CHAPTER I

TRANSITION PERIOD

THE LODGES OF BERGAMO AND CREMONA

----+----+----------------------------+---------------------------------- 1. |1137| Magister Fredus or | Built S. Maria Maggiore, | | Gufredus | Bergamo. 2. |1212| M. Adam of Arogno | Chief architect of Trent | | | cathedral. 3. |1274| M. Jacobus Porrata of | Made the wheel window at | | Como | Cremona. 4. |1289| M. Bonino with Guglielmo | Made the stairway on the | | da Campione | north of Cremona cathedral. 5. |1329| M. Ugo or Ugone of | Sculptured the tomb of Longhi | | Campione | degli Alessandri at Bergamo. 6. |1340| M. Giovanni, son of | Built the Baptistery and façade | | Ugone | of S. Maria Maggiore at | | | Bergamo. 7. | | M. Antonio, son of Jacopo} | | | da Castellazzo in } | Worked under Giovanni di Ugo | | Val d'Intelvi } | in building Bellano church. 8. | | M. Comolo, son of M. } | | | Gufredo da Asteno } | | | | 9. | | M. Nicolino, son of } | | | Giovanni } | | | } sons of } | Helped Giovanni di Ugone in 10. |1351| M. Antonio } Cattaneo } | the façade at Bergamo. 11. | | M. Giovanni } of Campione} | | | | 12. | | M. Niccola, son of } | | | Giovanni } | Worked at the church of St. 13. | | M. Pergandi, another } | Anthony of Padua in 1263. | | son of Ugone } | | | | 14. |1360| M. Giovanni, son of | Finished his father's work at | | Giovanni da Campione | Bergamo. ----+----+----------------------------+----------------------------------

THE ANTELAMI SCHOOL.--PARMA

------+----+-------------------------+--------------------------------- 1. |1178| Magister Benedetto da | Pulpit of Parma cathedral | | Antelamo | (1178). Baptistery of Parma | | | (1196). 2 & 3.|1181| M. Martino and M. Otto | | | Bono | 4. |1256| M. Giorgio da Iesi | Fermo cathedral (1227). Iesi | | | (1237). Parma (1256). 5. |1280| M. Giovanni Bono da } | Chief architect at Padua (1246), | | Bissone } | at Parma (1280). 6. | | M. Guido } | Worked with Giovanni Bono at | | } | Padua and Pistoja. 7. | | M. Niccolao, son of } | | | Giovanni } | This group forms the link with 8. | | M. Bernardino } | Pistoja and the Tuscan 9. | | M. Johannes Benvenuti } | schools. ------+----+-------------------------+---------------------------------

PADUA

------+----+-------------------------+-------------------------------- 1. | | Magister Graci | Employed. 2. |1263| M. Egidio, son of M. } | | | Graci } | 3. | | M. Ubertino, son of } | | | Lanfranco } | All worked together at the 4. | | M. Nicola, son of } | church of St. Anthony. | | Giovanni } | 5. | | M. Pergandi, son of } | | | Ugone of Mantua } | | | | 6. | |{ M. Zambono, or } | | |{ Giovanni } | Father of M. Nicola. These |1264|{ Bono da Bissone, near} | two form the link with Parma. | |{ Como } | 7. |1264| M. Benedetto da Verona | Worked at Padua with Zambono. | | | At Verona he is | | | styled Benedetto da Antelamo. | | | Probably a descendant | | | of the one at Parma. ------+----+-------------------------+--------------------------------

The rise of the Romanesque is the stepping-stone to the Renaissance of Art in Italy. We need not enter at length into all the vexed questions of how this Renaissance began, and which school was the link between that and classic art, but a slight glance must be given to the subject. Some make everything begin from Niccolò Pisano, as though he suddenly sprang ancestorless out of the darkness, a full-fledged artist. Some date the rise of art from the Byzantines in Aquileja and Venice; others again from the union of the Normans with the Saracens in Sicily.

First, as to Pisa. There are no records or signs of a school of art indigenous to Pisa, before the building of the Duomo there. Both Morrona[124] and Ridolfi, the historians of the respective cities, have well searched the archives in both Pisa and Lucca, but can find no single reference to any native artist before the Duomo of Pisa was begun, or even of any Pisan who worked at that building as early as the eleventh century. All the first architects seem to have been imported. Morrona asserts that when the cathedral was begun "the most famous _Masters_ (mark the word) from foreign (_stranieri_) parts, assembled together to give their work to the building." The word _stranieri_ is used by all old Italians not only as meaning foreigners, but Italians from other provinces. Ridolfi, on his part, affirms that at the beginning, the _Maestri di Como_ were the only ones employed in building the chief churches at Lucca; adding that--"Many of the works show certain symbols, monsters and foliage, which were always a special characteristic of the Comacines, and a sign of the Freemasonry founded and propagated by them."[125]

From this it may be deduced that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries no indigenous Pisan school existed, and that the mediæval buildings were of the Lombard type. Certainly the old church of S. Pietro a Grado, three miles out of Pisa on the Leghorn road, which we have described, is a standing witness to the presence of the Comacines before this era. It still exists, the most perfect specimen extant of a Lombard tri-apsidal church. Not a shaft, not an archlet is wanting.

As to Aquileja and Venice, Selvatico's[126] theory is that the Friuli people, and those of Aquileja, being driven out in 450 by Attila, fled to Grado (another Grado near Venice), thence spread to Torcello and Murano, and then founded Venice. That they built the cathedrals on those islands, and founded the Veneto-Oriental school. Did this native school ever exist? asks Merzario, seeing that the church of Grado was built by _artefici Franchi_, which might mean Freemasons, or French builders, _i.e._ the Comacines under Charlemagne; and that those of Santa Fosca and Murano were, judging by their style, of the same origin?

The church of Torcello was rebuilt in the eleventh century by the Bishop Orso Orseolo, and if it comes into the question at all, would prove that the Lombard school had something to do with it then. In spite of these two opposing opinions, it is certain that architecture took a certain distinctive form in Venice; but it was a later development which occurred after the twelfth century, and with which the Greeks and Byzantines had little or nothing to do.

Selvatico, although the champion of the Veneto-Friuli theory, is constrained almost in spite of his own arguments to own that the Lombard architects had their part in early Venetian architecture, saying--"Although the prevalent architecture of Venice from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries consists of Byzantine and Roman elements, yet after A.D. 1000 another element mingled with it, which though partly the product of the two, nevertheless had in itself elements so original as to be truly national. This is the art which modern writers style Lombard, which, born first in Lombardy, diffused itself over the greater part of Italy, and then crossing the Alps expanded greatly in Northern Europe."[127]

The learned Domenico Salazari is at the head of the Siculo-Norman theory, but the influence of the mingling of Oriental and Saracenic architecture with the Norman and Lombard elements in Sicily are so well known, and so fully acknowledged, that it is useless to go over his prolix arguments.

It seems to me that each party is right as far as it goes. Venetian architecture has Oriental elements in it; the Tuscan Renaissance truly dates from Niccolò Pisano, and the Romanesque style was formed by the marriage of north and south in Sicily; but none of their advocates have got hold of the missing link in the development of each special school from the old classical styles. And that missing link, if anywhere, is to be looked for in the Comacines.

In the ninth century they went northward, and laid the seeds of the round-arched Norman architecture at Dijon, under S. Guglielmo; a seed which took root and developed. In the next century they appear to have planted the seed of French Gothic at Aix-la-Chapelle, and of German Gothic at Cologne and Spires, and these grew to be goodly trees. In the eleventh century they again met their brethren of the north in Sicily; and all worked together, adding to their own beauties those of the rich and varied Saracenic style--and the Romanesque style was thus formed.

The Venetian link dates about the same era. Fortunato, the Patriarch of Aquileja, called in the Comacines about A.D. 828, and their churches there show a groundwork of form and masonry quite Romano-Lombard, with an ornamentation of which it is difficult to say whether it be more Byzantine than Comacine, the two being so similar in conception, and the distinctive difference in technical work being at this distance of time not always distinguishable. Where the Byzantines worked in sandstone, the sharp edges of their precise cutting would have worn off during many centuries; and where the Comacines worked in marble, their marvellous knots and interlacings may look as clean-cut now as any time-worn Byzantine sculptures. In any case the union of Lombard and Byzantine in Venice was the forging of the link connecting Venetian art to the classic Roman.

The part the Comacines had in forging the connecting chain between the Tuscan Renaissance and the classic Roman, and the artistic pedigree of Niccolò Pisano, who is the first link in that branch of the threefold chain, will be traced in a future chapter. We must now inquire how the first Romano-Lombard style of the Comacines, from the sixth to the tenth centuries, became changed into the florid Romanesque, in which the same guild was building in all parts of Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This development was possibly derived from both Northern and Southern sources.

The close connection of the Comacine or Lombard architects with the Patriarch of Aquileja in the seventh and eighth centuries brought them in touch with the Greek artists of the earlier period, from whom they learned much, especially in varying the plan of their circular churches, and in richness of ornamentation. Their later emigrations to the southern Lombard dukedoms, and their work in Sicily had a still greater effect on them. It seemed to break up their fixed traditions as a thaw breaks up ice. Before this time, every church must be of a fixed plan; every apse round; every space of wall headed by a gallery or arched brackets; every arch a pure half-circle on colonnettes. But the varied arches of the Oriental-Saracenic style influenced their fancy; they saw that art lay in variety, and learned that the pointed arch was as strong as the round one, the ogival arch more graceful. The Moorish arch never entirely took their fancy, though they sometimes gave a slight Moorish curve to their stilted arches.

It must be remembered that the _Magistri_ of the Comacine Guild were no longer of the same calibre as those mediæval men who built for the Longobards. Those were the products of an age of slavery and degeneration, who, lacking literature, clung to tradition, and could only act according to the small portion of intellectual light vouchsafed to the Dark Ages. They put stone and stone together, precisely as their forefathers had taught them. In form they clung to their ancient teacher, Vitruvius, and for their ornamentation to their ancient pagan superstitions, grafted on a mystical Christianity. Yet, as we have seen, they so far improved on these, as to build several Basilican churches which might be called grand for the time, though still holding close to traditional forms.

The Comacine after A.D. 1000 was a man beginning to feel his intellect; the feudal system was breaking up, republics beginning to be established, schools were opened, and man began to feel himself no longer a vassal bound hand and foot, but a human being who might use his own intellect for his own pleasure and good.

What wonder then, that the arts began to flourish, commerce to increase, and riches to accrue in this joyous freedom?

And what wonder that man's thankfulness for freedom first took the form of building churches for the glory of the God of the free?

The architects of the Masonic _loggie_ (lodges) who had held together through the troublous times, became alive with new enthusiasms. They compared their own buildings with others, and instead of varying the principles of Vitruvius, to suit early Christian demands as heretofore, they passed on to new and freer lines. Instead of solid and rude strength, elegance of form and aspiring lines gave lightness and beauty.

The starting-point of the change was, of course, the adoption of the pointed arch, which at this time began to be substituted for the circular one as giving greater strength with greater lightness. "_Curvetur arcus ut fortior_," says an old chronicler of Subiaco. According to their method of gradual development the Comacine Masters did not blindly throw themselves into new forms. They went cautiously, and first tried their acute arches in clerestories, and triforia, over naves supported by the old Lombard arches of _sesto intiero_, as we see in several churches of the Transition period. A little later they mixed the two inextricably, as in Florence cathedral, where the windows are pointed with Gothic tracery, the interior arches round and Roman in form.

"The early Lombard architecture," said Cesare Cantù,[128] "was not an order, nor a system, so much as a delirium. Balance and symmetry utterly disregarded, no harmony of composition or taste, shameful neglect in form proportion; to the perfect classic design which satisfies the eye, they substituted incoherent and useless parts, with frequently the weak placed to support the strong, in defiance of all laws of statics. Columns--which used to be composed of a base, shaft, and capital, in just proportions, supporting a well-adapted architrave or frieze more or less fitly adorned, and a cornice which only added beauty and strength--were exchanged for certain colonnettes, either too short or too slight, knotted, spiral, and grouped so as to torture the eye, and above the disproportioned and inharmonious abacus of the capitals were placed the arches, which in a good style should rest on the architrave. In fine, there was an endless _modanature_, ribs, reliefs, and windows of elongated form and walls of extraordinary height." In spite of Cantù's leanings to the classic, this tirade shows the first indication of the change towards the Gothic, and it only proves that the Comacine Masters did not take up new forms borrowed entire from other nations, but assimilated what they saw in other places, gradually developing their style.

To find the origin of the pointed arch would be difficult. Was it evolved from the arching trees in the German forest? or was it from the rich Arabian mosque or ancient Indian temple? or did the Comacines find it, just as they acquired their Basilican forms, on Italian soil?

Germany, it is pretty well proved, got the seed of her glorious Gothic from France or Italy, and nourished it right royally. But the pointed arch is much more ancient than German Gothic. It is to be seen in the tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ, in an Etruscan tomb at Tarquinii, and even in the subterranean gallery at Antequere in Mexico.[129] The pointed arches in the Mosque El Haram on Monte Morea date from Caliph Omar's time, between 637 and 640. The Mosque of Amrou, with its curious combination of pointed and horse-shoe arches, dates from 640.

The church of St. Francis at Assisi (1226) has generally been accepted as the first instance in Italy, and it was soon followed in the design for the church of S. Antonio at Padua five years later; but there are two little churches annexed to the monastery of Subiaco on Monte Telaso, which were built, so say the chroniclers, one in A.D. 981, the other in 1053, in which some arches are round and others acute.[130] Hope[131] quotes examples of this mixture of round and acute arches in the ninth and tenth centuries at Cluny, 1093-1134; the Abbey of Malmesbury in England, which is in Lombard style; St. Mark's at Venice, 976-1071; Subiaco, 847, and others.

"But," as Selvatico remarks,[132] "these are isolated instances determined by static reasons, and do not point to a system." The Arab used the pointed arch as a decorative principle, as well as for stability. As the style spread in Europe it got modified, some countries keeping to the ancient type, and others changing its proportions. So the Arab arch became in the eleventh century the germ of the ogival arch, and in the twelfth expanded in the North into the most glorious forms of ecclesiastical Gothic architecture.

The Comacines made their first steps towards a more florid style, about the end of the eleventh century. The change, as in all such growths of circumstance, was a gradual one. First, a little more ornamentation, then a slight change in the forms of arches; next, a less fixed ground-plan of the churches, a mingling of the Greek cross with the square-walled Basilica. After these slight trials of their wings, came flights of imagination, and endless variety of form and ornamentation; that variety which could only spring from the ideas of many minds, united in one work.

To see the earliest signs of a wider scheme of design we must go to the region of Parma. Here in a little town called Borgo S. Donnino--the ancient "Fidentia Julia"--about fifteen miles north of Parma, is one of the finest early Romanesque churches in Italy. It was a great place for pilgrimages in the Middle Ages, as it contained the tomb of S. Domninus, who was martyred in the persecutions of Maximian. Great miracles were worked at his shrine, and religious fervour rose to such a height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that the devotees collected money enough to build a church, which they desired should be the finest and most majestic of those times.

The work was finished before 1195. An ancient document shows that the _Rettori_ (civil governors) of Milan, Verona, Mantua, Modena, Brescia, Faenza, Bologna, Reggio, Gravedone, Piacenza, and Padua, with their suites, all met there in that year to form a league against Henry VI., son of Frederic Barbarossa, who seemed likely to carry on the hostility of his father.[133] We have no documents to show who was the architect of the fine Basilica of S. Donnino, but as the Comacines had their _laborerium_ at Parma, and as the work is clearly and distinctly Romanesque, we may believe the old authors who say that it arose _per lo scarpello dei Comacini_.[134] If internal evidence is wanting, the three lion portals of the ornate façade bear witness to the hand of the Comacines of the Romanesque epoch.

Another of their buildings which shows a marked advance, was the cathedral of Trent--the gate of Italy leading into Germany. This had been built in the first Lombard style between 1124 and 1149, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch of Aquileja. In 1207 the Bishop Federigo Manga, Chancellor of the Emperor Otho IV., formed a design to enlarge and almost rebuild it. He commissioned a _Magistro Comacino_ to superintend the works, as appears from an inscription in Gothic letters on the tomb of that very _Magister_. Anglicized it would run--"In the year of our Lord 1212, the last day of February, Master Adam of Arogno, of the diocese and district of Como (_Magister Adam de Arognio cumanæ diocesis et circuito_), began the work of this church and constructed it. He with his sons and his _abbiatici_ (underlings) built the interior and exterior of this church with its adjoining parts. He and his sons lie below in this sepulchre. Pray for them."

Prof. Cipolla, in an article in _Arte e Storia di Firenze_, quotes a poem written in 1309, in honour of the Duomo of Trent and of the Comacine Master who had achieved so much with his potent and clever hands (_Cumani Magistri qui potenti manu non inani complevit_).

The church has since then undergone several restorations, but in none of them has its plan been materially altered. There is still the octagonal dome, the circular apse at one end of the building, and the narthex at the other. The façade still honestly follows the lines of the roof, and has its little rows of pillared galleries across. The outside of the apse shows the new tendency to Romanesque more than the façade does; here arches and friezes in horizontal circles around it, take the place of the perpendicular shafts, and the single row of archlets on the top. It is more in the style of the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Lucca churches. The arch of the north door rests on lions, which we may take as the secret sign of Romanesque Comacine work between the tenth and twelfth centuries, as the _intreccio_ or Solomon's knot had been their mark in the Lombard period.

The church of S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo is a valuable specimen not only of this transition in its early stage, but of the culmination of the Romanesque, two centuries later. An inscription on the arch of the portico records that it was founded in the time of Pope Innocent II. and King Lothair II., _i.e._ about 1135, Rogerius being then the Bishop of Bergamo.[135] The builder's name is also recorded as Magister Fredus, probably short for Godfredus. Magister Fredus is not expressly said here to be of the Guild of Comacines, but as his work was entirely in Lombard style, with a few slight indications of a freer school, and as the architects who succeeded him were, as may be proved by documents, Comacine Masters chiefly from Campione, we may fairly make the hypothesis that he too was one of the guild. The little that remains of his work is to be seen in the interior, where the round arch still predominates, and in the exterior walls of the apse, with its crown of arches and colonnettes.

The parts due to the later brethren of the guild are the rich ornamentation of the two façades with their grand and characteristic Comacine porches, and also the Baptistery. It was in 1340 that Giovanni, son of Ugone (Big Hugh) of Campione, a _celebre scultore ed architetto_, was commissioned to build this Baptistery. According to the fixed laws of the Comacines he made it octagonal--the mystic sign of the Trinity, being formed of a threefold triangle. Around it entwine circles of arches and colonnettes, some lines having double columns; these reach to the cornice of the roof, which cornice is composed of reliefs allusive to the Sacrament of Baptism.

This work finished, Magister Giovanni went to Bellano on the east bank of Lake Como, together with two of his brotherhood, the Magister Antonio, son of the late Jacopo of Castellazzo da Peglio in the valley of Intelvi, and Magister Comolo, son of the late Magister Gufredo--probably a descendant of the Magister Fredus mentioned above--of Asteno, near Porlezza, to rebuild the church there, which had been ruined by age and repeated floods.[136] This church is in pure Lombard style, and has a façade in black and white marble, with a fine rose window, encircled with terra-cotta foliaged decorations. After this Magister Giovanni of Campione was recalled to Bergamo to adorn the façades of the church which Fredus had left in a rough state 200 years before. These two façades faced north and south. Strange to say, the part opposite the altar has no door. In this new emprise Giovanni brought as his assistants his son Nicolino, a relative named Antonio (probably the one who had worked with him at Bellano), and a certain Giovanni Cattaneo, also from Campione. Giovanni, who was head architect, decided not to renovate the whole south façade facing the Piazza on which he began first, but to concentrate his ornamentation on a fine vestibule and doorway, to form a species of frontal. The vestibule was finished in 1351, having taken only two years. On the architrave he has himself chronicled it--"1351, m. Johannes de Campillione C. B. (civis Bergomensis) fecit hoc opus." The whole front seems to have taken three years more, as on the base of the horse on which St. Alexander, patron saint of Bergamo, sits, may be read--"Filius Ughi de Campillione fecit hoc opus 1355."

Good Master John of Campione did not long survive the execution of this masterpiece, for on the north porch is inscribed--"1360. Magister Johannes f. q. (filius quondam) Dom. Johannes de Campilio ... (abrasion) fecit hoc opus in Christi nomine. Amen."

This north porch, though so nearly coeval, shows a much greater advance in style. It is an eloquent proof of how architecture was progressing at this time by the grafting on of different influences. John the father, being older, kept more closely to his Lombard traditions. John the son, being youthful and more open to conviction, took up new ideas. He has kept the Lombard arch in his porch, the moulding of which is extremely rich, and the lions of Judah duly support his pillars, but he has filled in his arch with very Gothic tracery, in trefoil arches, and over the Lombard columns of the upper storey of the porch are arches and decorations decidedly Oriental in appearance. It is about as good a specimen of the rich chaos of ideas that marks a transition stage as one can get, and shows that John the younger had been influenced by the Saracen-Norman influence in Sicily.

Fergusson, in his _Handbook of Architecture_, p. 790, gives an illustration of this porch. The Campione family evidently came from a race of sculptor-architects, for the church of S. Maria at Bergamo contains a sculptural work of much merit for the time, by Ugo da Campione, the father of Giovanni senior. It is the tomb of Cardinal Longhi degli Alessandri, who died at Avignon in 1329. The almost mediæval artist compares not unfavourably with a very modern master from Como, Vincenzo Velada Ligurnetto, who in 1855 sculptured the neighbouring tomb of Donizetti placed near it.

Coming down the valley of the Pò to Cremona, we find ourselves on a scene of great Comacine industry. There is the Baptistery, dating before A.D. 1000, and the Cathedral begun in 1100. These were both works of the Lombard Masters; their style is identical, and over the architrave of the great cathedral door may be read in the Gothic characters used by them--

MCCLXXIIII. Magister Jacobus Porrata. da Cumis, fecit hanc Rotam.

_Rotam_ refers to the wheel window, which is a remarkably fine one, and is not, as some writers think, an illiterate mis-spelling of _portam_ (door). The rose window is prior to the one which Jacopo or Lapo, the so-called father of Arnolfo, placed in the façade of the Duomo of Arezzo, and is even superior to it in richness of design. To Jacobus Porrata is also attributed the principal entrance of Cremona cathedral, with the statues of the four prophets beside it. Over the architrave rises a species of porch, formed of little Lombard galleries, fringing as it were the arch. Below are the usual lion-supported pillars, the lions being carved in fine red marble. The vestibule above is formed of pointed arches, on each of which a lion crouches to sustain the finishing _loggia_. The Comacine Masters seem to have formed a school and _laborerium_ at Cremona, for among the archives of the Duomo a deed has been found entitled _laborerio_, of the year 1289. It was drawn up by the notary Degoldo Malatesta on December 12 of that year, and on the part of the Revdo. P. Cozzaconte, Bishop of Cremona, and the monk Ubertini, director and treasurer to the works of the Duomo, making a contract with Bonino and Guglielmo da Campione to build a stone stairway on the north of the cathedral towards S. Nicolò, etc. etc. The stairs still exist, with remains of some little turrets which formed part of the design.

At Parma we have also precise data, and a name carven in stone. The cathedral was begun in 1059, four years before that of Pisa. It was finished by 1106, when Pope Pasquale II. consecrated it, the great Countess Matilda being present. In 1117 a part of it fell in an earthquake, and the Bishop Bernardo apportioned the receipts of several taxes to the rebuilding. Frederic Barbarossa in 1162 confirmed this disposition of the taxes and the work was continued. The _laborerium_ of the Comacines at Parma was at different times under two of their chief sculptor-architects, Benedetto da Antelamo being master of the lodge in 1178, and Giovanni Bono of Bissone in 1281. Benedetto sculptured the now ancient pulpit of the cathedral, which was supported on four columns, and to which the relief of the Crucifixion, signed by him, belonged. It is now in the third chapel on the right. He also designed and erected the Baptistery, which, more than any building of the time, shows an originality of idea quite remarkable. It is built entirely of white marble, is of course octagonal, that is _de règle_, and is surrounded by rows of little pillared galleries, but in these he has made his colonnettes classical, and has left out the arches entirely, except in the upper one, substituting a solid flat marble entablature for them. The lower part only has a circular arch in each of the eight sides. The arches of the doorways are very deep, and richly sculptured. One has four dark marble pillars on each side of the door, of which the lintels and architrave are richly carved in reliefs. The north door has a Nativity of Christ in the lunette, and a story of John the Baptist beneath it. The west portal shows a realistic Last Judgment above, and on the sides the seven ages of man, and Christ performing the seven works of mercy. On the south door is the allegory of Death from the mediæval religious romance of _Barlaam and Josaphat_. The arches between the doors are filled in with niches containing statues supported on black marble Corinthian columns.

All round the building above the base is a frieze of the real old animal myths and symbols, such as the Comacines of two or three centuries earlier delighted in. The march of the times had now substituted actual representations of scriptural subjects, instead of mere symbols of dark mysteries, but the _Magister_ could not all at once leave behind him the old emblems which had served his guild for centuries in the way of ornamentation. The building is unique, and shows daring independent thought at a time when independence was most difficult.

Fergusson, however, blames the false principles of design. He says the four upper storeys are only built to conceal a dome, which is covered by a flat wooden roof. The roof seen from above seems to be a flat tiled roof, and it has a pretty solid bell-turret in the centre. The little arches forming the upper range are slightly pointed. This Baptistery, as well as the pulpit in the Duomo, bears the signature of the builder and sculptor, and the date 1196.

"Bis binis demptis annis de mille ducentis. Incepit dictus opus hoc sculptor Benedictus."[137]

Val d'Antelamo, the native place of Benedictus, is a valley near Lago Maggiore towards Laveno. It seems probable that a branch school or lodge of the Comacines existed here, of which Benedetto was at this epoch at the head,[138] and gave the name to his pupils. They must have emigrated like other branches of the guild, for in the ancient statutes of Genoa we find several mentions of experts in architecture, called _Magistri da Antelamo_, who were called in by the city magistrates, when any building work had to be valued or judged.[139]

As early as 1181 in the archives of S. Giorgio, one finds the names Martino and Ottoboni, Magistri Antelami, and as late as Nov. 27, 1855, a sentence was given at the Collegio dei Giudici at Genoa by a Maestro Anteramo. The substitution of r for l is to this day a very common error among Italians.

In 1161 a squadron of Masters from Lombardy was called to renovate the cathedral of Faenza, which was much ruined. These Masters accepted, and showed themselves most proficient. So says an old writer quoted by Merzario, but whether these very clever architects were the same Antelami branch who worked at Parma cannot be decided.[140] A later Comacine Master at Parma, whose name has come down to us, is Giovanni Bono of Bissone, a little village between Como and Lugano. The grand vestibule of the principal door of Parma cathedral, with its lion-supported columns, its bands of colonnettes and its rich sculpture, was designed by him. In a Gothic inscription over the door deciphered by Sig. Pezzana, we learn that the lions were made by Giovanni Bono da Bissone in 1280, at the time when Guido, Niccolao, Bernardino, and Benvenuti worked in the _laborerium_.[141]

This inscription, for which I am indebted to Canonico Pietro Tonarelli, is especially valuable, not only in fixing the epoch of Giovanni Buono da Bissoni's work, but as proof of the organization of the lodge and the brotherhood of its members. The word _fratrum_ certainly implies that the _laborerium_ was in the hands of a guild. The Canonico Tonarelli writes in a letter from Parma, that in an estimate in the archives of the Chapter, dated 1354, the _Fabbriceria_ was denominated _Domus laborerii seu fabricæ ... majoris Ecclesiæ_, and that the administrators were called _fratres de Laborerio_. In Tuscany they were called _Operai_, and the office of administrator was the _Opera del Duomo_. The four names of the _fratres_, too, have a significance when read in the light I have since found thrown on the organization by the archives of the _Opere_ in Siena and Florence. In those lodges one perceives plainly that the administration of the lodge was placed under four persons, of whom two were Masters of the guild, and two were influential persons of the city, _i.e._ half the council of administration gave the votes of the architects employed, and the other half those of the patrons who employed them. That the same rule held in this earlier lodge at Parma is confirmed by the fact that Niccolao and Benvenuti are found working together with Giovanni Buono at Pistoja in 1270.[142]

Sometimes a single name stands out among the file of Comacines, and one finds several well-known buildings that have emanated from one mind. Such a Master was Magister Giorgio of Jesi, near Como. His name is graven in the stones of many a church. At Fermo on the Adriatic, a "sumptuous" cathedral was built in 1227; a certain Bartolommeo Mansionarius being the patron. On the left south door was a slab with the inscription--"A.D. MCCXXVII Bartolomeus Mansionarius Hoc opus fieri fecit Per Manus Magistri Georgii de Episcopatu Com".... That the mutilated word is Como we prove by a similar inscription on the cathedral at Jesi (the ancient Æsis where the Emperor Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, was born). The ancient cathedral of S. Septimus, a truly Lombard building, still exists in part. Here the inscription runs--"A.D. MCCXXXVII tempore D. Gregorii Papae domini Federici Imperatoris, et domini Severini. episcope. æsini. Magister Georgius de Cumo civis æsinus fecit hoc opus."

Here we get the city as well as the bishopric to which Magister Giorgius belonged. He was a citizen of Jesi in the diocese of Como, and a qualified member of the higher rank of the Comacine Guild. In the little town of Penna in the same province, where the church was ruined in an earthquake, an ancient stone was found with the following inscription in old Latin--"In the name of God. Amen. This work was commenced in the time of the Priest Gualtieri, and completed in that of the Priest Grazia, by Master George of Jesi in the year 1256." By these stones we find that Master George worked in the province of Piceno for thirty years, between Fermo, Jesi, and Penna. To him is attributed the ancient communal palace of Jesi which was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by other Comacine Masters.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] _Pisa illustrata nelle Arti del Disegno._

[125] Professor Ridolfi, _L' Arte in Lucca_, p. 74, _et seq._

[126] Sull' Architettura e sulla Scultura in Venezia nel medio evo sino ai nostri giorni. _Studi di P. Selvatico_, cap. ii. p. 48.

[127] Selvatico, _Storia della Scultura_, Lib. II. cap. ii.

[128] _Storia di Como_, vol. i. p. 537.

[129] In a work by Luigi Mazara (_Temple antédiluvien découvert dans l'île de Calypso_, Paris 1872) there are two engravings of gateways, one a subterranean one at Alatri in Latium, which is said to have been the work of Saturn, and is called the Porta Sanguinaria; the other of Cyclopean architecture was also in Latium, and called Porta Acuminata; both of them are pointed arches. This would carry the invention back to 2000 B.C. Many of the subterranean aqueducts of Rome have acute arches for purposes of strength.

[130] Seroux, _Histoire de l'art par les monuments_, p. ii. Paris.

[131] Hope, _Storia dell' Architettura_, cap. xxxiii.

[132] Selvatico, _Sull' architettura e scultura in Venezia dal medio evo_, p. 90. Venezia, 1874.

[133] Affò, _Storia di Parma_, tomo iii. p. 14.

[134] See _Borgo S. Donnino e suo Santuario_, pp. 59 and 112, by an anonymous author.

[135] "Dicta ecclesia fundata fuit anno Dominicæ Incarnationis millesimo centesimo III gesimo septimo sub dom Papa Innocentio II., sub Episcopo Rogerio, Regnante Rege Lothario, per Magistrum Fredum."--_Storia della Città e Chièsa di Bergamo_, Tomo III. lib. x.

[136] The contract, which is preserved in the archives of Bellano, is dated July 18, 1348--"Indictione prima in burgo Bellano, Magister Johannes filius quondam Magistri Ugonis de Campilione, et Magister Antonius filius quondam Jacobi de Castelatio de Pelo Vallis Intelvi, et Magister Comolus filius quondam Magistri Gufredi de Hosteno plebis Porleciae, qui omnes tres magistri de muro et lignamine laboraverunt ad laborem Ecclesiæ novæ," etc.

[137] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. I. chap. iv. p. 145.

[138] Documents exist which mention it in King Luitprand's time, A.D. 713, and in that of the Emperor Otho, 989.

[139] Arbitrio duorum magistrorum antelami seu fabricorum murariorum eligendorum per magistratus.--Quoted by Merzario, Vol. I. chap. iv. p. 168.

[140] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. I. chap. v. p. 171.

[141] _Storia di Parma_, tom i. Appendix, p. 43. "In mille ducto octuago p. mo indictione, nona facti fuere leones per Magistrum ianne bonum d. bixono et tpore fratrum guidi, nicolay, bnardini et bevenuti di Laborerio."

[142] This Giambono or Giovanni Buono was, I believe, the founder of the Lodge at Pistoja, or at least Master of it in about 1260. His works in Tuscany are many and important, as will be seen when the Tuscan link is under consideration.