Part 17

The Church of Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal, one of the earliest buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, is rendered impressive by its position, size, and general proportions. These latter are exceedingly good; the grace of the whole building being chiefly dependent on the inequality of size in its cupolas, and pretty grouping of the two campaniles behind them. It is to be generally observed that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to do with the style or general merits of their architecture. An architect trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all meaning or purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of massing and grouping as will render all his structures effective when seen from a distance: such a gift is very general with the late Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in the country have good stage effect so long as we do not approach them. The Church of the Salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the Canal; and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by Turner for the principal object in his well-known view of the Grand Canal. The principal faults of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is stated by Lazari to be of timber, and therefore needs none. The sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on its roof by Titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are monstrous; but the small Titian, “St. Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and Damian,” was, when I first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first work of Titian’s in Venice. It has since been restored by the Academy, and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but I had not time to examine it carefully.

At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo; and at the side of it, one of the most highly finished Tintorets in Venice, namely _The Marriage in Cana_, an immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen feet high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which Tintoret signed with his name.

THE RAMPARTS OF CARCASSONNE

A. MOLINIER

To what race shall we attribute the foundation of the city of Carcassonne? We cannot say exactly, so many races having occupied this part of the valley of the Aude in turn; the first in point of time was that of the Iberians, that mysterious people, who had colonized Southern Europe long before the coming of the Aryan race. Without taking any more account than is necessary regarding the hypothesis of the etymologists, we may recall the fact that the celebrated William von Humboldt attaches the vocable _Carcaso_, as well as many others from the south of Gaul and the north of Spain, to the Iberic language.

Erected into a Latin colony by Cæsar himself, or by his adopted son, Augustus, Carcassonne vegetated obscurely for three centuries until the day when the invasion by the Barbarians and the civil wars brought about the ruin of the Empire. At this moment she was shorn of her ancient glory; and from a Latin colony, she became a simple _castrum_, which many manuscripts of the _Notitia dignitatum_, written about the year 400, do not even mention. But if the old city lost her importance with regard to civil life, she gained it in military life. At the moment the Germans, those hereditary enemies of Rome, spread over the whole of Gaul, the cities repaired their too long neglected fortifications in great haste; open spaces they surrounded with high walls; the ancient citadels were reinforced; and in their haste, just as happened later during the Hundred Years’ War, many sumptuous buildings erected by Latin architects, were sacrificed to make the defences. Carcassonne is now furnished with a strong enclosure, the honour of which many archæologists, among them Viollet-le-Duc, wish to give to the Visigoths; but it seems more prudent to attribute them to the last engineers of the expiring Empire. This enclosure, of which some parts still exist to-day, is composed of curtains of medium height, surmounted by a parapet without projections and flanked at intervals with semicircular towers opened at the gorge, or closed by a flat wall.

The towers were bare up to the level of the circling road, higher they comprised two or three stories. Viollet-le-Duc supposes that they were covered with a roof, and restored one according to this hypothesis. Much more elevated than the curtain, these Gallo-Roman towers commanded it from above, and on each of their flanks the curtain is interrupted by a gap connected by a narrow bridge, which was easy to destroy in case of an attack.

One must imagine the city of Carcassonne, with this enclosure composed of high curtains with parapets and turrets, and, at intervals, high towers, dominating the country and commanding the neighbouring defences. Such she was at the end of the Empire and such she remained for several centuries. Occupied by the Visigoths, vainly besieged several times by Clovis and by the successors of that prince, she was not forced before the Eighth Century. At this date, she fell into the hands of the Arabs, with all of the surrounding country. The domination of the Mussulmans, however, was very ephemeral; occupied by them about 720, Carcassonne again became Christian thirty years later, in 759.

Carcassonne became an important town. The city remains a fortress of the first order, almost impregnable, with its towers, its curtains and its vast _château_; but around it, on the slopes and at the base of the hill between the Aude and the city, extensive and flourishing boroughs are forming. These _bourgs_ are mentioned in 1067; more recent discoveries tell us that the two principal ones were Saint-Vincent and Saint-Michel. The latter was a commercial town inhabited by common people and workmen whose turbulent character caused great embarrassment to the viscounts during the Twelfth Century. From the beginning of that century, the notables of Carcassonne took the side of the enemy of their legitimate master, the Count of Barcelona, gave him their oath, and on two different occasions the Viscount, Bernard Aton, was chased by them from his capital. When he returned, in 1125, he took rigorous measures to assure his rule in the future. Each tower on the wall was confided to the care of a faithful noble who had to live in it with his family and his men, to do what was called _le service d’estage_. The feudal acts have preserved for us the name of several towers, the _turris monetaria vetus_, for example, but it would be difficult to state precisely to which of the existing towers the old names were given.

To the same viscount, Bernard Aton, is attributed the construction of a great part of the present wall of the city, and almost the entire _château_; from the reign of the same prince dates also the old part of the church Saint-Nazaire. Let us begin with the _château_. An act of the year 1034 already mentions the residence of the Counts of Carcassonne, and the _sala_, in which the Bishop of Gerona, Pierre Roger, lived; it speaks of the kitchens, the chambers, the stables and the chapel Saint-Marcel. Later, the _castellum Carcassonne_ is always carefully distinguished from the citadel; the acts, in mentioning a _camera rotunda_, speak of the elm that ornamented the court and under which the feudal lords rendered justice, as Saint Louis did later at Vincennes. But these give very meagre information which the study of this building will happily permit us to complete.

The ordinary residence of the suzerain, the _Château de Carcassonne_, like the donjons of the North, was designed to protect him against all attacks that came from outside as well as from within the town. A last refuge for faithful defenders, it had to be a shelter during a regular siege, or a personal attack, and to protect the suzerain against enemies without and traitors within. Therefore, a special wall was erected against the town and against the country. The _Château de Carcassonne_ was no exception to the general rule. Supported by the exterior wall on the side of the town, it is defended by a wide moat and by a circular barbican over the end of a bridge that was thrown over the moat; it forms a parallelogram, flanked by towers and high curtains. The masonry is the same and is composed of yellowish stones placed in regular layers of from fifteen to twenty centimetres in height. The domes have the form of hemispherical caps, with regular arches and are unornamented. The bays are semicircular without mouldings, or projections; nowhere is there any sacrifice to decoration, with the exception of certain upper openings that are inaccessible to attack, and these have received a few ornaments,--mouldings and little columns of marble that garnish the corners of the windows. The principal entrance towards the city was defended by two portcullises and two successive gates; after having passed these obstacles, you find yourself in a large court of honour which was flanked on one side by the walls of the city, and on the other by dwellings, shops, and light wooden buildings, that have disappeared to-day, or have been restored in the style of the Thirteenth Century. A few halls of the Twelfth Century have, however, survived; they are not very attractive, with their surbased vaults and their narrow openings.

Let us now turn our back on the _château_ and enter the _lices_, for this is what they called the space circumscribed by the two walls of the City. We have seen above that from 1240 the town had a double wall, but the first, probably much damaged by the lords of Trencavel, was doubtless reconstructed in, and appears to date almost entirely from, the reign of St. Louis. It is composed of curtains elevated upon the rock and which never could have been of a great height: since the ground of the _lices_ was made, it has gained in height. Sometimes the two curtains were quite far apart, sometimes, on the contrary, they are close together, and the straight passage between them was formerly closed by walls with battlements and solid gates. Most of the towers which flank the exterior wall are very simple and are quite low; as a rule, they are composed of two storeys and their platform is covered with a pointed roof covered with slate.

The interior enclosure, which is much stronger and better preserved than the exterior, dates only in part from the Thirteenth Century, but if the royal architects have respected the work of their predecessors as scrupulously as possible, they have never hesitated to transform the defective or insufficient portions, whenever they felt it practical. This second enclosure is at once higher and stronger than its neighbour, the towers are closer together and better arranged for defence. The elevated and spacious curtains still carry traces of the _hourds_ which surmounted them in times of war; in many of those near the _château_, the base dates from the time of a remote epoch,--perhaps the time of the Romans, but the tops were remodelled in the Thirteenth Century by Saint-Louis, or Philip the Bold. Moreover, these princes made no other changes in the whole wall that extends from the _château_ to the Tower of the Inquisition; you particularly notice the Tower of Justice, a beautiful building with four stories of the feudal period, and the Visigoth Tower, cleverly restored, too cleverly perhaps, by Viollet-le-Duc, but an interesting example of the military system of the Gallo-Romans of the Decadence.

The Tower of the Inquisition appears to date from the reign of Philip the Bold. It is a beautiful building of four storeys which in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, sheltered the ecclesiastical tribunal the name of which it bears.

Before the Revolution, the city was deserted; in 1744, the bishop followed the general example and left his old palace of the Thirteenth Century. The new _régime_ was not equally just. For a long time, the city remained a military post, mutilated by military genius, on the pretext of maintaining and improving it; a great number of towers were razed and transformed into low curtains, absurd defences which could not have held out two hours against a strong attack. This admirable collection of mediæval military art was exposed to the greatest danger; let us thank the archæologists who interested the State in the preservation of these venerable remains. Restored to-day with a reverent care, the old citadel is assured a long life. As for the City herself, she can never become what she was in the Thirteenth Century, a rich and populous town, but she will certainly remain forever an admirable museum, where everyone who is interested in national history will come to study the military art of old France.

THE CATHEDRAL OF MODENA

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN

The student of the Romanesque who transports himself suddenly from the Arno and the Apenines to the river-basin of the Po will find himself spirited away into a new architectural world. Let him flit from Pisa to Modena. Pistoia, a city of high interest on other grounds, will not long detain him. A single noble campanile is attached to a basilican _duomo_ which would hold a third or fourth-rate place at Lucca, and which at Pisa no one would think of mentioning at all. But at Modena his halt must be longer. The church of Pisa and the church of Modena are contemporary buildings, and the Great Countess is honoured as a benefactress by both; but they are as unlike one another as any two buildings of the same date and general style well can be. At Modena we get our first glimpse of the genuine Lombard form of the Italian Romanesque, a form wholly unlike either the domical or basilican type, and which makes a far nearer approach to the Romanesque of the lands beyond the Alps. The approach is indeed only an approach; the _duomo_ of Modena is Italian, and not English, French, or German; still it is a form of Italian far less widely removed from English, French, or German work than the style of Pisa or St. Vital. As at Pisa, the architect seems to have halted between two opinions. The church is cruciform, but the transepts have no projection on the ground-plan; there are real lantern-arches, not obscured as they are at Pisa, but they do not bear up any central dome or tower. The lantern-arches are pointed; but here, as at Pisa, the pointed form is more likely to be Saracenic than Gothic. Without, three eastern apses, rising from between pinnacles of quite Northern character, group boldly with one of the noblest campaniles of Italy, which is certainly not improved by the later addition of a spire. The great doorways rest on lions; the west front has a noble wheel window; the greater part of the outside is lavishly arcaded, but the arcading is of a different type from the long rows of single arcades at Lucca and Pisa; the favourite form at Modena is that of several small arches grouped under a containing arch.

With such an outside, we are not surprised to find, on entering the church, an elevation more nearly after the Northern type than anything which we have yet seen in Italy. At Pisa we saw an arcade, triforium, and clerestory; but the triforium was not so much the Northern type itself as the Northern type translated into Italian language. But at Modena we find as genuine a triforium as in any minster of England or Normandy. Its form indeed seems somewhat rude and awkward, as if the containing arch had been crushed by the lofty clerestory above. And eyes familiar with Norman detail may possibly be amazed at the sight of mid-wall shafts, and those of a somewhat rough type, showing themselves in such a position. But the mid-wall shaft is constructively as much in its place in a triforium as it is in a belfry window, and in the whole elevation there is nothing lacking. There is pier-arch, triforium, and clerestory, and the deep splay of the highest range hinders the presence of any continuous blank spaces such as we have seen in the Basilican churches. The capitals are a strange mixture of classical and barbaric forms, and in the alternate piers, supporting the arches which span the nave, we find huge half-columns, which form a marked contrast to the tall slender shafts commonly used in like positions in Northern churches. Altogether the Cathedral of Modena is strictly an Italian church, yet the approaches to Northern forms are very marked, and they are of a kind which suggests the direct imitation of Northern forms or the employment of Northern architects.

THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS

LOUIS GONSE

The basilica of Rheims is the ideal type of a great Gothic cathedral. Everything has been gathered together here to enchant the eye and touch the mind.

From the outside, with its eight spires, and the lace-work of its bell-towers, and its galleries boldly mounting to the sky, with the breadth of its arrangement, the splendid development of its cruciform plan, with its two cloisters and its magnificent dependencies, it appears as the sublime expression of western genius and the culminating point of the Christian idea.

Within, it is dazzling. All the resources of decoration have been prodigally employed. Indeed, the eye does not know which of the marvels to select, and if this stupendous whole has been preserved to us by a miracle, nothing in the world can be compared to it. The brilliant series of windows, one of the most complete and beautiful in existence; the pavement, with its labyrinth and countless mortuary tombs; the rich altars and chapel paintings; the tomb of St. Nicaise; the pulpit of St. Remi; the rood-screen, a master work by Colard de Givry, made in 1417; the railings of the choir, with precious hangings and stalls; the high altar charged with relics, and presents from the Kings of France; its golden retable and its splendid ciborium of the Thirteenth Century, in silver gilt; the sacrarium, the fonts, and the sepulchres;--form a great mass of treasure.

And how greatly is the feeling increased by memories when you reconstruct the public life of Notre-Dame of Rheims, and the events of which she was the theatre during the long course of centuries; when you dream of all the coronations, councils, and meetings that have taken place beneath its vaults! No edifice, in truth, is, in this respect, more worthy of our honour and admiration.

Notre-Dame of Rheims measures in round numbers one hundred and thirty-nine metres long and thirty-eight metres high beneath the vault; it is not surpassed in length by the Cathedral of Mans, thanks to the unusual dimensions of its absidal chapel, nor in height by Beauvais, Cologne, Metz, Amiens, or Saint-Quentin. The great divisions of the whole, founded upon a triple scale, in height and breadth, are clearly accentuated. From the lower part of the nave the view is one of striking grandeur and harmony; the dazzled glance loses itself in these vast depths, under the luminous sheets of light which spread out from the lateral bays, while the large vault, clouded in the mysterious penumbra of the high windows, ornamented with their glass, invites you to meditation. No cathedral offers so powerful an opposition to light. The arrangement of the great piers cantoned by four half-columns bound together also increases the fleeting perspective.

Of the whole building, I have only to criticize the composition of the triforium, which is truly not of the first order; it demands more elegance and firmness; the arches of that gallery, the decorative function of which is so important in a Gothic church, seem heavy and as if crushed between the robust piers of the ground-floor and the large bays of the upper story.

In all that belongs to the Thirteenth Century, the execution bears witness to an extreme care and luxury. The Cathedral of Rheims, principally in its interior work, is a model that has never been surpassed from the point of view of technique, of show and of the judicious use of material. The carving is of the first order. The capitals of Rheims are celebrated, and very justly. The independence of the _Style champenois_ has introduced some elements of life and fantasy which give them a character of their own. Some of the most beautiful, notably the capital of the _Vendanges_ (The Vintages), have been made popular by the mouldings in the Musée of the Trocadéro; but all of them are remarkable on account of the variety of the motives that decorate them. Viollet-le-Duc has justly observed that the capitals of Rheims present a decisive progress in the union of the capital of the principal column with the capitals of the connected columns: a very great difficulty which Gothic architects did not solve until after numerous groupings. Here the monotony has been avoided by a division of the bound columns into two segments, separated by an astragal. The effect of this division is most happy and constitutes one of the most striking peculiarities of the Cathedral of Rheims.

The choir is unanimously admired. However, it has not the breadth nor the spring of the great choirs of Bourges, Amiens and Mans; but it derives its originality from its depth and its radiating chapels; and to the preservation of its most exquisite windows it owes a poetic charm that very few interiors can equal. The windows of Rheims are, in reality, the most perfect we have seen after those of Chartres, Bourges, Mans and Auxerre. In purity of expression they surpass the windows of Soissons, Troyes, and Châlons. The windows in the apsis are masterpieces; their sweet intensity, in the scale of blue, is truly enchanting. They were executed from 1227 to 1240 under the episcopate of Henri de Braisne, whose figure appears in the principal window, in the centre of nine large, high windows, between the twelve suffragans of Rheims, arranged in order, according to their rank in the province: Soissons, Laon, Beauvais, Noyon, Senlis, Tournai, Cambrai, Châlons, Thérouanne, Amiens, etc., each having at his side a Gothic cathedral.

These figures of bishops of gigantic proportions have a majesty that cannot be described. But in the midst of these splendours, it is the rose of the western window which is perhaps the most worthy of everything to hold your attention. Composition, brilliancy, harmony and elegance of position,--it possesses all these qualities. It would be difficult to find a more admirable witness of the decorative sense of the old glass-workers. When across the network of the immense surface, the light from the setting sun is thrown, the whole interior of the church is illuminated as if by a conflagration. The preservation of this masterpiece is unfortunately greatly compromised by the crack like a sabre cut which crosses the façade near the rose. The high windows in the nave represent the Kings, just as in the Cathedral of Sacres; they are still more beautiful, however, of deep rich colours, but of a less careful execution than the great rose and the windows in the choir.

All these marvels, however, pale before the carved decoration that surrounds on the inside the lower part of the three doors of the façade, a kind of drapery in relief, as unique by the character of its invention as by the perfection of its workmanship.