The Cathedral Builders Part 41

He got some of his architects, such as Leon Battista Alberti and Rossellino, from the Florentine Lodge, but by far the greater part of them were Lombards. The chief of these was Master Beltramo da Varese, of whom we have heard much in the Lombard Lodges. With him were his nephew Maestro Pietro di Giovanni, Maestro Paolo da Campagnano (a village near Varese), and Maestro Giacomo di Cristoforo. Rossellino had begun the works at St. Peter's in a kind of reverse fas.h.i.+on, starting with the apse. The continuation of this tribune was confided to Maestro Beltramo, who set to work in good earnest. He made vast lime and brick furnaces, filled the _laborerium_ with wood, ropes, ladders, etc., engaged sub-architects and _Magistri_ with bands of workmen under them, most of whom came down from the Como region. In fact, there was an army of Lombards.[299] The registers of the _Opera_, now in the Vatican, mark large payments to Magistro Beltramo and his nephew Pietro di Giovanni, who became chief architect after his uncle's death.

Besides the Tribune of St. Peter's, the two relatives were employed to rebuild the Campidoglio. Muntz publishes some notes taken from the registers of the Apostolic Camera, recording payments made between 1447 and 1448 to Maestro Beltramo, and some of his a.s.sociates (_socii_), for the roof and marble windows of the Campidoglio and the palace of the Conservators. In 1452 Pietro da Varese is found continuing the work alone. The doc.u.ments recently published from the registers of the Vatican have these entries--

"1452. _December 31._--To Maestro Pietro da Varese, nephew of Maestro Beltramo, 1000 gold ducats for part of the Tower he is building behind the Campidoglio, at the side where they sell salt by retail. T. S.

1452, fol. 216, cf. fol. 194."

"1453. _March 9._--D. 112, b. 56, d. c., for remainder and completion of the contract of the Tower he (Pietro) has made at the Campidoglio, which in full amounts to 1212 ducats, of which he received last year at different times, 1000 (and 100) ... and thus it is registered by Janni di Jordani (Notary V. fl. 126. 10. 93)."[300]

We find Pietro in 1450 sculpturing in the cathedral at Orvieto, where in a public act he is described as a good and clever sculptor ("lapidum sculptor bonus et doctus"), and prayed to remain at Orvieto in the service of the lodge there.

Muntz speaks very highly in praise of the Lombard sculptor, Giacomo di Cristoforo[301] da Pietrasanta, saying that although his name is little known to biographers, he holds a high place in Roman art of the fifteenth century, and merits to be ranked among the most celebrated artists of his time. Many of the buildings which Vasari ascribes to Giuliano da Majano and Baccio Pontelli are in reality due to him; for instance, the Palazzo Venezia, which was rebuilt under Pope Paul II.

(Pietro Barbo, who succeeded to the papal throne in 1464). Now Giuliano da Majano only came to Rome towards the end of the reign of Pope Sixtus IV., and could not therefore have been employed by Paul II. In fact, Muntz, after many researches, concludes that the chief architect was Maestro Giacomo da Pietrasanta, who is in the registers of 1467 qualified by the t.i.tle of _Soprastante_ in the _laborerium_ of the church and palace of S. Marco at Rome, and in 1468 is written as the president of the building of the Palazzo Apostolico or Vatican.[302] In fact, Giacomo da Pietrasanta, the Lombard, was Grand Master of the whole Roman Lodge during these years.

But Maestro Giacomo was not the only Comacine employed in the Palazzo Venezia. A contract dated June 16, 1466, names Magister Manfred of Como and Andrea of Arzo, whom we have seen in Venice, as _magistros architectos_,[303] and the registers reveal a whole army of master builders and sculptors whose names will be found in the list appended.

Muntz quotes no less than twenty-five, many of whom have been familiar to us at Milan, Siena, and Florence.

Although when Calixtus III. (Alfonso Borgia) succeeded Nicholas V. in 1455, he had no great ideas about resuscitating the architectural glories of ancient Rome, he nevertheless employed the Lombard Masters to finish the works begun. Maestro Pietro da Varese, and Maestro Paolo da Campagnano, with Maestro Antonio di Giovanni from Milan, and Maestro Paolino da Binasco, were joint architects of the Pontifical Palace. Maestro Bartolommeo da Como, whom we have known at Milan and Pavia, was director of the works of fortification at Castel S. Angelo, while Maestro Stefano da Bissone di Como is named as a sculptor in the church of S. Spirito.

The next Pope, Pius II. (aeneas Silvio Piccolomini), did so much building and embellis.h.i.+ng in Siena--where the Lombard Masters divided the honours with their colleagues born in Siena, and trained by them--that he did little for Rome. He employed the same Pietro da Giovanni and Paolo da Campagnano between 1460 and 1463, for the roof of S. Pietro, which menaced destruction. The palace of the Vatican was placed under the architectural superintendence of Maestro Manfred of Como and Domenico of Lugano. The first appears to have been designing architect, and the second master builder, as he commanded squadrons of workmen, and was a.s.sisted in ruling them by his brother Antonio.

Maestro Angelo da Como, and a certain Martino Lombardo, rebuilt the chambers which had been destroyed by fire, and adorned the "Hall of the Pavilion" and "Hall of the Parrot."

In the time of Sixtus IV. (Francesco della Rovere, 1471-1484) the Lombards of the Roman Lodge were joined by their brethren from Florence, and now we find the two groups inextricably mixed. Baccio Pontelli and Giuliano da Majano work together with Manfred the Lombard and Paolo da Campagnano in the administration of the works of the Vatican; while Francesco and Andrea, both Lombards, are found carving in wood and executing beautiful doors in _intarsia_, together with Giovanni and Marco di Dolci, Florentines; Giovanni de' Dolci with his colleagues (chiefly Comacines) worked at the Sixtine Chapel, some parts of the Vatican, and the fortress of Civita Vecchia, which Baccio Pontelli finished. Pope Innocent VIII. (Cibo, 1484-92) added the Loggia Belvedere to the already immense palace of the Vatican, and Alexander VI., a Spaniard, built the Borgia apartment, for which he employed Antonio di San Gallo, or from St. Gall, a Lombard naturalized Florentine, whose a.s.sistants in the work seem to have been chiefly Lombards.

It was this influx of Florentines, who were fresh from the humanistic influences of the cla.s.sic revival of literature under the Medici, and therefore more open to further inspirations from the influences of antique Rome, which brought about the revival of cla.s.sic forms in architecture in Rome. Bramante and San Gallo began it in 1503, Raphael and Michael Angelo carried it on; and such hold did the Renaissance style take on the minds of people in the late Cinque-cento era, that it spread, and overpowered the Gothic from end to end of Italy.

Vasari raved about the faults of the old architecture and its _goffissima_ style, upholding the chastened order of the new, but whatever may have been the merits of Renaissance, as Bramante and Michael Angelo practised it, their later followers committed quite as many sins against reason and good taste as any Comacine or Romanesque architect ever did. Look, for instance, at the church of S. Carlo, in the Corso at Rome, with its gigantic pilasters running up the whole height of a front, which is, by its square windows, cut up into three storeys, giving the lie to the unity of s.p.a.ce implied by the mock columns; and at San Firenze in Florence, where half an arch runs up into the air and stops short, as a defiance to all laws of gravity.

Arches or pediments, with a _hiatus_ where the key-stone should be, and which, logically speaking, can support nothing, are the most common blots on a late Renaissance building.

But we have nothing to do with this era. It was only a late survival of a side issue of the Comacine Guild which had been practically dissolved before Michael Angelo's time, although the influence of its smouldering ashes vivified the art even of that great genius.

The great family of sixteenth-century architects, the Fontana, was of Comacine origin, though I believe the guild was dissolved by their time. Domenico Fontana was born at Melide near Como; his elder brother Giovanni, famous for his stucco work, had preceded him in Rome, but Domenico was an artist of a wider kind. The Cardinal Felice di Montalto soon discovered his capacities, and entrusted him with the erection of the Cappella del Santissimo in S. Maria Maggiore. Here a very unusual episode occurred. The Cardinal had not means enough to finish the work, and the brothers Fontana, instead of suing him for their pay, lent him 1000 scudi. Of course the Cardinal was their great patron after this, and recommended them to Pope Sixtus V., who employed them in the Vatican to build the Belvedere and the Library.

Domenico also enshrined the Scala Santa at S. John Lateran; he placed the obelisks on Piazza S. Giovanni and Piazza S. M. Maggiore; set up the Castor and Pollux on the Quirinal; built the bridge at Borghetto, the hospital of S. Sisto, and restored the Alessandrini-Felice aqueduct; embanked the Fiumicino near Porto; made the water conduit at Civita Vecchia, which implied tunnelling under a mountain; and the great aqueduct of Acqua Paola from Bracciano to Rome, thirty-five miles long; besides constructing fountains everywhere, in Rome and Frascati.

In fact, he nearly made Cinque-cento Rome. His brother Giovanni was nominated architect in general to Pope Clement VIII.; and Paul V. made him chief architect of St. Peter's, with his nephew Carlo Madern. He too was employed in Ferrara. For a century the name and race of Fontana flourished in Rome, some of the family emigrating to Naples, where they became equally famous. The number of their buildings was legion; they and the family Della Porta, who also came to Rome from Lake Lugano, divided the renovation of Rome between them. Girolamo della Porta, like the Fontanas, was a naturalized Roman.

The Fontana family forms a link with Naples, though not the only connection of that city with the guild. The Comacine Masters kept up their connection with Naples long after the time of the Normans, when Maestro Buono built the Castel Capuana for William I. Merzario claims for one of his descendants, Buono dei Buoni, the credit of having first invented painting in oils, which he is supposed to have taught privately to Antonello of Messina.[304] Several names of the Solari family, so famous at Milan and Venice, turn up at Naples in the fifteenth century, and then a famous work was put into Lombard hands.

When Alphonso of Aragon made his entry in 1443, the governors of the city decreed that a triumphal arch should be built to commemorate the event. It was placed at the entrance of Castel Nuovo, and consists of two round towers, with an arch between them, supported on Corinthian columns. The arch is surmounted by a frieze and cornice, with a parapet above, enriched with bas-reliefs representing the entry of King Alphonso. The whole is surmounted by statues of saints and the cardinal virtues.

The construction of this fine arch has been attributed to Giuliano da Majano, but as he was at the time only a boy of ten or twelve years old, this could not be. Sig. Miniero Riccio, after a diligent search in the Neapolitan archives, has found some acts, which give the names of sculptors employed on this. We find Pietro di Martino from Milan, head architect; Isaja da Pisa, Domenico di Montemignano, Antonio da Pisa, Francesco Arzara, Paolo Romano, and Domenico Lombardo. This authors.h.i.+p is confirmed by the epigraph in the church of S. Maria la Nuova in Naples, dated 1470, in memory of Pietro di Martino, Milanese, who, for his merit in erecting the arch at Castel Nuovo, was created Cavalier by King Alphonso, and a sepulchre was given in this church for him and his descendants.[305]

If the date had only been a little later, we might have supposed this to be Pietro Lombardo, son of Martino Solario, who had won such fame in Venice; but as he died in 1512, it is scarcely likely he would have been well-known enough to have obtained such an important commission in 1440. Knowing how a certain succession of names was, and is, kept up in Italian families, this Pietro and Martino might have been the father and grandfather of the Martino da Carona, father of Pietro Lombardo, especially as they had Domenico, also a Solari, with them.

King Alphonso was a good patron to the Comacine Masters, and greatly appreciated them. On February 16, 1456, a gentleman at Terracina wrote to the Duke Francesco Sforza, saying that _some master builders from Como_, in leaving the realm of Naples, had been made to forfeit 190 ducats, on which they appealed to the King. Alphonso ordered the rest.i.tution of the money, excepting a small tribute to the confiscators, which he made good to the Comacine Masters out of his own purse.[306]

From 1484 to 1508, a Maestro Tomaso da Como, sometimes called _Tomaso delle parti di Lombardia_, master sculptor, was living in Naples. He was paid for the carving of the princ.i.p.al door of the church of the Annunziata, which his son Giovanni finished after his death. His will still exists. It is dated July 2, 1508, and says that "Mastro Tomaso de Sumalvito (now Sanvito) de la terra de Como de la parti di Lombardia, marmorario habitante in Napoli: ist.i.tuisce herede Joan Thomaso de Sumalvito de Napoli suo figlio," and declares besides that a debt of three ducats is still owing to him on the work for the great doorway of the church of the Annunziata. The fine monument to Signor Antonio d'Alessandro and his wife, Maddalena Riccio, in the church of Monte Oliveto, and that of the Bishop of Aversa in the same church, were sculptured by Tommaso de Sanvito, as he is called in the books of Orvieto, where he was head architect.

His son Giovanni built, in 1509, the fine chapel of the Macellai in the church of S. Eligio, and the "Confession" of S. Gennaro under the tribune of the cathedral of Naples, where the yearly miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of S. Gennaro takes place. Even the beautiful Royal Palace at Capodimonte was built by a Lombard, Domenico Fontana of Melide, near Como, whose family we have seen was more famous in Rome than in Naples? Domenico, however, died in Naples in 1607, and was buried in S. Anna dei Lombardi, where his sons Sebastian and Julius Caesar (Giulio Fontana) wrote on his tomb--"Patritius Roma.n.u.s, Summus Romae Architectus. Summus Neapolis." Like so many of his predecessors in the guild, he had been given the citizens.h.i.+p of the towns he had embellished. It is this which makes it so difficult to trace the artists--the same man may appear successively as being a citizen of Rome, of Orvieto and Siena, and yet have been born at Como in spite of all.

Enough has been said to show that at Rome and Naples, as well as in other cities, the great Lombard Guild led the way. The guild, which may be looked on as the flower of the Renaissance, had, however, reached the period when its blossoming time was over; its many petals, too much spread, were falling from all its branches. Some had dropped off long since, and new suckers formed in the painting academies, and the sculptors' companies, at Siena, Florence, Venice, and other parts.

These suckers had, by the fifteenth century, grown into independent plants, that threatened to overshadow and choke the ancient trunk. Art knowledge of all kinds had now become dispersed outside the jealous custody of the once secret Freemasonry, and the Cinque-cento artist stood alone on his own merit, without needing the _cachet_ of the Masonic t.i.tle of _Magister_. There were, after this time, Masters in every other art or trade guild, the nomenclature of this most ancient and universal of guilds having been adopted by all other guilds whatsoever; so that even in our own England we find Master Humphrey the iron-worker, or Master Ambrose the cloth-weaver; and in Italy Maestro Giorgio the maker of majolica, and Maestro Pollajuolo the metal-worker; and in Germany the "Little Masters," who, I opine, were a German group of painters, who, like their brethren of the South, seceded from the Masters _par excellence_, i.e. the great Masonic Guild.

FOOTNOTES:

[290] VIR P(RO)BUS. DOCT' PASCA- LIS RI TA, VO CAT: S?VMO c.u.m STUDIO C?ODIDIT H?UC CEREVM:

[291] Marchese Ricci, _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, Vol. I. chap. ii.

p. 467.

[292] _Ibid._

[293] _Ibid._

[294] Boito, _Architettura del Medio Evo. I Cosmati_, p. 124.

[295] ANNO V PONT[^IF] [^DN]I CELESTINI III [^PP] [^GE] GIO CA?DIN LUCE ET DE [^DN]I PP CAMERARIO JUBENE OPUS ISTUD FACT e.

[296] This Giovanni, _Jubente_ or President of the lodge, would probably be the same one under whom the bronze doors of the Baptistery of S. John Lateran were made. By this date he has risen to be Abbot.

[297]

D?NS. Albertus. Venerabilis an agnin e?ps fecit hoc fieri paviment?u pi (pro illo) construendo magister Rainaldus anagnin canonicus, DNI. Honorii III. PP. subdiacon' et capellan'

C obolos aureos erogavit. Magist. Cosmos hoc op fecit.

[298] _Storia della citta di Roma nel medio evo_, translated into Italian by Renato Manzato, vol. vii. p. 744. Venice, 1875.

[299] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. II. chap. x.x.xviii. p. 413.

[300] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. II. chap. x.x.xvii. p. 415.

[301] Probably the son of Cristoforo di Milano, who worked so much in Venice and Udine. He may have been employed by the Medici in their buildings at Pietrasanta.

[302] "Superstans marmorariis laborantibus, lapides marmoreas pro ecclesia et palatio Sancti Marci presidens fabrice palatii apostolici."--Muntz, _Les Arts a la Cour des Papes_, vol. i. p. 606.

It is interesting to note that the head of the _laborerium_ bore the same t.i.tle as in A.D. 1250, when Guido da Como wrote on his pulpit, "Superstans Turrisia.n.u.s."

[303] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. II. chap. x.x.xviii. p. 424.

[304] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. II. chap. x.x.xvi. p. 359.

[305] "Petrus de Martino Mediolanensis ob triumphalem arcis novae arc.u.m solerter structum et multa statuariae artis suo munere hinc di oblata, a divo Alphonso rege in equestrem adscribi ordinem et ab ecclesia hoc sepulcro pro se ac posteris suis donari meruit MCCCCLXX."--Merzario, _Op. cit._ Vol. II. chap. x.x.xvi. p. 375, note 4.

[306] Milanese State Archives. Doc.u.ments of the Dukes Sforza.

EPILOGUE