been their mark in the Lombard period.

The church of S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo is a valuable specimen not only of this transition in its early stage, but of the culmination of the Romanesque, two centuries later. An inscription on the arch of the portico records that it was founded in the time of Pope Innocent II.

and King Lothair II., _i.e._ about 1135, Rogerius being then the Bishop of Bergamo.[135] The builder's name is also recorded as Magister Fredus, probably short for G.o.dfredus. Magister Fredus is not expressly said here to be of the Guild of Comacines, but as his work was entirely in Lombard style, with a few slight indications of a freer school, and as the architects who succeeded him were, as may be proved by doc.u.ments, Comacine Masters chiefly from Campione, we may fairly make the hypothesis that he too was one of the guild. The little that remains of his work is to be seen in the interior, where the round arch still predominates, and in the exterior walls of the apse, with its crown of arches and colonnettes.

The parts due to the later brethren of the guild are the rich ornamentation of the two facades with their grand and characteristic Comacine porches, and also the Baptistery. It was in 1340 that Giovanni, son of Ugone (Big Hugh) of Campione, a _celebre scultore ed architetto_, was commissioned to build this Baptistery. According to the fixed laws of the Comacines he made it octagonal--the mystic sign of the Trinity, being formed of a threefold triangle. Around it entwine circles of arches and colonnettes, some lines having double columns; these reach to the cornice of the roof, which cornice is composed of reliefs allusive to the Sacrament of Baptism.

This work finished, Magister Giovanni went to Bellano on the east bank of Lake Como, together with two of his brotherhood, the Magister Antonio, son of the late Jacopo of Castellazzo da Peglio in the valley of Intelvi, and Magister Comolo, son of the late Magister Gufredo--probably a descendant of the Magister Fredus mentioned above--of Asteno, near Porlezza, to rebuild the church there, which had been ruined by age and repeated floods.[136] This church is in pure Lombard style, and has a facade in black and white marble, with a fine rose window, encircled with terra-cotta foliaged decorations.

After this Magister Giovanni of Campione was recalled to Bergamo to adorn the facades of the church which Fredus had left in a rough state 200 years before. These two facades faced north and south. Strange to say, the part opposite the altar has no door. In this new emprise Giovanni brought as his a.s.sistants his son Nicolino, a relative named Antonio (probably the one who had worked with him at Bellano), and a certain Giovanni Cattaneo, also from Campione. Giovanni, who was head architect, decided not to renovate the whole south facade facing the Piazza on which he began first, but to concentrate his ornamentation on a fine vestibule and doorway, to form a species of frontal. The vestibule was finished in 1351, having taken only two years. On the architrave he has himself chronicled it--"1351, m. Johannes de Campillione C. B. (civis Bergomensis) fecit hoc opus." The whole front seems to have taken three years more, as on the base of the horse on which St. Alexander, patron saint of Bergamo, sits, may be read--"Filius Ughi de Campillione fecit hoc opus 1355."

Good Master John of Campione did not long survive the execution of this masterpiece, for on the north porch is inscribed--"1360. Magister Johannes f. q. (filius quondam) Dom. Johannes de Campilio ...

(abrasion) fecit hoc opus in Christi nomine. Amen."

This north porch, though so nearly coeval, shows a much greater advance in style. It is an eloquent proof of how architecture was progressing at this time by the grafting on of different influences.

John the father, being older, kept more closely to his Lombard traditions. John the son, being youthful and more open to conviction, took up new ideas. He has kept the Lombard arch in his porch, the moulding of which is extremely rich, and the lions of Judah duly support his pillars, but he has filled in his arch with very Gothic tracery, in trefoil arches, and over the Lombard columns of the upper storey of the porch are arches and decorations decidedly Oriental in appearance. It is about as good a specimen of the rich chaos of ideas that marks a transition stage as one can get, and shows that John the younger had been influenced by the Saracen-Norman influence in Sicily.

Fergusson, in his _Handbook of Architecture_, p. 790, gives an ill.u.s.tration of this porch. The Campione family evidently came from a race of sculptor-architects, for the church of S. Maria at Bergamo contains a sculptural work of much merit for the time, by Ugo da Campione, the father of Giovanni senior. It is the tomb of Cardinal Longhi degli Alessandri, who died at Avignon in 1329. The almost mediaeval artist compares not unfavourably with a very modern master from Como, Vincenzo Velada Ligurnetto, who in 1855 sculptured the neighbouring tomb of Donizetti placed near it.

Coming down the valley of the P to Cremona, we find ourselves on a scene of great Comacine industry. There is the Baptistery, dating before A.D. 1000, and the Cathedral begun in 1100. These were both works of the Lombard Masters; their style is identical, and over the architrave of the great cathedral door may be read in the Gothic characters used by them--

MCCLXXIIII.

Magister Jacobus Porrata.

da c.u.mis, fecit hanc Rotam.

_Rotam_ refers to the wheel window, which is a remarkably fine one, and is not, as some writers think, an illiterate mis-spelling of _portam_ (door). The rose window is prior to the one which Jacopo or Lapo, the so-called father of Arnolfo, placed in the facade of the Duomo of Arezzo, and is even superior to it in richness of design. To Jacobus Porrata is also attributed the princ.i.p.al entrance of Cremona cathedral, with the statues of the four prophets beside it. Over the architrave rises a species of porch, formed of little Lombard galleries, fringing as it were the arch. Below are the usual lion-supported pillars, the lions being carved in fine red marble. The vestibule above is formed of pointed arches, on each of which a lion crouches to sustain the finis.h.i.+ng _loggia_. The Comacine Masters seem to have formed a school and _laborerium_ at Cremona, for among the archives of the Duomo a deed has been found ent.i.tled _laborerio_, of the year 1289. It was drawn up by the notary Degoldo Malatesta on December 12 of that year, and on the part of the Revdo. P.

Cozzaconte, Bishop of Cremona, and the monk Ubertini, director and treasurer to the works of the Duomo, making a contract with Bonino and Guglielmo da Campione to build a stone stairway on the north of the cathedral towards S. Nicol, etc. etc. The stairs still exist, with remains of some little turrets which formed part of the design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAPTISTERY AT PARMA. DESIGNED BY BENEDETTO DA ANTELAMO, A.D. 1178.

_See page 187._]

At Parma we have also precise data, and a name carven in stone. The cathedral was begun in 1059, four years before that of Pisa. It was finished by 1106, when Pope Pasquale II. consecrated it, the great Countess Matilda being present. In 1117 a part of it fell in an earthquake, and the Bishop Bernardo apportioned the receipts of several taxes to the rebuilding. Frederic Barbarossa in 1162 confirmed this disposition of the taxes and the work was continued. The _laborerium_ of the Comacines at Parma was at different times under two of their chief sculptor-architects, Benedetto da Antelamo being master of the lodge in 1178, and Giovanni Bono of Bissone in 1281.

Benedetto sculptured the now ancient pulpit of the cathedral, which was supported on four columns, and to which the relief of the Crucifixion, signed by him, belonged. It is now in the third chapel on the right. He also designed and erected the Baptistery, which, more than any building of the time, shows an originality of idea quite remarkable. It is built entirely of white marble, is of course octagonal, that is _de regle_, and is surrounded by rows of little pillared galleries, but in these he has made his colonnettes cla.s.sical, and has left out the arches entirely, except in the upper one, subst.i.tuting a solid flat marble entablature for them. The lower part only has a circular arch in each of the eight sides. The arches of the doorways are very deep, and richly sculptured. One has four dark marble pillars on each side of the door, of which the lintels and architrave are richly carved in reliefs. The north door has a Nativity of Christ in the lunette, and a story of John the Baptist beneath it.

The west portal shows a realistic Last Judgment above, and on the sides the seven ages of man, and Christ performing the seven works of mercy. On the south door is the allegory of Death from the mediaeval religious romance of _Barlaam and Josaphat_. The arches between the doors are filled in with niches containing statues supported on black marble Corinthian columns.

All round the building above the base is a frieze of the real old animal myths and symbols, such as the Comacines of two or three centuries earlier delighted in. The march of the times had now subst.i.tuted actual representations of scriptural subjects, instead of mere symbols of dark mysteries, but the _Magister_ could not all at once leave behind him the old emblems which had served his guild for centuries in the way of ornamentation. The building is unique, and shows daring independent thought at a time when independence was most difficult.

Fergusson, however, blames the false principles of design. He says the four upper storeys are only built to conceal a dome, which is covered by a flat wooden roof. The roof seen from above seems to be a flat tiled roof, and it has a pretty solid bell-turret in the centre. The little arches forming the upper range are slightly pointed. This Baptistery, as well as the pulpit in the Duomo, bears the signature of the builder and sculptor, and the date 1196.

"Bis binis demptis annis de mille ducentis.

Incepit dictus opus hoc sculptor Benedictus."[137]

Val d'Antelamo, the native place of Benedictus, is a valley near Lago Maggiore towards Laveno. It seems probable that a branch school or lodge of the Comacines existed here, of which Benedetto was at this epoch at the head,[138] and gave the name to his pupils. They must have emigrated like other branches of the guild, for in the ancient statutes of Genoa we find several mentions of experts in architecture, called _Magistri da Antelamo_, who were called in by the city magistrates, when any building work had to be valued or judged.[139]

As early as 1181 in the archives of S. Giorgio, one finds the names Martino and Ottoboni, Magistri Antelami, and as late as Nov. 27, 1855, a sentence was given at the Collegio dei Giudici at Genoa by a Maestro Anteramo. The subst.i.tution of r for l is to this day a very common error among Italians.

In 1161 a squadron of Masters from Lombardy was called to renovate the cathedral of Faenza, which was much ruined. These Masters accepted, and showed themselves most proficient. So says an old writer quoted by Merzario, but whether these very clever architects were the same Antelami branch who worked at Parma cannot be decided.[140] A later Comacine Master at Parma, whose name has come down to us, is Giovanni Bono of Bissone, a little village between Como and Lugano. The grand vestibule of the princ.i.p.al door of Parma cathedral, with its lion-supported columns, its bands of colonnettes and its rich sculpture, was designed by him. In a Gothic inscription over the door deciphered by Sig. Pezzana, we learn that the lions were made by Giovanni Bono da Bissone in 1280, at the time when Guido, Niccolao, Bernardino, and Benvenuti worked in the _laborerium_.[141]

This inscription, for which I am indebted to Canonico Pietro Tonarelli, is especially valuable, not only in fixing the epoch of Giovanni Buono da Bissoni's work, but as proof of the organization of the lodge and the brotherhood of its members. The word _fratrum_ certainly implies that the _laborerium_ was in the hands of a guild.

The Canonico Tonarelli writes in a letter from Parma, that in an estimate in the archives of the Chapter, dated 1354, the _Fabbriceria_ was denominated _Domus laborerii seu fabricae ... majoris Ecclesiae_, and that the administrators were called _fratres de Laborerio_. In Tuscany they were called _Operai_, and the office of administrator was the _Opera del Duomo_. The four names of the _fratres_, too, have a significance when read in the light I have since found thrown on the organization by the archives of the _Opere_ in Siena and Florence. In those lodges one perceives plainly that the administration of the lodge was placed under four persons, of whom two were Masters of the guild, and two were influential persons of the city, _i.e._ half the council of administration gave the votes of the architects employed, and the other half those of the patrons who employed them. That the same rule held in this earlier lodge at Parma is confirmed by the fact that Niccolao and Benvenuti are found working together with Giovanni Buono at Pistoja in 1270.[142]

Sometimes a single name stands out among the file of Comacines, and one finds several well-known buildings that have emanated from one mind. Such a Master was Magister Giorgio of Jesi, near Como. His name is graven in the stones of many a church. At Fermo on the Adriatic, a "sumptuous" cathedral was built in 1227; a certain Bartolommeo Mansionarius being the patron. On the left south door was a slab with the inscription--"A.D. MCCXXVII Bartolomeus Mansionarius Hoc opus fieri fecit Per Ma.n.u.s Magistri Georgii de Episcopatu Com".... That the mutilated word is Como we prove by a similar inscription on the cathedral at Jesi (the ancient aesis where the Emperor Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, was born). The ancient cathedral of S.

Septimus, a truly Lombard building, still exists in part. Here the inscription runs--"A.D. MCCx.x.xVII tempore D. Gregorii Papae domini Federici Imperatoris, et domini Severini. episcope. aesini. Magister Georgius de c.u.mo civis aesinus fecit hoc opus."

Here we get the city as well as the bishopric to which Magister Giorgius belonged. He was a citizen of Jesi in the diocese of Como, and a qualified member of the higher rank of the Comacine Guild. In the little town of Penna in the same province, where the church was ruined in an earthquake, an ancient stone was found with the following inscription in old Latin--"In the name of G.o.d. Amen. This work was commenced in the time of the Priest Gualtieri, and completed in that of the Priest Grazia, by Master George of Jesi in the year 1256." By these stones we find that Master George worked in the province of Piceno for thirty years, between Fermo, Jesi, and Penna. To him is attributed the ancient communal palace of Jesi which was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by other Comacine Masters.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] _Pisa ill.u.s.trata nelle Arti del Disegno._

[125] Professor Ridolfi, _L' Arte in Lucca_, p. 74, _et seq._

[126] Sull' Architettura e sulla Scultura in Venezia nel medio evo sino ai nostri giorni. _Studi di P. Selvatico_, cap. ii. p. 48.

[127] Selvatico, _Storia della Scultura_, Lib. II. cap. ii.

[128] _Storia di Como_, vol. i. p. 537.

[129] In a work by Luigi Mazara (_Temple antediluvien decouvert dans l'ile de Calypso_, Paris 1872) there are two engravings of gateways, one a subterranean one at Alatri in Latium, which is said to have been the work of Saturn, and is called the Porta Sanguinaria; the other of Cyclopean architecture was also in Latium, and called Porta Ac.u.minata; both of them are pointed arches. This would carry the invention back to 2000 B.C. Many of the subterranean aqueducts of Rome have acute arches for purposes of strength.

[130] Seroux, _Histoire de l'art par les monuments_, p. ii. Paris.

[131] Hope, _Storia dell' Architettura_, cap. x.x.xiii.

[132] Selvatico, _Sull' architettura e scultura in Venezia dal medio evo_, p. 90. Venezia, 1874.

[133] Aff, _Storia di Parma_, tomo iii. p. 14.

[134] See _Borgo S. Donnino e suo Santuario_, pp. 59 and 112, by an anonymous author.

[135] "Dicta ecclesia fundata fuit anno Dominicae Incarnationis millesimo centesimo III gesimo septimo sub dom Papa Innocentio II., sub Episcopo Rogerio, Regnante Rege Lothario, per Magistrum Fredum."--_Storia della Citta e Chiesa di Bergamo_, Tomo III. lib. x.