Chapter 23

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED; As before, Corroyer, Reber. Also, Cummings, _A History of Architecture in Italy_. De Fleury, _La Toscane au moyen âge_. Gruner, _The Terra Cotta Architecture of Northern Italy_. Mothes, _Die Baukunst des Mittelalters in Italien_. Norton, _Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages_. Osten, _Bauwerke der Lombardei_. Street, _Brick and Marble Architecture of Italy_. Willis, _Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, especially of Italy_.

+GENERAL CHARACTER.+ The various Romanesque styles which had grown up in Italy before 1200 lacked that unity of principle out of which alone a new and homogeneous national style could have been evolved. Each province practised its own style and methods of building, long after the Romanesque had given place to the Gothic in Western Europe. The Italians were better decorators than builders, and cared little for Gothic structural principles. Mosaic and carving, sumptuous altars and tombs, veneerings and inlays of colored marble, broad flat surfaces to be covered with painting and ornament--to secure these they were content to build crudely, to tie their insufficiently buttressed vaults with unsightly iron tie-rods, and to make their church façades mere screen-walls, in form wholly unrelated to the buildings behind them.

When, therefore, under foreign influences pointed arches, tracery, clustered shafts, crockets and finials came into use, it was merely as an imported fashion. Even when foreign architects (usually Germans) were employed, the composition, and in large measure the details, were still Italian and provincial. The church of St. Francis at Assisi (1228-53, by _Jacobus of Meruan_, a German, superseded later by an Italian, Campello), and the cathedral of Milan (begun 1389, perhaps by _Henry of Gmund_), are conspicuous illustrations of this. Rome built basilicas all through the Middle Ages. Tuscany continued to prefer flat walls veneered with marble to the broken surfaces and deep buttresses of France and Germany. Venice developed a Gothic style of façade-design wholly her own (see p. 267). Nowhere but in Italy could two such utterly diverse structures as the Certosa at Pavia and the cathedral at Milan have been erected at the same time.

+CLIMATE AND TRADITION.+ Two further causes militated against the domestication of Gothic art in Italy. The first was the brilliant atmosphere, which made the vast traceried windows of Gothic design, and its suppression of the wall-surfaces, wholly undesirable. Cool, dim interiors, thick walls, small windows and the exclusion of sunlight, all necessary to Italian comfort, were incompatible with Gothic ideals and methods. The second obstacle was the persistence of classic traditions of form, both in construction and decoration. The spaciousness and breadth of interior planning which characterized Roman design, and its amplitude of scale in every feature, seem never to have lost their hold on the Italians. The narrow lofty aisles, multiplied supports and minute detail of the Gothic style were repugnant to the classic predilections of the Italian builders. The Roman acanthus and Corinthian capital were constantly imitated in their Gothic buildings, and the round arch continued all through the Middle Ages to be used in conjunction with the pointed arch (Figs. 149, 150).

+EARLY BUILDINGS.+ It is hard to determine how and by whom Gothic forms were first introduced into Italy, but it was most probably through the agency of the monastic orders. Cistercian churches like that at Chiaravalle near Milan (1208-21), and most of those erected by the mendicant orders of the Franciscans (founded 1210) and Dominicans (1216), were built with ribbed vaults and pointed arches. The example set by these orders contributed greatly to the general adoption of the foreign style. +S. Francesco+ at +Assisi+, already mentioned, was the first completely Gothic Franciscan church, although +S. Francesco+ at +Bologna+, begun a few years later, was finished a little earlier. The Dominican church of +SS. Giovanni e Paolo+ and the great Franciscan church of +Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari+, both at Venice, were built a little later. +Sta. Maria Novella+ at Florence (1278), and +Sta. Maria sopra Minerva+ at Rome (1280), both by the brothers _Sisto_ and _Ristoro_, and +S. Anastasia+ at Verona (1261) are the masterpieces of the Dominican builders. +S. Andrea+ at +Vercelli+ in North Italy, begun in 1219 under a foreign architect, is an isolated early example of lay Gothic work. Though somewhat English in its plan, and (unlike most Italian churches) provided with two western spires in the English manner, it is in all other respects thoroughly Italian in aspect. The church at Asti, begun in 1229, suggests German models by its high side walls and narrow windows.

+CATHEDRALS.+ The greatest monuments of Italian Gothic design are the cathedrals, in which, even more than was the case in France, the highly developed civic pride of the municipalities expressed itself. Chief among these half civic, half religious monuments are the cathedrals of +Sienna+ (begun in 1243), +Arezzo+ (1278), +Orvieto+ (1290), +Florence+ (the +Duomo+, Sta. Maria del Fiore, begun 1294 by Arnolfo di Cambio), +Lucca+ (S. Martino, 1350), +Milan+ (1389-1418), and +S. Petronio+ at Bologna (1390). They are all of imposing size; Milan is the largest of all Gothic cathedrals except Seville. S. Petronio was planned to be 600 feet long, the present structure with its three broad aisles and flanking chapels being merely the nave of the intended edifice. The Duomo at Florence (Fig. 147) is 500 feet long and covers 82,000 square feet, while the octagon at the crossing is 143 feet in diameter. The effect of these colossal dimensions is, however, as in a number of these large Italian interiors, singularly belittled by the bareness of the walls, by the great size of the constituent parts of the composition, and by the lack of architectural subdivisions and multiplied detail to serve as a scale by which to gauge the scale of the _ensemble_.

+INTERIOR TREATMENT.+ It was doubtless intended to cover these large unbroken wall-surfaces and the vast expanse of the vaults over naves of extraordinary breadth, with paintings and color decoration. This would have remedied their present nakedness and lack of interest, but it was only in a very few instances carried out. The double church of S. Francesco at Assisi, decorated by Cimabue, Giotto, and other early Tuscan painters, the Arena Chapel at Padua, painted by Giotto, the +Spanish Chapel+ of S. M. Novella, Florence, and the east end of S. Croce, Florence, are illustrations of the splendor of effect possible by this method of decoration. The bareness of effect in other, unpainted interiors was emphasized by the plainness of the vaults destitute of minor ribs. The transverse ribs were usually broad arches with flat soffits, and the vaulting was often sprung from so low a point as to leave no room for a triforium. Mere bull’s-eyes often served for clearstory windows, as in S. Anastasia at Verona, S. Petronio at Bologna, and the Florentine Duomo. The cathedral of +S. Martino+ at Lucca (Fig. 149) is one of the most complete and elegant of Italian Gothic interiors, having a genuine triforium with traceried arches. Even here, however, there are round arches without mouldings, flat pilasters, broad transverse ribs recalling Roman arches, and insignificant bull’s-eyes in the clearstory.

The failure to produce adequate results of scale in the interiors of the larger Italian churches, has been already alluded to. It is strikingly exemplified in the Duomo at Florence, the nave of which is 72 feet wide, with four pier-arches each over 55 feet in span. The immense vault, in square bays, starts from the level of the tops of these arches. The interior (Fig. 148) is singularly naked and cold, giving no conception of its vast dimensions. The colossal dome is an early work of the Renaissance (see p. 276). It is not known how _Fr. Talenti_, who in 1357 enlarged and vaulted the nave and planned the east end, proposed to cover the great octagon. The east end is the most effective part of the design both internally and externally, owing to the relatively moderate scale of the 15 chapels which surround the apsidal arms of the cross. In S. Petronio at Bologna, begun 1390 by _Master Antonio_, the scale is better handled. The nave, 300 feet long, is divided into six bays, each embracing two side chapels. It is 46 feet wide and 132 feet high, proportions which approximate those of the French cathedrals, and produce an impression of size somewhat unusual in Italian churches. +Orvieto+ has internally little that suggests Gothic architecture; like many Franciscan and Dominican churches it is really a timber-roofed basilica with a few pointed windows. The mixed Gothic and Romanesque interior of +Sienna Cathedral+ (Fig. 150), with its round arches and six-sided dome, unsymmetrically placed over the crossing, is one of the most impressive creations of Italian mediæval art. Alternate courses of black and white marble add richness but not repose to the effect of this interior: the same is true of Orvieto, and of some other churches. The basement baptistery of +S. Giovanni+, under the east end of Sienna Cathedral, is much more purely Gothic in detail.

In these, and indeed in most Italian interiors, the main interest centres less in the excellence of the composition than in the accessories of pavements, pulpits, choir-stalls, and sepulchral monuments. In these the decorative fancy and skill of the Italians found unrestrained exercise, and produced works of surpassing interest and merit.

+EXTERNAL DESIGN.+ The greatest possible disparity generally exists between the sides and west fronts of the Italian churches. With few exceptions the flanks present nothing like the variety of sky-line and of light and shade customary in northern and western lands. The side walls are high and flat, plain, or striped with black and white masonry (Sienna, Orvieto), or veneered with marble (Duomo at Florence) or decorated with surface-ornament of thin pilasters and arcades (Lucca). The clearstory is low; the roof low--pitched and hardly visible from below. Color, rather than structural richness, is generally sought for: Milan Cathedral is almost the only exception, and goes to the other extreme, with its seemingly countless buttresses, pinnacles and statues.

The façades, on the other hand, were treated as independent decorative compositions, and were in many cases remarkably beautiful works, though having little or no organic relation to the main structure. The most celebrated are those of +Sienna+ (cathedral begun 1243; façade 1284 by _Giovanni Pisano_; Fig. 151) and +Orvieto+ (begun 1290 by _Lorenzo Maitani_; façade 1310). Both of these are sumptuous polychromatic compositions in marble, designed on somewhat similar lines, with three high gables fronting the three aisles, with deeply recessed portals, pinnacled turrets flanking nave and aisles, and a central circular window. That of Orvieto is furthermore embellished with mosaic pictures, and is the more brilliant in color of the two. The mediæval façades of the Florentine Gothic churches were never completed; but the elegance of the panelling and of the tracery with twisted shafts in the flanks of the cathedral, and the florid beauty of its side doorways (late 14th century) would doubtless if realized with equal success on the façades, have produced strikingly beautiful results. The modern façade of the Duomo, by the late _De Fabris_ (1887) is a correct if not highly imaginative version of the style so applied. The front of Milan cathedral (soon to be replaced by a new façade), shows a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance forms. +Ferrara Cathedral+, although internally transformed in the last century, retains its fine 13th-century three-gabled and arcaded screen front; one of the most Gothic in spirit of all Italian façades. The +Cathedral+ of +Genoa+ presents Gothic windows and deeply recessed portals in a façade built in black and white bands, like Sienna cathedral and many churches in Pistoia and Pisa.

Externally the most important feature was frequently a cupola or dome over the crossing. That of Sienna has already been mentioned; that of Milan is a sumptuous many-pinnacled structure terminating in a spire 300 feet high. The +Certosa+ at Pavia (Fig. 152) and the earlier Carthusian church of Chiaravalle have internal cupolas or domes covered externally by many-storied structures ending in a tower dominating the whole edifice. These two churches, like many others in Lombardy, the Æmilia and Venetia, are built of brick, moulded terra-cotta being effectively used for the cornices, string-courses, jambs and ornaments of the exterior. The Certosa at Pavia is contemporary with the cathedral of Milan, to which it offers a surprising contrast, both in style and material. It is wholly built of brick and terra-cotta, and, save for its ribbed vaulting, possesses hardly a single Gothic feature or detail. Its arches, mouldings, and cloisters suggest both the Romanesque and the Renaissance styles by their semi-classic character.

+PLANS.+ The wide diversity of local styles in Italian architecture appears in the plans as strikingly as in the details In general one notes a love of spaciousness which expresses itself in a sometimes disproportionate breadth, and in the wide spacing of the piers. The polygonal chevet with its radial chapels is but rarely seen; +S. Lorenzo+ at Naples, Sta. Maria dei Servi and S. Francesco at Bologna are among the most important examples. More frequently the chapels form a range along the east side of the transepts, especially in the Franciscan churches, which otherwise retain many basilican features. A comparison of the plans of S. Andrea at Vercelli, the Duomo at Florence, the cathedrals of Sienna and Milan, S. Petronio at Bologna and the Certosa at Pavia (Fig. 153), sufficiently illustrates the variety of Italian Gothic plan-types.

+ORNAMENT.+ Applied decoration plays a large part in all Italian Gothic designs. Inlaid and mosaic patterns and panelled veneering in colored marble are essential features of the exterior decoration of most Italian churches. Florence offers a fine example of this treatment in the Duomo, and in its accompanying +Campanile+ or bell-tower, designed by _Giotto_ (1335), and completed by _Gaddi_ and _Talenti_. This beautiful tower is an epitome of Italian Gothic art. Its inlays, mosaics, and veneering are treated with consummate elegance, and combined with incrusted reliefs of great beauty. The tracery of this monument and of the side windows of the adjoining cathedral is lighter and more graceful than is common in Italy. Its beauty consists, however, less in movement of line than in richness and elegance of carved and inlaid ornament. In the +Or San Michele+--a combined chapel and granary in Florence dating from 1330--the tracery is far less light and open. In general, except in churches like the Cathedral of Milan, built under German influences, the tracery in secular monuments is more successful than in ecclesiastical structures. Venice developed the designing of tracery to greater perfection in her palaces than any other Italian city (see below).

+MINOR WORKS.+ Italian Gothic art found freer expression in semi-decorative works, like tombs, altars and votive chapels, than in more monumental structures. The fourteenth century was particularly rich in canopy tombs, mostly in churches, though some were erected in the open air, like the celebrated +Tombs of the Scaligers+ in Verona (1329-1380). Many of those in churches in and near Rome, and others in south Italy, are especially rich in inlay of _opus Alexandrinum_ upon their twisted columns and panelled sarcophagi. The family of the _Cosmati_ acquired great fame for work of this kind during the thirteenth century.

The little marble chapel of +Sta. Maria della Spina+, on the Arno, at Pisa, is an instance of the successful decorative use of Gothic forms in minor buildings.

+TOWERS.+ The Italians always preferred the square tower to the spire, and in most cases treated it as an independent campanile. Following Early Christian and Romanesque traditions, these square towers were usually built with plain sides unbroken by buttresses, and terminated in a flat roof or a low and inconspicuous cone or pyramid. The Campanile at Florence already mentioned is by far the most beautiful of these designs (Fig. 154). The campaniles of Sienna, Lucca, and Pistoia are built in alternate white and black courses, like the adjoining cathedrals. Verona and Mantua have towers with octagonal lanterns. In general, these Gothic towers differ from the earlier Romanesque models only in the forms of their openings. Though dignified in their simplicity and size, and usually well proportioned, they lack the beauty and interest of the French, English, and German steeples and towers.

+SECULAR MONUMENTS.+ In their public halls, open _loggias_, and domestic architecture the Italians were able to develop the application of Gothic forms with greater freedom than in their church-building, because unfettered by traditional methods of design. The early and vigorous growth of municipal and popular institutions led, as in the Netherlands, to the building of two classes of public halls--the town hall proper or _Podestà_, and the council hall, variously called _Palazzo Communale_, _Pubblico_, or _del Consiglio_. The town halls, as the seat of authority, usually have a severe and fortress-like character; the +Palazzo Vecchio+ at Florence is the most important example (1298, by Arnolfo di Cambio; Fig. 155). It is especially remarkable for its tower, which, rising 308 feet in the air, overhangs the street nearly 6 feet, its front wall resting on the face of the powerfully corbelled cornice of the palace. The court and most of the interior were remodelled in the sixteenth century. At Sienna is a somewhat similar structure in brick, the +Palazzo Pubblico+. At Pistoia the Podestà and the Communal Palace stand opposite each other; in both of these the courtyards still retain their original aspect. At Perugia, Bologna, and Viterbo are others of some importance; while in Lombardy, Bergamo, Como, Cremona, Piacenza and other towns possess smaller halls with open arcades below, of a more elegant and pleasing aspect. More successful still are the open loggias or tribunes erected for the gatherings of public bodies. The +Loggia dei Lanzi+ at Florence (1376, by _Benci di Cione_ and _Simone di Talenti_) is the largest and most famous of these open vaulted halls, of which several exist in Florence and Sienna. Gothic only in their minor details, they are Romanesque or semi-classic in their broad round arches and strong horizontal lines and cornices (Fig. 156).

+PALACES AND HOUSES: VENICE.+ The northern cities, especially Pisa, Florence, Sienna, Bologna, and Venice, are rich in mediæval public and private palaces and dwellings in brick or marble, in which pointed windows and open arcades are used with excellent effect. In Bologna and Sienna brick is used, in conjunction with details executed in moulded terra-cotta, in a highly artistic and effective way. Viterbo, nearer Rome, also possesses many interesting houses with street arcades and open stairways or stoops leading to the main entrance.

The security and prosperity of Venice in the Middle Ages, and the ever present influence of the sun-loving East, made the massive and fortress-like architecture of the inland cities unnecessary. Abundant openings, large windows full of tracery of great lightness and elegance, projecting balconies and the freest use of marble veneering and inlay--a survival of Byzantine traditions of the 12th century (see p. 133)--give to the Venetian houses and palaces an air of gayety and elegance found nowhere else. While there are few Gothic churches of importance in Venice, the number of mediæval houses and palaces is very large. Chief among these is the +Doge’s Palace+ (Fig. 157), adjoining the church of St. Mark. The two-storied arcades of the west and south fronts date from 1354, and originally stood out from the main edifice, which was widened in the next century, when the present somewhat heavy walls, laid up in red, white and black marble in a species of quarry-pattern, were built over the arcades. These arcades are beautiful designs, combining massive strength and grace in a manner quite foreign to Western Gothic ideas. Lighter and more ornate is the +Ca d’Oro+, on the Grand Canal; while the Foscari, Contarini-Fasan, Cavalli, and Pisani palaces, among many others, are admirable examples of the style. In most of these a traceried loggia occupies the central part, flanked by walls incrusted with marble and pierced by Gothic windows with carved mouldings, borders, and balconies. The Venetian Gothic owes its success largely to the absence of structural difficulties to interfere with the purely decorative development of Gothic details.

+MONUMENTS.+ 13th Century: Cistercian abbeys Fossanova and Casamari, _cir._ 1208; S. Andrea, Vercelli, 1209; S. Francesco, Assisi, 1228-53; Church at Asti, 1229; Sienna C., 1243-59 (cupola 1259-64; façade 1284); S. M. Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, 1250-80 (finished 1388); Sta. Chiara, Assisi, 1250; Sta. Trinità, Florence, 1250; S. Antonio, Padua, begun 1256; SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 1260 (?)-1400; Sta. Anastasia, Verona, 1261; Naples C., 1272-1314 (façade 1299; portal 1407; much altered later); S. Lorenzo, Naples, 1275; Campo Santo, Pisa, 1278-83; Arezzo C., 1278; S. M. Novella, Florence, 1278; S. Eustorgio, Milan, 1278; S. M. sopra Minerva, Rome, 1280; Orvieto C., 1290 (façade 1310; roof 1330); Sta. Croce, Florence, 1294 (façade 1863); S. M. del Fiore, or C., Florence, 1294-1310 (enlarged 1357; E. end 1366; dome 1420-64; façade 1887); S. Francesco, Bologna.--14th century: Genoa C., early 14th century; S. Francesco, Sienna, 1310; San Domenico, Sienna, about same date; S. Giovanni in Fonte, Sienna, 1317; S. M. della Spina, Pisa, 1323; Campanile, Florence, 1335; Or San Michele, Florence, 1337; Milan C., 1386 (cupola 16th century; façade 16th-19th century; new façade building 1895); S. Petronio, Bologna, 1390; Certosa, Pavia, 1396 (choir, transepts, cupola, cloisters, 15th and 16th centuries); Como C., 1396 (choir and transepts 1513); Lucca C. (S. Martino), Romanesque building remodelled late in 14th century; Verona C.; S. Fermo, Maggiore; S. Francesco, Pisa; S. Lorenzo, Vicenza.--15th century: Perugia C.; S. M. delle Grazie, Milan, 1470 (cupola and exterior E. part later).

SECULAR BUILDINGS: Pal. Pubblico, Cremona, 1245; Pal. Podestà (Bargello), Florence, 1255 (enlarged 1333-45); Pal. Pubblico, Sienna, 1289-1305 (many later alterations); Pal. Giureconsulti, Cremona, 1292; Broletto, Monza, 1293; Loggia dei Mercanti, Bologna, 1294; Pal. Vecchio, Florence, 1298; Broletto, Como; Pal. Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, 1310-40 (great windows 1404; extended 1423-38; courtyard 15th and 16th centuries); Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, 1335; Loggia del Bigallo, 1337; Broletto, Bergamo, 14th century; Loggia dei Nobili, Sienna, 1407; Pal. Pubblico, Udine, 1457; Loggia dei Mercanti, Ancona; Pal. del Governo, Bologna; Pal. Pepoli, Bologna; Palaces Conte Bardi, Davanzati, Capponi, all at Florence; at Sienna, Pal. Tolomei, 1205; Pal. Saracini, Pal. Buonsignori; at Venice, Pal. Contarini-Fasan, Cavalli, Foscari, Pisani, and many others; others in Padua and Vicenza.