Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy. George Edmund Street
of the place which, without one’s knowledge, sways the judgment.
There is in fact only one building of great architectural importance—the cathedral; but, as I shall shew, it has the greatest interest, not only on account of its real merit, but also because it is a startling example of the way in which, in the thirteenth century,[11] the Lombard architects adhered to their old lessons and habits in spite of all the developments which were then universally accepted on the northern side of the Alps.
The church is a round-arched building throughout, but the mouldings and details everywhere show a knowledge of thirteenth-century work, and have none of the character of true Romanesque or Lombard art. Yet at the same time there is in many respects a most close imitation of Lombard features. There are arcades under the cornices of the aisles, arcades under the eaves of the apses, open porches supported on shafts whose bases rest on monsters, and other features which, looked at apart from the sections of mouldings and details of sculpture, might well warrant a much earlier date being fixed on for the execution of the work than I have named. An inscription which fixes the date of some works here in 1212[12] may fairly, I think, be assumed to give the date of the greater part of the fabric, though some portions, as e.g. the western wheel window and the northern porch, are probably not so early by at least a hundred years. But I am not concerned to deal with the question only from an archæological point of view, and will at once therefore go on to give some description of the building.
The ground-plan is in the shape of a Latin cross—with an eastern apse, two small apses to the east of the transepts, and a nave and aisles of seven bays. There is an octagonal lantern over the crossing, and the whole church is groined. The doors are, two in the east walls of the transepts, one at the west end (of marble), and one with a projecting open porch over it near the east end of the north aisle. Two western towers were intended to be built, and the staircases to them are carried up in the western and southern aisle walls in a very unusual and picturesque fashion. They commence in the third bay east of the towers, and are carried up in a continuous rise, opening to the church with a series of arches stepping up to suit the level of the staircases. The western bay to which these stairs lead is groined at a lower level, as well as at the nave level, so as to form a very lofty gallery open to the church.
The clerestory consists of very small windows, and there is no triforium; the main portion of the columns goes up to
and carries the groining, and though the main arches are all semi-circular, there is nevertheless an evident attempt—and it is successful—to give an impression of height to the interior. The continuous arcades under the eaves are carried also across the front of the transepts, and give a great effect of richness to the external architecture. Of the two towers only one is complete, and this was built in the sixteenth century. The northern porch is the only place in which the pointed arch appears, and it seemed to me to be of the fourteenth century, though the doorway is of Lombard character, with very quaint but poor carving in its tympanum, of Our Lord with the four Evangelists. The whole church is built of stone, and has a Classical want of life and vigour which one notices only too often in the best Lombard work. Were it not for the building attached to its north-east angle, I suspect the general impression would be much less agreeable than it is. This is a lofty erection with two square turrets and a small apse at the east, parts of which seem to be earlier than the date I have given to the cathedral. It is connected with the north-east angle, but its axis is not parallel with that of the cathedral, and there is consequently a good deal of picturesqueness in the perspective, besides which it prevents the otherwise insipid outline of the whole building being perceived.
The porch on the east side of the south transept, of which I give an illustration, is one of the most interesting portions of detail in the building. Its front is supported on two shafts, one of which is an octagon, resting on the back of a lion, the other four shafts cut out of a single block and ingeniously knotted together in the centre, and resting on the shoulders of four sitting figures—altogether about as strong an illustration of mediæval love of change and variety as could be found. It must have been the work of a sculptor who was just a little savage with the somewhat tame uniformity of the whole of the architectural scheme of the cathedral.
I found little else to see in Trent. Sta. Maria Maggiore has a Romanesque steeple, quite plain below, but with its two upper stages arcaded, the arcades resting in the lower stage on shafts coupled one behind the other, and in the upper tripled in the same way. I do not remember before to have seen this last arrangement. A tower in the walls between this church and the cathedral is a rhomboid in plan, and was, I suppose, built of this strange shape to suit some necessity arising out of the position of streets and walls. Considerable portions of the walls remain; they are of stone, finished on the top with the forked Italian battlement, and having square projecting towers at short intervals.
Trent Cathedral and the fine church at Innichen in the Pusterthal, are quoted frequently as the two finest churches in Tyrol. That at Innichen has not the same entirely Italian character which marks that at Trent. In the latter I always feel that climate, people, and town are all in concert to make one suppose oneself in Italy, which certainly is not the case at Innichen. North of Trent the architecture of the Tyrol (as at Botzen and Meran) is entirely German, whilst in Trent itself, were it not for a steep roof here and there covered with bright glazed tiles, and a few such slight indications, no one would suspect the presence of any German influence whatever.
I have travelled so frequently from Trent to Verona by the railway that I always regard it as one of the most natural and obvious roads of approach to Italy for Englishmen. It takes its course through so fine a country that one does not easily tire of the journey, and finally, it sets travellers down in the city which, perhaps more than any other in northern Italy, charms the cultivated traveller by the beauty, interest, and grandeur of its buildings. Who that has taken this way to Verona does not remember with pleasure the last quarter of an hour of his journey, as the railway, making a circuit round two-thirds of the city, reveals first a mixed group of lofty steeples, presently the great church of San Zenone, then Sta. Anastasia, anon San Fermo, then crosses the swift-flowing Adige, and at last lands one at the station, full of anxiety to make the nearer acquaintance of the buildings of “Verona la degna,” which from afar look so wondrous brave and fine?
CHAPTER VI.
“Come, go with me. Go, sirrah, trudge about
Through fair Verona.”
Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 2.
Verona: Campanile of the Palazzo dei Signori—Sta. Anastasia—Monuments—Piazza dell’ Erbe—The Duomo—The Baptistery—Sta. Maria l’Antica—Cemetery and Palace of the Scaligers—Domestic Architecture—Piazza di Brà—The Austrians—Ponte di Castel-Vecchio—San Zenone—San Fermo Maggiore—Chapel near the Duomo—Romeo and Juliet—Dwarfs—Wells.
WE reached Verona in the evening, and were up early on the next morning, anxious to get a general idea of the city. But I was no sooner out of my bed than I saw from my window, over the roofs of the opposite buildings, the campanile of the Palazzo dei Signori, a lofty, simple, and almost unbroken piece of brickwork, rising, I suppose, at least three hundred feet into the air, and pierced with innumerable scaffold-holes, in and out of which, as I looked, flew countless beautiful doves, whose choice of a home in the walls of this tall Veronese tower will make me think kindly of putlog-holes for the future. Certainly, if the Italian and English principles of tower-building are to be compared with one another, the Italian need give no fairer example of its power than this simple and grand erection.
It rises, as we found afterwards, out of a large pile of buildings, and for a short distance above their roofs is built in alternate courses of brick and a very warm-coloured stone,