Monreale. View across Transept. A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY FROM THE TIME OF CONSTANTINE TO THE DAWN OF THE RENAISSANCE BY CHARLES A. CUMMINGS MEMBER OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS WITH NEARLY FIVE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (€be fiitoersibe press, Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY CHARLES A. CUMMINGS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November, igoi CONTENTS OF VOLUME II The seat is a slab, of which the faces are divided into square panels with rosettes, and crowned by a classic cornice. The posts are decorated with a small mosaic, and finished with finials. The sides are each in a single square panel with figure subjects in relief, St. George and the Dragon, and others. The back is high, with a gable bearing an inscription, and crowned by a finial, the remaining surface being panelled with an inter¬ lacing Arabic pattern enclosed by a border. A great antiquity has been claimed for this chair, but it is probably not older than the end of the eleventh century. (Fig. 287.) To the sculpture and mosaic which had, since the earliest Christian centuries, been the constant adornment of the churches of Italy, the Greek artists added, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, another department of art. I have shown the characteristic sculpture which embellished the great doorways of the cathedrals and other churches. In many cases this decoration was completed and supplemented by the decoration of the doors themselves. The art of casting in bronze had been for several centuries in Italy a lost art, so that when, in the second half of the eleventh century, various members of the rich Bronze family of the Pantaleone of Amalfi wished to provide bronze doors?: doors for the cathedrals of Amalfi and Atrani, and later, for other churches, it was found necessary that the work should be done in Constantinople. Between 1066 and 1087 seven churches were thus furnished with bronze doors from the Byzantine capital. In most of these doors the treatment was essentially the same, — large panels either bearing simple inscriptions, or with emblematic devices (a decorated cross the most frequent of these) or with figures in outline generally very simple, all executed in niello; that is to say, with incised lines filled in with silver or some other precious material; the panels being enclosed in a frame or border decorated with more or less richness. In the earliest of these doors, those of the cathedral of Amalfi, f a lam mac ^ e in 1066, there are twenty-four oblong panels, disposed in four vertical rows. Of these panels, twenty bear only a large and rather ugly decorated cross, — the remaining four being THE SOUTHERN ROMANESQUE 73 Fig. 287. Chair at Monte Sant’ Angelo. filled each by a single standing figure in niello, of pretty rude design and execution ; the subjects are Christ the Virgin, St. Peter, and St. Andrew. In the doors of the grotto church of St. Michael at Monte Sant’ Angelo, 1 ten years later than those of Amalfi, the of Monte decoration is much richer and more complete. The number S An s el °; and arrangement of panels are the same as at Amalfi, but, with the exception of a single panel which contains an inscription, all the panels are filled with groups illustrating the legend of the archangel Michael and other angels. Both here and at Amalfi the panels are flat, the decoration being by means of lines incised with the chisel or graver, and filled in for the most part with cement variously colored, the lines of the figures being black, green, or blue, while those of the accessories — as foliage or architecture — are red; the exceptions being in the faces and hands, where silver is used. The bronze is in comparatively thin plates, fixed to a framework of solid oak. The cathedral of Atrani, the monastery of Monte Cassino, and the basilica of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, at Rome, also received doors 1 This grotto was of old a sacred place. Hither came the earliest Normans, as popes, emperors, and private adventurers had come for centuries before, to invoke the aid of the archangel in their enterprises, no matter how nefarious. 74 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY of similar character given by the same family of the Pantaleone, while the cathedral of Salerno, the church of S. Martino at Monte Cassino, were similarly endowed, the former in 1084 by Robert (juiscard, and the latter by the Lombard abbot Desiderius, who was perhaps the most zealous and enlightened patron of Byzantine art. I lie great doors of St. Paolo at Rome were destroyed in the disastrous fire of 1823. 1 The Salerno doors differ from the others I have mentioned, chiefly at Salerno- in bein §’ mu °h more minutely divided. The panels here number fifty-four, of which the greater part, as at Amalfi and Atrani, bear only a decorated cross, the others containing rude figures of Christ and the apostles and saints under arches. As in all the doors up to this time, the work is in niello, much of the deco¬ ration somewhat Arabic in character, with leafage, which, as well as the faces and hands of the figures, is outlined in silver, — though the greater part of the silver has long since disappeared. 2 1 he inspiration of the Eastern art was caught, though not very promptly, by the Italian workmen. The earliest existing example of bronze doors executed in Italy appears to be the doors of the burial chapel of Bohemund at Canosa. (Fig. 288.) Bohemund died in 1111, and the chapel was built immediately after by Albereda his mother, adjacent to the church of S. Sabina, which Bohemund himself had erected some ten or twelve years before. The doors appear to have been executed by Roger of Amalfi, some time before 1120. They show a certain freedom of design which distinguishes them from the earlier examples, though the manner of execution is the same. The two valves are differently treated : that on the right hand being divided into four large square panels, of which the upper and lower have a circular geometrical Arabic pattern ; while the two others enclose groups of figures. The left-hand valve has a single long panel, with three circular ornamental designs ; the plain spaces between being occupied by inscriptions. The decoration is still in niello, and of much elegance, the lines of the faces and hands in silver. 3 A rich border encloses and separates the panels. The doors of the cathedral of Troja are nearly contemporai’y with tT . those of Canosa, having been made between 1119 and 1127 by Oderisius of Benevento. Here the two valves are each divided into fourteen square panels, of which those in the lowest 1 Schnaase, vol. vii., p. 593; Schulz, vol. i., pp. 11G-242, 246-284, pis. 39-85. See, also, Dantier, L’ltalie, i., 215. 2 Seliulz,•'vol ii., 284, pi. 85. 3 Ibid., pis. 10-41. THE SOUTHERN ROMANESQUE row bear simple incised inscriptions, while the rest enclose devices of very various character, single figures of popes and bishops, gro¬ tesque fishes, lions’ heads holding rings, emblematic devices, as heraldic shields crowned by a cardi¬ nal’s hat with cord and tassels, or a bishop’s mitre, the whole enclosed by borders of foliage. The character of all this decoration is much less distinctly Byzantine than is usual. 1 (Fig. 289.) In the twelfth cen¬ tury the ’ at Trani; m e t h o d of decoration by niello gradually gave way, as the subjects became more ambitious, to that of reliefs, cast on the plate. By 1160 the change seems to be com¬ plete. In that year the cathedral of Trani was adorned by a magnificent pair of doors exe¬ cuted by Barisanus of Trani. (Fig. 290.) Of this ar¬ Fig. 288. Doors of Chapel of Bohemund. tist we know no more than the name, which is, however, immortalized not only by these doors of his native town, but by those which he 1 Schulz gives these doors an earlier date, 1098 (vol. i., p. 187). and Mothes, pi. 36. See, also, Schnaase 76 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY executed somewhat later for the cathedral of Ravello and for the northern doorway of Monreale. These three examples differ in size and form: those of Ravello are much smaller than the others, being about seven feet wide and eleven feet high, while those of Trani are nearly ten feet wide and fifteen and a half feet high. But it is very curious that in all three of these widely seiiarated examples, the Panels, which vary greatly in number (thirty-two at Trani, fifty-four at Ravello, forty-four at Monreale), are for the most part identical in subject and design. 1 he subjects are of a prodigious variety, sacred and profane; single sitting figures of saints and apostles, knights on horseback, both Norman and Saracen, warriors with cross-bow, scenes from the chase, scenes from the life of Christ, kneeling angels, are mingled without coherence or system, and with a vigor and rude energy which partake more of the Lombard than of the Byzantine spirit, though a certain refinement of line shows the survival of the old Greek feeling. In the flat bands which enclose the panels, however, and which are themselves divided into small panels, there is a variety of reliefs of floral and figure subjects, of great delicacy of execu¬ tion. In the Ravello doors the vertical border on each side of the opening is a very important feature of the composition, having a breadth equal to that of the panels and being itself divided into panels answering to those within it. The panels of the border are decorated with a design of intersecting circles enriched with foliage. 1 M. Alphonse Dantier, one of the most intelligent and sympathetic of the travellers who have studied the monuments of Southern Italy, has some interesting remarks on these doors at Trani, from which I venture to quote a passage. “ The doors of the cathedral of Trani may be considered to be one of the most curious and most perfect examples of the metal work of the twelfth century. If we examine them carefully we shall hardly know which to admire the most, the complete design or the details ; the ingenuity of the invention or the finish of the execution ; the immense variety of the subjects or the naturalness and expressiveness of the figures. Whether we study the larger figures in the panels or the smaller which enrich the borders, we find a certain life, a certain vivacity, and above all that tone of local color which brings before us, after the lapse of so many centuries, the religious faith and the warlike habits of the a^e of 1 Scliulz, vol. i., p. 116, pis. xx., xxv.; Schnaase, vol. vii., p. 595; Mothes, p. 021; Sala- zaro, pi. 10. THE SOUTHERN ROMANESQUE Fig. 280. Troia. Portion of Doors. 1 L’ltalie , vol. i., p. 211. St. Bernard and of Ccenr de Lion. On the one hand, the figures of the encircling border, the richly decorated knock¬ ers, the finely modelled rosettes which separate the panels, reveal the imagination of the art¬ ist. On the other, the customs and habits of thought of that age live again in these episodes of the chase, these mounted archers discharging their arrows backward as they ride, and not less in these real or fabulous beasts to which the Bi¬ ble, the legends of the church, and the mystic poetry of the time had lent a sort of popular consecration.” 1 (See, also, Fig. 291.) The cathedral of Mon- ieale has, in atMon- addition to the reale; doors of Barisanus, an equally fine example of bronze work from a widely different source, in the doors of the great central entrance of the west front. These are the work of the cele¬ brated Pisan artist, Bo- nanno, the maker of the great doors of the Pisa cathedral, and the archi- 78 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY tect of the campanile. We have hacl occasion to observe the influence of the contemporary Pisan architecture in several of the most impor¬ tant of the churches of South Italy, as Troia and Siponto. But the doors of Monreale furnish the only instance, so far as is known, where the Pisan artist himself is clearly present. At the bottom of the narrow right-hand stile of these doors appears this inscription: ANNO DNI MCLXXXYI IND GOE BONANNUS CIVIS PISANUS ME FECIT . 1 The doors, though set in a pointed arch, are themselves rectangular, measuring about ten feet in width by twenty-five in height, and are divided into forty-four panels, set in four vertical rows, the upper and lower panels, however, occupying the full breadth of the valve. The subjects are executed in bas-relief, and consist, with the excep¬ tion of the two lowest panels, entirely of scenes from the Old and New Testaments, beginning with the Creation of Adam and Eve, and ending, in the two uppermost panels, with the Annunciation to the Virgin and Christ surrounded by angels and cherubim. (Fig. 292.) The comparison of the doors of Bonanno with those of Barisanus is most interesting. Although the two are almost exactly contem¬ porary, yet the work of the Pisan architect is still archaic in style, though by no means rude in execution; the panels are without mouldings, the vertical bands of foliage are rigid, though not conven¬ tionalized, and without much relation with each other. The sculp¬ ture of the panels is in very high relief and spirited in character. The work of Barisanus is more homogeneous ; the foliage, though rigidly conventionalized, is appropriate to its position in the enclos¬ ing bands and carefully subordinated to the figure sculpture of the panels. The figures themselves are single, with only three excep¬ tions, consisting mostly of sitting saints, of admirable design. A standing figure of an archer in the act of shooting, scarcely twelve inches high, in one of the lower panels, is of remarkable vivacity and vigor. 2 In the later works of this sort, even before the end of the cen¬ tury, the refinement of artistic feeling disappears in great ciemente, measure. The doors of San Clemente at Pescara, which Pescara. from 1191, and even those of Benevento, probably of nearly the same date, show a distinct decline in the higher qualities of art. The last-mentioned are nevertheless in some respects among' 1 Professor Springer, in his Mittelaltliche Kunst in Palermo , denies in the face of this- inscription that these doors are the work of Bonanno, and maintains that they are by a Sicilian artist. 2 Gravina, pi. xii.; Uehli, pi. xlvii. THE SOUTHERN ROMANESQUE 79 tlie most magnificent of all the doors of the period, as they are certainly the lar¬ gest. They are more minute¬ ly panelled than any others except those of San Cle¬ mente, where the number of panels is the same, — no less than seventy-two, — enclos¬ ing groups of figures in high relief. The subjects are of various character, those of the five upper rows, forty in all, being from the life of Christ, the rest mostly figures of local bishops. The designs show much vi¬ vacity and invention, but both the figures and the draperies have lost the touch of Greek simplicity and grace which is percep¬ tible through all the rude¬ ness of the earlier work. It is like a return to the forms of the Lombard sculpture of the Northern churches. 1 With the Norman work 1 Serradifalco remarks, citing- D’Ag-incourt, upon the evidence of Byzantine influence in these doors, that in comparing- them with those of St. Paul at Rome and with those of Pisa, made in Constantinople, as drawn by Ciampini (for the doors of Pisa as well as those of St. Paul were destroyed by fire), it is mani¬ fest that all three were closely re¬ lated in subject and composition. Serradifalco, Del Duomo di Mon¬ reale , pp. 9, 10, pi. iv. See, also, Hittorff, Architecture moderne de la Sidle, p. 57, pi. 06. Fig'. 290. Trani. Half of Central Doors. 80 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY Fig-. 291. Monreale. Portion of Doors of Barisanus. of the eleventh and twelfth centuries the development of architecture in the Southern provinces of Italy comes to an end. In the great Gothic movement of Northern Italy, in the greater Renaissance movement which followed it, and which filled the streets of Florence and Rome and Venice with the masterpieces of modern architecture, the South had no part. The intense local patriotism of the Northern cities, the prodigious commerce, the rapid increase in wealth, and the immense stimulus to letters and the arts which for centuries made THE SOUTHERN ROMANESQUE 81 Italy the undisputed leader of the civilization of the world, had no parallel in the South. For a brief period, indeed, this brilliant flowering of the genius of Italy was anticipated in the neighboring island of Sicily, under the extraordinary mixture of races which fol¬ lowed the Norman conquest. I shall attempt in the next chapter to trace briefly the history of this remarkable phenomenon. Fig. 292. Monreale. Portion of Doors of Bonanno. CHAPTER VI SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE Our knowledge of the mediaeval architecture of Sicily begins, singularly enough, with the Norman occupation in the eleventh cen¬ tury. When we consider the close and continuous connection, both political and commercial, which was maintained for nearly or quite four hundred years between this great island and the Eastern Empire, and the Saracen occupation which followed the decay of that empire, and which endured for more than two hundred years, it is inexpli¬ cable that so little, so nearly nothing in fact, should remain of the monuments of those six centuries. Of the earlier period, we can only conjecture that in the savage and long-continued wars by which the Saracens finally overthrew the Byzantine domination, the Byzan¬ tine monuments, probably of somewhat unsubstantial character, were sacrificed to the religious zeal of the conquerors. Yet in the destroy¬ ing raids of the Saracens upon the southern provinces of the penin¬ sula, which were kept up with short intervals all through the two centuries of their occupation of Sicily, great numbers of the ancient Lombard monuments of those regions were spared, and have, as we have seen, endured to our own day. In the effort to put a stop to these destructive attacks of the Saracens, various expeditions were undertaken by the mixed armies of Southern Italy during the tenth and eleventh centuries for the invasion of Sicily, and the Normans were represented more or less largely in these armies very soon after their first appearance in Italy. But it was not until the Norman power had been firmly established in South Italy that these expeditions met with any considerable success. It was reserved for Roger, the brother of Robert Guiscard, to undertake and to carry through the work of conquest and to inaugurate the most brilliant period in the history of Sicily. Under him the rule of the Saracens in that island was brought in 1090, after thirty years of war, to a definite and permanent end. 1 The popula- 1 It was in assisting the operations of Roger against Palermo, the Saracen capital, that the Pisan fleet distinguished itself. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 83 tion he found there was a singularly mixed population composed of Greeks, Lombards, Arabs, and Jews, who had enjoyed under the Saracen rule an extraordinary measure of personal liberty and inde¬ pendence, each race retaining its own language and to a great extent its own civil and religious customs. It is related that when Roger took possession of Palermo, he found a Greek archbishop in the free exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, and the Christian churches and monasteries as undisturbed as in Italy. The two official lan¬ guages in use were Greek and Arabic. This tolerance was imitated by the Norman conqueror. The various races, to which now still another was added, 1 retained practically unimpaired their own tradi¬ tions and institutions and ways of life. The Greeks were still allowed to adhere to the code of Justinian, the Lombards to that of Rotharis ; the Saracens still took their official oaths on the Koran, and the Normans brought in the Frankish laws and customs. Even the Jews were allowed to worship freely in their own synagogues and to hold land, paying, however, the same tribute to the Norman rulers which they had paid to the Saracens. Malaterra relates that a Mussulman named Bencimen was made governor of Catania. Count Roger proved himself to be made of very different stuff from most of the rough fighters who had overrun Italy from various directions for six hundred years. 2 He was not content with conquer¬ ing or possessing the regions he had invaded, but set himself to work 1 It is estimated that the Normans never formed more than one per cent, of the popu¬ lation of Sicily, hut they were the elite, composed almost wholly of barons and feuda¬ tories, a true feudal aristocracy. It is interesting - to remember that at this period the Norman conquest of England was still fresh, and that the intercourse between England and Sicily was frequent and intimate. Many Englishmen were to be found in the larger towns of Sicily, some holding - important offices. 2 What the Monk of Telesia (Alexander Telesinus), a contemporary chronicler, says of Roger, the king, seems to apply with equal truth to his father: “He loved justice and avenged crime ; he abhorred lying, did all by rule, and never promised what he did not mean to perform. He was energetic, but not rash, guarded in language, and self- controlled in action. He never persecuted his private enemies. Justice and peace were universally observed throughout his dominions.” Before leaving Italy to undertake the conquest of Sicily, he had a prolonged conference with Pope Nicholas II., who encour¬ aged him in his great enterprise, and said to him: “ When, victorious over thine enemies, thou shalt have subdued the island, show thyself, whatever may be thy power, obedient to God. Make of thy spoils of victory three portions, — the first for building churches and hospitals, the second for the soldiers who have fought thy battles, the third for thy¬ self. When thou shalt have done these things, I, sovereign Pontiff, will bless thee, and the Lord will be with thee in all thy ways.” Roger was so far true to the Pope’s injunc¬ tions as to bestow on the church one third of the lands and properties confiscated, and thus were laid the foundations of the great estates rapidly accumulated by the churches and monasteries of Sicily. 84 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY to pacify and develop. He created before liis death the beginning of a civilization which had at this period no equal in Europe. lie had, to be sure, as a foundation, the Arab fineness and intelligence, solidified by two hundred years of continuous possession and enlight¬ ened administration over a people consisting not only of Arabs, but also of Greeks and Jews. 1 Roger died in 1101, and was succeeded by his son Roger, the first king, who continued for fifty years the noble work which his father had commenced. Under him the bitter hostility of the mixed population of Sicily towards the new rulers was calmed, and an interval of peace and tranquillity followed, during which literature and the arts were protected and encouraged. As early as 1071, during his prolonged siege of Palermo, Robert Guiscard had built a small church outside the walls of that city, to which was attached, according to the Christian custom of the time, a hospital for lepers. The hospital gave the name to the church, which was called San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi. (Tig- 298.) This was a basilica, with a short nave and aisles separated by arcades of four round arches each, on octagonal piers, and opening into a fully developed transept, not projecting beyond the aisle walls, but rising as high as the nave, and divided by a single broad arch in the line of each of the nave arcades into three unequal bays, of which the central one is covered by a dome. Three apses open from the east sides of the bays, the central apse preceded by a shallow rectangular bay. The doors and windows are covered by arches, round outside, pointed within. The church has been entirely rebuilt on the inte¬ rior. In its present form the nave is covered by a barrel vault, the aisles by groins, but not divided into bays. The old apses and the Saracenic dome at the crossing are preserved. About the same time Robert’s brother, Count Roger, by whom the conquest of Sicily was finally completed, was building the cathe¬ dral of Troina, a much larger church than San Giovanni, and very different in disposition. The plan here is a Latin cross, with nave and aisles of nearly equal width, separated by arcades of five arches with square piers, the transept divided into three equal square bays, the ends projecting slightly, the crossing covered by an octagonal dome, which takes externally the form of a square tower, and on the east end three square bays in the line of naves and aisles, but no apse. The exterior is very rude and primitive. 1 Palermo had, at the time of the Norman conquest, a population of about three hun¬ dred thousand. Salazaro, Studi sui monumenti d' Italia meridionale dalV iv. all' xHi. secolo, ii. 354. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 85 In these early churches the influence of the native races of the island is scarcely perceptible, either in general disposition or in details or decoration. Of the last, indeed, there can scarcely be said to be any. After the conquest was complete a half century inter¬ vened, during which we may suppose the practical affairs incident to the consolidation of a new dynasty and the pacification of a new kingdom prevented the sovereign from giving much thought to the building of churches. He did apparently make some progress with the building, or perhaps the restoration, of a royal palace or castle in Palermo, which, however, he left his successor to finish ; and that edifice has undergone such radical rebuilding in later years — not¬ ably by the princes of the sixteenth century — that little of the original palace of King Roger can he recognized beyond a single one of the four square angle towers which made its principal exterior features. (Fig- 316.) But when the second Roger, the first king, — who, although he succeeded to the kingly authority soon after his father’s death in 1101, was not crowned until 1130, —had established himself firmly on the throne, churches began to rise all over the island. Those which are of most interest to us, as illustrating most clearly this brilliant episode of European history and the extraordinary mingling of nationalities, which is one of its chief char¬ acteristics, are nearly all in or near the capi¬ tal city of Palermo. They group themselves in two distinct divisions according as their founders followed the traditions of the conti¬ nental architecture to which they had become accustomed or were governed by those of the native races which formed the greater part of their population. Several of the earlier churches of this period were transcripts, more or less modified, of the smaller monuments of the Eastern towns, — a Greek cross inscribed in a square, divided into square bays, with a central dome, sometimes repeated in the bays adjacent to the centre, and with three apses on the eastern side. Such was the interesting church erected about 1129 by George of Antioch, the High Admiral of King Roger, who enjoyed the title of First Noble of Sicily. 1 The church was called 1 In the archives of the church the act of endowment, written partly in Greek and partly in Arabic, is still preserved, by which the admiral endows the church with certain Fig - . 293. Palermo. S. Giov. dei Lebbrosi. 86 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY Santa Maria del Ammiraglio, but is more commonly known as La Martorana, from a family of later benefactors. It lias been enlarged both on the east and on the west, but the original construction is still easily distinguishable. Its plan, like that of the Eastern churches with which its founder was familiar, is a square of about thirty-six feet, with four columns forming an inner square of some fifteen feet, from which pointed arches spring across the four sides of the square, and also to the exterior walls. The interior is thus divided into nine bays, of which that in the centre is covered by a high dome raised on an octagonal drum with pointed windows, the transition from the square to the octagon being made by round arched squinclies. The four oblong bays, adjacent to the central bay, are covered by pointed barrel vaults, and form the four arms of the cross, the four square bays at the angles being lower and covered by groined vaulting. The three eastern bays terminate in apses, at the openings of which are set small columns of porphyry and verd- antique, the central apse being preceded by a rectangular tribune. The walls and vaults are covered to a considerable extent with mosaics, of which many are doubtless contemporary with the church, while others are a century more recent. Of the older mosaics, one, probably the earliest Norman mosaic in Sicily, shows the noble founder prostrate at the feet of the Virgin, who exhibits to Christ, looking down out of an opening at the top, a scroll bearing these words, “ Oh Son of God, protect ever from all harm George the first of princes, who has raised this temple to me from the foundations.” 1 The beautiful mosaic pavement of the church still remains, and defines the limits of the original floor. 2 The remarkable tower of the Martorana was probably of older date than the church, and a portion of some other edifice now de¬ stroyed. It is separated from the original church of the admiral by a distance of some fifty feet, the intervening' space being now covered by the Renaissance addition, — two or three times as large as the original church, — which was made in the middle of the fifteenth lands, and with ten serfs or villani attached thereto, whose names are given. (G. Knight, The Normans in Sicily, p. 260, note.) It is difficult in these prosaic days to appreciate duly the splendor of this exalted personage. In an epitaph quoted by Boito he is styled “ the radiant morning star, the marvel of the world, a friendly light to the Christians, a devouring flame to the barbarians,” etc., etc. 1 In another inscription, which records the consecration of the church in 1143, the admiral excuses himself to the Virgin that the temple he has dedicated to her is so small. Mothes, p. 544. 2 See Dehli and Chamberlin, Norman Monuments of Palermo , pi. 25, et seq. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 87 Fig. 294. Palermo. La Martorana. century. (Fig. 294.) The tower is in four well-marked stages, of which the first two are plain and square, while the upper two are greatly enriched by the addition of round angle turrets. The tower was originally crowned by a hemispherical dome, which has now dis¬ appeared. With the exception of the open pointed arches of the first stage, all the openings of the tower are of two lights, divided by marble shafts, and covered by pointed bearing arches. The orna¬ ment, which is profuse, is of a singular character, hardly to be called distinctively Saracenic, yet doubtless due to Saracenic influence, as is also the general use of the pointed arch. Very near the Martorana is the nearly contemporary, perhaps slightly later, church of S. Cataldo, with much the same general characteristics. The principle of the Greek cross, here, as in the Martorana, governs the disposition, although the plan is not a square, but a rectangle measuring about twenty-five by thirty-three feet within the walls. The division into nine bays is the same as in the Martorana, but the side bays are narrower. The three bays of the nave are all covered by domes. The transition from the square to 88 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY the circle is made by two stages, an octa- o'on intervening 1 be- tween the lower and upper plans. The drum is pierced by eight simple pointed windows, and four small windows, round- arched, are set at the base of the dome it¬ self. The domes, as in all the Eastern ex¬ amples, and like all their fellows in Sicily, are simple hemi¬ spheres without l’lbs Fig-. 295. Palermo. S. Cataldo. and without lantern. The side bays are all covered by domed groined vaults. The divi¬ sion of the interior into bays is by means of four tall, slender, serpentine columns with freely designed Corinthian capitals, which are joined with each other and with the four walls of the church by pointed arches of the simplest character. On the east end the middle bay has a semicircular apse, covered by a spherical vault, and the side bays have each an answering niche in the thickness of the east wall. (Figs. 295, 296.) In S. Giovanni degli Eremiti, finished, like the admiral’s church, in 1132, the plan is entirely different from those of the other Palermo churches of which I have spoken, being T-shaped, without aisles, measuring about sixteen by fifty feet within the walls. (Fig. 297.) There is nothing Saracenic about the plan of this little church. The nave consists of two square bays, and opens into a square tribune, on the east side of which is a flat niche in the thickness of the straight wall. The transept arms, as well as the tribune and the two bays of the nave, were originally covered by domes, of the character of those we have seen in the two last-mentioned churches, but the domes of the nave were much larger than the others. The dividing arches are partly round and partly pointed. The exterior is thoroughly Oriental in aspect. The walls are plain without cnrnice, and with few openings or other features, and the domes repose upon the flat roof without the intervention of any SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 89 preparatory drum. The tower, which rises over the northern arm of the transept, has a belfry stage with a broad pointed arched opening- in each face, with three orders of jambs and archivolts, and is surmounted by a plain hemispherical dome. Some of the windows of the church are closed by plates of marble perforated with an Arabic pattern. 1 (Tig. 298.) The' church has a beautiful but decaying cloister, with arcades of small pointed arches on coupled twisted columns. (Fig. 299.) At Malvagna, near Randazzo, is a monument of which the age is not accurately known, but which cannot be far from contemporary with those I have cited. This is a little Greek chapel which is chiefly interesting as being one of the extremely rare examples in Italy or Sicily of genuine Byzantine arrangement and construction. Its plan (Fig. 800) is a square of no more than eighteen feet inside the walls, covered by a low dome, the transition made by squinches in the angles. From three sides of the square open semicircular apses, covered by semi-domes which abut against and but¬ tress the central dome. The arrangement re¬ peats precisely, upon a small scale, but more completely, that of S. Sofia at Con¬ stantinople. 2 In all these in¬ stances the Norman rulers turned their backs on the archi¬ tectural traditions, not only of their own country, but of that country in which their career of con¬ quest had begun, and Fig. 296. Palermo. Interior of S. Cataldo. 1 Serradifalco, Bel Duorno cli Monreale, e di altre ehiese Siculo-Normanne; Gaily Knight; Hittorff ; Mothes. p. 542. 2 G. Kniglit, The Normans in Sicily, p. 178. 90 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY allowed their monuments to be built in the style and with the deo¬ ration familiar to tlie various elements of the people they bad cone to govern. The use of the pointed arch was here first brought to tie knowledge of the new rulers, and became at once general with then. But it was the pointed arch of the Saracens, broad, high-stilted, and without mouldings, and had no relation whatever to the use of tie pointed arch in the Gothic architecture of the north of Europe, which was, even then, beginning to be introduced in the monastic architec¬ ture of Italy as well. Nowhere in Sicily, I believe, is there any instance, dating from the period we are now considering, of an interior which has any hint of a Gothic system. The use of the intersecting vault is confined entirely to the small bays of the aisles or porches, while the naves, where not covered by the Oriental dome, or tie equally Oriental stalactite ceiling, are invariably covered by an open timber roof. 1 But at the same time and in the same capital where these monu¬ ments were building, the Norman king was also building in tie royal palace of his predecessor a chapel whose general plan was more in harmony with the traditions of Italy, and which furnished the type of most of the later churches of the Normans. The Cappella Palatina, as it is now commonly called, has suffered little from the restorations which have transformed so large a pro¬ portion of the ancient churches, and is as we see it to-day in perfect preservation, and substantially the chapel which King Roger consecrated in 1140. It is one of the most interesting and valuable monu¬ ments of the splendid architecture of the Norman kings. The chapel is entered from an arcaded gallery surrounding the court on the second story of the palace. Its plan (Fig. 301) is a rectangle about forty-one feet by eighty-eight, divided into nave and Fi ■ ■ * 297. Palermo. S. Giovanni degli Eremiti. 1 A possible exception to this statement is to be found in the little chapel near the Zisa. transformed from a mosque by the early Norman princes under the name of S. Anna alia Zisa. It is a rectangle only fifteen and a half by thirty-seven feet, of which the eastern half is covered by a high dome like some of those mentioned above, and the western half by a groined vault. Hittorff, p. 26. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 91 Fig\ 298. Palermo. S. Giovanni degli Eremiti. aisles, with a transept as high as the nave, but with no projection beyond the aisle walls, and from which open three apses in the axes of nave and aisles ; the crossing covered by a high dome. In its general disposition, then, the chapel does not materially differ from the familiar type of the Romanesque church as seen both in the north and the south of Italy. It is only in the treatment of its details, in the use of the pointed arch, and in its sumptuous decoration, that we feel the influence of the mixed Orientalism which colored all the art of Sicily at this period. The nave and aisles are separated by arcades of five broad and highly stilted pointed arches, supported by columns alternately of polished granite and marble, with Corinthian capitals. The height of the arch is very nearly as great as that of the column, and the stilt of it is nearly or quite one-half its height. Above the arcade is a rather low clerestory, pierced with single small pointed windows, one over each arch. A high pointed triumphal arch similar in form to those of the nave arches, but even higher in proportion to its supports, opens between nave and transept, and a similar arch in the line of each nave arcade divides the transept into three unequal bays, of which the middle one is covered by a dome of Byzantine form, whose relation to its supports is peculiar. These supports, 92 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY which consist of four columns of unequal diameter, the largest scarcely more than eighteen inches, form in plan not a square, but a rectangle, of which the length in the direction of the nave is greater than its breadth by something more than four feet, the diameter of the dome being about eighteen feet, equal to the shorter sides of the rectangle. The dome thus falls at two points of its periphery some two feet inside of the arches upon which it depends for support. The small scale of the building makes it possible to meet the diffi¬ culty of construction in the simplest manner by corbelling forward the wall over the two smaller arches. In form the dome resembles that of many of the smaller Byzantine churches, with a circular wall or drum carried up so as to enclose the lower half of it, with only the upper flat segment showing above the cornice, and a ring of small windows at its base. The side bays of the transept are very long and narrow, having only the breadth of the aisles, and are covered by high-stilted, slightly pointed barrel vaults, their axes in a line with the aisles. The aisles themselves are covered by sloping wood ceilings following the line of the roof, and the nave has a coved wooden ceiling of the richest Moorish character, similar in design to many of those in Granada and Seville, and decorated in the most Fig. 299. Palermo. Cloisters of the Eremiti. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 93 Fig’. 300. Greek Chapel at Malvagna. lavish manner with gold and color, the borders of the panels hearing Arabic inscriptions in the Cufic character. The interior surfaces, with the exception of the nave ceiling, are everywhere flat; the arches are without mouldings, the clerestory and apses without belt or cornice. But these flat surfaces are decorated throughout the church with the utmost splendor. The walls are lined to the height of fourteen feet with plates of marble and porphyry, in panels enclosed within borders of beautiful mosaic in geometrical patterns, with a double frieze above. (Fig. 302.) Above this, the walls, arches, domes, and vaults, even to the soffits of the arches, are covered with gold mosaics of the greatest variety and beauty, the figures having much expressiveness and dignity, without the rigid fonnality of most of the Byzantine mosaics. Some of these mosaics are doubtless contemporary with the chapel, but the greater part were added during the reign of William I., the son of Roger, before the end of the century. The pavement of the whole chapel is of mosaic, of admirable design and decora¬ tion ; and the organ gallery is one of the most exquisite exam¬ ples of geometrical mosaic in Europe. It may perhaps be more properly called a delicate inlay, being composed of porphyry, serpen¬ tine, and white and red marbles, with gold glass, in most graceful designs. In this lovely chapel the Norman architecture of Sicily came to its full flowering. In later monuments we shall find equal magnificence 94 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY and more complete develop¬ ment of plan and disposition, but nowhere a more typical or a more beautiful expres¬ sion of the peculiar genius of the place and time. The Cappella Palatina may be said to bear much the same relation to the cathedrals of Palermo and Monreale which the Sainte Cbapelle of Paris bears to the later Gothic of France. 1 The cathedrals of Messina and Cefalu are both nearly contemporary with the Cap¬ pella Palatina, both having been founded by King Roger not far from the year'1130. 2 Of the former a very small portion, if any, retains its original architecture, though the plan is probably substan¬ tially unchanged. It is a long three-aisled basilica of which the high transept and the three deep apses which open from it in the line of nave and aisles have the charac¬ teristic disposition of the Fig. 301. Palermo. Cappella Palatina. "" Norman Sicilian cathe¬ drals. A reminder of the Saracen influence still remains in the slightly horseshoe form of the nave arches. Of the great wealth of mosaic decoration which enriched the original church, the greater part was destroyed by a disastrous conflagration early in the thir¬ teenth century, but the mosaics of the three apses were preserved. 1 Hittorff, p. 43, pis. 44-47; Serradifalco, pis. 15-17; Mothes, p. 540. 2 Gaily Knight says the cathedral of Messina was founded by Count Roger in 1098, and left unfinished until 1130, when King Roger completed it. Normans in Sicily, pp. 116-119. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 95 The cathedral of Cefalu is one of the many mediaeval churches whose origin is credited by tradition to the pious gratitude of their founders. King Roger, so the story runs, returning in 1131 from an expedition to the Italian coast, was overtaken by a tempest in which he was in imminent peril of shipwreck; whereupon he made a vow to build, if he got safe to shore, a church to the glory of Christ Fig-. 302. Palermo. Cappella Palatina. 96 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY and the apostles. He landed at Cefalii, and began at once the building of the cathedral. In size it is not a church of the first class, its total length being about 217 feet, as compared with 300 feet at Messina, and 260 at Monreale. But it is a church of great interest and value as illustrating the mingling of the various ele¬ ments of constructive and decorative taste which existed side by side in this singular community, and which the genius of the time was able to combine into absolute harmony. The church is entered through an open vaulted western porch of three bays, between two square angle towers. The nave and aisles are separated by arcades of seven slightly pointed, high-stilted arches, on columns of polished red granite, with white marble bases, and capitals of various design, many of which are from older buildings. The clerestory has a single pointed window over each arch. The arcades terminate in strong square piers, between which a high pointed triumphal arch opens into the transept. In the angles of these piers, as also in those of the answering piers on the aisle walls, are set small detached angle columns, those under the triumphal arch being repeated by superposed columns ; and the large piers have also on two sides larger columns, one of which takes the spring of the last of the nave arches, and the other that of the central member of the triumphal arch. The tran¬ sept, very narrow and high, projects nearly a half of its breadth beyond the aisle walls, and is divided into three square bays by a single narrow and very lofty pointed arch in the line of each of the nave arcades, the central bay being covered by a dome which is now invisible from the interior, being concealed by a continuous wooden ceiling covering the whole transept. From the east wall of the tran¬ sept open three very deep tribunes, the middle one in two square bays, covered by groined vaults, and each terminating in an apse. In the transept ends, the wall has on three sides of the bay, just under the vault, an open arcaded gallery of small depth, in the thickness of the wall, with small round arches on columns, — a Lom- baixl feature of which this is perhaps the only example in Sicily. The central apse and one of the two groined bays of the central tribune are still covered — walls and roof — with the original gold mosaics. All the others have disappeared. Those which remain consist entirely of single standing figures of saints and apostles. The great half-length figure of Christ on the vault of the central apse dominates the whole interior. Below on the wall of the apse and the adjacent bay are three ranges of figures, over a very high SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 97 Fig-. 303. Cefalu. Interior of Cathedral. wainscoting’, now of rich parti-colored marbles. The greater por¬ tion of the interior of the church has been cruelly modernized, but this cannot destroy the striking effect of the extraordinary lofty choir, with its high groined vault, opening from the flat east wall of the transept, by the high and narrow pointed arch. There is nothing- like it south of the Alps ; and even in the North the effect of the similar choir is wholly different, because the vault and its supports continue, in appearance, those of the nave, while here the choir opens from the flat wall, the effect being greatly enhanced by the contrast with the comparatively low and narrow arches which con¬ nect the side tribunes with the transept. (Fig. 303.) * 98 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY The exterior of this church is scarcely less interesting than the interior. The west front is flanked by the square angle towers of the Norman cathedrals of France, but here they are brought forward from the facade, and enclose a great open arcaded porch, with three arches, the middle one round, the sides pointed. Above the porch are two stages of blind arcades, the lower of intersecting pointed arches, as at Amalfi, interrupted in the centre by a broad pointed window whose lack of coherence with the arcade suggests that it may have been a later addition. The upper stage has round arches. In both stages the arches rest on engaged columns, and are deco¬ rated with the billet ornament of the Normans. There is no gable. The towers are of somewhat rude design, with three stages of simple pointed windows, coupled in the upper stage under a pointed bear¬ ing-arch. There is a smaller square belfry stage, crowned with a pyramidal spire. (Fig. 304.) The blind interlacing arcade of the facade is repeated on the flanks of the central tribune, and on the transept ends, where the walls are divided into bays by flat pilaster strips, as in the Lombard churches of the north of Italy. It is also repeated on the upper portion of the long east wall of the transept, and on the side apses. In the latter case the arcade is of the whole height of the wall, the arches springing from tall engaged coupled columns, with well- developed foliage capitals. Over this arcade the eaves are enriched by an arched corbel-table, — another reminder of the Lombard churches. The central apse, which is double the height of the side apses, has also its blind arcade, which is peculiarly treated. The slender coupled columns stand on elongated pedestals, which are themselves raised on a high stylobate, and their capitals are joined by two small pointed arches instead of a single arch. The pointed dome, once enclosed in a square lantern, is now exposed, and adds a Byzantine effect to this remarkable exterior. A large and fine cloister, now much ruined, adjoins the church on the north, with pointed arches springing from coupled columns with large and variously designed capitals. At the angles the columns are in groups of four. 1 An interval of near fifty years seems to have elapsed between the building of the group of churches above described, and the two great cathedrals which form almost the only additional examples of the splendor of the Norman church architecture in Sicily. The great King Roger, after ruling Sicily with singular wisdom 1 Salazaro, pp. 62-64 ; Serradifalco, pis. 18-22; Mothes, p. 535; G. Knight. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 99 and ability for half a century, died in 1154, and was succeeded first by his son, Wil¬ liam the Bad, and in 1168 by his grandson, William the Good, then still in his minor¬ ity. Under the last king the two cathe¬ drals of Palermo and Monreale were built. Palermo had a cathe¬ dral, begun in 1109, in the early days of the second Roger, on the ruins of a mosque which the Saracens had built. A year or two after the second William came to the throne an English prelate, Walter of the Mill, 1 became archbishop of Palermo, and his first work seems to have been the rebuilding of the cathedral. The western portion was, we are told, entirely rebuilt ; the eastern, less completely. The church, when finished in 1185, though perhaps less pure and restrained in form than the Cappella Palatina, was doubtless one of the most beautiful in Sicily, while in splendor of decoration it was unsurpassed. But a tasteless modernization at the lowest and darkest period of the eighteenth century has transformed the interior quite beyond recognition, leaving’ little or nothing but the ground plan, and not all of that, a new east end having been built within the old, lessening the length of the choir. The plan is a Latin cross, and very similar in its general disposition to that of Cefalu, but without the western porch and towers. (Fig. 305.) The three tribunes, which at Cefalu are quite disconnected from each other, or connected only by a small arched opening in each dividing wall, are at Palermo joined by a broad arch, which makes the rectangular portions of them into a sort of second transept, answering somewhat to the bema of some early basilicas. The nave 1 Whose name appears in history amusingly Italianized as Offamilio. Fig. 304. Cefalu. Facade of Cathedral. 100 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY arcades were of pointed arches carried on groups of four slender columns set in a square, and. joined by their bases and abaci into a singularly beautiful pier ; and above the arcade the clerestory was pierced by three- light pointed windows divided by columnar mullions. The ceiling was of wood, deco¬ rated with gold and color, and the whole interior was magnificently enriched with precious marbles and mosaics. All this splendor remained practically untouched until the end of the eighteenth century, when the cruel hand of the “ Restorer ” was laid upon the church and its beauty vanished “ as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.” 1 The exterior has also suffered greatly from successive changes, mostly earlier than the transformation of the interior under Fuga, though the Renaissance dome added by him is the most incongruous of all the additions which have been made. The west front is, in its present condi¬ tion, a singular but interesting composition of which some features may belong to the church of the twelfth century, but the greater portion of which appears to have been governed by two majestic pointed arches which are thrown i Even the dry and prosaic Mothes grows indignant over this atrocious spoliation. His account is so coni pi etc an exposition of the treatment to which countless beautiful churches of the Middle Ages have been subjected under the name of restoration, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even nearer to our own day, that I ventmrc to translate it. “ In 1781-1801 the interior was completely transformed, or rather deformed by Feirdi- nando Fuga, [the royal architect] in spite of the strenuous remonstrance of the Palermi tan architects under the lead of G. V. Marvuglia, well known for his advocacy of the classsic stvle. Fuga walled up the groups of nave columns with massive piers, substituted romnd for pointed arches in the arcades, opened the aisles into fourteen lateral chapels, set a row of domes over each aisle, thus hiding on the exterior the clerestory windows, covered the crossing with a clumsy Barock dome, destroyed the apse decoration of Gagini, land replaced the sumptuous wood ceiling by a whitewashed vault. Of the marble, porphjyry, lapis lazuli, jasper, mosaics, statues, monuments, — some were sold, others disappeared without leaving a trace. His impious hand was laid also on the exterior of the chuirch, but the breaking out of war fortunately interfered with the completion of the Erostnatic work.” P. 558. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 101 from it across the street on which it faces, to the tower of the arch¬ bishop s palace, and which divide the facade into three compart¬ ments. The two slender towers which rise from the angles are very like those of the east end. The central door and the light windows with pointed bearing arches have columns whose shafts are decorated with the Norman chevron, while the crowning feature of the fa9ade is an intersecting arcade running from tower to tower, in which, how¬ ever, the arches are round instead of pointed, as in nearly all the other examples in Sicily, and are pierced with windows. On the south flank, which is the principal front of the church, many changes have been made. The three-arched open porch at the main door¬ way, with its broad high-stilted pointed arches supported on slender columns, exhibits some of the forms of the Saracenic arcades, and its columns themselves are old, one bearing an Arabic inscription. But the flanking towers and the low gable are anything but Saracenic, and the whole construction is doubtless three hundred years later than the church. The lower walls of the flank are the work of Fuga, but the high clerestory retains much of the beauty of form and material of the early construction; the wall being crossed by bands of various colored marbles, and crowned by a richly decorated frieze with an arched corbel-table, and a battlement which recalls that of the ducal palace at Venice. In the square transept end, with its single window in the middle of a pointed blind arcade, as in all the exterior to the eastward of it, there is less evidence of the re¬ storer’s hand, and the whole of the eastern end shows presumably the original architecture. The three apses are surrounded by a blind Fig. 306. Palermo. Cathedral. 102 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY interlacing arcade, not on columns as at Cefalu, but with a broad, flat, decorated border carried all around each arch. Within tie sharp pointed arches are lower and blunter blind arches, without openings, but decorated with bands of marble inlay of great delicacy and beauty. Above the arcade is a most elaborate cornice, composed of bands of mosaic and a pointed arched corbel-table, the whole crowned by a singular undulating battlement. This terminal orm- ment is repeated on the long rear wall of the tribunes, which rises without openings, high above the apses, above even the transept, aid is decorated by a series of disconnected blind arches with borders )f mosaic. The east end is flanked by two tall and slender square towers, of which the lower portion continues the decoration of the apses, while the upper portion, divided into stages with coupled openings under bearing arches, much in the Lombard manner, ap¬ pears to be of later date. 1 (Fig. 307.) Simultaneously with the building of the cathedral the English prelate was carrying on a smaller work, which is, however, interesting as showing the prevalence of the characteristic Saracenic features in the Norman churches. This was the small church of S. Spirito, a mile or so outside the walls of Palermo, founded by Archbishop Walter in 1173, and known as “la Chiesa dei Vespri,” the frightful massacres of the “ Sicilian Vespers ” having begun within its walls in 1182. (Fig. 308.) The nave arcades have a peculiar character, the plain pointed arches springing from low, stout columns without other capital than a heavy slab or abacus, and resting on bases of very rude and elementary form. The choir occupies the eastern half of the church, and is divided from the western half by strong square piers in the line of the nave arcades, which carry three transverse arches across the nave and aisles. The arcades continue throughout the whole length, but the arches of the choir rest on plain square piers without capital or base. The choir has a wooden roof, of which the ridge runs north and south. The exterior shows on the north flank of the aisle and the transept end a pointed blind arcade, with a window in every other arch ; and an inlay of black and yel¬ low marbles in the spandrils and in the frieze of the transept. On the east end an intersecting arcade of black marble runs around all the apses. (Fig. 309.) 1 In a side chapel of the cathedral are four sarcophagi of porphyry which contain the ashes of King Roger and members of his family. That of King Roger is borne on the shoulders of kneeling Saracens. Two of the sarcophagi were brought from the cathe¬ dral at Cefalu, where the great king had prepared them for his own burial. Gaily Knight, p. 251. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 103 Fig-. 307. Palermo. East End of Cathedral. A monastery was connected with this, as with nearly all the Sicilian churches, which was occupied by the Cistercians until the fourteenth century. 1 We come now to the latest and most splendid of all the monu¬ ments of the Norman rule in Sicily, the cathedral of Monreale. It was founded in 1176 by the young king William the Good, then in his twenty-second year, who had already, five years before, begun the cathedral of Palermo. The act of foundation is still preserved, in which the founder sets forth that “ before and above all the splendor and all the grace with which the King of kings has been pleased to invest his reign, he rejoices that it has been given him to erect an aula and found a basilica to the Supreme King, who has put the sceptre into his hand and protected his realm from all calamity.” 2 The church was rapidly built, 3 and in 1182 Pope Lucius III. made 1 Mothes, p. 560. 2 Ibid., p. 562. 3 Some caution must be exercised here, as in many other instances, in accepting the contemporary record as to the time occupied in building. Boito points out the extreme 104 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY it the seat of an archbishopric, and congratulated William on having built in so short a time “ so wonderful a temple, so richly endowed, and so nobly ornamented with gold and silver and costly fabrics, with a monastery so worthily peopled with monks, and the whole place so well furnished with build¬ ings and all appurtenances that no king from the earliest days has ever before accomplished so great a work.” The church was worthy of all the praise it received, and though it has shared to a certain extent the fate of many of the noblest works of the Mid¬ dle Ages, and has suffered from decay, from fire, from restoration, still it may be said to present to-day in most essen¬ tial respects the aspect which it wore at the end of the twelfth century. The plan (Fig. 310) is very similar to that of the cathedrals of Palermo and Cefalu, but the superiority of the eastern portion of the church over the nave and aisles is even more pro¬ nounced than in those churches. The nave arcades are each of eight pointed arches, much less stilted than in the examples above cited, and narrower in proportion to their height, supported on columns of Oriental granite, with capitals very various in design, of which most or all are believed to have been taken from older buildings ; nine of them, of a florid composite character, with figures in the centre of the faces and cornucopias occupying the place of volutes, have been thought to have belonged to a temple of Ceres. (Fig. 311.) Ail the capitals are capped by very large stilt-blocks, a rare feature in the Norman churches. The flat clerestory has a large pointed window over each of the nave arches. The nave opens into the transept, as at Cefalu and Palermo, by a pointed triumphal arch with a soffit nearly nine feet broad. A peculiar arrangement is observable at the end of the Fig. 308. Palermo. Chiesa dei Yespri. improbability that such a church was built and decorated in six years. Similarly in the case of the cathedral of Cefalu, of which the diploma of Hugo, archbishop of Messina, says the first stone was laid at Pentecost in 1131, while King Roger, writing in March, 1132, ten months later, speaks of it as complete. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 105 nave arcades, where the final column stands free, and is followed by a piece of wall some thirteen feet long, against which on either side abut the five steps which rise to the floor of the transept, and which extend across the whole breadth of nave and aisles. This wall is pierced on each side the nave by a narrow arch “ for the passage of monks,” indicating perhaps some peculiarity in the service not now apparent. The transept, considerably broader than the nave, and projecting well beyond the aisle walls, is divided, by broad pointed arches con¬ tinuing the line of the nave arcades, into three oblong bays, beyond which are three rectangular bays interposed between the transept and the apses, connected transversely by pointed arches, and forming as at Palermo a sort of bema, extending quite across the church. (See Frontispiece.) From its three bays open the three apsidal trib¬ unes, that in the centre preceded by still another narrow rectangular bay. This arrangement, by which the length from the triumphal arch to the extremity of the central apse is very nearly equal to the length of the nave, taken in connection with the unusual height to which the choir and the central apse are carried above the roof of the nave and transept (the central apse is eighty-five feet high to the crown of its vault), gives to the eastern portion of the church an extraordinary importance compared with the western portion. There is no lantern, and none seems to have been intended. There is no characteristic treatment of the crossing, which, like all the Fig. 309. Palermo. Chiesa dei Vespri. 106 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY other parts of the church except the apses, is covered by an open wooden roof of low pitch, brilliantly decorated with gold and color. The roof of the crossing ends in a low gable to the east and west, and below it on three sides are small windows above the roofs of nave and transepts. The plan of the church still includes the western porch of three arches between square angle towers, but the great atrium with its enclosing arcades was removed in 1569 by Cardinal Alexander Farnese. A portion of its columns were used in building an arcade on the north flank of the church, connecting the northern tower of the facade with the projecting transept. Various other mutilations and a century or two of neglect brought this noble church, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to a somewhat ruinous condi¬ tion, which was further increased by the breaking out of a fire in 1811, which de¬ stroyed the roofs of the choir and its side chapels and much of the interior decora¬ tion, columns, marble plates, mosaics, etc. The church was then taken in hand, and during the second quarter of the century was very carefully and conscientiously re¬ paired and restored. 1 Externally the cathedral of Monreale has much resemblance to that of Cefalii. This resemblance is particularly marked in the facade, where the two square flank¬ ing towers, projecting well forward on front and sides enclose between them a deep porch with three broad, stilted, pointed arches supported on columns. Above the porch the wall is crossed by an interlacing blind arcade of pointed ^rches, in the middle of which is a single plain pointed window. The wall at the back o£ the porch has an elaborate but not beau¬ tiful central doorway, with three orders of jamb columns and arches, enclosing the famous bronze doors of Bonanno of Pisa, already described in a previous chapter. Of the 1 Boito tells us that between the years 1811 and 1859 nearly half a million ducats were spent on the restorations, of which sum about thirty thousand ducats were given to the repairing of the mosaics. Boito, op. cit., p. 107. OS to A toJt'e/c# Fig. 310. Monreale. Cathedral. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 107 Fig-. 311. Monreale. Interior of Cathedral. towers at the angles of the fagade, that on the north is unfinished ; the south tower is in five stages; the lowest is quite plain, the next two have a single pointed window in each face, while the two upper stages have coupled arched openings, divided by a shaft and enclosed by a pointed bearing arch. The whole is crowned by a low pyra¬ midal spire. The flanks are interesting. The wall of the south aisle shows over the cloister a range of pointed windows surrounded by thin bands of mosaic, and between the windows broader arches formed by a similar ornament, but not recessed, and enclosing circular pat¬ terns of geometrical mosaic, with horizontal bands of the same character. A frieze of inlay runs beneath the cornice. The whole composition is very rich and delicate. The clerestory wall, on the other hand (probably of later date), is absolutely plain, with single pointed windows and an arched corbel-table at the eaves. The east end is, however, the most characteristic portion of the church, as it is also that in which the characteristic decoi’ation of the period and style is most lavishly displayed. It is certainly one of the most striking compositions in Italy. Its similarity in style to the corresponding portion of the cathedral of Palermo is perfect, but the treatment is different in some respects, and there are no flanking 108 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY towers. The three apses cover the whole frontage of one hundred and thirty feet, the central apse projecting forward of the others and rising above them by an additional stage. The entire surface of the eastern fa§ade is covered by a series of blind interlacing arcades of pointed arches, two stages of which run across the whole frontage, while a third covers the upper wall of the central apse; and it is the treatment of these arcades which gives the composition its peculiar and characteristic effect. The arches are emphasized not by mould¬ ings but by broad bands, which in the lowest stage are made up of plain voussoirs continuing equally plain pilaster strips without base or capital. The effect, it must be confessed, is far from beautiful. In the two upper stages the arches spring from small engaged colon¬ nettes, which in the principal stage are raised on simple pedestals as high as the columns, much as in the apse of Cefalii. In both the upper stages the bands which enclose the arches, as well as the pedestals which support the columns, are covered with a geometrical inlay of marble in two colors and of a fine and delicate pattern, and the arches, which are highly stilted, enclose smaller arches treated in a similar manner. The wall is further enriched by horizontal bands and circles of the same character. There are few examples in Europe of an exterior possessing a surface decoration of equal richness and extent. 1 (Fig. 312.) In its interior decoration this church is surpassingly magnificent, and can be reasonably compared only with the Royal Chapel of King Roger and with St. Mark’s at Venice. The scheme is precisely that of the Cappella Palatina, and it cannot be said that the decoration of the chapel is excelled in beauty by that of the cathedral. But the superior size and height of the latter necessarily enhance the effect. The walls are lined, as in the Cappella Palatina, and to the height of twenty-two feet, with narrow vertical slabs of white or nearly white marble, enclosed in borders of marble inlay, and with a frieze of mosaic. Above this all the interior surfaces of walls and arches, including the jambs of the windows and the soffits of the arches, are covered with mosaics. On the smaller surfaces this is of a geo¬ metrical character, 2 as are also the broad bands surrounding the arches, and running horizontally under the clerestory windows. The mosaics of the walls and vaults are pictorial, the subjects being, for 1 Mothes, remarking on the effect of this front, says the inlay is largely of asphaltum and that the general impression is greatly heightened by the mellow tone of the wall- stone, upon which the white marble columns are relieved with great beauty (p. 566). 2 Yet not always so. Some of the arch soffits have circles enclosing saints. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 109 the most part, scenes from the Old and New Testaments; a single range covering the wall spaces between the windows of the aisles, two ranges the clerestory wall, three ranges the walls of the transept ends, while upon the high walls of the central bay are five ranges of subjects, divided by bands of geometrical mosaic. At the summit of the clerestory wall is a broad frieze composed of a series of circles enclosing half-length figures of angels. The whole vault of the middle apse is occupied as at Cefalu by a gigantic half-length figure of Christ, which dominates the whole church. Below it, on the cir¬ cular wall of the apse, are two rows of standing figures of saints. It is to be remarked that the mosaics of Monreale, though per¬ haps not superior in color and general decorative effect to the mosaics of the Cappella Palatina and to those of the Martorana and the Fig. 312. Monreale. General View of Cathedral. cathedral of Cefalu, show a distinct advance in drawing and in mechanical execution over the earlier work. 1 1 Gravina thus describes the method employed in Sicily in the execution of the mosaics as being at once very expeditious and calculated to ensure permanency. A coat of fine lime mortar is spread on the wall, upon which, while it is still fresh, the picture is broadly painted in fresco in its proper colors. The painter is immediately followed by the mosaicist with his cubes, which are imbedded in the soft mortar and pressed to an even surface. Gravina, II duomo di Monreale, text, p. 78. 110 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY As in the Cappella Palatina, the decoration of this noble interior is carried into the minor details. The beautiful pierced balustrade of the chancel, the faces or risers of the steps of the altar and of some of the doorways, are examples not less noteworthy than the mosaic pavement of the chancel. 1 Several of the interior doorways are enclosed by triple bands of Cosmati work, of great delicacy and beauty. 2 The monastery which the good king founded at Monreale in con¬ nection with the cathedral was very extensive and splendid, covering with the church a rectangle of about three hundred and sixty by four hundred and sixty feet, enclosed by a great wall with towers. Little is, however, left of the conventual buildings except the clois¬ ter, which lies on the south side of the church, and which was per¬ haps in its best estate, in respect of its mosaic and sculpture, the finest in Italy. It is a square of about one hundred and forty feet, enclosed by arcaded galleries with twenty-six pointed arches on each side, sup¬ ported on coupled columns, of which each alternate pair have plain shafts, the others being decorated with mosaics in vertical flutes or spirals or chevrons. The capitals, which in each couple are joined by a common and very high abacus, are infinitely varied, most of them having groups of figure sculpture with animated action, mingled with florid foliage, not of the purest design. At the angles of the square the columns are in groups of four, and the shafts are covered with reliefs of beautiful and varied design rather Byzantine in char¬ acter, while the capitals, joined like those of the other columns by a common abacus, are still more elaborate and florid. The arch heads are, like every other portion of this admirable cloister, of extreme richness, the bands between the mouldings being adorned with mo¬ saics. The relation between the arches and their supporting col¬ umns is very singular. The inner arch moulding is a large roll, which is wholly outside the abacus on each side, and hangs in the air without support. (Figs. 314, 315.) The peculiar unreasonableness of such an arrangement has led some writers 3 to maintain that the arches were originally supported by piers, with engaged columns on the sides, corresponding to the roll-mouldings of the arches, and that the piers were removed by the Norman builders and replaced by the coupled columns which we see. The suggestion is not altogether 1 Dehli, pi. iii., et seq. 2 Dehli, pis. i., ii. 3 Notably Gravina, whose monumental work on the cathedral of Monreale is some¬ what lessened in value by the fondness of its author for startling' and ill-founded theories. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 111 unnatural, from one point of view, but it fails to remove the dif¬ ficulty, since it is as easy to imagine the fault to belong to the origi¬ nal design as to a reconstruction, and there is no other evidence that the parts of the cloister were not contemporaneous. Furthermore, a similar awkwardness is to be seen in the cloisters of Cefalu, and in those of the church of Santa Trinita, known as the Maggione, at Palermo, a small church contemporary with the cathedral. The lavatory of the monks is in one angle of the square, and is a graceful feature of this beautiful cloister, with its own Jittle square enclosed by three arches on each side. 1 I have said that little remains of the buildings of the monastery with the exception of the cloister. There are, however, some frag¬ ments of the south and west sides of the enclosing square, which Fig-. 313. Monreale. Cloisters. show above the arcades of the cloister. On the south, the wall is in two stories separated by a narrow band of inlay. The lower story 1 The enclosed square of these cloisters is laid out as a beautiful garden, with fountains rising amid oranges and palms, presenting a strong contrast to the sombre cloisters of the Northern cathedrals, the whole effect here being gay rather than grave, — 11 a sort of monastic Alhambra,” to use the words of Dantier. 112 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY has a range of narrow blind arches, coupled, with dividing columas, — the upper a tall blind arcade of pointed arches surrounded by mouldings, each arch enclosing a coupled arch divided by columns, as in the lower story, the alternate couples being pierced for windows. The west arm has the look of older work, and consists of a continu¬ ous arcade of high narrow pointed arches of rude masonry, without mouldings, with a single window in the upper half of each alternate arch. 1 It is an interesting indication of the novel elegance and refinement of the civilization which marked the period of the Norman rule in Sicily, that here, for the first time since the decay of Rome, we find the remains of a domestic architecture which is fit to take rank with the archi¬ tecture of the church. Up to this time the only domestic archi¬ tecture in Europe, with very rare excep¬ tions, has been that of the military castles and strongholds of the kings and feudal lords. But in Sicily the example of the luxurious Arabs was too attractive to be resisted, and during the long interval of tranquillity which succeeded the Nor¬ man conquest, the arts which had been everywhere so lav¬ ishly employed in Fig. 314. Monreale. Cloisters. the Service of the 1 Gravina, II duomo di Monreale, pi. iii. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 113 church were turned to account also in beautifying and softening the domestic life of the time. Palermo, in particular, became a second Cordova, with palaces, villas, and pleasure pavilions standing in parks and gardens with fountains and statues ; a ring of gardens surrounded the city, with trees of every species, and flowers and running water. Of the royal palace of Palermo, the work of suc¬ cessive reigns, little, as I have said, now remains except the beauti¬ ful chapel. But the single tower which still stands, of the original construction, the Torre della Ninfa (Fig. 316), a massive square four stories in height, with broad and lofty pointed blind arches enclos¬ ing simple windows, contains a large hall which bears witness to the interior luxury of the king’s houses, even as early as the first quarter of the twelfth century. It is covered by a groined vault, the ribs of which spring from small columns in the four angles. One wall is pierced by pointed arched windows ; two others, as well as the vaulted ceiling, are adorned with mosaics. Other fragments of the palace are still to be seen ; among them a Saracenic vault covering the observatory, and portions of the exterior wall to the south, showing three stages, the upper faced by a tall blind arcade of narrow pointed interlacing arches on engaged colonnettes, and something like a Venetian battlement crowning the wall. Descriptions more or less flowery and doubtful, by contemporary writers (as Falcandus and Ibn Dschobair, cited by Mothes, p. 531), give us dim notions of what the palace was in the twelfth century, with its flanking towers, — Fig. 315. Monreale. Cloisters. 114 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY Torre Pisana, Torre Greca, etc., — its banquet halls and state apart¬ ments in the central building, its offices for business and clerical work in the wings, its courtyard laid out as a garden and enclosed by arcaded galleries in which magistrates and official personages strolled and took their refreshment. But we are fortunately not left without more complete and authen¬ tic evidence as to the character of the civil architecture of this period. A group of buildings are still standing, in more or less ruinous con¬ dition, quite distinct and homogeneous in style, and as perfectly characteristic and apart from those of any other age or country as are the contemporary churches of Sicily. With regard to most of these buildings, it has until recently been held, from the extent to which the Saracenic forms and particularly the Saracenic decoration enter into their design, that they belong to the period before the Norman occupation. But it now seems tolerably clear that they are the work of the Normans, though doubtless carried out with the help of the Arab artists and perhaps of Arab workmen. Almost the only building which can with certainty be referred to the period of Saracenic rule is that of the baths at Cefala, 1 a large rectangular block about ninety feet long with high walls, without conspicuous features except a plain broad pointed entrance doorway, and a frieze with a very decorative Saracenic inscription enclosed between two carved string courses of Byzantine design, and carried quite around the building. Above this is an additional stage of more modern construction. Within is a great hall covered by a simple pointed barrel vault pierced with numerous circular openings for light and ventilation. The hall is unequally divided by a screen of three broad high-stilted pointed arches, perfectly plain, carried on slender columns. A basin occupies the floor of each division. 2 The characteristics of this simple but admirable building are with slight modifications the cliai’acteristics of all the group of Norman civic buildings to which I have alluded. 1 he earliest of these were two pleasure palaces which King Roger II. built about 1120 in the eastern and western suburbs of Palermo, for use in summer and winter respectively, and of which one known as La Favara or Mare- dolce, the winter palace, is still to be seen in a much ruined condi¬ tion. It was an extensive building, with a frontage of some one hundred and fifty feet, rectangular in plan, and presenting on the exterior the high unbroken walls with a series of tall blind pointed 1 Some twenty miles south of Palermo ; not to be confounded with Cefalh. 2 Mothes, p. 547 ; Gaily Knight, Norman Remains in Sicily , pi. iv. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 115 Fig-. 316. Palermo. Torre della Ninfa. 116 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY arches in three orders without columns or other ornament, which characterize all the buildings of its class. A chapel occupies a por¬ tion of one side, which shows some interesting and unusual features. It is a rectangle (Fig. 317) scarcely more than sixteen feet wide and thirty-five feet long, three quarters of its length covered by a groined vault, and terminated by a solid wall, in the middle of which an arch opens into a small sanctuary. Of this apartment the centre is cov¬ ered by a Byzantine dome about nine feet in diameter on a very high drum, which rises two stages above the vault of the nave and is flanked by a high barrel vault on each side. A ring of sixteen small windows surrounds the base of the dome itself. The walls .and vaidts are quite bare. In a wing of the palace are the ruins of a building for vapor-baths, of which the tall chimneys are still stand¬ ing. The palace stood in the midst of grounds planted with citrons, oranges, and palms, and the whole was enclosed within a great moat, which was utilized as a fish-pond, some two hundred and fifty feet broad, over which, as we are told by an Arab writer of the twelfth century (Benjamin of Tudela), floated the gilded gondolas of the king and the ladies of his court. The same admiring observer also re¬ cords that the walls of the palace were “ adorned with gold and silver, and with mosaics representing all things on earth.” The summer pal¬ ace known as Mi- nenio, on the other side of the city, was Fig. 317. Chapel of La Favara. long believed to exist only in the descrip¬ tions of contemporary chroniclers. But in 1855 the remains of it, overgrown with vegetation, were discovered and identified in a garden some two miles west of Palermo. They show the same rectangular mass, the same pointed blind arcades on the exterior, with fragments of a Cufic inscription above, which we find to be characteristic of IOC 1Q1 SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 117 Fig. 318. Palermo. La Zisa. this class of buildings; and on the interior, traces of decorated vaults and walls of marked Saracenic character. 1 The more familiar examples of this Norman-Saracenic style are the two palaces which are now known to have been built by the son and grandson of King Roger, — William the Bad and William the Good,—the Zisa and the Cuba. Both these interesting buildings are valuable, not only in themselves, but from the testimony they bear to the readiness with which the Normans availed themselves of the Arabian genius for luxurious and elegant domestic architecture and the kindred arts, especially the art of formal landscape garden¬ ing and the use of water. The Zisa, which stands a mile or more outside the western gate of Palermo, is still in a tolerably good condition. It is a rectangular block of buildings of squared stone, with but little mortar, and mea¬ suring on the ground about one hundred and fifteen by sixty-two feet, with a height of eighty feet. (Fig. 318.) This height is divided into three nearly equal stories, separated by light moulded string¬ courses, the lowest story showing on the principal front three pointed arched doorways, the central one an open arch thirty feet high and fifteen feet broad, rising well into the second story. These arches are without ornament, but in the central arch the inner order is carried on coupled jamb columns of fine marble, no more than a third the 1 Mothes, p. 532. 118 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY height of the arch, which thus appears stilted to an exaggerated degree. The upper stories have each a range of blind arches very slightly pointed, four in the second story and seven in the third, nearly twenty feet high. In the lower half of each arch was origin¬ ally a coupled pointed window, with a smaller window between the arch heads. These have all been walled up or replaced by large and plain openings. The wall was crowned by a parapet, the divisions Fig\ 319. Palermo. Story Plans of La Zisa. of which were filled by Arabic inscriptions in the Cufic character, extremely decorative in effect, and enclosed, as in the baths at Cefal, between two horizontal bands of Byzantine carving. All this has disappeared. The interior amply atoned for the plainness of the exterior. The central arch of entrance leads through a vaulted vestibule into a hall about twenty-two feet square occupying the centre of the building, to which a deep rectangular x-ecess on each of three sides gives nearly the plan of a Greek cross. These recesses are covered by highly decorated Sax'acenic vaults, precisely iix the manner of the Alcazar at Seville or the Alhambra at Granada, and their walls were faced with mosaic and plates of marble. The recess opposite the entrance was occupied by a fountain, from which a stream of water was led ini a marble channel across the floor of the hall, with two small basins intercepting its course. The central hall and vestibule have tbe height of two stories, and their walls were enriched by bands of floral and geometi*ical mosaic, varied in the vestibule by Cufic inscrip¬ tions. Much of this decoration is still in fairly good condition, but the rest of the interior has been entirely stripped of all ornameuit. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 119 (Fig. 320.) The space on the sides of the building is divided into apartments of varying size and shape on the three floors, communi¬ cating with each other by ample staircases on either side of the central hall. (Fig. 319.) The palace stood in the midst of pleasure grounds. Opposite its main entrance was a fish-pond surrounding a square pavilion which has now disappeared, but which was presum¬ ably much like that of the Cuba, which still remains. 1 The palace of the Cuba (from El Kubbah, the dome) built by the second William about 1180, in the midst of a charming park adja¬ cent to the southwestern gate of Palermo, and which has now disap¬ peared, has much the same architectural character as the Zisa, and a very similar plan. It is somewhat smaller, measuring on the ground one hundred and fifteen by fifty-eight feet, with a height of fifty-five feet, and with a rectangular projection in the middle of each front. The blind arcades of the Zisa are repeated here, but in a single range covering the whole height of the wall, and the parapet bore an Arabic Fig 1 . 320. La Zisa. Interior Decoration. inscription ascribing glory and honor to William II., “ the best of kings, of whom no castle can be worthy,” and giving the date of the 1 Motlies, p. 551; Salazaro, ii., pi. xxiv. See, also, Dantier, i., p. 227. 120 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY building as 1182. Small grouped windows are set in the blind arches, but so irregularly placed that no clear notion can be formed from them of the interior disposition of the apartments, beyond the general division of the space into a square hall in the centre occupy¬ ing the full depth of the building, and smaller rooms on each side as in the Zisa. The basement wall of the palace, of rough hewn stone, bears witness to its original position in the midst of a great basin of water. 1 This building and its adjacent grounds are now degraded to the uses of an artillery barrack. Of the various pavilions with which the grounds of the Cuba were adorned, only one remains, known as La Cubola; but this is ex¬ tremely characteristic. It is a square of about twenty-five feet, with a broad and high open pointed arch on each side, in three orders, of which the middle one is composed of a singular cylindrical ornament much like what may be seen in the Martorana and on the front of the cathedral at Cefalu. The arches occupy nearly the whole height of the wall, which is crowned by a simple parapet, above which rises an absolutely plain hemispherical dome. On the interior, above tlie great arches, are eight smaller arches, four on the sides and, four at the angles, which bring the plan to an octagon, from which springs the dome, the inner surface of which is divided into eight panels by flat bands simply ornamented, which rise from the cornice to the crown of the dome. 2 The whole composition is marked by great elegance and refinement. (Fig. 321.) With the death of William the Good in 1189, the development of the characteristic architecture of the Normans in Sicily—that architecture, which, compounded of so many elements brought from various directions, and growing out of various civilizations, was yet in itself so harmonious and complete — may be said to ha ve come to an end. Its existence covers a period of little more than half a century, yet in that space of time it had exhibited a logical consistency, a union of strength and grace, hardly less remarkable than was shown by the Byzantine style in Sta. Sofia or San Marc:o. I have spoken of its development. But strictly speaking, the styde had no development. The earliest examples of it, as the cathedral of Cefalu and the Cappella Palatina, are as characteristic as tihe greater churches of Palermo and Monreale. No architecture ewer expressed more fully and clearly the peculiar character of its aige 1 Gaily Knight, op. cit., pi. iii. ; Mothes, p. 572. 2 Gaily Knight, op. cit., pis. i., ii. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE and people, and none was ever more dependent on and coincident with a single dynasty. It is easy to trace a natural connection as of cause and effect between the unexampled civilization of this remark¬ able episode of history and the architecture which it produced. The strength of the Norman, the fineness of the Greek, the luxury and grace of the Arabian, were exhibited not more conspicuously in the social and political fabric which grew up under the Rogers and the W illiams than in the churches and palaces which they left to their unworthy posterity. For this brilliant architecture, like that of the dynasty from which it sprung, was but an episode. It was without progeni¬ tors and without de¬ scendants. 1 The splendid king¬ dom which Roger had established, and which his successors had illustrated, went down, smothered under the dull weight Fig. 321. La Cubola. of German invasion. The arts which they had protected and cher¬ ished were despised and forgotten ; the Saracens were persecuted, the Jews were expelled. After the death of the second William, the internal peace and security which his kingdom had enjoyed for a half century were broken by the war of succession, which ended in 1197 in the accession of Frederick II., and which was followed during his minority by constant and violent disturbances among the 1 I do not forget the slightly earlier churches, such as the Martorana, San Cataldo, and San Giovanni degli Eremiti, in which the Normans allowed themselves to follow the traditions of the native races whom they found in possession. But I do not consider these as belonging strictly in the category of the Norman churches, which I take to include those only in which the basilican plan formed the basis of the composition, how¬ ever modified and transformed by the influence of the native races. 122 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY now discordant races of the population. All important building was practically suspended for a generation or more. When it was at length resumed, the style had lost the characteristics of the earlier and better days of the kingdom. For though the persecution of Jews and Saracens had not been continued by Frederick, yet under the exclusive favor which he bestowed on the Lombard element in his population, the other elements steadily declined. The partial revival of architecture in the fourteenth century saw another style, the style of the Palazzo dei Tribunali at Palermo, in which the Sara¬ cenic element had well-nigh disappeared, while the half military and massive construction of the Northern cities had taken the place of the lightness and elegance of the older style. CHAPTER VII THE MONASTERIES The early years of the sixth century saw the rapid growth in Italy of a class of institutions which grew eventually to be among the most important in history, in their relation to the social, political, and reli¬ gious life of the people, and scarcely less so in their influence upon their intellectual and artistic development. These were the monas¬ teries, which from the smallest and humblest origin in the retreats of solitary men, disgusted and satiated with the wild and violent life of the age, became later the seats of the richest and most powerful asso¬ ciations known to history. The Christian monastery had its origin in the mountains and deserts of Syria and Egypt, where as early as the fourth century many men were found glad to retire from the world and devote them¬ selves to a life of meditation and abstinence in caves or cells. The austerity of the solitary or hermit life was imitated with more or less strictness by others similarly inclined, who were nevertheless glad to associate themselves in a religious company. These were called monks, and their numbers increased rapidly in all the provinces of the lower empire, until at the end of the fourth century the monas¬ tery or cenobium had became a recognized institution of the Greek church, whose daily life and government were regulated by the con¬ stitution or “ rule ” drawn up by St. Basilius. Substantially the same history was repeated among the peoples of Western Europe, but the organization of the Western monasteries was of somewhat later date. The perfected system, beginning in the fourth century under Athanasius, Ambrose, and Hilary, was, however, chiefly the work of St. Benedict, from whom, towards the middle of the sixth century, monasticism in Italy took its first strong impulse. Benedict, born in Nursia, in the Umbrian region, in 480, of a noble Roman family, studied deeply at Rome, became at the age of fourteen an ascetic, and shortly retired to the wild solitudes of the mountains about Subiaco, some forty miles to the east of Rome, where he fixed his lonely abode in a cave of the rocks. His retreat 124 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY was in no long time invaded by others with desires similar to his own, and their numbers increased to such an extent that Benedict was obliged to provide for them by building simple houses in which they could be disposed. Twelve monasteries were thus formed in ' the neighborhood of Subiaco, each with twelve monks presided over by an abbot. His sister Scolastica joined him, and assisted him in his labors. Senators and patricians sent him their sons to educate. Here the saint lived for thirty-five years, until, having excited the dangerous enmity of certain monks of a neighboring monastery, he fled southward to Monte Cassino, halfway between Rome and Naples, where he established a new monastery which was destined to become the richest and most powerful in Europe and to be recog¬ nized as the capital of the monastic order. Two small oratories were first built, and dedicated, one to St. John Baptist, the other to St. Martin ; and around these grew up year by year the accessory build¬ ings which were needful for the orderly life of the monastery. It was here that Benedict founded the great order which was to bear his name, and here that he drew up and promulgated the rule or constitution by which it was governed through seven centuries of varying experience and growth. Here he passed the last fourteen years of his life, and here, in 543, he died. The monasteries which Benedict had founded became the model on which other similar institutions were established, not only in Italy, but all over Western Europe. 1 One of the earliest and most inter¬ esting was the monastery, founded about 538, at Vivaria, on the eastern shore of Calabria near Squillace, by Cassiodorus, the minis¬ ter of Theodoric, and several of his successors. Cassiodorus had grown old in noble efforts to improve the politics of his time, and at the age of seventy retired from the world as Benedict had done in his youth, and gave the remainder of his life, which was prolonged for nearly thirty years, to the establishment and development of his great monastery. The numerous disciples who followed him into his retreat were provided for in two fine buildings, while many isolated cells were constructed higher Tip on the mountain side for those who preferred a solitary life. “ He made his monastery,” says Monta- lembert, “ a kind of Christian academy and the principal centre of the literary activity of his time. He collected there an immense library, and imposed on his monks a complete and severe plan of study.” 1 “ The Benedictine institute was carried to Sicily in 534, to France in 543, to Sp>ain a little later, and at the end of the century to Germany and England.” Enc. Brit vol. xvi. THE MONASTERIES 125 The founders of the monasteries were, as a rule, from the high feudal nobility, and to a considerable extent the abbots who governed them, and even the monks by whom they were peopled, were from the same class. “ From the eighth to the thirteenth century,” says the Count de Montalembert, “ all the monasteries in Europe, except the small number which owed their existence to the piety of kings, were founded by the feudal aristocracy, in the sense that they received from the hands of the nobles the territorial endowments which were necessary for their support. But these nobles were not content with founding abbeys and endowing them richly; they themselves entered them in crowds, they peopled them with their bravest and most illustrious children. In return, the monasteries opened their doors to all travellers and strangers, whatever might be their origin or destination. Abbeys were the principal inns of the time.” 1 During the dismal centuries which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, the monasteries seem to have afforded the only havens of quiet and peaceful life in the midst of the universal flood of savage barbarism under which the civilization of Italy had gone down. There are, indeed, if we look closely, indications in the gen¬ eral history of the time that the spirit of humanity was not alto¬ gether extinct. I have already alluded to the charities of the Lombard kings. We have seen that in their code of laws the com¬ mercial and industrial classes were recognized and protected. There was then, in spite of the uninterrupted prevalence of war in its most brutal and cruel form, such a thing as civil life, and some regard for the decencies of existence. To foster these better tendencies, — to keep alive in the general darkness the faint light of an almost extinct civilization — was the work of the monasteries. The rule of Benedict shows us very clearly that the life of the monk in the cloister was not wholly that of the recluse who, on retiring from the world, withdraws from it the activity and the useful work of which he is capable. Article after article inculcates the duty of labor. To every hour of the day is assigned its own duty. Much of the labor was doubtless of an humble sort, which served the daily common needs of the community. But apart from these duties a large por¬ tion of the time and energy of the monks was given to the work of education. Few persons realize in our day the extent to which this work was carried by the monks of the Middle Ages. As regards both the useful and the liberal arts, the monasteries filled, through 1 Montalembert, The Monks of the West, vi., p. 113. 126 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY all the centuries which preceded the revival of learning, the place of universities. “ In every monastery there was established, first, a library, then great studios, where, to increase the number of books, skilful calligraphers transcribed manuscripts ; and finally schools, open to all who had need of or desire for instruction. Public instruction was almost entirely centred in the cloister, and was thence abundantly distributed to all who claimed it; thither gath¬ ered a crowd of students from all ranks and from all countries.” 1 The advantages of this instruction were not limited to those intending to become monks or to enter the service of the church, but were open to laymen with equal freedom. The same may be said of the convents of women, where “ schools were maintained in which were trained not only the future novices, but also numbers of young girls destined for the life of courts or the world.” Neither were the monasteries merely the conservators and teachers of the classic liter¬ ature. 2 They were schools of agriculture, road-making, and the draining of marshes, — of handicrafts, such as book-binding and the mounting of gems, of philosophy, government and civil law, and finally of art. Benedict had provided for the employment and encouragement of artists in his monasteries, and had exhorted them to reverence and humility in the practice of art; and in accordance with his precept the Benedictine abbeys early “ contained not only schools and libraries, but also studios where architecture, painting, sculpture, mosaic, engraving, calligraphy, ivory-carving, and various purely ornamental or decorative arts were studied and pursued with equal ardor and success.” 3 Among these branches of art, the most serious and productive study was given to that which includes all the rest, namely architec¬ ture. For eight centuries the practice of this art was carried on by the monks, by whom very many of the conventual and ecclesiastical buildings of the Middle Ages all over Europe, down to the thirte>enth century, were not only designed, but executed. 4 For the rrnonks 1 Montalembert, The Monks of the West , vi., p. 156. 2 Though in this respect alone their services were of inestimable importance. The libraries of the great monasteries were their chief pride and glory, and the increase: and, protection of the manuscripts was their most worthy ambition. “ In the ninth century,’ says Montalembert, “ during the wars which ravaged Lombardy, most of the treasures which are now the pride of the Ambrosian library were being collected in the ablbey of Bobbio. The monastery of Pomposa, near Ravenna, had, according- to contemporaries, a finer library than those of Rome or any other town in the world.” And “ the primcipal and most constant occupation of the learned Benedictine nuns was the transcription of manuscripts.” Ibid., p. 177. 3 Montalembert, vi., p. 218. 4 Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Bom, vol. ii., jd. 101. THE MONASTERIES 127 “ were not only architects, but masons, and executed their own designs generally without the aid of stranger workmen.” The multiplication of monasteries went on with surprising rapidity. For five hundred years the Benedictines had the field to themselves, the Carthusians following only in the eleventh century, the Cister¬ cians in the twelfth, and the Franciscans and Dominicans in the thirteenth. At the end of the sixth century there was scarcely a church in Rome of considerable importance which had not its monas¬ tery or nunnery attached. In the time of Leo III. (795-816), Rome alone contained not less than forty of these institutions. They attached themselves to all the great basilicas; the Vatican included three monasteries before the middle of the eighth century, and Stephen II. added a fourth. 1 As their number increased, privileges and honors were bestowed unequally upon them. Twenty of the Roman monasteries were especially distinguished in this regard in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and their abbots walked in the processions of the great festivals of the church, with the abbots of St. Paul and St. Lawrence at their head. But the monasteries which were directly under the protection of the Pope appear to have been much less distinguished by the liber¬ ality of their administration, and by the character and learning of their monks, than those at a distance from the capital. 2 In these respects the Lombard monasteries were eminent. At Milan and Pavia, grammar, dialectics, and jurisprudence were taught; at Bene- vento and Salerno, rhetoric and history. At Bobbio, the great monastery founded in 612 by the Irish monk Columbanus, under the protection of the Lombard king Agilulf, the study of classic literature became the distinguishing feature, and the library grew in the tenth century to be perhaps the most valuable in Italy. 3 On the other hand, it was in the monastery of Sta. Scolastica at Subiaco that the two German monks, Sweynheim and Pannartz, pupils of Fust and Gutenberg, set up, in 1465, the first printing-press in Italy. The monasteries, notwithstanding their sacred character, and the services which they rendered to all classes of the people, were by no means exempt from the dangers of the stormy times in which they 1 Gregorovius, iii. 34-344. Yet Rome was not without her scholars, for it is recorded that Charlemagne took hack with him to France, in 787, grammarians and arithmeticians, in order to establish schools. 3 See, in regard to the dispersion of the treasures of this library, Dantier, Les Monas- teres Bine diet ins, vol. ii., pp. 36-38. 128 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY existed. The earliest of them were the special objects of the hatred of the Lombards in their first fury of conquest, and before they had come under the softening influence of the Italian civilization. Monte Cassino was plundered by them in 580, and Subiaco in 601, at which time eleven out of the twelve monasteries of Benedict were destroyed. Later the Saracens, in repeated incursions as far north as Rome, ravaged the monasteries which lay in their path, and which had by that time grown sufficiently in wealth to make them a tempting prize for the freebooters. Subiaco was twice destroyed by them. In 884 they plundered the great monastery of Monte Cassino, killing the abbot at his altar. Six years later they besieged in force the imperial monastery of Farfa in the duchy of Spoleto, twenty miles north of Rome, one of the most beautiful and renowned among the monasteries of Italy. Abbot Peter stoutly defended his walls during seven years, and then, seeing himself incapable of further resistance, and despairing of relief, he sent off his treasures of all kinds, includ¬ ing the great library, to Rome, Fermo, and Rieti, destroyed the fine ciborium of the high altar, burying the onyx columns, and abandoned the monastery. The Turks took possession, but, struck with the beauty of the place, forbore to destroy it. What the Saracens spared, however, fell in no long time before the rage of the Christian marauders. The monastery was burned, and lay for thirty years in ruins. It was rebuilt by Abbot Roffred, and passed through a period of evil fame. A revolt arose among the monks, — the abbot was imprisoned by two of the leaders of the rebellion, who got possession of the goods of the monastery, and led a wild life there for some years. 1 The history of Farfa is exceptional, no doubt; but it is easy to see that the greatest danger which beset the monastic institution arose, not from enemies without, but from corruption within. The monastery from modest beginnings grows gradually rich, — the tem¬ poral power concedes an ample territory around it, on which, under its protecting wing, villages grow up, hoping for a measure of safety from its neighborhood. The great feudal barons make gifts of castles and lands. Rich men and princes, tired of vanity and strife, come to end their days in the peace of the cloister, and dying, bequeath to it their possessions. The increase of wealth brings with it political influence. The abbots become powerful lords, making war like the secular barons. 2 The monastery is a power to be 1 Gregorovius, iii., p. 342 (p. 467, further history of Farfa). 2 “ When an abbot died, a sword was laid by his side in the tomb.” THE MONASTERIES 129 reckoned with. The original impulse of simple piety is lost, and ambition and pride have come in to take its place. 1 The accumula¬ tion of wealth in the monasteries, and the growth in them of the spirit of luxury and worldly ambition, 2 effected a radical change in the life of those institutions and in their relations to the outside world, and prepared the way for their abolition. The monastery was an institution whose usefulness depended on and arose out of the conditions of mediaeval life. The Renaissance, with its new freedom of thought and action, with its extension and diffusion of knowledge and of power, and of the comforts and graces of life, speedily made men independent of the cloister and impatient of its methods. The suppression of the monasteries in all the Catholic countries of western Europe, which took place in the middle of the nineteenth century, was but the inevitable result of the pro¬ gress of the modern spirit. The magnitude of the undertaking, as well as the unanimity of feeling which compelled the various govern¬ ments to the step, is the best evidence of its necessity. 3 In Italy alone, the number of monasteries which had been suppressed, up to the year 1882, is given as 2225. As early as 1835, Spain abolished nine hundred at a single stroke ; and Portugal, a year earlier, had suppressed five hundred. 4 Their example was followed by Piedmont in 1866, and in 1873, after the establishment of the kingdom of Italy, the law became operative over the whole of the peninsula. In all these cases, the property of the monastery was confiscated to the state, no exception being made in favor even of the most ancient or famous. Their inmates were dispersed, except where the monastery was converted into a charitable or educational establishment, in which case a few of the monks were commonly left in charge. 1 ' ‘ At the beginning- of the fourteenth century the abbot of Monte Cassino, — then at the height of its material splendor, — was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and administrator of a special diocese, composed of thirty-seven parishes. Among his depend¬ encies were reckoned four bishoprics, two principalities, twenty counties, two hundred and fifty castles, four hundred and forty towns and villages, three hundred and thirty- six manors, twenty-three maritime ports, thirty-three islands, two hundred mills, three hundred territories, one thousand six hundred and sixty-two churches.” Haeften, Cont¬ inent. in Vit. S. Bened., quoted in Mont.,vi., 21. At the end of the sixteenth century his income was reckoned at not less than 500,000 ducats. From this time the great monastery steadily declined. h or some interesting- remarks on the luxury and effeminacy of the monks in the time of Boccaccio, in dress, food, and manners, see Perrens, La civilisation Florentine , p. 104. A remark of Pius IX., in speaking to an English Roman Catholic bishop, is signifi¬ cant. It was the Devil’s work, but the good God will turn it into a blessing, since their destruction was the only reform possible to them.” 4 Enc. Brit., vol. xvi., p. 715. 130 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY As the monastic life formed one of the most interesting and picturesque features of the general life of the Middle Ages, so the monastery in its full development was one of the most interesting and characteristic examples of the service of architecture to practical needs. The germ of the monastery was, as we have said, the solitary cell of the recluse, to which in time others were successively added. To these, the first addition was the modest oratory for the devotions of the monks in company. This was commonly a small oblong building of the simplest form, quite without architectural character, not infre¬ quently following the example of the earliest monastic cells and excavated from the rock. Examples of these excavated chapels are rarely met with in the northern and central regions of Italy. There is, however, one at Sutri, thirty miles north of Rome, made out of an ancient Etruscan tomb, and having a square vestibule open¬ ing into what is in plan really a small basilica, with nave and aisles terminating in a more ample tribune with a shallow apse. (Fig. 322.) In the southern provinces, in which the austerity of the early Benedictine monks was longer maintained, great numbers of ascetics belonging to the Greek church dwelt and worshipped in this manner even as late as the ninth and tenth centuries. In the eastern provinces of Calabria and Otranto especially, but also in the region of Amalfi and Capua to the west, many subterranean chapels and oratories are still to be found, with a distinctly architectural plan and often with corresponding architectural constructive features, and of which the walls and vaults are decorated with frescoes and in¬ scriptions of Byzantine character. In the neighborhood of Mottola are two grottoes, dedicated to S. Margherita and S. Nicola. The former is without intelligible plan, except the small apse at the far end containing the altar. Yet the walls are covered with frescoes THE MONASTERIES 131 of the Madonna and saints, of little merit, except as examples of the piety of the age which produced them. The neighboring chapel, of S. Nicola, has a more logical plan, covering nearly a square, of which rather more than a quarter at the east end is cut off from the rest by a wall or iconostasis decorated with frescoes and pierced by three openings. This eastern portion answers to the bema or transept. Its floor is raised by three steps, and from its centre projects a square tribune in place of the usual apse. The front portion of the plan is divided unequally by two arches on each side into nave and aisles, the arches springing from two square piers, from which spring also transverse arches dividing nave and aisles each into two bays. (Fig. 323.) The region about Matera furnishes several examples of this interesting class of buildings, among which it will be sufficient to mention two, viz., the grottoes of S. Barbara, and the Cappucino Vecchio. S. Barbara is a rect¬ angle measuring some twenty by thirty feet, entered by a doorway in the face of the rock. The roof is supported by two rudely hewn piers, each of which bears on one face the monogram of Christ, enclosed in a circle. On the right near the entrance, a little stair leads to a small cell in the side-wall, beyond which is a stone pulpit set against the wall. The rectangle is closed at the far end by a wall covered with frescoes, pierced in the cen¬ tre by a doorway and on the sides by several small windows, beyond which is the sanctuary, somewhat smaller than the front portion, Fi s . 323. Chapel of S. Mottola. Nicola, near and consisting of three apses, one opposite the doorway, the others on the sides, the middle one containing the altar. The neighboring grotto of the Cappucino Vecchio has a singular plan. An enclosed porch or narthex, opening by two doorways in the wall of the ravine on the border of which Matera lies, gives access to two aisles separated by a wall pierced by arches, each aisle 132 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY ending in an apse raised by several steps above the aisle, witli a large niche at the base, a stone bench running around the semi-circu¬ lar wall, and an altar at the centre of the circle. (Fig. 324.) llie frescoes with which the walls were covered have now disappeared, the plaster having fallen from the walls. 1 The grotto of S. Nicola, not far off, near the village of Monte- scaglioso, is in plan very similar to the last-mentioned; and here, as it appears, the two aisles were devoted to the two forms of worship; in the right-hand aisle the Latin rite was celebrated, in the left-hand, the Greek. This chapel, like many of its class, was the centre of a little community of monks who dwelt in cells excavated in the rock in the immediate' neighborhood of the chapel, 2 having neither the organization nor the per¬ manence of the monastery, but brought into existence by the same influences, and living with something of the same life, though with a severer asceticism. These little institu¬ tions retained the name which had been given centuries before to their Eastern prototypes, of “ laura,” and they were sometimes attached to the greater monasteries. 3 As the buildings of the monastery grew in importance they were surrounded, as an obvious precaution against the dangers of hostile attack to which they were perpetually exposed, by a strong wall of defence. As the cells of the monks increased in number they were arranged in closer order and made to enclose an open space, around which was carried a covered gallery of communication. Thus was developed, out of the practical needs of the daily monastic life, the cloister, — the most picturesque, poetical and characteristic feature of the monastery. 4 The isolated cells which surrounded it were, in the course of time, consolidated into compact buildings, often of two stories, and supplementary buildings were added, as the life of the monastery became more secure and more complex, — the refectory, the infirmary, the guest-house, the workshops, the stables, the stu¬ dios, the library. Both on account of the generally secluded position 1 Diehl, L'art Byzantin dans Vltalie ndridionale, p. 154. 2 Ibid., p. 156. 3 Ibid., p. 27- 4 The cloister, which in all Western monasteries is attached to the side of the church, was in the East an enclosure enveloping the whole church within its walls. See Lenoir, ii., p. 296. Fig. 324. Cappucino Vecchio. THE MONASTERIES 133 of the monastery, and on account of the danger of invasion and siege, it was important that the institution should contain within its walls all that was needful for the support of its inhabitants. The monastery thus became, to use the words of a French writer, a veritable religious city, embracing gardens, mills, bakeries, brew¬ eries, stables, workshops of various sorts, and everything needful for the domestic economy of a great establishment. Lenoir, in his “ Architecture Monastique,” gives the following comprehensive summary of the requirements of a monastery of the first class: — Wall of enclosure, fortified or not. Principal church. One or more secondary churches, with chapels, oratories, and sac¬ risties. Treasury, chapter-house. Cloister. Parlor or conversation-room. Summer refectory. Winter refectory. Kitchens, cellars. Chauffoir, or warmed sitting-room, the only room artificially warmed in severe weather. Dormitories, vestries, baths. Library. One or more scriptatoria , rooms for the copying of MSS. Archives. Schools and their dependencies. Abbot’s house and garden. Infirmary and dependencies. Physician’s house, with garden for medicinal plants. Pharmacy. House for novices. Guest-house for distinguished visi¬ tors. Guest-house for pilgrims and the poor. Almshouse for the distribution of food and money. Bakery with storehouse for meal. Mills. Brewery. Winepress.. Lardarium for the preparing and storing of dried meats. Granaries for cereals and fruits. Reservoirs, for holding and distrib¬ uting water. Stables for all sorts of domestic animals. Inner yard or court, with pigeon- houses and keeper’s residence. Kitchen-gardens and gardener’s house. Fruit-garden. Garden for walking, with fish¬ ponds. Workshops for all kinds of indus¬ tries. Administration, tribunal. Prisons. Pillory and other instruments of punishment. Dead-house, with lavatory. Cemetery, with or without ossu¬ ary. Commemorative monuments. In determining the general plan of the monastery, these secular buildings were generally so placed that the lay members of the institution did not necessarily see the monks at all. The abbot, 134 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY who exercised an absolute authority, lived apart, often in much luxury, in a separate house, to which a garden was always attached. The modest chapel of the early monastery expanded into a church, as noble and beautiful as the resources of the monks could command; and in the vast majority of cases, the church, on which was concen¬ trated the devotion and pride of the order, remained to preserve the remembrance and fame of the monastery when all its accessory buildings had crumbled into dust. 1 The monasteries of Italy may be grouped for purposes of descrip¬ tion in two classes: — the Benedictine, — which include all those built from the time of St. Benedict down to that of Bernard of Clairvaux, or from the middle of the sixth century to the middle of the twelfth, — and those of the later orders, —the Cistercian, whose foundation coincides with, and was doubtless the occasion of, the establishment in Italy, though in a partial and modified form, of the Gothic of Northern France, and the Franciscan and Dominican, which followed a century later. The monasteries of the first class were mainly founded during the two centuries which followed Benedict, and, as I have said above, were repeatedly destroyed and repeatedly rebuilt until little or nothing remained of the original construction. At Subiaco, the earliest of all, we can still trace the general plan on which the successive constructions of the early monasteries of Bene¬ dict arose. The site lends itself most naturally to that native instinct for the picturesque which appears in all the work of the early Italian builders. The two great monasteries into which the numerous smaller institutions of Benedict were consolidated, occupy the abrupt and broken slope of a rough mountain, — the lower called Sta. Scolastica, after the beloved sister of Benedict, and the upper, the Sacro Speco. They are separated by a mile or so of intervening- space, and the two present a maze of churches, chapels, oratories, crypts, passages, stairways, and cloisters, upon the most irregular plan, at all levels and of all dates. The buildings are in part sup¬ ported upon tall arcades growing out of the rocky slope. Of the lower monastery, the only portions which can be called ancient are the second and third cloisters, — dating the one from 1052, in which instead of the usual arcade we find a solid wall pierced at intervals by large pointed arched openings, with a second story lighted by 1 In respect of the preservation of the ancient monasteries, France has been much more fortunate than Italy. Many of the earliest and most important of the French mon¬ asteries, as Cluny, Citeaux, Clairvaux, etc., are still in good condition and carefully kept by the state. THE MONASTERIES 135 small windows, and the other a century and a half later, — and the tower of the church, which may probably be assigned to the middle of the eleventh century. The third cloister is still in a good state of preservation, and shows a series of delicate arcades divided into groups of four, five, and six round arches supported by slender columns, alternately single and coupled, of various design, resting on a high stylobate. (Fig'* 325.) Over the western arcade is an inscription in mosaic, which shows the cloister to have been, at least as far as its decoration is concerned, the work of the Cosmati, the celebrated family to whom were due the sculpture and mosaics of the more beautiful cloister of the Lateran at Rome. “ Cosrnus et filii Luc. et Jac., alt. Romani cives in marmoris arte periti hoc opus explerunt, abbatis T. de Laudi.” The walls of the arcades were covered with frescoes now nearly obliterated, representing the popes, emperors, princes, and other dignitaries who were reckoned among the benefactors of the monas¬ tery. The arcades support a high second story which had formerly an open arcade of broad and high arches on square piers. Of the upper monastery of the Sacro Speco, none of the buildings appear to be older than the middle of the eleventh century. The Fig. 325. Subiaco. Third Cloister. 136 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY church embraces, as at Assisi, three churches, one above another, of various dates and styles. The lowest, dating from 1053, has pointed groined vaults and round apse; the uppermost dating from 1116, but probably more or less changed in its interior, is Gothic in some of its details, but with round barrel vault and no apse, and is profusely decorated with frescoes, mostly of the early thirteenth century. Con¬ nected with it is a long and intricate succession of chapels, partly excavated from the rock, and in which the same decoration is con¬ tinued. 1 In the upper church the place of the apse is occupied by a cave in the rocky hillside, in which is placed the altar, lighted by a shaft from the surface above, — an extremely effective and pictur¬ esque arrangement. At Monte Cassino, as at Subiaco, repeated rebuildings have left nothing of the original work, and but very little, of the work of the great abbot Didier, or Desiderius, afterwards Pope Victor III., who in the eleventh century rebuilt the whole monastery on a grand scale, and adorned it sumptuously with sculpture, painting, mosaic, bronze, gold, silver, and ivory, bringing to the monastery Byzantine and Saracenic artists in great numbers. Although here, as at Subiaco, the monastery climbs the abrupt slope of a hill, yet the later plan, — how much changed from the earlier we do not know, — has much more coherence and regularity. It covers a space measur¬ ing roughly some three hundred by seven hundred feet. The main entrance, under a low tower at the foot of the great mass of build¬ ings which forms the front, leads by a low vaulted staircase to a great court, flanked on each side by a cloister, from which it is separated only by an open arcade. From the opposite end a majestic flight of steps leads to an inner court which is the atrium of the church, a Renaissance structure built upon the foundations of the church of Desiderius, which was consecrated in 1071. Of the present building the facade is unfinished. On the right of the church and of the atrium are the cloisters of the monks, rebuilt with the other principal portions of the monastery in 1659, and the whole is enclosed on three sides by the great ranges of dormitories. (Fig. 326.) Of all these vast buildings, the only portion which tradition assigns to the original monastery are the entrance gateway, with its low arch and vault, signifying humility, and the lower portion of the square tower which surmounts it. 1 See Didron, Annales Archeologiques, vol. xviii.-xix., for a minute description of these frescoes. For an interesting account of the Subiaco monasteries, both in their history and their present aspect, see Gregorovius, Promenades en Italie, p. (50 et seq. THE MONASTERIES 137 Of the ancient Lombard monastery of Farfa, many of the vast buildings remain, but by no means in their original form. Of its early aspect and plan, we have no exact knowledge. But the great basilica which formed its central feature, dedicated to the Virgin, was surrounded by five other basilicas; an imperial palace and numerous lesser official residences were included within the sur¬ rounding wall, colonnades of great extent furnished sheltered walks for the rich and proud monks, and the whole was enclosed by a strongly fortified wall, with towers at intervals. 1 Of the second group of monaste¬ ries, beginning with those either founded by the Cistercians or substantially rebuilt by them during the first half of the twelfth century, we find several examples which, though unhap¬ pily in a more or less ruinous condition, are yet sufficiently preserved to show us clearly both their general disposition and their architec¬ tural design. The earliest of these are the three founded within ten or twelve Fig 1 - 320. Plan of Monte Cassino. Present Monastery, years of each other by Bernard of Clairvaux, in all of which the name of the parent monastery was preserved, though in the Italian form, viz., Chiara- valle near Milan, whose church has been already described in a 1 Gregorovius, iii., 284. 138 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY previous chapter, Chiaravalle della Colomba, near Piacenza, and Chiaravalle di Castagnola, near Ancona. Of all these, the churches are the only portions which have not become ruinous by time and neglect, or transformed by restoration. The churches are in each case of brick, and the two earlier ones are of rude and heavy design, with massive round piers supporting ponderous arches and low groined vaults. The latest, that of Chiaravalle di Castagnola, is of much lighter and more advanced construction, and is probably the earliest existing example of the introduction in Italy of the forms, and to a limited extent the construction of the Gothic architecture of Northern France. 1 Its plan is a Latin cross with nave and aisles of six bays, a transept with a square bay at the crossing, and two bays in each arm, of which the outer one projects beyond the aisle wall, and a small choir in two bays, flanked on each side by two chapels corre¬ sponding to the bays of the transept arms, — the usual Cistercian plan. (Fig. 327.) The total length of the church is a little less than two hundred feet, its breadth about sixty-five feet. The nave arcades are of pointed arches, carried on compound piers, of which three members toward the nave, in the form of engaged shafts, rise from the pavement to the vaulting, the middle shaft taking the 1 The solidarity of the monastic institution throughout Europe doubtless accounts for the essential unity of the monastic style in all the Western countries. As always, the French examples are superior in refinement of design and completeness of plan to those of England, Germany, or Italy; but the Italian examples, being mostly by French archi¬ tects, exhibit a noticeable superiority to most of the native architecture of the time. THE MONASTERIES 139 spring of the transverse arch which separates the nave bays, and the others that of the diagonal ribs of the pointed and groined vaults. The arrangement is the same in the bays of the aisles, a half-pier on the outer wall answering in plan to the nave pier. This construction is varied in those portions of the nave and aisles adjacent to the transept, where there seem to be the remains of an older and ruder building. The same may be said of the details. The capitals of the shafts are in general without foliage or other ornament, and are for the most part simple cubical block capitals, although some are of a 140 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY later form with a more or less Corinthian outline, but with no more decoration on the bell than four large simple leaves at the angles, scarcely more than outlined. But one at least of the piers at the angles of the crossing lias capitals which suggest a Lombard origin, with rude foliage, of which the stems form an interlacing pattern. The square of the crossing has a vault similar to those of the nave, and is surmounted by a square belfry tower with a low pyramidal roof which doubtless replaces one of an earlier date. 1 But if this interesting interior shows in the clearest manner the hand of the French architect reproducing almost without modifica¬ tion the forms of the Gothic of France, the same can by no means be said of the exterior. The facade is a mere screen wall, entirely without relation to the church behind it in height, breadth, or out¬ line. It has a projecting porch of the full breadth of the church, with five open round arches and a lean-to roof, with a small wheel- window over it, the wall being carried up without change of breadth to a horizontal cornice above the ridge of the nave roof, and crowned by a low pediment. The windows of the flanks are all round-arched. The walls of aisles and clerestory have strongly projecting buttresses, and the thrust of the nave vaults is met by a wall carried up on the transverse ai’ches of the aisles above the aisle roof, and abutting against the buttresses of the clerestory, a device adopted by the Lom¬ bard architects at least two centuries before, as seen in S. Ambrogio, 1 Enlart, p. 71; A. L. Frothingham, Jr., in Am. Jour, of Archeology , 1891, p. 286 ; Schnaase, vii., p. 106. THE MONASTERIES 141 Fig. 330. Fossanova. Interior. Milan. These walls are now solid, but their masonry affords evi¬ dence that the portion above the roof was originally an arch, which has been filled in with later brickwork. If this be so, we have here probably the first example in Italy of a flying buttress, though its form is still rudimentary, and its adoption in this instance was apparently unsuccessful. The effective use of this feature required, 142 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY in truth, more science and constructive skill than was possessed by the Italian builders even at a period much later than that with which we are now concerned, which, it must be remembered, was the period of the earlier of the great Gothic churches of France. St. Denis was piactically complete in 1150, and Notre Dame of Paris, Soissons, Autun, Langres, and many others were well under way before the end of the century. I have said that of the monastery at Castagnola, the church is the only portion which remains to us of the original construction. The earliest of the Cistercian monasteries which shows us with tolerable completeness the entire group of buildings is that of Fossanova, which lies on the Via Appia, some seventy miles to the southeast of Rome. It is believed to have been founded during the lifetime of Bene¬ dict, and to have been peopled by a colony of monks sent from his monastery at Monte Cassino. Falling more or less into decay, it was about 1135 given by Pope Innocent II. to Bernard of Clairvaux, and was thenceforth under the rule of the Cistercian order, which had by that time grown to be the greatest of the monastic orders. The ancient buildings were befoi’e the end of the century successively replaced by new ones, in which the forms of the Gothic of the lie de France were chiefly followed, though with many exterior modifica¬ tions. The ground-plan (Tig. 328), shows the arrangement of the various parts. The surrounding wall encloses a space some six hun¬ dred feet square. The central mass of buildings in the middle of this enclosure surrounds a cloister measuring about sixty-four by seventy-seven feet, which shows on three of its sides the old Lombard arcades in groups of four small plain round arches, supported, some on mid-wall shafts with large block capitals, others on coupled columns - while the fourth or south side is Gothic, with high pointed arches supported on coupled columns, some with twisted shafts, with a second story above the arcade. The three older galleries are covered with barrel vaults ; the fourth is groined. The church, which meas¬ ures about two hundred and ten feet in its total length, and ninety- four feet across the transept, is cruciform, with a lofty nave and very low aisles, each in seven vaulted bays, a square projecting choir of two bays, flanked by two square chapels on either side, opening from the transept, — the characteristic arrangement of the Cistercian churches everywhere. The transepts are each in two bays like those of the nave and choir, and the crossing is covered by an octagonal lantern or tower in two stories with cupola. (Fig. 329.) THE MONASTERIES 143 The piers of the nave arcades are square, with simple, engaged columns on three sides carrying the arches of the nave and the transverse arch of the aisle, while on the fourth side, — that next the nave, — a pilaster rises to the spring of the nave vault, bearing on its face an engaged vaulting shaft, which springs not from the floor, but from a Fig. 331. Fossanova. Exterior of Church. corbel some eight feet above it, and rises to take the spring of the transverse arch of the nave. There are no capitals except those of the engaged shafts, which are well developed, with strong knobs at the angles, supporting the high abacus, and with simple foliage in low relief. Everything about this interior is marked by the strictest simplicity and reserve ; the mouldings of the imposts and strings are small and severe, while the arches throughout are unmoulded. The vaults are without ribs, except in the apse and under the lantern. (Fig. 330.) The exterior of the church adheres less closely than the interior to the French traditions, yet it has many points of resemblance to the contemporary Cistercian churches of Central France. Its fine west- ei’n front follows the outline of the nave and aisles, and suffers from the extreme lowness of the latter. The central doorway is of unus¬ ual richness, with deeply splayed jambs having three orders of col- umns carrying an admirable series of rich mouldings, which enclose 144 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY the low pointed arch. The only other important feature of the front is a noble wheel-window, of the diameter of eighteen feet, with inter¬ lacing arches springing from slender colonnettes, and a foliated circle at the centre. The church had originally a porch in three bays ex¬ tending across the whole front, similar to that of Castagnola, just described ; the wall-ribs and starts of its transverse arches and vault- ribs are still visible in the wall of the facade. The transept is as high as the nave, and its walls, like those of the nave and aisles, and the angles of the central division of the faQade, are reinforced by strongly projecting buttresses, with single round-arched windows between. The central lantern is octagonal, of two stories, each with a coupled pointed window in each face, divided by a slender shaft. The small octagonal cupola which surmounts the roof is of the same design. (Fig. 331.) On the east side of the cloister, in a line with the south transept of the church, are the sacristy, the chapter-house, a passage of entrance to the cloister from the outside, flanked by a narrow stair which leads to the dormitory of the monks above, and two vaulted storehouses. The storehouses are, like the chapter-house, divided into groined bays, but the design is naturally much simpler, the supports being plain square piers, and the vaults not being separated by arches. Another range of storehouses encloses the cloister on the west, with a second story, formerly used as a dormitory for the lay members of the monastery. The chapter-house is a fine room, meas¬ uring about thirty-five feet square, with a ceiling divided into six groined bays, supported by two grouped piers. In construction and detail this room is a pure example of the French Gothic of the period. The grouping of the shafts of which the piers are composed, their bases and capitals, the mouldings of the arches which spring from them, and enclose the bays, the simple diagonal ribs of the vaulting, are all such as are to be seen in the twelfth-century churches of Northern France. The exception is found in the door and window openings, which are round-arched, and which indicate that the external wall is that of the ancient chapter-house of the Benedictines. (Fig. 332.) From the middle of the south side of the cloister opens the refec¬ tory of the monks. This is a rectangular hall, measuring about fifty feet wide and a hundred long, divided into six narrow bays by high pointed arches spanning the whole breadth, and springing from engaged piers on the side walls, most of which rest on corbels. On these arches solid walls were carried up to support the wooden roof. THE MONASTERIES 145 A small stone stair in the thickness of the side wall led to the pulpit, from which a brother read to the rest during the simple meal. The pulpit is gone, but the finely moulded corbelling which supported it remains. The stair and the pulpit are covered by two arches, each occupying the whole width of the bay. Opposite the door by which the refectory is entered from the cloister, a square pavilion projects from the arcade, with two open round arches on each of the sides except that which makes a part of the arcade. In the centre of the pavilion was the fountain and basin for the ablutions of the monks as they left the refectory. This was one of the most characteristic features of the cloister, though its more usual position was in one of the angles of the inner square. The refectory is flanked on one side by the kitchen, and on the other by the calefactorium, or warming- room, — the only room in the monastery except the kitchen where a fire was allowed. Outside the central block of buildings were various supplementary structures of greater or less importance in the daily life of the monastery. Of these the most conspicuous was the infirmary or hospital, a great hall not unlike the refectox-y, measuring about one hundred and fifty feet in length and forty in breadth ; divided into ten bays by simple transverse pointed arches which spring from Fig'. 832. Fossanova. Interior of Chapter-house. 146 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY consoles in the wall, and which carried the wooden roof. The rubble masonry which filled the spaces between these arches and the roof has fallen away, but these fine, thin arches still stand in perfect con¬ dition, an interesting witness of the care and solidity with which they were built. (Fig. 333.) Their thrust is met by buttresses projecting from the side walls. The hall was lighted by large pointed windows, one in each bay, set high in the walls, and by smaller windows in the gables. An important adjunct of the mediaeval monastery was the hospi- tium, or guest-house, where strangers and pilgrims were entertained. At Fossanova two buildings on opposite sides of the central group were devoted to this purpose. The one nearer the entrance gate is a long building of two stories, the lower furnished with an open vaulted arcade along its whole length. The other building, on the east side of the enclosure, consists of two separate portions, of which the longer is believed to be the ancient church of Sta. Potentiana (or Pudenziana), a singular Lombard structure dating perhaps from the eighth or ninth century ; while the other portion, built some three or four centuries later, but still before the acquisition of the monastery by the Cistercians, was used for the lodgment of guests. An open arcade of simple round arches on plain square piers extended from the front of the guest-house along the flank of the old church. Vari¬ ous other buildings, of which the original use can only be conjectured, still stand near the west wall of the monastery, in which is the entrance gateway, a large and massive building of two stories, con¬ taining several rooms for the gate-keeper and other servants, and giving entrance to the enclosure under two broad archways, the outer pointed, the inner round. The monastery of Casamari, rebuilt a few years later than Fossa- nova, is very similar to it in its general arrangement and extent, and in the architectural design of its various parts so close a simi¬ larity is observable as to suggest that they were the work of the same architect. The two churches, especially, are in most respects nearly exact counterparts,—the exceptions being a western aisle added to the transepts of Casamari 1 to balance the chapels which flank the choir, 2 the choir itself being a single square bay covered by a sexpartite vault. The fine exterior porch is still in good condition. It is approached by a broad and high flight of steps, 1 Enlart, Origines Franqaises de VArch. Goth, en Italie, p. 33. 2 A. L. Frothingham, Jr., in Am. Jour, of Archaeology, 1S90, p. 46. THE MONASTERIES 147 Fig'. 383. Fossanova. Interior of Infirmary. and extends across the whole front of the church, with three open arches, the middle one round, the side arches pointed, opening into three vaulted bays corresponding to the nave and aisles. The central lantern is much smaller and simpler than that of Tossa- nova, and instead of covering the crossing of nave and transept, whose vault seems a preparation for it, is set over the last bay of the nave, a curious and inexplicable arrangement. In the vaulting, a distinct advance is to be noted from the earlier church of Fossanova, the arches being higher proportionally, and being all built on ribs. The cloister, which shows to a smaller degree than most of its class the influence of the French Gothic, forms a square of about sixty-five feet, with a round-arched doorway on each face, flanked on each side by two smaller coupled arches of the same form, which spring from coupled columns on a high stylobate. The centre of the enclosure is occupied by a fine cistern hewn from the rock, and surrounded by a wall or curb of red marble adorned with small white marble columns. The chapter-house, less elegant than that of 148 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY Fossanova, is still one of the finest in Italy. It is divided into nine square bays by four grouped piers composed of shafts which have a moulded band or girdle around their middle, elongated leafed capitals, and a high octagonal stilt-block from which spring finely moulded arches dividing the bays, and the diagonal ribs of the vault¬ ing. On the walls, the arches spring from responds, of which the shafts, just below the capitals, are diminished in the form of a corbel, with a singularly awkward effect. The hall is lighted by fine large windows, coupled, pointed - arched, and covered by pointed bearing-arches following the wall-arch of the vaxdt. The entrance gateway is an effective and charming composition. Its outer facade shows a great, open, round arch, with ample space of wall on each side, and above, on a light string-course, a graceful arcade of open, small, round arches divided into groups of two, and supported on delicate coupled columns. Above the arcade is a light decorated cornice, with carved consoles over the piers which separate the groups. The whole composition is thoroughly French in feeling, and is very similar to many examples in Central France during the thirteenth century. (Fig. 334.) The refectory is of more ample dimen¬ sions than that of Fos¬ sanova, and having a second story above it, its ceiling is vaulted in groined bays, and sup¬ ported by massive col¬ umns. Over it is the great dormitory of the monks. 1 The monks of Casamari seem to have been among the most energetic of their order. During the first quarter of the thir¬ teenth century, they founded, besides carrying- on the works of their own monastery, two others of 1 Motlies (p. G73) assigns the foundation of the monastery to 1088, hut says the actual work of building was begun in 1095, and the church finished in 1151. Fig. 334. Casamari. Entrance Gateway. THE MONASTERIES 149 importance, — S. Maria d’ Arbona, near Chieti, in the recesses of the Abruzzi, in 1208, and ten years later that of San Galgano, s Maria some twenty miles from Siena. Of the first of these no- d ’ Arbona - thing now remains save the church and chapter-house. But these are still in tolerable pre¬ servation. The church follows the usual Cis¬ tercian arrangement, —- a cruciform plan, with a square project¬ ing choir in two bays flanked on each side by two square chapels opening from the tran¬ sept, whose ends are each divided into two oblong bays. The nave evidently remained unfinished, since it consists only of a sin¬ gle oblong bay. The interior (Fig. 335) is less severe than those of Fossanova and Casamari, and with the exception of the single nave bay, the vaults are built on ribs of simple profile forming pointed arches. The square of the crossing is covered, as at Fossanova and Casamari, by a domical octagonal vault with strongly profiled ribs springing from the four piers at the angles of the square and from the apexes of the four enclosing arches, and meeting at the crown of the vault in a round opening, evidently the preparation for an octagonal lantern which was never built. The choir is lighted with more than usual completeness by three windows in the lower stage, of which the central one is pointed, by two single, round-arched windows above these, and a wheel-window under the arch of the vault. A similar wheel-window pierces the gable of the north transept. All the other windows of the church are simple round-arched openings. The arches which separate the Fig. 335. S. Maria d’ Arbona. 150 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY nave and aisles are also round ; those in the transept, as well as all the transverse arches, are pointed. The exterior of the church, which is very rude, with strong buttresses and low roofs, shows a partial return to Lombard motives, as in the arched corbel-table which makes the cornice of the aisles and clerestory. 1 At San Galgano the church reproduced very closely that of Casa- mari, but with an additional bay in the nave and aisles. The height is the same, the disposition of the bays the same, except S. Galgano. . ... 1 . . . . A . . . 1 , that in the six westerly bays ot the clerestory the original small single windows have been replaced by tall two-light windows with cusped heads and a foliated circle under the bearing-arcli; while in the other two bays the original single windows remain with a rose above in the arch of the vault. The transverse arches of the nave are built of brick with alternate voussoirs of travertine, and a similar alternation of brick and stone occurs on the exterior wall of the north transept and of the choir. 2 This is perhaps the earliest instance of that use of contrasting colors which became, a little later, so marked a characteristic of the Northern schools of Italian Gothic. (Figs. 386, 337.) In some of the monastic churches which immediately followed Fig’. 886. S. Galgano. Section. Fossanova and Casamari, we begin to see a variation from the forms s Martino an ^ principles of the Northern Gothic, notably in that of aicimino. the monastery of San Martino al Cimino, some eight miles from Viterbo, — one of the earliest monasteries in Italy, its founda- 1 Enlart, p. 45 ; Bindi, Monumenti Storici degli Abruzzi, p. 651; Schulz, ii., p. 35, pi. lx. 2 Enlart declares, on very insufficient grounds, that “ the church of S. Galgano was the model of the cathedral of Siena, and the prototype of the Tuscan Gothic.” It appears to he true, however, that the works of that cathedral were directed, during some twenty years, or from 1260 to 1280, by the monks of S. Galgano. Enlart, pp. 17, 49. THE MONASTERIES 151 tion going back to the early times of the Benedictines, and its transference to the Cistercians in 1150 following close upon that of Fossa- nova and Casarnari. The buildings were at that time in a state of ruin which made a complete re¬ building necessary. This did not, how¬ ever, take place for another half century. Early in the thir¬ teenth century it was carried out under the patronage of Pope Innocent III. The church differs from those heretofore mentioned in several important respects. Its nave, transepts, Fig-. 337. S. Galgano. Interior of Church, and choir are divided into square bays, four in the nave, one in each transept, and one in the choir. The aisles are also in square bays, of which two answer to each bay of the nave, the vaulting of the aisles being effected by means of an intermediate column between the great nave piers, and the large squares of the nave and the small squares of the aisles being covered alike with quadripartite vaults. This is not the French arrangement, so closely adhered to in the other monastic churches of which I have spoken above, but the Lombard arrange¬ ment, as seen in San Ambrogio at Milan, San Michele at Pavia, and most of the characteristic Lombard churches of Northern Italy. In the transepts this disposition is modified by the interposition of an intermediate transverse arch thrown across the square bay, dividing the two lateral cells of the vault, which thus becomes sexpartite. A similar construction was apparently intended in the nave, of which 152 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY the hay next tlie transept shows on the upper wall the intermediate transverse arch across the nave ; the intention being further indicated by two windows in the clerestory which, had the intention been car¬ ried out, would have occupied the heads of the two wall-arches of the vault. 1 The choir of the church also shows a return to the Romanesque form, and instead of the two oblong- bays of the earlier Cistercian churches, shows a single oblong bay, in line with the flanking chapels, and a projecting octagonal apse with vaulting ribs springing from angle-shafts, and on the exterior strong angle buttresses. Of the other buildings which made up the extensive group which belonged to the monastery, the greater part were destroyed or entirely rebuilt for quite different uses, in the middle of the seventeenth century. 2 As at Fossanova and Casamari, the most important of the conventual buildings seem to have been disposed in line with the transept of the church, the direction here being, however, re¬ versed. The sacristy and another Fig. 338. Plan of S. Martino. small room, perhaps the treasury, ad¬ joined the north transept. Then came a narrow passage or corridor connecting the cloister with the exte- Tlie perfectly logical arrangement of a sexpartite vault covering a square bay, with an intermediate nave-column and a vaulting shaft above it, taking the spring of an intermediate transverse arch, is common in French churches of the twelfth century. Examples may be seen in the smaller churches of Champeaux, Nesle, Angicourt, and la Madelaine at Troyes, in the cathedral of Lausanne, and in some of the French cathe¬ drals, as Noyon, Mantes, Senlis, and Sens. In 1 ->(!4 the monastery had become extinct, and the property passed into the hands of the Vatican chapter. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, it became the property of the Doria family, who are still the owners. Donna Olimpia Pamphile, sister-in-law of Innocent X., who died in 1657, made the site her favorite residence! She built a great palace within the precincts of the ruined monastery, restored the church in the barocco taste of the time, and was buried there, as is shown by two inscrip¬ tions, one placed over the door of entrance, the other in the pavement in front of the high altar.” Frothingham, in Jour, of Arch., vi., p. 302. THE MONASTERIES 153 rior, beyond which, but separated by a square apartment whose use is not known, was the chapter-house, larger than either of those above mentioned, — a double square in plan, divided by a line of three grouped piers into two aisles, each covered by four square groined vaults with dividing pointed arches and moulded ribs. The chapter- house nearly closed one side of what seems to have been a second cloister, — the first adjoining the church, and the two separated by a range of buildings which was probably either a dormitory or a refec¬ tory, or possibly both combined. Fig. 339. S. Martino. Longitudinal Section. CHAPTER VIII THE GOTHIC In entering on the Gothic period in the architecture of Italy we seem to be in the midst of a new order of things, as well in the social as in the religious and political life of the people. As the earlier Romanesque architecture, particularly that of the Lombard school, spoke of the sombre conditions of the dark ages, in which the people, the sport and prey of kings, nobles, and priests, scarcely rose above the beasts of the field, so the Gothic which replaced or followed it in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries represented the newer, freer, more active and hopeful life into which the struggling people slowly emerged. At the opening of this period, the arts and graces of life were still shut up within the walls of the monasteries ; all outside was war and turmoil, with intervals of torpor and exhaustion. Before another century had passed, a new sense had possessed the people, and a new relation was established between them and the powers which had hitherto fought for the privilege of enslaving them. In the fierce and prolonged struggle between the Popes and the Emperors, which tore the North of Italy through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, both parties had to take account of the swarming populations of the cities, and for the first time in history we begin to see architecture freely employed in the service of the people, and no longer exclusively in the service of state and church. The Renais¬ sance was already at hand, and all the conditions of arts, politics, and social life were preparing for it. 1 We have seen in the preceding chapter that the earliest examples of the use of the Gothic forms in Italy were in the monastic churches and their accessory buildings, and that the style was wholly an importation from France. The failure of the Romanesque of Lombardy to develop out of the rudeness of its early forms, and out 1 What Viollet le Due says of the French communes of the twelfth century is equally true of those of Italy: The enfranchisement of the communes marks an important point in the history of architecture ; it was a serious blow to the feudal influence, whether religious or secular. From that moment the great religious centres ceased to occupy exclusively the domain of art.” Diet., vol. i., p. 127. THE GOTHIC 155 of the timidity and clumsiness of its construction, into a more com¬ plete and logical system both of construction and design, is very remarkable. The more scientific and artistic Romanesque of North¬ ern France grew naturally in the second half of the twelfth century into the system of balanced thrust and resistance which characterizes the Gothic, and which took upon itself those qualities of daring light¬ ness, height, space, and constructive decoration which have made that architecture, not less than the classic architecture of Greece, the wonder and admiration of the world. But in Italy the preparatory steps towards such development, which we have seen in the earliest of the great Lombard churches still existing, in San Ambrogio and San Michele, — the transverse arches which divide the nave and aisles into bays, the grouped piers with their vaulting shafts, the vaulting ribs sustaining the masonry of the vaults, — led to nothing- further. The process of development was checked, much as was the case with the Romanesque of the southern provinces of France. The tendency towards a Gothic structure was arrested before the Gothic forms had begun to appear. In the later Lombard monu¬ ments, in Pavia, Piacenza, Parma, an amelioration of the lowness of proportion and of the heaviness of construction is the most that can be remarked in this direction, up to the time when the classic tradi¬ tions resumed their sway. In the centre and south of Italy, there was, as we have seen, even less approach to a scientific construction ; the use of vaulting being everywhere extremely limited, and the churches tending both in plan and construction to keep as closely as possible to the basilican type. Two things are to be remarked in the Gothic of Italy, — first, its incompleteness as compared with the Gothic of France, and Inferiority even with that of England and Germany : and second, its ? ft heitai- lack of homogeneousness as a national style. The monastic churches which have been described in the previous chapter — the earliest examples of the use of Gothic forms in Italy — were of too limited dimensions, and too simple in their plan and disposition of parts, to exhibit the more important and characteristic features of the French Gothic. They were in those respects on a plane with the parish churches of France, and called for no especial science in construction, beyond what was exhibited in the nearly contemporary vaulted Romanesque churches of Lombardy. But even in the much larger and more important churches which followed these first examples, — churches which in some cases approached nearly to the scale of the great Northern cathedrals, the development 156 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY was, as we shall see later, singularly incomplete ; so that, as a recent French writer has remarked, “ there are perhaps not seven churches in Italy which have flying buttresses.” 1 Not that these supports are not in many instances manifestly needed; since the constant use of iron ties at the spring of the vaults furnishes the strongest testimony to the insufficiency of the preparation made for resisting their thrusts. But indeed, as I have said before, the Italian builders seem never, after the decay of the Roman civilization, to have exhibited any of the scientific knowledge and invention which characterized the builders of the North of Europe. Whether the Gothic architecture would in Italy, under other con¬ ditions, have ever attained to anything resembling the development which it reached in Northern Europe, may perhaps be matter of con¬ jecture. But beginning in Italy after it had flowered in France, and beginning not as a phase in the development of a national style, but as an example of the art of a foreign country, and in the hands of foreign builders, it had lost by the end of the fourteenth century its feeble hold on the Italian mind; and with the opening of the fifteenth century, the early Renaissance turned all forms of art away from the mediaeval paths, and gave them instead the strong impulse towards the classic models. The introduction to a certain extent of the Gothic of Northern France in the monasteries of Fossanova and Casamari dates, as we have seen, from the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth. But it was for more than a generation a monastic style exclusively, and it was not until fifty years later that it was adopted to any considerable extent in the cathedrals and smaller churches of the peninsula. From the first it was far from being a homogeneous style, but showed equally with the Romanesque which preceded it the wide variations in form, material, and construction which were given to it by the tastes and predilections of the various geographical divisions of the country. Only when it was the direct work of Northern builders were the Northern forms at all closely adhered to, as in the monasteries already noticed, or in later instances like S. Francesco at Assisi. Everywhere else the style fell away from the comparative purity of the earlier examples, falling away in one province in one direction, in another province in another ; but everywhere losing from generation to generation more of the Gothic feeling, and yielding more and more to local preferences and tradi¬ tions. In Venice, Bologna, Florence, Verona, Milan, the character 1 Enlart, p. 5. THE GOTHIC 157 of the architecture is widely varied, and almost the sole point of agreement is the pointed arch. Many smaller village churches were built during the thirteenth century under the direct influence of the Cistercians, chiefly of Fossanova and Casamari. These were, for the most part, in the cen¬ tral portion of Italy, and show in some respects, and to a greater or less extent, the same partial use of the Gothic forms which we have remarked in the monastic churches, with perhaps still less of the Gothic spirit. Among the earliest of these smaller churches are S. Maria del Fiume at Ceccano, which is probably contemporary with the rebuilding of Fossanova, S. Maria Maggiore at Ferentino, a small church at Amaseno, and S. Maria at Sermoneta. They are generally rectangular in plan, without any projecting choir, vaulted often with simple groined vaults without ribs, as at Fossanova, show¬ ing extreme simplicity as to mouldings and decoration, and with little pretension to Gothic character on the exterior except the pointed arches of the openings. 1 An impulse closely corresponding to that exercised in Central Italy by the monastic builders, but from a source wholly discon- Barietta, nected with them, made itself felt at nearly the same SSe P 01 cro. moment in Southern Italy. The prebendaries of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem built at Barietta in Apulia, on the shore of the Adri¬ atic, a church since known as S. Sepolcro, which is not less Gothic in its forms than the monastic churches of which I have spoken above, but with important differences of plan and disposition, and which is interesting as probably the earliest example of the use of Gothic forms in South Italy. 2 . Its plan (Fig. 340) is a long rectangle com¬ posed of a narthex in two stages, nave and aisles in six bays, and a transept scarcely projecting beyond the aisle walls, and divided into three square bays, each with a round eastern apse, and the central bay covered by an octagonal dome with a lantern and crowning spire. 3 The bays of the nave and aisles, as also those of the tran¬ sept and narthex, are separated by high pointed arches, without mouldings, and all are covered by pointed groined vaults, of which only those of the nave and transepts are built on ribs, which spring, 1 Enlart, chap. iii. Mothes pushes all these churches back, apparently without reason, into the last quarter of the twelfth century. “ Mothes, relying on an ancient church document, assigns this church to the beginning of the fourteenth century, hut remarks, nevertheless, that it is possible it may he older, and the document imperfect or untrustworthy. P. 648, note. 3 I am describing the church in its original state. It was much transformed in the eighteenth century. 158 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY like the transverse arches, from pilasters which form a member of the compound nave-pier. The small single windows of aisles and clere¬ story are round-arched. The most striking feature of the church is the narthex, which is within the walls, and divided into three bays, which continue those of nave and aisles, and are connected with these by pointed arches in two orders, the middle arch springing from low pilasters. The gallery above is also divided into three bays, of which the middle one opens into the nave by five pointed arches, the central arch broader and higher than those on the sides, which are grouped in couples divided by columnar mullions. The side bays have each a door opening onto the flat roof of the aisles. An open porch with a single square-vaulted bay formerly projected from the centre of the west front, but has now disappeared, with the exception of the shafts on the wall, from which sprang its lateral arches. The church has no wooden roof ; the masonry of the vaults is brought up to a uniform slope, and covered with roofing tiles. It will be seen that this interesting church, though similar in gen¬ eral character to the monastic churches above mentioned, shows in many respects its freedom from the governing influence of the Cis¬ tercians. This freedom is accentuated by the character of the sculp¬ ture, both exterior and interior, which, though sparing in quantity, is much less severe in character than that of the monkish builders, and by the traces of Byzantine paintings to be seen on the walls of the gallery over the narthex. The exterior of the church is free from any suggestion of Gothic feeling, except in the great doorway of the north aisle, in which three orders of pointed arches spring from pilasters and jamb shafts raised on a stylobate. The arch is covered by a moulded gable, and the tympanum is filled in with masonry. The whole composition is like that which prevails in most of the important churches of the Southern Romanesque, but without the richness and profusion of sculpture which is characteristic of these. 1 Examples of a more advanced Gothic plan than is to be found in any of the buildings heretofore cited in this chapter have been already mentioned in the chapter on the Southern Romanesque. I allude to the east ends of several of the Norman churches of South Italy, — as Aversa (probably the earliest example), Acerenza, and Venosa, where the apsidal choir is enclosed within a surrounding aisle, divided into vaulted bays from which open a series of radiating 1 Enlart, p. 105 ; Schulz, i. 139. THE GOTHIC 159 apsidal chapels. These churches are, as far as their east ends are concerned, easily accounted for as the work of the French architects brought to Italy by their Norman founders, or of the bishops or other high dignitaries of the French church, who from time to time visited these regions. 1 They are the purest examples of the true Gothic to be found south of the Alps, and reproduce with close resemblance the chevets of many of the smaller churches of Auvergne, Poitou, and other provinces of Central France, where this form was common from the early years of the twelfth century. 2 But the French architects, though the earliest and most active and instructed, were not the only ones by whom the Gothic Verce]li) influence was exerted in Italy at this period. The church s Andrea - of S. Andrea at Vercelli is nearly contemporary with that of Casa- mari, and is not less Gothic in its forms and construction ; but the French, whether monks or architects, seem to have had nothing to do with its design. Its founder, Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, was a native of Vercelli and a canon of its cathedral, and had been sent as papal legate to France, and later to England, where he became possessed of consid¬ erable wealth through the favor of Henry III., whom he had apparently helped to establish on the throne. Returning from the latter country, he brought with him an English architect, John Brigliinz or Brighinth, by whom, at the cost of the cardinal, the church was built in five or six years, the corner-stone having been laid February 20, 1219, and the consecration following in 1224. The cardinal died in 1227, leaving all his prop¬ erty to the church which he had founded. Such is the tradition. It must, however, be confessed that the presumption of the English origin of the church is not strongly borne out by any internal evidence. The gen¬ eral forms are for the most part substantially those of the churches already cited, but with differences of detail. (Fig. 341.) The east end has a more developed character than any previous example, except the Southern churches above cited, — a choir in two square Fig'. 340. Barletta. S. Sepolcro. 1 Suget, abbot of S. Denis, is known to have come to Monte S. Angelo in 1122. - Viollet le Due, i., p. 0. It was a century later that this became the prevailing form in the great Northern cathedrals, e. g., Rlieims, Amiens, Beauvais, Soissons, Noyon, Cologne, etc., etc. 160 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY bays flanked by two apsidal chapels on each side opening- from the oblong bays of the transept, the ajjses being polygonal in plan, and lessening in projection towards the transept ends. The crossing is covered by a high pointed octagonal vault, with ribs springing from vaulting shafts attached to the great piers, and the change to the oc¬ tagonal plan is effected by means of simple round-arched squinches. A reminder of the Lombard interiors is seen in the round-ai'ched o-ab lery which surrounds the base of the octagon. The nave and aisles are in six bays with sharply pointed nave arches, springing from cir¬ cular piers surrounded by eight engaged shafts which take the spring of the arches and vault ribs, — a detail not unlike what is to be seen in certain of the English and French cathedrals, 1 but of which I know no other example in Italy. In the present instance the shafts are singularly managed. The curve of the circular pier projects slightly outside the face of the nave arches, and a small segment of it, with the three shafts attached, is carried up on the clerestory wall. The transverse arches which separate the bays are of stone ; all others are of brick with occasional voussoirs of stone. The windows both of aisles and clerestory are small single round-arched openings as in the earlier Romanesque churches; but the east wall of the choir has a group of three pointed windows with deejfly splayed and moulded jambs, and a rose window above. There is little sculpture ; the capitals are mostly of the form which prevails in the earlier Gothic churches, but there are some instances of the Byzantine block capital. The exterior has, except in a single particular, no suggestion of Gothic influence, but is purely Romanesque in style, with a high octagonal lantern in two well marked stages over the crossing, and a very extensive use both on the facade and the flanks of the church of the arcaded gallery which is so characteristic a feature of the Romanesque. The exception consists in the system of buttresses, which, timid and tentative as it is, is yet enough to give the church a stronger claim to be considered a Gothic structure than can be made in favor of any of its predecessors or contemporaries. The buttresses of the aisle and clerestory walls are strong, though not more so than at Fossanova and Casamari. But in S. Andrea, a low flying buttress springs from the top of the aisle buttress, and con¬ nects it with that of the clerestory. The arch is of brick, and rises but little above the aisle roof, and the lower buttress from which it springs is crowned by no pinnacle. But one of the most important 1 Chapter-house at Wells, presbytery at Chichester, nave piers at Laon, etc. THE GOTHIC 161 principles of the true Gothic construction is here recognized as it had not before been in Italy; and had the Italian mind been open to the full appreciation of the Gothic constructive system, this might have proved to be the precursor of a line of churches having something of the char¬ acter and development of the Northern Gothic. The weakness of the hold which the Gothic architecture had upon the Ital¬ ian builders is further shown in the fine cloister and chapter-house of S. Andrea, in both of which the round arch reap¬ pears ; though in the arcades of the cloister, whose vault is without ribs or dividing arches, the grouped columns, Fig 341 . y ercem . s. Andrea, with the rich foliage of their capitals, show a more frank adoption of French models than is to be found in any earlier example with which I am acquainted. Closely contemporary with S. Andrea was the more important and famous church of S. Francesco at Assisi. This was perhaps . . . , r . r Assisi, the first instance of which we have any knowledge in which s. Fran- " ” C6SC0. a competition was established to determine the architect, though this method of procuring plans seems to have been not uncommon in Italy at this period. The competition was held in 1228, less than two years after the death of St. Francis, — not only plans, but models being submitted for the judgment of the pro¬ jectors,— and the work was given to a Tyrolese architect, one Jacob of Meran, concerning whom little is known, though much strife has been waged over his origin, his history, and even his identity. The foundations were begun in May, 1228, and the corner-stone was laid two months later by Pope Gregory IX. In 1230, the narrow crypt, hewn out of the rock, beneath the church was ready to receive the body of the saint, 1 and the work went steadily forward to its comple¬ tion, the final consecration being solemnized in 1253 by Pope Inno¬ cent IV. During the later years the work was under the direction of Filippo di Campello, the successor of Jacob, and a Franciscan monk. The site chosen for the church, on the abrupt slope of the 1 This crypt has in modern times been expanded into a great Renaissance chapel, in the form of a rotunda with four apses and a small octagonal oratory opening from it. 162 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY hill on which the town is built, led to the building of a lower and an upper church, — the ground in front being terraced up to the level of the floor of the upper, and the lower being entered on the side, from one of the cloisters some twenty-five feet below the terrace. The lower church has a somewhat peculiar plan, with a transept at each end, and a nave and aisles connecting the two ; the aisles being, how¬ ever, divided into rectangular chapels opening from the nave by pointed arches. The eastern transept 1 is really a narthex, with a doorway in the south end of it opening from the great court which flanks the church. Each transept is divided into three bays, and is terminated at each end (except that occupied by the doorway just mentioned) by a polygonal chapel of somewhat later date. The nave, about forty feet broad, is in three square bays, and is bounded by very low round arches carried on massive round piers eight feet in diameter and seven feet high, and similar arches divide the bays of the nave, which, as well as the square of the crossing, are covered by slightly domed four-part vaults, built on strong square ribs sixteen inches broad, the transept ends be¬ ing covered by round barrel- vaults and the semicircular apse by a hemispherical semi¬ dome. The bays of the east¬ ern transept or narthex are covered by sexpartite vault¬ ing. The church is very sombre, nearly the only light coming from the small win¬ dows of the polygonal chap¬ els of the transepts. All the surfaces are covered with frescoes, and the effect is that of a sumptuous crypt. (Figs. 342, 343, 344.) To this gloomy but im¬ pressive and beautiful inte¬ rior, the upper church Fig. 342. Assisi. Plan of S. Francesco. presents a striking and de- 1 The church, owing to its peculiar position on the southwestern slope of the hill, has a reversed orientation, — the fagade being towards the east. THE GOTHIC 163 Fig. 343. Assisi. Longitudinal Section of S. Francesco. lightful contrast. Its plan is a long Latin cross, the whole length being nearly two hundred and forty feet, with a breadth across the transept of one hundred feet. The nave has the breadth of the nave of the lower church, and there are no aisles, the walls of the nave being carried on the massive arcades of the nave below. The nave is in four square bays, the transept in three, with a polygonal apse opening from the middle bay over the round apse below, and the vaulting is uniform throughout, the bays being separated by high pointed arches springing, like the vaulting ribs, from slender grouped shafts, engaged on the nave walls and rising from the pavement. The vaults are highly pointed, with unusually large chamfered ribs without mouldings. Their thrust is resisted on the nave walls by heavy round buttresses like turrets, rising from the piers of the lower church to the full height of the nave wall, and by low arched Hying buttresses connecting these witli the outer walls of the chapels of the lower church. The arches, however, abut upon the vertical buttresses at so low a point that the reinforcement they bring can hardly be very effective. The design of the interior is quite unlike that of any preceding building in Italy, yet it would be hard to point out its prototype in France, England, or Germany. The whole height is about sixty feet, yet such is the breadth of the arches which divide the wall that their height is nearly equal to that of the piers from which they spring. 164 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY In each arch of the nave is a high and narrow two-light pointed win¬ dow, the lights being separated, not by a column, as has heretofore been the invariable rule in Italy, but by a true Gothic chamfered mullion. A similar window occupies each face of the apse. In the transept ends this window is doubled, and the two pairs are brought together under a broad pointed bearing-arch with a quatrefoil in the head. The wall below the windows is broken only by the dividing piers, and is of superior thickness, so that at the point where the wall is thinned, sufficient breadth is left for a narrow gallery, which runs quite around the church, cutting through the masonry of the deep wall arches. In the side walls of transepts and choir, where there are no windows, this gallery is faced by a light and graceful arcade of narrow cusped arches, on slender columns with foliage capi¬ tals of a distinctly French type; and above the arcade is a second gallery, protected by a low fence wall. It will be seen that the whole design of this interior is of the simplest character. Except for the gallery arcade even the stern Cistercians could not have built with more severe restraint, so far as the architectural forms were concerned. But the decoration which was applied to these broad walls and arches and vaults made the church one of the richest and most sumptuous in Italy. With the Fig. 344. Assisi. S. Francesco. Lower Church. THE GOTHIC 165 exception of the mo¬ saic decorations of Palermo and Venice, from fifty to a hun¬ dred years earlier than the church of Assisi, we must go back to the sixth century to find any example of such a complete and con¬ sistent decoration of a church interior. But there is no mo¬ saic in S. Francesco; the decoration is in fresco. Every por¬ tion of the surface is covered with paint¬ ing, — whether of figure subjects repre¬ senting the legends of the church, in¬ cluding a Series of * Fig-. 345. Assisi. S. Francesco. Upper Church, twenty-eight pictures illustrating the history of St. Francis and attributed to Giotto; or of arabesques and bands of various design on the shafts and ribs and soffits, and in the borders of the vault cells; or of scattered stars on a blue ground, as in the broad surfaces of the vaults. The lower church is not less rich than the upper, and a series of heads and half-length figures enclosed in squares or lozenges on the soffits of the broad vaulting ribs are of wonderful delicacy and beauty ; while the vaults are covered with pictorial subjects which recall the frescoes of Fra Angelico in the cathedral of Orvieto. When we add that the windows both of the lower and the upper church are filled with excellent stained glass, partly contemporary and partly of the fourteenth century, it will be seen that the liberation from the bondage of the Cistercian asceticism is complete and permanent; and although in the matter of pure decoration no church in Italy for three hundred years rivalled the luxury of San Francesco, yet during the whole of that time the use of fresco painting in churches to a 166 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY greater or less extent was common, and schools of religious art were developed by the stimulus thus afforded. Strong as was the Gothic influence in the interior of this fine church, it was not strong enough to affect sensibly the exterior. (Fig. 346.) The facade is a mere screen, quite without relation to what is behind it, with a gable rising far above the flat roof, and in whi