Part 14

The formerly cathedral church is the only building in the town of Curzola which suggests any thought that it can be older than 1420. Documentary evidence, we believe, is scanty, and contains no mention of the church earlier than the thirteenth century. In England we should at first sight be tempted to assign the internal arcades to the latter days of the twelfth; but the long retention of earlier forms which is so characteristic of the architecture of this whole region makes it quite possible that they may be no earlier than the Venetian times to which we must certainly attribute the west front. Setting aside a later addition to the north, which is no improvement, this little _duomo_ consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, ending in three round apses. Five bays we say, though on the north side there are only four arches; for the tower occupies one at the west end. The inner arcades and the west doorway are worthy of real study, as contributions to the stock of what is at any rate singular in architecture; indeed a more honourable word might fairly be used. The arcades consist of plain pointed arches rising from columns with richly carved capitals, and, like so many columns of all ages in this region, with tongues of foliage at their bases. Above is a small triforium, a pair of round arches over each bay; above that is a clerestory of windows which within seem to be square, but which outside are found to be broad pointed lancets with their heads cut off. In England or France such a composition as this would certainly, at the first sight of its general effect, be set down as belonging to the time of transition between Romanesque and Gothic, to the days of Richard of Poitou and Philip Augustus. And the proportions are just as good as they would be in England or France; there is not a trace of that love of ungainly sprawling arches which ruins half the so-called Gothic churches of Italy. But, when we look at the capitals, we begin to doubt. They are singularly rich and fine; but they are not rich and fine according to any received pattern. They are eminently not classical; they have nothing more than that faint Corinthian stamp which no floriated capital seems able quite to throw away; they do not come anything like so near to the original model as the capitals at Canterbury, at Sens, or even at Lisieux. But neither do they approach to any of the received Romanesque or Byzantine types, nor have they a trace of the freedom which belongs to the English foliage of days only a little later. They are more like, though still not very much like, our foliage of the fourteenth century; there is a massiveness about them, a kind of cleaving to the shape of the block, which after all has something Byzantine about it. Those on the north side have figures wrought among the foliage; the four responds have the four evangelistic symbols. Here then we cannot fail to find the lion of Saint Mark, but we find him only in his place as one of a company of four. Would the devotion of the Most Serene Republic have allowed its patron anywhere so lowly a place as this to occupy? Otherwise the character of the capitals, which extends to the small shafts in the triforium, might tempt us to assign a far later date to these columns and arches than their general effect would suggest. But at all events they are thoroughly mediæval; there is not the faintest trace of _Renaissance_ about them.

Outside the church, the usual mixed character of the district comes out more strongly. The addition to the north, and the tower worked in instead of standing detached, go far to spoil what would otherwise be a simple and well-proportioned Italian front. Both the round window--of course there is a round window--and the great doorway are worthy of notice. The window is not a mere wheel; the diverging lines run off into real tracery, such as we might see in either England or France. The doorway is a curious example of the way in which for a long time in these regions, the square head, the round arch, and the pointed arch, were for some purposes used almost indifferently. The tradition of the square-headed doorway with the arched tympanum over it never died out. We may believe that the mighty gateways and doorways of Diocletian's palace set the general model for all ages. But when the pointed arch came in, the tympanum might be as well pointed as round. Sometimes the pointed tympanum crowns a thoroughly round-headed doorway, and is itself crowned with a square spandril, looking wonderfully like a piece of English Perpendicular. In the west doorway at Curzola things do not go quite to such lengths as this; but they go a good way. The square doorway is crowned by a pointed tympanum, containing the figure of a bishop; over that again is a kind of canopy. This is formed of a round arch, springing from a pair of lions supported on projections such as those which are constantly used, specially at Curzola, for the support of balconies. The lions which in many places would have supported the columns of the doorway seem, though wingless, to have flown up to this higher post. For here the doorway has nothing to be called columns, nothing but small shafts, twisted and otherwise, continued in the mouldings of the arch. The cornice under the low gable is very rich; the tower is of no great account, except the parapet, and the octagon and cupola which crown it, a rich and graceful piece of work of that better kind of _Renaissance_ which we claim as really Romanesque.

In the general view of the town from the sea this tower counts for more than it does when we come close up to it in the nearest approach to a _piazza_ which Curzola can boast. It is the crown of the whole mass of buildings rising from the water. At Curzola the fortifications are far more to the taste of the antiquary than they are at Ragusa; they fence things round at the bottom, instead of hiding everything from the top. We may shut our eyes to a modern fort or two on the hills; the walls of the town itself, where they are left, are picturesque mediæval walls broken by round towers, on some of which the winged lion does not fail to show himself. He presides again over a _loggia_ by the seashore, one of those buildings with nondescript columns, which may be of any date, which most likely are of very late date, but which, because they are simply straightforward and sensible, are pleasing, whatever may be their date. Here they simply support a wooden roof, without either arch or entablature. And while we are seated under the lion in the _loggia_, we may look down at another lion in a sculptured fragment by the shore, in company with a female half-figure, something of the nature of a siren, Nereid, or mermaid, who seems an odd yoke-fellow for the Evangelist. He seems more in his natural place over the gate by which we shall most likely enter the town, a gate of 1643, itself square-headed, but with pointed vaulting within. Its inscriptions do not fail to commemorate the Trojan Antênor as founder of Black Korkyra, along with a more modern ruler, the Venetian John-Baptist Grimani. To the right hand, curiosity is raised by a series of inscriptions which have been carefully scratched out. About them there are many guesses and many traditions. One cannot help thinking that the deed was more likely to be done by the French than by the Austrian intruder. To scratch out an inscription is a foolish and barbarous act; but it implies an understanding of its meaning and a misapplied kind of vigour, which, of the two stolen eagles, was more likely to flourish under the single-headed one. The double-headed pretender, by the way, though he is seen rather too often in these parts, is seldom wrought in such lasting materials as Saint Mark's lion. So, when the good time comes, the stolen badge of Empire may, at Curzola as at Venice and Verona, pass away and be no more seen, without any destruction of monuments, old or new.

We are now fairly in the town. The best way to see Curzola thoroughly is for the traveller to make his way how he will to the ridge of the peninsula, and then systematically to visit the steep and narrow streets, going in regular order down one and up another. There is not one which does not contain some bit of domestic architecture which is well worth looking at. But he should first walk along the ridge itself from the gate by the isthmus to the point where the ground begins to slope to the sea opposite Sabioncello. Hard by the gate is the town-hall, _Obcina_, as it is now marked in the native speech. The mixed style--most likely of the seventeenth century--of these parts comes out here in its fulness. Columns and round arches which would satisfy any reasonable Romanesque ideal, support square windows which are relieved from ugliness by a slight moulding, the dentel--akin to our Romanesque billet--which is seen everywhere. But in a projecting building, which is clearly of a piece with the rest, columns with nondescript capitals support pointed arches. Opposite to the town-hall is one of the smaller churches, most of which are of but little importance. This one bears the name of Saint Michael, and is said to have formerly been dedicated to Orthodox worship. It shows however no sign of such use, unless we are to count the presence of a little cupola over the altar. We pass along the ridge, by a house where the projection for balconies, so abundant everywhere, puts on a specially artistic shape, being wrought into various forms, human and animal. Opposite the cathedral the houses display some characteristic forms of the local style, and we get more fully familiar with them, as we plunge into the steep streets, following the regular order which has been already prescribed. Some graceful scrap meets us at every step; the pity is that the streets are so narrow that it needs some straining of the neck to see those windows which are set at all high in the walls. For it is chiefly windows which we light upon: very little care seems to have been bestowed on the doorways. A square or segmental-headed doorway, with no attempt at ornament, was thought quite enough for a house for whose windows the finest work of the style was not deemed too good. Indeed the contrasts are so odd that, in the finest house in Curzola, in one of the streets leading down eastward from the cathedral, a central story for which _magnificent_ would not be too strong a word is placed between these simple doorways below and no less simple square-headed windows above. This is one of the few houses in Curzola where the windows are double or triple divided by shafts. Most of the windows are of a single light, with a pointed, an ogee, or even a round head, but always, we think, with the eminently Venetian trefoil, and with the jambs treated as a kind of pilaster. With windows of this kind the town of Curzola is thick-set in every quarter. We may be sure that there is nothing older than the Venetian occupation, and that most of the houses are of quite late date, of the sixteenth and even the seventeenth century. The Venetian style clave to mediæval forms of window long after the _Renaissance_ had fully set in in everything else. And for an obvious reason; whatever attractions the _Renaissance_ might have from any other point of view, in the matter of windows at least it hopelessly failed. In the streets of Curzola therefore we meet with an endless store of windows, but with little else. Yet here and there there are other details. The visitor will certainly be sent to see a door-knocker in a house in one of the streets on the western slope. There Daniel between two lions is represented in fine bronze work. And some Venetian effigies, which would doubtless prove something for local history, may be seen in the same court. Of the houses in Curzola not a few are roofless; not a few have their rich windows blocked; not a few stand open for the visitor to see their simple inside arrangements. The town can still make some show on a day of festival; but it is plain that the wealth and life of Curzola passed away when it ceased to be the arsenal of Venice. And poverty has one incidental advantage; it lets things fall to ruin, but it does not improve or restore.

Two monasteries may be seen within an easy distance of the town. That of Saint Nicolas, approached by a short walk along the shore to the north-west, makes rather an imposing feature in the general view from the sea; but it is disappointing when we come near. Yet it illustrates some of the local tendencies; a very late building, as it clearly is, it still keeps some traces of earlier ideas. Two equal bodies, each with a pointed barrel-vault, might remind us of some districts of our own island, and, with nothing else that can be called mediæval detail, the round window does not fail to appear. The other monastery, best known as the _Badia_, once a house of Benedictines, afterwards of Franciscans, stands on a separate island, approached by a pleasant sail. The church has not much more to show than the other; but it too illustrates the prevalent mixture of styles which comes out very instructively in the cloister. This bears date 1477, as appears from an inscription over one of its doors. But this doorway is flat-headed and has lost all mediæval character, while the cloister itself is a graceful design with columns and trefoil arches, which in other lands one would attribute to a much earlier date. The library contains some early printed books and some Greek manuscripts, none seemingly of any great intrinsic value. A manuscript of Dionysios Periêgêtês is described as the property of the Korkyraian Nicolas and his friends. ([Greek: Nikolaou Kerkyraiou kai tôn philôn.]) Nicolas had a surname, but unluckily it has passed away from our memory and from our notes. But the local description which he has given of himself makes us ask, Did the book come from Corfu, or did any citizen of Black Korkyra think it had a learned look so to describe himself?

On the staircase of the little inn at Curzola still hangs a print of the taking of the arsenal of Venice by the patriots of 1848. Strange that no Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic official has taken away so speaking a memorial of a deed which those who commemorate it would doubtless be glad to follow.

RAGUSA.

1875--1877--1881.

The voyage onward from Curzola will lead, as its next natural stopping-place, to Ragusa. At Curzola, or before he reaches Curzola, the traveller will have made acquaintance with what was once the territory of the Ragusan commonwealth, in the shape of the long peninsula of Sabioncello. He will have seen how all the winged lions of Curzola look out so threateningly towards the narrow tongue of land which bowed to Saint Blaise and not to Saint Mark. He will pass by Meleda, that one among the larger islands which obeyed Ragusan and not Venetian rule. After Meleda the islands cease to be the most important features in the geography or in the prospect. They end, so far as they give any character to the scene, in the group which lies off the mouth of the inlet of Gravosa and Ombla, the ordinary path to Ragusa. But he who would really take in the peculiar position of Ragusa will do well to pass by the city on his outward voyage, to go on to Cattaro, and to take Ragusa on the way back. The wisdom of so doing springs directly out of the history of the city. The haven, which is said--and we have no better derivation to suggest--to have given its name to _argosies_, could certainly not give shelter to a modern argosy. Nothing but smaller craft now make their way to Ragusa herself; steamers and everything else stop at the port of Gravosa. It has been only quite lately, long since the earlier visits which gave birth to the present sketches, that Ragusan enterprise has so far again awakened as to send a single steamer at long intervals from the true Ragusan haven to Trieste. He therefore who visits Ragusa on his outward voyage has to land at Gravosa and to make his way to Ragusa by land. He thus loses the first sight of the city from the sea which he has had at Zara and Spalato, and which at Ragusa is, setting special associations aside, even more striking than at Zara and Spalato. Before he sees Ragusa from the water, as Ragusa was made to be seen, he has already made acquaintance with the city in a more prosaic fashion. He will not indeed have had his temper soured by the inconveniences which Sir Gardner Wilkinson had to put up with more than thirty years ago. There is no more delay at the gate of Ragusa, there is no more difficulty in finding a carriage to take the traveller from Gravosa to Ragusa, than there is in the most frequented regions of the West. Still, in such a case, the traveller sees Ragusa for the first time from the land, and Ragusa of all places ought to be seen for the first time from the sea. Seen in this way, the general effect of Ragusa is certainly more striking than that of any other Dalmatian city; and it is so in some measure because the effect of Ragusa, whether looked at with the bodily eye or seen in the pages of its history, is above all things a general effect. There is not, as there is at Zara and at Spalato, any particular moment in the history of the city, any particular object in the city itself, which stands out prominently above all others. We draw near to Zara, and say, "There is the city that was stormed by the Crusaders," and, though we find much at Zara to awaken interest on other grounds, the crusading siege still remains the first thing. We draw near to Spalato; we see the palace and the campanile, and round the palace and the campanile everything gathers. We draw near to Ragusa; the eye is struck by no such prominent object; the memory seizes on no such prominent fact. But there is Ragusa; there is the one spot along that whole coast from the Croatian border to Cape Tainaros itself, which never came under the dominion either of the Venetian or of the Turk. Ragusa will be found at different times standing in something like a tributary or dependent relation to both those powers, but it never was actually incorporated with the dominions of either. In this Ragusa stands alone among the cities of the whole coast, Dalmatian, Albanian, and Greek. Among all the endless confusions and fluctuations of power in those regions, Ragusa stands alone as having ever kept its place, always as a separate, commonly as an independent, commonwealth. It lived on from the break-up of the Byzantine power on those coasts till the day when the elder Buonaparte, in the mere caprice of tyranny, without provocation of any kind, declared one day that the Republic of Ragusa had ceased to exist. This is the history of Ragusa, a history whose general effect is as striking as any history can be. It is a history too which, if we dig into its minute details, is full of exciting incidents, but not of incidents which, like the one incident in the history of Zara, stand out in the general history of Europe. There is, to be sure, one incident in Ragusan history which may claim some attention at the hands of Englishmen, and ought to claim more at the hands of Poitevins. Count Richard of Poitou, who was also by a kind of accident King of England, and who in the course of his reign paid England two very short visits, paid also a visit to Ragusa which was perhaps still shorter. But this again is an incident of mere curiosity. The homeward voyage and captivity of Richard had some effect on the general affairs of the world; his special visit to Ragusa affected only the local affairs of Ragusa. Ragusan history then may either be taken in at a glance, and a most striking glance it is; or else it may be studied with the minute zeal of a local antiquary. There is no intermediate point from which it can be looked at. In the general history of Europe Ragusa stands out, as the city itself stands out to the eye of the traveller, as that one among the famous cities of the Dalmatian and Albanian coast where the Lion of Saint Mark is not to be seen.

As is the history, so is the general effect. As we sail past Ragusa, as we look at the city from any of the several points which the voyage opens to us, we say at once, Here is one of the most striking sights of our whole voyage; but we cannot at once point our finger to any one specially striking object. There are good campaniles, but there is nothing very special about them; there are castles and towers in abundance, but each by itself on any other site would be passed by without any special remark. What does call for special remark and special admiration is the city itself, at once rising from the sea and fenced in from the sea by its lofty walls. It is the shore, with its rocks and its small inlets, each rock seized on as the site of a fortress. It is the background of hills, forming themselves a natural rampart, but with the artificial defences carried up and along them to their very crest. Here we are not tempted, as we are tempted at some points of our voyage, to forget that our voyage is one by sea, and to fancy that we are floating gently on some Swiss or Italian lake. Ragusa does not stand on a deep inlet like Cattaro, on a bay like Spalato, on a peninsula like Zara, fenced in by islands on one side and by the opposite shore of its haven on the other. Ragusa does indeed stand on a peninsula, but it is a peninsula of quite another kind; a peninsula of hills and rocks and inlets, offering a bold front to the full force of the open sea. One island indeed, La Croma, lies like a guard-ship anchored in front of the city, but we feel that La Croma is strictly an island of the sea. The islands of the more northern coast form as it were a wall to shelter the coast itself. And such a function seems specially to be laid upon the small islands which lie off the mouth of Ragusa's modern haven at Gravosa. Covered indeed as they are with modern fortifications, it is not merely in a figure that it is laid upon them. But La Croma fills no such function. The city of argosies boldly fronts the sea on which her argosies were to sail, and fiercely do the waves of that sea sometimes dash upon her rocks. Ragusa seems the type of a city which has to struggle with the element on which her life is cast, while Venice is the type of a city which has, in the sense of her own yearly ceremony, brought that element wholly under her dominion.