CHAPTER V

CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE ERA

The Comacines were always fine fortress builders from the early times, when they fortified not only their own island and city against the Goths, and against their civil foes at Milan, etc., but also other cities which had foes to keep off. Their towers and forts were so solid and strong that their builders were taken by Justinian to the East to build castles there, with the strong battlemented walls which aroused Procopius's admiration, and which he confesses were called _Castelli_, because that was the Italian name for them.

After the eleventh century, when the Communes were formed, the building of the fortress was less frequent, and the Communal Palace took its place. The guild was always gradual in its adoption of new styles, and the palace of the Podestà or the "Signoria" differed only in form, and not in style, from the older castle. There is the same solid masonry--either _opus Gallicum_ of smoothly-hewn stones fitted with nicety, or _opus Romanum_ of flat wide bricks welded together with cement till they are strong as a Roman wall. There are the same battlements and cornice of arches supported on brackets; and wherever a window is needed, high enough to be safe without an iron grating, it is invariably of the old Lombard form, with its two round arches enclosed in a larger one. There was the same pillared courtyard with its flight of steps to the upper floor. Jacopo Tedesco's Bargello at Florence, his Castle at Poppi, and his Palazzo Pubblico at Arezzo are the most beautiful examples of this style.

Arnolfo's Palazzo Vecchio, the Palazzo of the Commune at Siena, and the Palazzo Pubblico at Pistoja show the next step towards a less military style. There still remains much of the fortress, in the solidity and rigidity of the masonry below, and the battlemented lines above, but the tower is no longer a solid weapon of war; it becomes an airy ornamental shrine for a peaceful civic bell, that rings for the joys and sorrows of the people.

These buildings may stand as the fair examples of the work of the Masonic Guild for the thirteenth century; in the fourteenth and fifteenth the style changed gradually towards less rigid lines. The windows were widened and cusped, and the arches over the archlets of the windows became pointed; a gable with crockets placed above the windows still further lightened the effect, and emphasized the new Gothic influence. The ancient Palace of the Priors and Palazzo del Popolo, which stand close together at Todi, of which we give an illustration, show this progress in a very marked degree. There is just the difference between the two buildings that there lies between the palace of King Desiderius at S. Gemignano, and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. The Palazzo Pubblico, at Perugia, with its noble Ringhiera and Loggia, might be taken as the culminating point of Romanesque civil building. Its principal doorway is a masterpiece of Comacine work. The Masters have set their sign of the lion beneath the column, but both lion and pillar are secularized; instead of the ecclesiastic column, here is a square pilaster with niches containing graceful figures of the civic virtues--justice, mercy, fortitude, charity, etc. In the tympanum of the arch stand three bishops, and over the architrave two other lions on brackets mark the spring of the arch. The door is surrounded with course upon course of beautiful mouldings, arabesques, and spirals rich in the extreme. Though exceptionally beautiful, yet if one compares this Palazzo Pubblico of Perugia with other public edifices of its time in Italy, the similarities are such that one cannot deny that a single influence must have dominated them all.

In the Palazzo Pubblico at Udine, which was later, being built in the fifteenth century by Giovanni Fontana of Melide (Master of Palladio) and Matteo his son, we get the link between these Romanesque civil buildings and the Venetian Gothic. The upper windows have still the Lombard columns, but the little arches are more ornately cusped and gothicized. The colonnade forming the Ringhiera is formed of decidedly pointed arches. There is in this a marked affinity to the Venetian architecture, and its origin accounts for it. The Fontanas were much employed at Venice, and worked with the Lombardi, to whom Venice is indebted for so much of her beautiful Gothic civil architecture. In _cinquecento_ times there was a great call on the Masonic Guild for palaces. The republics had begun to fade into principalities, wealth and aristocracy again got the upper hand. The great churches were already built, and so to employ the many great Masters of architecture and sculpture whose families had for generations beautified Italian cities, the dominant families in them vied with each other in palace building.

In Florence the Medici led the way, the Strozzi following them close. Then all the other old families, Guicciardini, Rinuccini, Antinori, Borghini, etc., also called in the masters of the Florentine Guild to make them palaces. Cronaca, Sangallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, all names whose ancestors were well known at either Siena, Orvieto, or in Lombardy, made the plans and directed the works. And one who compares these palaces one with another, cannot but confess that different as were the hands that fashioned them, one type and one style shows through them all, which is to say that the architects were all brethren of the same guild, and had received the same training. The Florentine palace bore on its face the imprint of its race; you can trace it gradually from the Brolio of Lombard times, through the mediæval fortress, and the republican public palace. Here in the Riccardi and Strozzi, the Pitti and Guadagni Palaces, is the same solidity of architecture; but instead of the smooth hewn blocks, the huge stones are left rough, _alla rustica_.[197] Here are the same shaped windows, enlarged and beautified with tracery and mullion in place of the ancient column, but directly derived from the older form. Here is the ancient crown of Lombard archlets diminished into a rich cornice; it is only in the older buildings that the battlements are seen above, as in the Palazzo Ferroni.

In the interior the cortile, with its arched and pillared _loggie_ around it, holds its own in the centre of the building. There is little change of form between the Court of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299 and the Riccardi, Strozzi, and a score of other private palaces of the fifteenth century. The _loggia_, which was such an important feature in the private house of the Republic, is now either relegated to the garden front or the upper storey, where it is a delight to the family itself, and is no longer the public meeting-place. This is a difference entirely depending on a changed state of society.

As in Florence, so it was in Milan, Venice, and other cities where Masonic lodges were established in the great church-building era. The nobles employed the builders whose hands were craving for work. And what palaces they built, and what a wealth of rich Gothic decoration they lavished on them! We are indebted for most of the Venetian Gothic palaces to the Buoni and Lombardi families, whose course we have traced in the chapter on Venice. The Renaissance buildings belong chiefly to the members of the Florentine Lodge, such as Sansovino and San Michele, who went to Venice in the sixteenth century.

At Rome, where the Pope's rule was absolute, there was less palace-building, but the Lombard Guild was employed greatly in their old branch of fortress and bridge building. The Masters Bartolommeo and Bertrando of Como were engaged by Pope Pius II. to strengthen the fortifications of S. Angelo. Maestro Antonio of Como built the Ponte Lucano, Maestro Antonio da Castiglione the Ponte Mammolo and Ponte Molle. Maestro Manfredo da Como was commissioned by Pius II. to build a new fortress on the heights of Tivoli to defend the valley of the Anio from incursions on the Abruzzi side. The following entries from the registers prove Maestro Manfredo's employment there--

"1461. August 12. Twenty-five ducats given to the treasurer by command of his Holiness, to be paid to Maestro Manfred the Lombard, to begin the castle of Tivoli (_roccha di Tiboli_)."

"1462. May 14. To Maestro Manfredino, builder, 200 gold florins on account of the works at the fortress of Tivoli."

"1462. October 6. 400 _ducats di camera_ to Master Manfredino the Lombard, who works at the castle of Tivoli."[198]

Master Manfred with Paolo da Campagnano, both Comacines, built the Ponte Sisto, which has been erroneously attributed to Baccio Pontelli.

Pope Sixtus IV. employed Giovanni di Dolci to build the citadel of Civita Vecchia, which Baccio Pontelli finished after Giovanni's death. Antonio di Giovanni da Canobbio built the fort at Zolfanella in the same reign, while Francesco di Pietro da Triviago, Francesco da Como, and Giorgio Lombardo were joint architects of the castle at Santa Marmella. So we see that nearly all the papal forts were the work of Lombards connected with the Roman Lodge. In their own native hills the Lombards were doing similar works.

In A.D. 1500 Maestro Jacopo Dagurro da Bissone, who was a most able engineer, constructed a splendid viaduct, forty-eight metres long, over the Natisone, among the rocks and beetling cliffs of Civitale in Friuli.

FOOTNOTES:

[197] This rustic style is carried to an eccentric excess in some buildings of the seventeenth century, such as the Parliament House (Palazzo Monte Citorio) at Rome, and Zucchari's house in Florence. In Monte Citorio the window-sills are hewn and shaped smoothly for half their length, the other half being left in the rough. Zucchari has done the same with his door-lintels and window-panels. The effect is an incongruity, not pleasing to the eye.

[198] Merzario, _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. II. ch. xxxviii. p. 420.