Part 7

In another church, S. Bartolomeo, I found a pulpit (also dated, etc.) made by Guido da Como in 1250. This is square in plan, supported partly in the wall and partly on three shafts, two of which rest on lions’ backs and the third on a sitting figure of a woman. The sculpture is rude but vigorous. The whole of the sides is covered with subjects, and at the angles are three figures, or rather one figure with two others looking out from behind him. The subjects are described by inscriptions under each in Latin.

Going from here to the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista, we saw a similar pulpit of later date and superior workmanship but evidently very closely copied from the work in S. Bartolomeo. The two angle columns remain, both resting on lions’ backs. The lions have been turned round so as both to face the west wall,--a most ridiculous position. It is clear indeed that all of these pulpits have been taken down and reconstructed. In this work the central column at S. Giovanni has been taken away. It seems to me that this pulpit at S. Bartolomeo is the prototype of all those for which the Pisani have so much credit. Giovanni Pisano is said to have sculptured the pulpit in S. Giovanni and if so (and I think it seems probable) he simply copied the older work. I do not know what the pulpit of S. Andrea is like, but I have little doubt that it was really from this pulpit that they obtained their idea for all their very similar works.

The south front of S. Giovanni is arcaded in the Pisan fashion (with lozenge panels in the arches) and above arcaded with two rows of elaborate arcading. The whole elevation is remarkable in its effect. The roof is of the usual type, with long tie-beams, and quite flat in pitch....

We were followed about everywhere here by two very dirty and very ragged urchins who took us to see everything. They knew about the pulpits, talked about Luca della Robbia, etc., and when I gave them an indivisible coin, about which they quarrelled, they settled the matter by putting it into the poor box. How unlike any English boys altogether! We were immensely amused by their sharp impudence.

The inn at Pistoia looked out on green shrubs and gardens, very pleasant: the consequence was not so pleasant--the being kept awake half the night and bitten in all directions by our troublesome enemies the mosquitoes. We had to turn out early to join the diligence which arrived by railway from Florence at 7.30 A.M. We made a brilliant start but very soon altered our pace, the road beginning to ascend almost immediately, and then for about four hours we toiled slowly up the slopes of the Appenines, at first with six and afterwards with eight horses. The day was fine but misty so that we lost very much of the distant view. The scenery is fine but not alpine. It reminded me more of the Jura, save that the hills seem here more to be shaken confusedly about and not to range themselves into regular lines or masses. The olive tree was seen for the last time as we went up and then we came through great numbers of Spanish chestnuts, and lastly for half an hour at most through a bleak, open and treeless country.

The descent was very different, down a narrow valley, following the windings of the mountain stream, with fine combinations of scenery and views. Stopped at La Porretta for dinner, and then on through a fine country but along a miserable road constantly crossing the (now dry) beds of mountains torrents. The soil is exceedingly liable to land slips and seems to be sliding about in all directions--of course road-making is difficult. At Vergato, a small village or town on this part of the road, the old Palazzo Pubblico was passed, covered with coats of arms in the usual way and distinguished by its Ringhiera still perfect and jutting out into the narrow street. We reached Bologna at 8 P.M. A wall and gate was passed about a mile from the town; I could not understand what wall it was.

_September 15._

S. Petronio is the grandest church in Bologna. Its west front is of immense size and width but left nearly all in rough brick, the door and basement alone being finished. This part of the work is of poor character and the sculpture[9] (except in a stela on the south-west door which I thought very vigorous) not particularly good. The interior is magnificent....

S. Francesco is one of the finest churches in the town but shabby and decayed outside and “painted and decorated” to such an extent inside as to have destroyed nearly all its good effect. I never saw anything more vile. The whole church is of brick and it has an apsidal east end with an aisle all round the apse and chapels beyond. The buttresses are “flying” but very heavy. The west door is good and indeed the whole west front is striking. The windows are new but appeared to me to be probably copies of the original windows. The campanili are curious. There are two--one much smaller than the other and both on the south side of the choir. They form a curious combination in the views from the east....

_September 16._

The ride to Ferrara was very uninteresting--about four and a half hours; we had left the hills altogether and saw nothing at all of any distant country. The land was rich with vines, mulberry trees and rice plantations, but certainly not picturesque. The grapes were being picked, and we met everywhere here and in Bologna waggons bearing magnificent casks for the reception of the grapes. These carts have a great beam from back to front elaborately carved and ornamented with colour, and wheels also carved and ornamented. They are really very handsome and put one in mind of the framework for guns of Queen Elizabeth’s time. They are always drawn by white oxen.

_Here the_ Brick and Marble _volume takes up the tale. To 1872 belongs a notebook particularly spirited in text and drawings. It opens:_

1872--With M. S. and Jessie Holland (afterwards J. M. A. Street)

_February 24._

Left London at 8.35, and reached Paris at 7 A.M. ...

Towns generally built on hills. Curious number of churches in which the tower and spire at one end and a very high choir at the other have a low nave between them. The scenery has the large French character, owing to absence of hedgerows and the very long lines of trees--generally lanky poplars closely set. Just before Dijon, at Plombières, I saw a very pretty tiled spire, tiles of golden yellow, green, etc., very rich and charming in colour;--green not at all blue-green.

Reached Mâcon at 8.30 and after coffee walked out to try to see something. Moon rose beautifully over the opposite side of the Saône, here a very fine looking river. Walked about nearly in vain but came at last on remains of a church of some interest.[10] It has two octagonal towers, the lower part of which seems to be Romanesque, and a nave of some forty feet long with an enormous central doorway of the fifteenth century, and aisle arches on each side of it (now glazed) of the twelfth century,--choir entirely destroyed, and a small cloister arcade built up in front. The whole has been all but destroyed and then I suppose just patched up by some good-intentioned antiquary. It is (at least in the dark) an architectural puzzle.

_February 25._

Called at 4.30 and off by train for Genoa via Turin at 6 A.M. As we left and crossed the Saône saw that the church I had discovered last night was the only old looking church, and that the cathedral is an entirely new stone building. It was a fine frosty morning and we could do no more than keep ourselves warm by shutting up windows, and so seeing but little through the hoar frost on the glass.

At Culoz we had a second breakfast and found the hills all about us suddenly looking like mountains owing to the snow on all their higher points. When we came back from Geneva last year, fresh from the Alps, we hardly deigned to look at them, and to-day they seem to all of us about as lovely and grand as they could be. At Culoz we changed carriages and then, keeping by the pretty Lac du Bourget, were soon at Chambéry, and then all the way to Modane we entertained ourselves by the discovery, first on one side then on the other, of snow mountains of the first magnitude! At Modane carriages are changed again for Italy, passports are examined, and then we start for the tunnel. The railway runs round Lons-le-Bourg, where we used to take sledges for the Mont Cenis, and then ascends winding round until the mountain above Modane is reached. Here the tunnel begins and we were just twenty-six minutes passing through it. I promised every one spring, oranges in fruit, and trees in full foliage when we really reached Italy; but it was just the opposite, for there was more snow, by very much, when we reached Bardonnecchia than when we left Modane. We caught one or two views of churches and I just managed to secure a note of Susa seen in the most picturesque way far below us. We reached Turin at 6.42, got some dinner at the railway station and had some much too sweet _vin d’Asti_, and started again at 7.35 for Genoa, where we arrived at midnight.

_February 29_, GENOA.

A glorious morning welcomed us to this most delightful town. It was really like summer and the views in all directions were most exquisite. Even before I got up I saw through my window the beautiful outline of the mountains of the Riviera all covered with snow, and just a line of the blue Mediterranean above and beyond the crowd of vessels below us in the port. We had rooms at Feder’s hotel--now Trombetta’s--and our bedroom had an oratory in it with a very elaborately carved altar, etc., which has been not very reverently turned now into a sleeping room.

I spent most of my day at the new English church directing the workmen, etc. Lunched with the Shelbells, but did not see Brown the consul, who had gone off to a castle he had bought near Sestri. The church looks fairly well, but it is difficult to make anything lofty enough to compete with the enormous houses which it is the fashion to build now in Genoa and with which it is surrounded.

Walked a little about the city: into the Via Nuova which is straight for the greater part of its length (instead of curved as I fancied)--up and down the goldsmith’s street which seems always to lead to everything--into the cathedral and some of my other old friends among the churches. Noticed particularly the sumptuous effect which the painted palaces produce. The palace now used by the British consul is covered outside with painting, a good deal of which remains in fair condition whilst the two arcades round the courtyard are in a very fairly perfect state. The doors to the houses in Genoa had commonly an oblong panel of sculpture over them. These were cut in slate at or near Savona. The Gothic houses here have arcades below, and corbel tables under the second floor, and the windows divided into lights by very delicate shafts. The best samples are the Doria houses close to S. Matteo.

We left Genoa at 9.00 by steamer for Livorno. The boat was small and full of passengers, but I slept well on the floor of the cabin till we reached our port soon after 5 A.M.

_March 1._

Started by the 9.12 train for Empoli. Murray describes Empoli in such terms as made us feel no regret at having to stop there those three hours. Unfortunately his description turned out to be all wrong, and we found but little to see or sketch. The best thing there is the steeple of the collegiata. The front of this church is a work of about 1600 in white marble and serpentine. And the Pallei building opposite to it is entirely seventeenth century, but has some wall painting outside which somewhat redeems its otherwise uninteresting walls.

Our train left Empoli at 2.25 and did not reach Orvieto till nearly 10. During the first part of the journey I was well employed making sketches from the windows of the carriage of Certaldo, S. Gemignano, etc. We caught some beautiful glimpses of Siena as we dashed by, and then as we passed through the wretched country just to the south of it, we gradually lost the daylight, and slept away the hours till Orvieto was reached. Here the station by daylight looks just under the town, but it took us forty minutes to drive up.

_March 2_, ORVIETO.

I was out before breakfast and spent a long, busy, and happy day here. The town is perched on the top of a rock which is on most sides a precipice at first and then a long slope carries the eye on to the river and valleys at the bottom. Beyond on all sides are distant hills to be seen, one of them very picturesque in outline. In summer it must be a perfect view, but now the olives are the only trees in leaf, and their colour is so sad that it does not do much for the landscape.

The old walls exist round much of the town. They are generally set back a few feet from the edge of the rock so as to leave a passage outside, which in its turn is defended by battlements built on the cliff. The lay of the ground reminds one of Toledo, but the country is more open, and the river is not a Tagus and does not produce much effect on the landscape. The views which may be had from various points of the rocks and walls are, however, superb, and I have seldom seen anything more striking. On the other hand there is no building of sufficient importance in the town to give the best effect to the views. The cathedral, not having any tower, produces but little general effect, and the only towers are some of the plain square family fortress towers like these sketched at S. Gemignano.

The cathedral more than fulfilled my expectations. The west front is in its way very beautiful, delicate and refined--perhaps over-refined everywhere, and beautiful in the symmetry of its arrangement. But it is still not a great success. My great interest here is in the sculpture of the piers between and at the sides of the doors. First of all, I must say that they strike me as too small and delicate for their place. This is their one fault. If they were to be there they ought to be, as they are, small and in low relief so as not to interfere with the flatness and look of strength in the walls. The sculpture in the northern pier--the days of creation--is perhaps the most beautiful of the four. Nothing can be much more refined in feeling or treatment. The heads are a little exaggerated. The next pier which contains the succession of the seed of Abraham seems to me to be altogether inferior to the others. The third and fourth (from the north) are equal, or nearly, to the first, though a little more crowded. In the last the figure of our Lord surrounded by an aureole of angels, in the Last Judgement, is beautifully designed. The foliage decorations of all this work are very natural in their treatment and extraordinarily skilful. The play of relief in leaves, whose extreme projection from the face of the marble is often not more than an eighth of an inch, is of the most delicate, subtle and artistic description. Contrast the skill with which it is treated with the workmanship in the south door, and the difference of power will be seen.

The interior is very large and simple--the architectural detail generally very poor. Columns (large cylinders with exaggerated capitals of queer semi-classic detail) carrying alternated arches, show the characteristic faults of the Pisan school of architects. The clerestory has long, simple, traceried windows, and the best detail is in the east window, which has good geometrical tracery, is of very long proportion, and is filled with stained glass of beautiful design--subjects in square panels. The effect of its colour is perfect. All round it are paintings by Agnolino of Orvieto, not very fresh now, but giving a colour of the most tender kind to the interior, to which the simple black and white striped construction of the columns and walls leads the eye up gradually and well. In the east window the glass is divided into small panels. There are four lights but in spite of the irregularity caused by this even number the grounds of the subjects are all countercharged, alternately ruby and blue....

_What Street said, and what he thought, of Siena and Orvieto, is nearly unique. At Viterbo and Toscanella, he could only see and feel the first what others have since made familiar. Corneto is less known._

_March 4._

Looking back to Viterbo I saw it lighted up with beautiful effect by a sudden burst of sunshine. Its towered walls were in deep shade whilst a cloud of light, wind-started from the town behind, caught the bright sunshine and seemed to set the steeples of the town in a sort of halo. Behind rose the high mountain and to the left of this, in the far distance, a line of snow-capped mountains which added immensely to the beauty of the view. This open country is very charming--clouds casting their shadows here and there and a horizon always lovely in the pure colour of the mountains or hills which fringe it. All the way we had Montefiascone in full view.

Corneto stands on a steep hill above the marshy flat which borders the Mediterranean. Its old walls and towers standing generally on a rocky base give it a very imposing appearance, but its interest seems to be mainly Etruscan. The inn at which we stopped made amends for any lack in the churches by its extremely good character. It is of late fourteenth century work, but the internal courtyard with its open arcades on two sides is most beautiful. The front towards the street shows in some of its detail and especially in the construction of the masonry in its upper portion, the influence of the Renaissance. The building formed originally three sides of a quadrangle with a passage-way corbelled out on the wall which forms the fourth side. The lower storeys have fine open arcades, and the third a series of delicate shafts with very effective capitals oblong in plan, carrying a white marble lintel under the wall plate. The whole scheme is one of extreme beauty and has much of the effect of being earlier in date than it really is....

_With a few notes on Rome, and the exquisite drawing of a living acanthus leaf at Paestum, the book dies away into a sort of Journal, that records talks with the Bishop of Gibraltar and Père Hyacinth_,--“I found him very pleasant and intelligent.”

NOTES ON FRENCH CHURCHES

III

SOME FRENCH CHURCHES CHIEFLY IN THE ROYAL DOMAIN

(From a notebook of 1855)

_June 13._

Somer has lost much of its original interest by the destruction wantonly in 1830 of nearly the whole of the abbey of S. Bertin. It is wicked, but I did not lament this so much as I should have done, had the church been of rather earlier date. From what now remains it appears to have been entirely in one style, and that an early phase of flamboyant--much more like some of our English late middle-pointed than flamboyant, and really very effective in its mouldings and sculpture, the two great tests of all architecture. The west front and the north wall of the nave are all that now remains of the once magnificent church, and the latter has lost all its window tracery and is in a sad state of decay.

The west doorway of the tower (which is central at the west end) is fine, and has cut in the lintel stone of its door an inscription:--“_Castissimum Divi Bertini templum caste memento ingredi._” The tympanum had a painted subject and much of the rest of the stone work still retains traces of decorative colour. The west window of the south aisle is an unhappy example of the worst kind of flamboyant, the tower is covered all over with vertical lines of panelling but is nevertheless, from its great size, imposing, and indeed gives S. Omer all the character it has when seen from the railway. A sentinel keeping watch warned me off as I was measuring the aisle: I suppose having lost so much they were nervously alive to the chance of architects’ hacking off what remains!

A long winding street leads from S. Bertin at one end of it to the cathedral of Notre Dame at the other. This is a church well worthy of a visit for several peculiarities and not less for its generally fine effect, especially in the interior.

The original fabric--of which the choir with its aisle and two apsidal chapels thrown out from the aisle, and the south transept and one and a half bays of the north, are all now remaining--is of the earliest pointed, with occasional round arches to windows, etc. The character is very simple and mainly remarkable for the great beauty of the profusion of sculptured capitals to all the shafts. The section of the piers is singular and gives great lightness of effect; they are in fact thin slices of wall, and not piers formed in the usual way, and as the weight of them is not a crushing weight, I look upon them as excessively scientific in their arrangement. The triforium is very lofty as compared with the rest of the design, and consists of a very simple arcade of pointed arches, supported only by long and slender shafts set near together.

The groining is good, and in the chapels a small shaft rises from the capitals for some feet and carries the wall rib: this gets over a difficulty in mitring the mouldings. The Lady-chapel appears to have been remodelled at a later day but upon the foundation of one coeval with the choir. A very grand effect is produced by the great size of the transepts--which have aisles on both sides--and by the placing of a chapel in the re-entering angles between them and the choir-aisle. In this way an internal effect of lightness and space, of very fine character, is obtained.

One of the most remarkable features about this cathedral is, however, the extent to which, in later days, the old design was persisted in: _e.g._ the remarkable triforium is carried round the entire church, varied a little in its details and quite different in its sculpture, but still evidently a copy and from its great size giving an air of great unity to the whole design. In the clerestory windows generally there is a good deal of poor flamboyant tracery with a little glass of the same date, but in the choir the original windows all happily remain. These are, in the apse, rather wide lancets, and in the rest of the clerestory simple triplets. In the aisle there were windows of two lights with a simple quatrefoil above. Many of the windows have the dog-tooth ornament round the external labels. The choir still retains on the outside a very fine and original corbel table.

In a chapel south of the choir are extensive remains of some most singular work for pavements--they are squares of stone slightly sunk in regular patterns and then filled in with some very hard black or red substance. The same work is carried up against the walls of this chapel, and in other parts of the cathedral are several small fragments of similar pavements. The stone is of a yellow colour and the system seems to admit of being turned to most useful account.

Of the exterior, the south transept door is about the most remarkable feature. It is very simple, almost plain, but nevertheless its great size and the deep shadow cast by its outer arch combine to make it a very magnificent work. The sculpture of the capitals is very good and the delicate arcade, containing figures on either side below the base of the columns, is thoroughly French in its beauty of detail and exquisite finish. Unhappily it has decayed much. There is a stoup inside against the pier dividing the doors; this is not used now. The western tower is like that of S. Bertin, engaged, and has but little to recommend it to notice.