CHAPTER VI

ART IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES

During the Venetian period, with the increasing wealth and consequence of Ragusa, the city itself was beautified by the erection of numerous handsome buildings, both lay and ecclesiastical, and by 1358 it was almost entirely reconstructed. In its early days the walls, the castle, and one or two churches were the only stone edifices; all the rest of the town was of timber. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the defences were increased, new bastions erected, and the older walls strengthened. The city now occupied both the seaward ridge and the slopes of Monte Sergio. The walls by which it was surrounded climbed painfully over the rocky eminences on each side, and dropped down almost to the sea-level in between. The fortifications did not acquire their present aspect until the sixteenth century, but parts of them were begun much earlier. Four towers were erected at the entrance of the harbour on the south-east side of the town, of which two—San Luca and San Giovanni—still survive. The latter, which is now called the Forte Molo, a huge round bastion, has been considerably altered in later times; San Luca has preserved more of its original character. Of the tower called the _Campana Morta_ (the dead bell),[261] few traces beyond the name survives. The sea-tower which occupies its site is evidently of a much later date. These towers were garrisoned by the town guard of 127 men, who were chosen by lot from the citizens every month, and increased in times of danger.[262] Other towers were built at intervals along the walls, and their defence was entrusted to the private families whose houses they adjoined. Of these the most important was the Torre Menze or Minćeta, one of the most beautiful features of the city. Its erection was decreed on July 3, 1319, but it was entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and considerably altered in the sixteenth. It stands on one of the highest points of the town on the Monte Sergio.

Of the other buildings of this time there are some important remains, from which we may resume a fair idea of Ragusan architecture under the Venetians. Its characteristic note at all times is the fact that early forms were preserved here, as in other parts of Dalmatia, down to a much later date than in the rest of Europe. The style is a mixture of Italian with an Oriental touch, and occasionally, according to Mr. Jackson, even a German element. During the Venetian age traces of Byzantine art still survive, and in buildings of the fourteenth century, a time when Italian Gothic was most flourishing, we find the round arch of Romanesque art. But Ragusan builders did not follow any very distinct system. The various styles were no more than tapped by them. None were fully developed; and in every building, from whichever point of view we regard it, we find many deviations from strict orthodoxy. Some of the Ragusan architects and master-masons had been educated in Italy, others perhaps at Constantinople, but no part of their work shows an absolute grasp over any definite style. Nevertheless it is extremely interesting, and proves them by no means deficient in artistic sense. Many of the buildings of this little Republic are of great beauty, and the whole _ensemble_ of edifices compares favourably with many a more famous Italian town.

The principal buildings erected or completed between 1200 and 1350 are the following: The cathedral church of Santa Maria (1206-1250), San Biagio (1348), the church and monastery of the Franciscans (begun 1319), the Dominican church and monastery (1254-1306), the _Castello_ (1350, on the site of an earlier building), and the _Sponza_ or custom house, begun early in the fourteenth century. The cathedral was destroyed by the earthquake of 1667, San Biagio by fire in 1706, the _Castello_ supplanted by another building in 1388. The Franciscan and Dominican churches were almost entirely rebuilt in later times, but of their monasteries much remains, and the cloisters are in their original state. The Sponza, too, survives, although the top story, the façade, and the portico were added subsequently.

What the Duomo was like we can only discover from the somewhat confused account of De Diversis, and from the model of the town in the hands of the silver statuette of San Biagio. According to local tradition, it was erected through the munificence of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, who on returning from the Holy Land encountered a terrible storm off Corfu, and made a vow that he would build a church to the Virgin on the spot where he should first touch land in safety. After being tossed about for several days he was able to land on the island of Lacroma, near Ragusa. In fulfilment of his vow he built the church, at the request of the citizens, in Ragusa itself, as well as a small chapel on the island. There is, however, no evidence of the truth of this story, and none of the contemporary accounts of Richard’s peregrinations even mention Ragusa, while the entries in the Ragusan archives state that the church was built with the contributions of the nobles. According to De Diversis, it was the most beautiful church in Dalmatia. It consisted of a nave and side aisles separated by great columns; and from the above-mentioned model of the city we see that it had a cupola mounted on a drum pierced with windows and a clerestory. De Diversis also speaks of a curious ambulatory formed by small columns outside the church, the walls of which were ornamented with figures of animals. In the choir was the high altar, with a pala of silver under a beautiful ciborium supported on four pillars. The floors were of mosaic, and the windows all filled with stained glass. On the walls were depicted scenes from the Old Testament and the New. All this bespeaks a Romanesque building with traces of Byzantine art. But alas! nothing remains of this exquisite piece of architecture; the present church (1671-1713) is a large classical edifice with barocco ornamentation.

The original church of San Biagio was begun in 1348 as a votive offering after the plague of that year. From De Diversis’s description it was very similar to the Duomo, but on a smaller scale. It suffered little damage from the earthquake, but was burnt down in 1706. Both this church and the Duomo are fairly good examples of an unattractive style, and the stone of which they are built is of a rich mellow tone.

The two stately piles at each end of the town—the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries—have fortunately preserved much of their original character. The latter was begun after the destruction of the first Franciscan house outside the Porta Pile by the Slaves in 1319, and the new building was erected just within the gate, which its inmates were to guard in times of danger. The church and a large part of the monastery have been rebuilt since the earthquake, although here and there a few interesting details remain. Thus on the south side, opening on to the Stradone, there is a handsome doorway in the Venetian Gothic style, surmounted by a _Pietà_, a very fair piece of sculpture; the date is probably the end of the fifteenth century. In the sacristy we find a Renaissance lavabo of carved stone. The campanile marks the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic. The east window of the lower story and those on the second story are Venetian Gothic, while the south window of the lower story is round-arched. The top story with the cupola was rebuilt after the earthquake. But it is in the cloister that the chief interest of the building lies, a cloister which Mr. T. G. Jackson calls “one of the most singular pieces of architecture I have ever seen.”[263] Here we observe the most notable feature of Dalmatian architecture in all its force, for although its date is later than 1319 it is thoroughly Romanesque in character, and all the arches are round. It consists of a courtyard with three bays opening out into it on each side; the openings are divided into six round-headed lights, each head being pierced by a large circular light. A series of coupled octagonal shafts standing one behind the other, with a common base and common abacus, but separate capitals, serve as mullions to the arches. The capitals are extremely quaint and curious. Each one is different from its fellows, and the architect seems to have let his fancy run riot in designing them, “recalling the wildest and most grotesque fancies of early Romanesque work.”[264] Some are adorned with simple foliage, spiral volutes, and block leaves, but on others we find hideous grinning faces, dragons, strange uncouth monsters, masks, dogs, and all manner of fanciful ornaments. Judged by ordinary standards, we should take them to be work of the twelfth or thirteenth century, but as a matter of fact they are of a much later date. According to Eitelberger, these early forms were preserved in most of the monasteries of the East when they had given place to Gothic in Western Europe.[265] The workmanship of these capitals, like much Ragusan carving, is somewhat rough and unfinished, but for this the material, which is not sufficiently hard, may be partly responsible. Of the open circles in the heads of the opening, the centre one on each side of the cloister is larger, and ornamented with a rich border of acanthus leaves; the others are cusped. Possibly it was intended that they should all contain some ornamentation, and indeed the large round openings look somewhat bare. Above the cloister is an elegant balustrade, of which only one side survived the earthquake, but a few years ago it was restored according to the original design. The name of the architect has been preserved in an inscription in the cloister itself:

☩ S · DE · MAGIST ER MYCHA PETRAR DANTIVAR QVIPPE CITCLAVSTRVM CVM OMNIBVS SVIS.

He was one Mycha of Antivari, a town where Byzantine influence was stronger than at Ragusa. The inscription has no date, but it is close to two others of 1363 and 1428, and the style of the lettering, according to Jackson, is even earlier than 1363. The building was not begun until after 1319, when the former Franciscan monastery was destroyed, so that the date is somewhere between 1319 and 1363. Within the enclosure are orange trees and evergreen shrubs, and a graceful little fountain is placed in the centre; the whole scene forms a most charming picture of mediæval monastic life. A second cloister higher up the hillside served as a garden where the simples for the monks’ pharmacy were grown. This, too, is a delightful old-world nook.

At the opposite end of the town, just inside the Porta Ploce, stands the massive group of the Dominican church and monastery. These buildings originally formed the southern bulwark of the town, the monks themselves, like the Franciscans, being entrusted with the defence of the gate; but later a second wall was built outside it. The church, which was begun in 1245 and completed in 1360, consists of a vast nave separated from a polygonal choir by a high arch. The building is extremely bare; the traces of Gothic arches and clustered pillars form a sort of skeleton, around which the existing church was constructed in the seventeenth century. In the sacristy there are a few more fragments of early work, and the south doorway, with a round arch of many receding orders under an ogee crocketed hood mould, also belongs to the original church. Jackson notices a strong flavour of German Gothic in it. There are several pointed windows of extreme simplicity, and a large round one decorated with an outside frill of small Venetian arches. The campanile was begun in 1424[266] by Fra Stefano, a Dominican, but it was not completed in 1440, for De Diversis says of it, “nondum perfectum, in dies crescit.” It has round arches and shafts set back to the centre of the wall.

But as in the Franciscan monastery, the cloister is almost untouched. It is an irregular square, with five bays on each side, each bay being divided by three lights, the head pierced by two irregular lights above. The style is a curious medley “of Gothic and Renaissance, of forms understood and otherwise, as indeed could only occur in a land which, being on the borders of Eastern and Western culture, did not possess the power to create and execute the various styles correctly.”[267] The arches of the bays are round, but the inside work has more the character of Venetian Gothic, especially in the foliage. The shield of the semicircular head is pierced by quatrefoil lights encircled alternately with an ornament of interlacing circles almost Byzantine in character. The Dalmatian architect had doubtless seen Gothic work in Italy, but “had failed to grasp the idea of receding orders in the arch, or consistent mouldings in his tracery.”[268] The columns with their caps and bases are of a severely antique character. But in spite of all deviations from architectural orthodoxy this cloister, set off by cherry and orange trees and evergreen shrubs, is, after the Franciscan cloister, one of the loveliest monastic buildings in Dalmatia.

The secular buildings, with one notable exception, belong to a later period. The exception is the Sponza[269] or custom house, a large part of which was built in the early fourteenth century. It stands at the end of the Stradone, opposite the Piazza and the church of San Biagio, and consists of three stories built round a courtyard. The ground floor and first floor were probably built in the first years of the thirteenth century.[270] The top story, the façade, and the portico belong to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The oblong courtyard is surrounded on the lower story by vaulted arcades of round arches with square soffits supported on short plain solid octagonal columns, without bases (like those of the Ducal Palace at Venice), and short capitals opening out into square abaci. The second story is also arcaded, and has twice as many window openings as the lower story has arches, round at the two ends and pointed on the sides, with square piers over the columns below and round columns over the centres of the arches; their capitals are adorned with foliage, some _à crochet_, and some with deflected leaves at the angles. According to Jackson, all this part is of the same period, in spite of the fact that some of the openings are round and some pointed. The general effect is one of extreme simplicity and sobriety; it is, as Jackson says truly, “an admirable piece of plain, useful, and not ungraceful architecture, not too showy for the commonplace purposes of the building, and yet well proportioned and carefully built.”[271] Round the courtyard are the various warehouses, over the doors of which are the names of different saints. Above the end arch is the inscription:— ___ FALLERE NRA VETANT ET FALLI PONDERA MEQ. PONDERO CVM MERCES PONDERAT IPSE DEVS.

The early work ends with the moulded stringcourse above the second story; the third story, which has plain square windows, bears the date 1520 and the monogram IHS, found on so many houses in Ragusa, to commemorate the earthquake of that year. The façade has a portico of five handsome round arches in the Renaissance style, the columns of which are adorned with elaborate capitals; many of these have been renewed. Above is a row of windows in the purest Venetian style of the fifteenth century. The central window is a three-light aperture, the two side ones are of a single light. The windows of the third story are square like those looking on the courtyard. In the centre is a niche with a statue of St. Blaize, while the row of pinnacles on the roof call to mind many a Venetian palazzo. In spite of all incongruities the Sponza is a very attractive building, full of quaint grace and good work.

It has many interesting associations with Ragusan history. It was here that the caravans about to start on their perilous journeys through the wild Balkan lands formed up, and those which arrived at Ragusa first stopped. Every bale of goods arriving at or departing from the city, by sea or land, had to be first examined at the Sponza, where the proper amount of duty was assessed and paid. All business was transacted at or around this building. To this day it serves as a custom-house, and still forms a picturesque background for the crowds of peasants and traders from all parts of Dalmatia, the Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania who congregate here on market days, although the traffic has declined both in bulk and in value since the palmy days of the Republic. The first floor was used in later years for literary and learned societies and entertainments. The second floor was the mint.

Of the _Castello_ no traces now remain, its place having been taken by the Rector’s Palace, with which we shall deal later on. The buildings we have described were almost the only stone edifices in the town. All the rest, including the convent of the Clarisse, founded in 1290, were of timber.[272] Ragusa was in great part destroyed by fire in 1292, and rebuilt shortly afterwards, mostly of wood, as before. In a _Reformatio_ of 1320 the Government published a decree against the excessive use of timber in construction. But the city was improving in various ways. The streets were wider and more regular, and stone steps were built on either side of the _Stradone_ to make the higher quarters more accessible. Elaborate rules were issued to ensure the solidity of the roofs and chimneys, and by 1355 the town was paved with brick.[273] The steep streets on the seaward ridge and on the eight slopes of Monte Sergio began to assume their present aspect, although but few details of fourteenth-century domestic architecture have remained. There are several houses in the Venetian Gothic style, but these were built during the Hungarian occupation, the artistic influence of Venice outlasting her political suzerainty.

Of the plastic arts we find as yet only slight beginnings, but we may mention a few early paintings in the Dominican church. A large crucifix in the Byzantine style, which hangs over the choir arch, was vowed during the black death of 1348. In the sacristy there is a polyptych in ten sections, with the Baptism of Christ in the centre of the lower row, and St. Michael, St. Nicholas, St. Blaize, and St. Stephen; the Virgin, with St. Peter, St. Dominic, St. Peter Martyr, and St. Francis above. The work is very primitive; but if it be by a local master, it is probably of a later date than the style suggests. The robes are very rich and profusely gilt, but the effect is garish rather than brilliant, although restoration may perhaps be responsible for this. A Byzantine Madonna and Child in red is in the same church between the nave and the transept.

In the city records there are occasional entries alluding to the engagement of painters, and in 1344 a certain Magister Bernardus was commissioned to paint the new hall of the communal palace, which he was to decorate “pomis et stellis auratis.” No trace of this work has survived.

An interesting piece of sculpture is the bas-relief of St. Blaize on a wall near the Porta Ploce. The figure is seen in profile, and carries a crozier with a Lamb in the crook. It is somewhat stiff and Oriental in pose, but full of character. Curiously enough, it is the only really good statue of the city’s patron saint at Ragusa. Other images may be seen over the gates, on the fortifications, and on various buildings, but they are all colourless and of very rough workmanship. A plaque of marble, with figures in high relief, in the sacristy of the Franciscan church, deserves notice. It is said to be thirteenth-century work of the Isola di Mezzo.

During the next two hundred years architecture attains to its full development, and at least one painter arises whose work is of considerable value, while the goldsmith’s and silversmith’s art come to occupy an important place.