Part 9

Genoa's quays present a busy picture with the endless traffic that makes her the premier port of Italy. Strings of heavily laden carts drawn by teams of great mules are continually passing to and fro. Cabs rattle on the pavements, their drivers cracking their whips, the horses' heads decorated with the long tail feathers of the Amherst pheasant that dance about to the music of the harness-bells. Groups of boys play pitch and toss with coins, and still cry "Croce e Griffo" ("Cross or Gryphon"), a cry as old as the wars with Pisa. Itinerant pedlars pester folk to buy what no one seems to want. Under the arcades that face the sea-front shops of all sorts exhibit everything the seafarer can possibly require, and a lively business goes on in restuffing the emigrants' mattresses with dry sea-weed or hay. Up, behind all this, narrow streets wind through the old parts of the city and form an intricate maze wherein it is not difficult to miss one's way. Many of the houses here are seven, eight, or nine storeys high. All the day's washing--and every day is washing day--hangs out from the windows on long bamboos, or flutters from a cord stretched across the confined thoroughfares. Fowls, in their inquisitive endeavours to find food, try to satiate an appetite which is never satisfied. They are all scraggy. Dark courtyards at the bottom of these tall dwellings teem with screaming children and scolding women who are engaged at the fountain troughs with the washing. The ear-splitting cries of hawkers hasten one's footsteps down the steep descents, and one dodges out of their way only to lose oneself in vain attempts to leave the picturesque but squalid quarters of old Genoa.

However fascinating these slums may be--and they can hold their own from the painter's point of view with those in any other Mediterranean port--it must be acknowledged that the palaces for which Genoa is justly famous have hardly a rival. Historically the most interesting is the Palazzo di S. Giorgio, which stands close to the quayside at the east end of the Piazza Caricamento. It was erected in 1261 by Guglielmo Boccanegra, Captain of the People, for his own residence. At his death it was taken over as the government office for the registration of public loans, or _compere_, and named the Palazzo della Compere. In 1407 the Banking Company which practically ruled commercial Genoa acquired it as their headquarters, and its name was changed to that of the city's patron saint. This bank was the oldest in the world. It originated after the Genoese had driven the Venetians out of Constantinople, and so crippled the trade of their great Adriatic rival that for a time they were masters of nearly all the Eastern commerce that flowed westwards. This increase in prosperity was to a great extent the cause of the formation of a trading company, which accepted deposits and advanced loans to others than its own members. Thus was founded a bank that carried on its business successfully until the last Doge of Genoa was unseated and the mushroom Republic of Liguria proclaimed. The bank's property was then confiscated, and Genoa, governed by time-servers and place-hunters, fell upon evil days.

The Palazzo has been much altered and restored, but retains some of the original Genoese Gothic of Boccanegra's building. The Grand Hall on the first floor contains many statues of the city's benefactors and prominent men, and is an interesting epitome of their charities, which are commemorated on tablets attached to each. Some of these statues are seated, others are standing. The former are of men who purchased their niche in this Temple of Fame by payment of one hundred thousand livres to the state; while those who wished to be handed down to posterity at a cheaper rate had to content themselves with effigies that for ever are on two legs. The building is now the Customs House, and so once more money passes through different hands within its walls.

There are no other streets in Italy which can boast such an array of noble houses as the renamed Strada Nuova, now the Via Garibaldi, and the Via Balbi. The Palazzo Rosso has a magnificent _sala_ that has a roof decorated with the armorial bearings of the Brignole family and those they intermarried with. The Municipality is now lodged in the Palazzo Doria Tursi. It has a grand façade flanked by open arcades with gardens on top, and was built for one of the Grimaldi by Rocco Lurago, a Como architect. Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, and a bust of him stands in the great hall of the palace, the Sala della Giunta. In its pedestal are some of his autograph letters to the Banco di S. Giorgio. His family came from Piacenza, but at the time of his birth his father was warden of the Porto dell' Olivella, one of the city gates. The Palazzo Ducale, a huge building of mixed styles, was begun in the thirteenth century but not finished until the sixteenth. The Palazzo Durazzo has a grand vestibule and the finest staircase of all. The Palazzo Doria, standing alone in a delightful garden which extends towards the harbour, is beautified by a good _loggia_ with arcades. Many are the palaces built by the great families of Genoa, the Spinola, Pallavicini, Balbi, Fieschi, Cambiasco, and others, as well as those already mentioned. They all contain large collections of pictures and other treasures, and it can certainly be said that the old nobility have left a hall-mark on their city. The earlier buildings all possessed towers, and during the Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, when street fighting was ever recurrent, these vantage positions were of immense strategic value--it was so pleasant to put the opposing faction _hors de combat_ by pouring boiling pitch and molten lead on to the heads below! Street fighting became at length such a nuisance to the peaceable inhabitants that the order went forth that all towers were to be demolished, with one exception, the tower that Guglielmo Embrianco attached to his house. This alone was spared. And it is due to the veneration in which his name was held that it stands to-day the solitary defensive relic of Genoa's family feuds. It will be noticed that some of these palaces are faced, like the Cathedral, with bands of black and white marble. This distinction was granted to the four noble houses of Doria and Spinola, who were adherents of the Pope, and Fieschi and Grimaldi, who took the Emperor's side in all wars.

The Cathedral is a good example of what may be termed Genoese Gothic. It is dedicated to S. Lorenzo, and was consecrated by Pope Gelasius II. in 1118. The façade, separated into three unequal parts, is a good example of thirteenth-century Gothic. The _piazza_ on to which it faces slopes sharply downhill--all Genoa is up and down hill--and the Cathedral rises well on its tier of steps. Bands of black and white form the exterior wall of the whole building, and are effectively carried through the recesses of the portals. The centre porch has twisted columns, which are carried round the splay of the arch. The columns themselves alternate with others that are circular. The bases and pedestals are covered either with carving or inlaid chequer and lozenge patterns. The two flanking porches are similar, and assist very greatly to increase the pleasing effect of this somewhat elaborate treatment, which is heightened by the two detached spiral columns on either side and those that terminate the façade at each end. In the tympanum over the central doorway is a figure of S. Lawrence lying nude on a gridiron. The fire beneath is stoked and kept alive by bellows handled by those who assisted at his martyrdom. Above is a figure of the Almighty surrounded by an angel, a lion, a peacock, and a deer. The detached column at the south-west angle of the façade, seen in the illustration, carries a figure of the patron saint under a canopy. It rests on the back of a lion; four smaller beasts of the same species encircle the base. The two huge _couchant_ lions at either end of the steps are of much later date than these. From the south-west angle a fine turreted tower rises upwards from the square, and with its copper dome forms a great feature of the Cathedral as one walks up the Strada Carlo Felice. This street is narrow and full of traffic, so much so that it is with difficulty one makes out the many mutilated tablets with Roman inscriptions, built haphazard into the south wall of the Cathedral, and the canopied mediæval tombs let in above.

The interior of the building is disappointing. One expects to find more space. A gallery at the west end, under which you find yourself directly upon entering, forms a sort of atrium. It is supported by very massive clustered columns which carry a good groined vault with heavy ribs. This was originally the _cantoria_, or organ-loft. Nine small bays on either side separate the nave from the aisles. The single columns of the arches are of red and purple marble from the renowned quarries at Tortosa, in Spain. At each corner of the black marble bases, and touching the _torus_ of the column, the head of a bird or animal has been carved. The arches of the bays are pointed. Above them is an open triforium formed by rows of small stunted arches that are carried by single and clustered columns in banded black and white. The clerestory is of small narrow single lights. The transepts are Renaissance, and the choir a mixture of styles.

The chapel of St. John the Baptist in the north aisle bears a resemblance to that of "Il Santo" at Padua. Four slender carved pillars support the entablature of good Renaissance design, on which are exceptionally well arranged panels illustrating the saint's life. Filippo Doria erected the canopy borne by porphyry columns which stands over the altar. Under this, enclosed in an iron casket within a marble ark, on which are sculptured reliefs, are the remains of St. John.

Genoa's fleet was homeward bound after one of the crusades, when, through stress of weather, it took shelter in the port of Myrra, in Lycia. Hearing that a monastery close by contained the sacred remains of the saint, some of the bolder spirits of the fleet entered the church attached, and, despite the protests of their co-religionists, carried off in triumph all that remained of St. John. The relics were presented to their own Cathedral of S. Lorenzo on arriving home. Here they have rested ever since. No women are admitted into the chapel--a prohibition imposed by Pope Innocent VIII. in remembrance of the guilt of Herodias. The Treasury holds many things of value and interest besides the Sacro Catino already described. Among them is a fine piece of Byzantine much-bejewelled metal work known as the Cross of Zaccaria. It was carried off from Phocea by Ticino Zaccaria at the capture of that place.

The church of S. Bartolommeo degli Armeni contains the celebrated picture on a cloth of the head of Christ. It was given to one of the Montaldi, a noble Genoese family, by John Paleologus, Emperor of Constantinople, in return for important services rendered. The legend runs that Agbarus, King of Edessa, sent an artist, Annanias by name, to paint our Lord's portrait. Annanias was no portrait painter, and failed in the attempt. Our Lord then took a cloth, pressed it to His face, and sent the impression back to the King. Leonardo Montaldo bequeathed it to the church in 1382.

The church of S. Donato, with its Romanesque tower that was built into the walls of Genoa forming one of its defences, dates from the eleventh century. There are many other ecclesiastical fabrics in a place which is fast losing all traces of old associations. Of the three sets of walls built at different times as the city slowly enlarged itself, the outer alone bears any semblance of its pristine state, and modern Genoa, with up-to-date improvements, is encroaching on these. But for all this its situation is superb, and it is in every way a bright and charming place. To those who enter by rail it is impossible to grasp the incomparable position the city occupies. Coming in along the Cornice road from the west, or that from the east, it can be better realised. But the best approach is by sea. The long line of distant mountains that first appears on the horizon gradually opens up, peak rises beyond peak, the nearer hills become detached, valleys are revealed, and soon white houses may be discerned dotting the dark grey slopes. A long, broken array of villages fringes the blue waters, gathering closer together as land is approached. The mass of warm yellowish tint scintillating in the brilliancy of a Mediterranean sun takes shape, and the eye by degrees separates long terraced rows of buildings, church towers and domes from one another. The colour changes, and a heterogeneous combination of pink, white, yellow, and grey discloses the far-famed city rising tier above tier from the busy port that lies at its base. A whistle sounds, the rattling cable rushes out, the anchor plunges into the water, and our ship is at rest. We are in the historic port from which the First Crusade started, and from which not so long ago the patriot Garibaldi, with the friendly aid of Rubattino, sailed with his devoted thousand for Sicily.

PISA

You will not find in all Italy anything that is placed quite so well with an eye to effective grouping as the Baptistery, Cathedral, and Campanile of Pisa. Nowhere does anything approach so near to the ecclesiastical exclusiveness of an English cathedral close as the great square of level green sward in which these three remarkable fabrics stand. From one corner of the Piazza del Duomo part of the university buildings looks over the turf to the Baptistery. Hard by the seat of learning is the Porta Nuova, a fine gateway that pierces the old walls of the city--walls of an almost unpaintable red. Within the walls, on the other side of the Cathedral--that is, to the north--the Campo Santo stands with bare façade and domed tower. Adjoining it on the east, conventual buildings and the Palace of the Archbishop occupy the angle of the Piazza. They face the Campanile. The one or two establishments which come next as we continue our _giro_ are full of little marble "Leaning Towers" and other souvenirs which the tourist delights in. Save for the intrusiveness of these shops, there is nothing else in the surroundings of the vast square that detracts from the fascination of the wonderful group in the centre.

The Pisa of to-day cannot have changed much from the Pisa of two hundred years ago. It is true that, outside the old walls which encircle her, a straggling suburb is growing up, but within them noble palaces still front the River Arno, and others occupy the best positions in the city. Dwellings of the poorer classes line the narrow streets that connect the wider and more spacious thoroughfares; they crowd thickly together, and the life of the pavements is the life of Italy as the tourist loves to find it--the life of days gone by.

It has been said that all roads lead to Rome; in Pisa all roads lead to the Piazza del Duomo. In the centre stands the Cathedral; to the west of it, the Baptistery; to the east rises the Campanile, or Leaning Tower. Pisa had well-nigh reached the zenith of her power when in 1063 her people resolved to commemorate a great victory over the Saracens by building a new cathedral. Ninety years later, having destroyed their Southern rival Amalfi, the Pisans commenced the Baptistery. The year 1174 saw the first stone of the Campanile laid. Thus in a little over one hundred years these three buildings, which mark so important an epoch in Italian ecclesiastical architecture, were under construction. The advent of a man of unknown origin, Busketus, who designed the Cathedral, and whose epitaph is on one of its walls, heralded a new phase in the art of the country. And although he adapted something from the Romanesque, this grand church of his was the precursor of a style that we find amplified, but not improved upon, in Ferrara, Pavia, Parma, and, most notably of all, in the neighbouring city of Lucca. In the history of Italian ecclesiastical architecture Pisa stands pre-eminent.

The façade of the Cathedral is very striking. The seven round arches of the blind arcade that form the lowest tier or base are continued round the entire fabric. The pedestals from which the columns of this arcade spring rest on a bold but simple base-table that also encircles the building. These columns are round on the façade, the eastern apse, and the apse at the end of each transept, but become pilasters elsewhere. This extremely good arrangement does not break up the flat walls by too many obtrusive perpendicular lines. On the contrary, it enhances their noble length, and at the same time improves the semicircle of the apses. Three bronze doors occupy three arches of the façade arcade. They are good examples of the seventeenth century. Crude mosaics in the tympanums above are a jarring colour note which one would willingly suppress. It is otherwise, however, with the wonderful patterns of inlaid marble and the rich ornamentation of vine-leaves and floral forms, human heads and animals, that embellish the whole façade--a character of decoration that finds a fitting terminal in the crockets on the gables and the figures at their ends. Above the arcade four deeply recessed galleries fill the whole space of the façade. The lowest of these is on a level with the clerestory lights in the aisles. The next is cut off at either end by the angle of the gable; the columns diminish in size with the slope of the aisle roof. The third is in a line with the clerestory of the nave, and the topmost diminishes with the gable, which is carried beyond and above the ridge of the roof of the nave. The slender pillars that support the arches of these galleries have wonderfully carved capitals, and stand out in the brilliant afternoon sun from the deep shadow behind with marvellous effect.

One enters the Cathedral by the south and only door which escaped the great conflagration of 1596. Its bronze panels are by Bonannus, who has handed down twenty-four episodes of Gospel history in the very ingenuous style of his time. A lead-covered penthouse wards off the inclemency of the weather. The fine cupola which rises above the crossing is rather dwarfed by the Gothic arcade and finials which surround its base. The grand effect of the Cathedral is due in a measure to the mellowing of the white marble, which the sun has seemingly baked to a beautiful warm yellow and light red. On the north side, which is exposed to the bitter _tramontana_ wind from the Monti Pisani, the marble is blistered and scored, and has acquired an ashen white that in this sunny land is not pleasant.

The interior is lofty. The effect obtained by the bands of black and white marble of which the walls are composed is not so embarrassing to the eye as in Siena's holy fane. The nave is divided into ten bays; the columns that support the round arches are magnificent monoliths of granite. These bays are carried in a continuous colonnade across the transepts and along their east and west walls. The aisles are double. As a consequence the forest of columns and arches is almost bewildering; and if it were not for the fine proportions of the nave, the eye would have but little rest from a multiplicity of shadows and disturbing spots of light. The pointed triforium, that is borne by the arches of the nave, is continued across the transepts into the choir. The base of the cupola at the crossing is elliptical, the length being east and west and the narrow sides north and south. The interior of the dome is covered with frescoes. The design of the six altars in each aisle is attributed to Michael Angelo. The transepts are terminated by two apsidal chapels with mosaics in the semi-domes said to be designed by Cimabue. The same origin can be more justly claimed by that which decorates the vault of the choir apse, and in which the great artist has depicted our Lord in Glory, and S. John. The pavements of the choir and crossing are exceptionally fine _opus Alexandrinum_. The huge bronze lamp that hangs, swinging slightly, from the coffered and gilded roof of the nave is supposed to have suggested to Galileo the idea of the principle of the pendulum.

To the west of the Cathedral is Pisa's beautiful Baptistery. This building was commenced by Diotisalvi in 1153, and continued later on in 1278. The lowest storey is of the first mentioned date, and, like the Cathedral, is composed of a blind arcade, pierced in this case with small round-headed windows. An open gallery circulates round the whole edifice above this. Its columns support round arches that are surmounted in piers by crocketed gables, pierced and cusped. A figure stands on the apex of each, while between every pair small open turrets thrust their pinnacles upwards. Above this gallery a series of windows with a similar arrangement breaks the base-line of the somewhat ugly pear-shaped dome. As a prevention against the corroding influence of the salt sea winds, this dome is tiled on its south-west surface. The other portion is covered with lead.

In the centre of the interior, generally entered by the door opposite the west façade of the Cathedral, stands the font in which baby Pisans have for many generations been baptized. Like others, it is made for total immersion. The walls which surround the appropriately "waved" black-and-white pattern of its floor are extremely beautiful. A delicately carved framework of marble encloses wonderful panels of inlaid mosaic somewhat in the style of the pulpit in the illustration to "Salerno." Six small basins are let into the walls of the font and are used now for the Holy Rite. Near the altar stands Niccolò Pisano's masterpiece. This hexagonal pulpit rests on seven slender columns of marble and granite. Some of these columns rise from their bases on the backs of lions, gryphons, and crouching human figures, thus in a way representing the dominion of the Word of God over creation. The rectangular panels of the pulpit stage are beautifully carved in high relief. Niccolò Pisano's art, which bears evident traces of pagan influence, is seen at its best in these panels of the Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, Presentation in the Temple, the Crucifixion, and Last Judgment. On the steps is a red marble pillar standing on the back of a lion. It supports a small marble book-rest from which the Epistle was read. The desk on the pulpit itself is placed on an eagle, and was used for the reading of the Gospel. Eight marble piers and eight granite columns support the gallery beneath the dome. The whole of this noble interior is very light and airy, and Pisan mothers should have more cause to hope for a bright future for their babes than their sisters in Parma, if a comparison is permissible between the bright cheeriness of the one place and the mystical gloom of the other.

The Campanile stands to the east of the Cathedral. Its base is some feet below the restful green of the grass that covers the whole of the Piazza. Four different architects carried out its erection during a period that extended over nearly two hundred years. The base, another blind arcade, was begun in 1174 by Bonannus; the fourth gallery was added by Benenato, the next two by William of Innsbrück, and the topmost by Tommaso. The foundations were unfortunately laid in sea-sand, and the tower settled at an angle that causes it to lean towards the south thirteen feet out of the perpendicular. Galileo utilised this feature for experiments on the velocity of falling bodies.