Chapter L: De Fourcaud (5)

Crossing these first courts, we have upon the right impenetrable gardens, where you see rising above the clumps of cypress old kiosks with closed windows,--the residences of imperial widows and aged princesses who wish to end their days here in this austere retreat in one of the most wonderful sites in the world.

It is all bathed in sunlight, all dazzling in tranquil light, the last portion of this walled-in spot to which we have now come,--the very last point of the Old Seraglio, and of Europe. It is a solitary esplanade, very elevated and very white, dominating the distant blue of the sea and of Asia. The clear morning sunlight inundates those depths of space out yonder, where the towns, the islets and the mountains are sketched out in light tints above the motionless sheet of Marmora.

Around us are old buildings also white, which contain all that is rarest and most precious in Turkey.

First the kiosk, forbidden to infidels, where the cloak of the Prophet is kept in a cover embroidered with jewels. Then the kiosk of Bagdad, the interior of which is entirely clothed in those old Persian faïences; which are priceless to-day: the branches of red flowers were made upon them with coral that they liquified by a process now lost and spread upon them like pigment.

Then the Imperial Treasury, very white also under its layers of whitewash and barred like a prison; and whose iron gates will be opened for me presently.

And finally, a palace, uninhabited, but well maintained, which we entered and sat down. Steps of white marble led us to the salons of the first floor, which were furnished about the middle of the last century in the European taste. They are of the Louis XV. style, to which an imperceptible mixture of Oriental singularity gives a special charm. The white and gold wainscots with old cherry or old lilac damask with white flowers show nothing but light tints mellowed by time. There are some large Sèvres and Chinese vases, and few other objects, but all of them are old and rare. Much space, air, and light, and a tranquil symmetry in the arrangement of everything--give a feeling of changelessness and neglect.

And there in a sort of sumptuous solitude, seated on these _fauteuils_ of a deliciously pale rose, before large open windows, we have from this last promontory of Europe, the splendid view that charmed the Sultans of the past. To our left, and very far below us, the Bosphorus spreads, furrowed with ships and caïques; the whiteness of the marble quays are reflected in it; the whiteness of the new imperial residences, Dolma Bagtche and Tcheragan, are mirrored inverted in long, pale lines; the row of palace and mosques is pictured magnificently upon its banks. Opposite is Asia, still bluish in the remaining drifts of the morning mist; it is Scutari, with its domes and minarets, with its immense cemetery and its forest of dark cypresses. To the right, the infinite expanse of Marmora;--distant steamboats are moving upon it, lost in all that diaphanous blue,--little grey silhouettes trailing delicate clouds of smoke.

How well it was chosen, this site, to dominate and watch from above that Turkey, seated superbly on two divisions of the world! And to-day, what peace and what melancholy splendour in this complete isolation from all the agitations of modern life, in this great silence of abandonment, under this clear and mournful sun!

When the guardian of the Treasury--an old man with a white beard--is ready to open the iron door with his enormous keys, twenty individuals come to form a hedge, ten to the right, ten to the left, on each side of the entrance.

We pass between this double row and enter the rather dark halls, into which they all follow us.

The cavern of Ali Baba could never have been filled with such wealth! For eight centuries they have been heaping up here the rarest jewels and the most astonishing marvels of art. As our eyes become rested from the outside sunlight, and get accustomed to the shadowy interior, the diamonds begin to sparkle everywhere. Things in profusion, without age or price, classified by species upon shelves. Arms of all periods, from Genghis Khan to Mahomet; weapons of silver and gold set with jewels. Then there are collections of golden coffers of all sizes and of all styles; some are covered with rubies, others with diamonds and others with sapphires; some of them are even cut out of a single emerald as big as an ostrich’s egg. Then there are services for coffee, for drinking, and ewers of antique and exquisite forms. And the stuffs fit for fays; the saddles; the harness, the housings of parade in brocades of gold and silver, embroidered and encrusted with flowers in precious stones; the large thrones made to sit upon cross-legged: all these in ruby and fine pearl together produce a rosy brilliancy; elsewhere, others covered with emeralds and brilliant in their green reflections, look as if bathed in sea-water.

In the last hall, there is waiting for us behind the windows a motionless and terrible company: twenty-eight _macabre_ dolls, of human size, standing up straight in a military row with their elbows touching each other. They all wear that high pear-shaped turban that has not been in use for a century, and which is only to be seen upon the catafalques of distinguished personages, in the twilight of mortuary kiosks, or carved upon the tombs--so that this kind of a turban is for me absolutely associated with the idea of death. Until the beginning of this century, whenever a sultan died, they brought here a doll clothed in the ceremonial robes of the dead sovereign, they placed marvellous arms in his belt, put on his turban, and his magnificent jewelled aigrette,--and it remained here forever covered with this eternally wasted wealth. The twenty-eight Sultans who succeeded each other from the capture of Constantinople until the end of the Seventeenth Century are standing here in their imperial robes in facsimile; slowly has the sombre and sumptuous assembly increased, new funeral dolls came one by one to range themselves in line with the old ones, who had awaited them for hundreds of years, sure of seeing them at last--and they are now touching each other’s elbows.

Their long robes are of the strangest brocades, with great mysterious designs whose tints are dimmed by time; priceless poignards with large handles made of a single precious stone, rust, notwithstanding the care, in the silken belts; it even seems that the enormous diamonds of the aigrettes have lost some of their fire, and shine with a yellowish and dulled light.

And this unheard of luxury, all powdered with dust, is sad to look upon. Fabulously magnificent, the dolls with the high coiffure, objects of so much human covetousness guarded there behind the double doors of iron, useless and dangerous, see the seasons, years, reigns, revolutions and centuries pass by with the same immobility and the same silence, with scarcely any daylight through the gratings of the old windows and in total darkness after the sun sets. Each one bears his name, written like a common name upon a faded ticket--illustrious names that were formerly terrible: Mourad the Conqueror, Soliman the Magnificent, Mohammed and Mahmoud. I believe that these dolls give me the most terrifying lesson of fragility and nothingness.

THE DUOMO, THE LEANING TOWER. THE BAPTISTERY AND THE
CAMPO-SANTO OF PISA

H. A. TAINE

There are two Pisas: one in which people are bored and where they have lived in a provincial manner since the decadence; this is the greater part of the city, with the exception of a secluded corner: the other is this corner, a marble sepulchre, where the Duomo, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower and the Campo-Santo repose silently like beautiful things that are dead. The true Pisa is here, and in these relics of an extinguished life, you find a world.

A renaissance before the renaissance, a second and almost antique budding of an antique civilization, a spring-time after six centuries of snow,--such are the ideas and words that crowd into the mind. Everything is of marble, white marble, whose immaculate whiteness shines in the azure. On all sides are large solid forms, the cupola, the full wall, the balanced stories, the firmly-planted round or square mass; but over these forms, revived from the antique, like delicate foliage that clothes an old tree-trunk, there is spread an individual invention and a new decoration of the small columns surmounted by arcades, and the originality and grace of this architecture thus renewed cannot be described.

In 1083, to honour the Virgin who had given them the victory over the Saracens of Sardinia, the Pisans began to build their Duomo.

This is almost a Roman basilica, I should say a temple surmounted by another temple, or if you like better, a house having its gable for a façade, and this gable is cut off at the peak to support a still smaller house. Five stories of columns cover the entire façade with their superimposed porticoes. Two by two they are coupled together to support the little arcades; all these lovely columns of white marble under their black arcades make an aërial population that is most graceful and unexpected. In no place here do you perceive that sorrowful reverie of the Mediæval north; it is the holiday of a young nation that is awakening, and, in the joy of its newly acquired wealth, honours its gods. She has gathered from the distant shores to which her wars and trade led her, capitals, ornaments and entire columns and these fragments of antiquity fit into the work without any incongruity; for the work is instinctively cast into the ancient mould and is only developed with a grain of fantasy on the side of delicacy and charm. All the antique forms re-appear, but remodelled in the same spirit, by a new and original vivacity. The exterior columns of the Greek temple are reduced, multiplied and elevated into the air and are not only a support but have become an ornament. The Roman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness diminished beneath a crown of slender little columns with a mitre ornament which girds it in the centre with its delicate gallery. On the two sides of the great door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with the luxuriant leaves, buds and twining stems of the acanthus, and from the threshold we see the church with its rows of black, and white columns of nave and transept, with their multitude of slender and beautiful forms rising up like an altar of candelabra. A new spirit appears here, a more delicate sense of feeling; it is not excessive and confused as in the north, but, at the same time, it is not contented with merely the grave simplicity and the robust nudity of antique architecture. This spirit is the daughter of a pagan mother, healthy and gay, but more feminine than her mother.

She is not yet an adult, sure of her steps; she makes awkward mistakes. The lateral façades outside are monotonous. The cupola within is a reversed funnel, of a strange and disagreeable form. The union of the two arms of the cross is unpleasing, and a number of modernized chapels dispel the charm of the purity found in Sienna. At the second glance, however, all this is forgotten, and the effect of the whole is felt again. Four rows of Corinthian columns, surmounted by arcades, divide the church into five naves and form a forest. A second passage also as richly peopled with columns crosses the first one, and above the beautiful grove, rows of still smaller columns are carried along and intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the quadruple gallery, also prolonged and intersected. The ceiling is flat; the windows are little, and most of them without panes; they allow the walls to exhibit the grandeur and solidity of their mass, and down these long lines of straight and simple windows the untempered daylight makes these innumerable columns glow with the serenity of an ancient temple.

It is not, however, wholly an ancient temple, and there lies its peculiar charm: at the back of the choir the entire hollowed out apsis is occupied with a large Christ[11] in a golden robe, with the Virgin and another smaller saint. His face is gentle and sad: on this golden background in the dimness of the pale daylight he seems like a vision. Certainly, a number of pictures and constructions of the Middle Ages supply all the needs of ecstasy. Other fragments show the decadence and the deep barbarism from which they sprang. There remains one of those ancient bronze doors covered with formless and horrible bronze bas-reliefs.

Such is what the descendants of the sculptors preserved out of antiquity, such is what the human mind became in the chaos of the Tenth Century at the time of the Hungarian invasions, of Marozzia and Theodora: sad, mournful, anæmic, dislocated and mechanical figures, God the Father and six angels, three on one side and three on the other, all leaning at the same angle like a row of cards leaning against one another; the twelve apostles all in a row, six in front and six in the intervening spaces, like those round rings with holes for eyes and long lines for arms that children scribble in their exercise-books. On the other hand, the entrance doors, carved by John of Bologna,[12] are full of life: leaves of the rose, the grapevine, the medlar, the orange and the laurel with their berries, their fruits and their flowers, amongst which are birds and animals, twine about and make frames for animated figures and groups that are energetic and imposing. This wealth of truthful and vital forms is peculiar to the Sixteenth Century: it discovered nature and man at the same time. Five centuries lie between the work of these two doors.

There is nothing more to say about the Baptistery or the Leaning Tower; the same idea, the same taste and even the same style are seen in them. The one is a simple isolated dome; the other is a cylinder; each has its exterior decoration of columns. However, each has its own distinct and speaking physiognomy; but too much time would be occupied in either talking or writing about them and too many technical terms would be needed to distinguish the subtle differences. I will only mention the inclination of the Tower. It is supposed that when the Tower was half-finished, it leaned and that the architects kept on, and since they went on with it this inclination did not seem to have troubled them. At all events, there are other leaning towers in Italy,--at Bologna, for instance; voluntarily, or involuntarily, this fondness for oddity, this search for paradox and this yielding to fantasy, is one of the characteristics of the Middle Ages.

In the centre of the Baptistery is a superb eight-sided basin; each one of three sides is incrusted with a rich and complicated flower in full bloom, and each flower is different. There is a circle of large Corinthian columns around it, supporting round-arched arcades; most of them are ancient and are ornamented with antique bas-reliefs: Meleager with his barking dogs and the nude bodies of his companions is assisting at Christian mysteries. On the left, there is a pulpit similar to the one in Sienna, the first work of Nicholas of Pisa,[13] a simple marble coffer supported on marble columns and covered with carvings. The feeling of the strength and nudity of antiquity is exhibited here in a striking manner. The sculptor understood the postures and movements of the body. His figures, a little massive, are grand and simple; sometimes he reproduces the tunics and the folds of the Roman costume; one of his nude personages, a kind of Hercules carrying a lion on his shoulders, has that large chest and the strained muscles that the sculptors of the Sixteenth Century loved so much. What a difference to human civilization and what a hastening of it there would have been if these restorers of ancient beauty, these young Republics of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, these precocious creators of modern thought had been left to themselves like the ancient Greeks, if they had followed their natural bent, if mystical tradition had not intervened to limit and divert their effort, if secular genius had developed among them, as it formerly did in Greece, amongst free, rude and healthy institutions, and not, as it did, two centuries later, in the midst of the servitude and the corruptions of the decadence.

The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the earth of which, brought from Palestine, is holy. Four high walls of polished marble surround it with their white and highly ornamented panels. Within, a square gallery forms a promenade and opens upon a court through arcades trellised with ogival windows. It is filled with mortuary monuments, busts, inscriptions, and statues of every form and of every age. Nothing could be nobler or simpler. A framework of dark wood supports the vault, and the naked crest of the roof cuts the crystal of the sky. At the corners four cypresses rustle their leaves in the light breeze. The grass grows in the court with freshness and wild luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twines itself around a column, a little rosebush, or tiny shrub, glowing in a ray of sunlight. Not a sound,--this quarter is deserted; now and then you hear only the voice of a stroller which echoes as if beneath the vault of a church. It is the veritable cemetery of a free and Christian city; here before the tombs of the great, you can well reflect upon death and public affairs.

ROCHESTER CASTLE

ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN

The Romans, who always had a keen eye for favourable defensive sites, were scarcely likely to miss the high ground in the great bend of the Medway not far from where it falls into the Thames. The Watling Street from Dover to London passed the river, moreover, at this point and received protection from the Roman camp. The Saxons and Danes also maintained the Castle of Hrofa here. The usual timber fortifications were constructed in an oblong enclosure of about seven acres, including a large conical mound of the Eastern chalk range called Bully Hill. It must even at that date have been a place of some strength, because when it was besieged by the Danes in 885, it was able to hold out long enough for Alfred to come to its relief. At the Conquest, the Normans recognized the strength of the position and added their own improved methods of fortification, enclosing a quadrangular space close to the river with a strong curtain wall and afterwards building a massive square keep in the enclosure. The Saxon works were left outside and used merely as an outpost, as was the case at Warwick and Canterbury. The original quadrangular enclosure had a wall-circuit of 580 yards, the North and South walls measuring 160, and the East and West 130 each. The East front faced the cathedral which even at that day was venerable. The West wall ran along the river front. The other three walls were defended by a broad and deep moat, traces of which still remain. Much of the outer wall, with square open towers recurring at intervals also exists. The main entrance or gatehouse with drawbridge, which no longer exists, was at the North-east angle, from which there was a steep descent to what is now the High Street. At the North-west angle, was a bastion tower with a postern gate. Although this tower no longer exists, it was still standing as late as 1735, immediately on the shore, commanding the bridge. A large round tower still stands at the South-east angle. It measures thirty feet in diameter; it has two floors and is loop-holed for archery. Two rectangular towers that defended the East front are still in existence. Throughout the constructions, we cannot fail to notice and admire the strength and massiveness of the masonry. To this the ruin owes its preservation, for besides the destroying hand of time, the neglect of unappreciative generations, and the destruction wrought by greed and fanaticism, it has also suffered from several sieges.

On the highest ground of the enclosure, near the South-east angle, stands the keep. In grandeur and impressiveness, this tower does not suffer in comparison with any English keep of the Norman period. Neither the smaller keep of Newcastle, nor the larger ones of Colchester, Canterbury, Norwich and Hedingham show the original arrangement better than Rochester. Its base is more than seventy feet square, and it is 113 feet high. It is buttressed at the angles with four small towers each twelve feet square. These, rising twelve feet above the principal mass, add greatly to the picturesque effect of the whole. Clinging like a limpet to the East angle of the keep is a smaller tower twenty-eight feet square and about seventy-five feet high. This contained the chief entrance to the keep. It had a flight of steps and an arched gateway enriched. This and the other arches are constructed of Caen stone brought from Normandy; the walls, from ten to twelve feet thick, are built with Kentish rag. Even when this smaller tower was taken in an assault, the besiegers still had trouble to get into the keep proper, for the vestibule was divided from the rooms of the great keep by a portcullis in the main wall. The groove in which it worked and traces of the ironwork still remain.

The keep contains three storeys of lofty apartments, with a vault beneath. As in the tower of London, it is divided into two nearly equal parts by a wall running East and West that rises to the roof. Its thickness allows it to contain a well two feet nine inches in diameter with openings by which each apartment might be supplied with water. By this arrangement, it was impossible for besiegers to cut off the drinking supply of the garrison. The thickness of the walls also admits of mural galleries, as in the White Tower, and a well staircase leading from the vault to the roof, communicating with each apartment. The basement and first floor received their light through loop-holes; the rooms of the higher storeys have their walls pierced with windows.

On the second storey were the rooms of state, thirty-two feet high. It has two tiers of windows, the upper tier having a passage in the wall in front of the windows. On this floor, the apartments open into one another through the central dividing wall by four arches; and in the north-east corner is a large doorway leading into an oratory or chapel built over the great entrance. A flight of steps ascends to the wall gallery which goes all round the tower: as in the White Tower, it is vaulted. It is three feet high. In these apartments, there are fireplaces with enriched arches from which the smoke escaped through openings in the wall near the hearth. This primitive contrivance must have rendered the council-chamber and banqueting-hall uncomfortable with draughts.

Twenty-three steps lead from the wall gallery to the top floor which contains two handsome rooms twenty-five feet high. From this storey, the visitor may enjoy a lovely view, including the town and banks of the winding river, the Cathedral and its close, extending in the distance to the junction of the Thames and Medway.

Above the third floor, are the battlements which had a rampart walk. The floorings were all carried by timber joists, and in the basement was a prison.

The striking resemblance between this keep and the White Tower at London of the same date would lead us to conclude that both were designed by the same architect. They were in fact both planned originally by Gundulf, who was consecrated Bishop of Rochester in the year after the Conquest. Besides his other great attainments, this bishop was a very able architect, and when the Conqueror wanted to erect a strong castle at Rochester, Gundulf was naturally entrusted with the task.

The first important historical event connected with the castle was the rebellion of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, half (and perhaps full) brother to William the Conqueror. Kent had already suffered greatly from his rapacity, and his conduct finally led to his dramatic arrest by William’s own hands. After William’s death, he plotted in Robert’s interest against his nephew Rufus. He attributed his imprisonment to Archbishop Lanfranc, and when war broke out between the brothers Robert and William in 1088, he plundered Kent, paying especial attention to the Archbishop’s estates. Finally, being captured at Pevensey, he was forced to give up all his possessions in England, including Rochester, and leave the country. He was sent under guard to Rochester to complete the surrender and take ship for Normandy; but on his arrival, Eustace of Boulogne and Robert de Belême and other supporters rescued Odo and refused to surrender the city. The castle was garrisoned and William Rufus besieged it in person. It surrendered after a blockade of six weeks. William was very reluctant to grant any terms, and indignantly refused Odo’s request for the honours of war. The English portion of William’s army, who were principally Kentishmen, were very bitter against the Bishop who had harried and oppressed them, and cried: “Halters! halters for the traitor bishop! Let not the doer of evil go unharmed!” Counsels of clemency, however, prevailed; and Odo was allowed to go; and on this occasion Rochester saw the last of him.

The castle had been considerably injured in the siege, and William commissioned Gundulf to spend £60, a large sum in those days, in building a new tower.

In the twenty-seventh year of William’s successor, Henry, the king, with the consent of his barons, granted to the church of Canterbury, William (of Corbeil), archbishop of that see, the custody of the castle of Rochester for ever, with liberty to build a fort and a tower. This archbishop, who had the support of the king in the rivalry of Canterbury and York, was a great builder. He rebuilt Rochester Cathedral and attended its dedication in 1130. Shortly before, he had with great pomp completed and dedicated the great cathedral at Canterbury begun by Lanfranc. It was therefore about 1130 that the new castle was also completed.

The castle with its splendid and strong keep was far too important a military post to remain in possession of the see of Canterbury for any length of time in that turbulent age. When the see became vacant, and on other occasions, the Crown resumed possession of it. In 1141, William of Ypres, a Fleming, was its governor for Stephen, as the archbishop had sworn allegiance to the Empress Maud. When the Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I. was captured at Winchester, he was imprisoned in this castle until exchanged for Stephen, who was taken at Lincoln later in the year. William of Ypres being banished, Henry II. gave his earldom of Kent and the castle of Rochester to Philip, Earl of Flanders, but the Earl never took possession.

In 1202, the castle was again restored to the archbishop, then Stephen Langton, who later, during John’s wars with his barons, turned it over to William de Albini, a valiant and able commander, to be held in the interests of the barons. John invested the stronghold in 1215, and succeeded in gaining possession after an obstinate defence lasting three months. The military engines could produce little impression, but the walls were undermined, and then the keep was attacked in the same way. The following year, Louis the Dauphin, being invited over by the barons to assist them against John, landed at Sandwich and led his army to Rochester. The damage had not yet been repaired and so the castle easily fell. With other Crown possessions, it then came into the hands of Henry III. Much money was spent in repairs, especially in 1225–6–7. This was while Hubert de Burgh was constable of Rochester castle. In 1240, the tower was ordered to be whitewashed where it had not yet been done; and in 1247 both chapels were ordered to be wainscoted. One of these was in the outer ward, and used by the garrison.

In 1264, the king gave the charge of the castle to the celebrated Roger de Leybourne who had just joined his cause. He furnished it with sufficient arms, garrison, and provisions to stand a siege. Early in April, the attack being imminent, the king’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Surrey, arrived at the castle with reinforcements. Just before Easter, Simon de Montfort came to besiege the castle. On reaching the western bank of the Medway, he found the passage of the bridge disputed, and a palisade and breastwork thrown up on the opposite side, well defended. Having sent Gilbert de Clare to attack the south side of the town, the Earl of Leicester in person assaulted the bridge, but was twice driven back by the citizens. At length, with the aid of boats loaded with combustibles, he set fire to the bridge and the tower upon it which were both built of wood. During the confusion caused by the fire, he crossed the river and destroyed the church and what was left of the priory. Richard de Leybourne for purposes of defence had already burned down all the suburbs and part of the priory. Simon de Montfort next made a furious assault upon the castle and captured the outworks and all the towers except the great keep. The latter made such an obstinate resistance that after a seven days’ close siege, Simon suddenly relinquished the attempt and retreated to London. Shortly afterwards, in 1264, most of the garrison, under Leybourne, who had been badly wounded, left Rochester and joined the Royal army at Lewes. The king’s disastrous defeat there resulted in the surrender of Rochester castle to the Baron’s forces. When however the tide of success turned two years later, on the death of de Montfort at Evesham, and the fall of Kenilworth, Leybourne resumed his governorship.

In 1274, Robert de Hougham died constable of this castle, and was followed by Robert de Septvans. Two other constables of Rochester during this reign were Sir John de Cobham and Stephen de Dene. During the next two centuries the following names occur among the holders of this office: William Skarlett, Lord Grey of Codnor, John de Newtrun, William Criol and Sir Thomas Cobham.

In 1367–8, extensive repairs were undertaken by Edward III., under Prior John of Rochester as chief of the works. Stone was imported from Beer, Caen, and Reigate, with copings and crests for battlements, probably for buildings in the court. Edward IV. also repaired the castle, but afterwards it lost its military importance and fell into decay. A drawing, of the year 1518, shows the turrets domed over and capped with vanes, like those of the White Tower.

Rochester much resembles Hedingham, which is a very perfect Norman keep with three floors, the remains of a forebuilding and upper gallery in the main floor. In each ornamentation, the chevron moulding is profusely employed.

SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE

JOHN RUSKIN

Your Murray’s Guide tells you that this chapel of the Bardi della Libertà, in which you stand, is covered with frescoes by Giotto; that they were whitewashed, and only laid bare in 1853; that they were painted between 1296 and 1304; that they represent scenes in the life of St. Francis; and that on each side of the window are paintings of St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Louis King of France, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and St. Claire,--“all much restored and repainted.” Under such recommendation the frescoes are not likely to be much sought after; and accordingly, as I was at work in the chapel this morning, Sunday 6th September, 1874, two nice-looking Englishmen, under guard of their valet de place, passed the chapel without so much as looking in.

You will perhaps stay a little longer in it with me, good reader, and find out gradually where you are. Namely, in the most interesting and perfect little Gothic chapel in all Italy--so far as I know or can hear. There is no other of the great time which has all its frescoes in their place. The Arena, though far larger, is of earlier date--not pure Gothic, nor showing Giotto’s full force. The lower chapel at Assisi is not Gothic at all, and is still only of Giotto’s middle time. You have her developed Gothic, with Giotto in his consummate strength, and nothing lost, in form, of the complete design.

By restoration--judicious restoration, as Mr. Murray usually calls it--there is no saying how much you have lost. Putting the question of restoration out of your mind, however, for a while, think where you are, and what you have got to look at.

You are in the chapel next the high altar of the great Franciscan Church of Florence. A few hundred yards west of you, within ten minutes’ walk, is the Baptistery of Florence. And five minutes’ walk, west of that is the great Dominican Church of Florence, Santa Maria Novella.

Get this little bit of geography, and architectural fact, well into your mind. There is the little octagon Baptistery in the middle; here, ten minutes’ walk east of it, the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross; there, five minutes’ walk west of it, the Dominican Church of St. Mary.

Now, that little octagon Baptistery stood where it now stands (and was finished, though the roof has been altered since) in the Eighth Century. It is the central building of Etrurian Christianity,--of European Christianity.

From the day it was finished, Christianity went on doing her best, in Etruria and elsewhere, for four hundred years,--and her best seemed to have come to very little,--when there rose up two men who vowed to God it should come to more. And they made it come to more, forthwith; of which the immediate sign in Florence was that she resolved to have a fine new cross-shaped cathedral instead of her quaint old little octagon one; and a tower beside it that should beat Babel:--which two buildings you have also within sight.

But your business is not at present with them; but with these two earlier churches of Holy Cross and St. Mary. The two men who were the effectual builders of these were the two great religious Powers and Reformers of the Thirteenth Century;--St. Francis who taught Christian men how they should behave, and St. Dominic, who taught Christian men what they should think. In brief, one the Apostle of Works; the other of Faith. Each sent his little company of disciples to teach and to preach in Florence: St. Francis in 1212; St. Dominic in 1220.

The little companies were settled--one, ten minutes’ walk east of the old Baptistery; the other five minutes’ walk west of it. And after they had stayed quietly in such lodgings as were given them, preaching and teaching through most of the century; and had got Florence, as it were heated through, she burst out into Christian poetry and architecture, of which you have heard so much talk:--burst into bloom of Arnolfo, Giotto, Dante, Orcagna, and the like persons, whose works you profess to have come to Florence that you may see and understand.

Florence then, thus heated through, first helped her teachers to build finer churches. The Dominicans, or White Friars, the Teachers of Faith, began their church of St. Mary’s in 1279. The Franciscans, or Black Friars, the Teachers of Works, laid the first stone of this church of the Holy Cross in 1294. And the whole city laid the foundations of its new cathedral in 1298. The Dominicans designed their own building; but for the Franciscans and the town worked the first great master of Gothic art, Arnolfo; with Giotto at his side, and Dante looking on, and whispering sometimes a word to both.

And here you stand beside the high altar of the Franciscan’s Church, under a vault of Arnolfo’s building, with at least some of Giotto’s colour on it still fresh; and in front of you, over the little altar, is the only reportedly authentic portrait of St. Francis, taken from life by Giotto’s master. Yet I can hardly blame my two English friends for never looking in. Except in the early morning light, not one touch of all this art can be seen. And in any light, unless you understand the relations of Giotto to St. Francis, and of St. Francis to humanity, it will be of little interest.

Observe, then, the special character of Giotto among the great painters of Italy is his being a practical person. Whatever other men dreamed of, he did. He could work in mosaic: he could work in marble; he could paint; and he could build; and all thoroughly: a man of supreme faculty, supreme common sense. Accordingly, he ranges himself at once among the disciples of the Apostle of Works, and spends most of his time in the same apostleship.

Now the gospel of Works, according to St. Francis, lay in three things. You must work without money, and be poor. You must work without pleasure, and be chaste. You must work according to orders, and be obedient.

Those are St. Francis’s three articles of Italian opera. By which grew the many pretty things you have come to see here.

And now if you will take your opera-glass and look up to the roof above Arnolfo’s building, you will see it is a pretty Gothic cross vault, in four quarters, each with a circular medallion, painted by Giotto. That over the altar has the picture of St. Francis himself. The three others, of his Commanding Angels. In front of him, over the entrance arch, Poverty. On his right hand, Obedience. On his left, Chastity.

Poverty, in a red patched dress, with grey wings and a square nimbus of glory above her head, is flying from a black hound, whose head is seen at the corner of the medallion.

Chastity veiled, is imprisoned in a tower, while angels watch her.

Obedience bears a yoke on her shoulders, and lays her hand on a book.

Now, this same quatrefoil, of St. Francis and his three Commanding Angels, was also painted, but much more elaborately, by Giotto, on the cross vault of the lower church of Assisi, and it is a question of interest which of the two roofs was painted first.

Your Murray’s Guide tells you the frescoes in this chapel were painted between 1296 and 1304. But as they represent, among other personages, St. Louis of Toulouse, who was not canonized till 1317, that statement is not altogether tenable. Also, as the first stone of the church was only laid in 1294, when Giotto was a youth of eighteen, it is little likely that either it would have been ready to be painted, or be ready with his scheme of practical divinity, two years later.

Farther, Arnolfo, the builder of the main body of the church, died in 1310. And as St. Louis of Toulouse was not a saint till seven years afterwards, and the frescoes therefore beside the window not painted in Arnolfo’s day, it becomes another question whether Arnolfo left the chapels or the church at all, in their present form.

On which point--now that I have shown you where Giotto’s St. Louis is--I will ask you to think awhile, until you are interested; and then I will try to satisfy your curiosity. Therefore, please leave the little chapel for the moment, and walk down the nave, till you come to two sepulchral slabs near the west end, and then look about you and see what sort of a church Santa Croce is.

Without looking about you at all, you may find, in your Murray, the useful information that it is a church which “consists of a very wide nave and lateral aisles, separated by seven fine pointed arches.” And as you will be--under ordinary conditions of tourist hurry--glad to learn so much, _without_ looking, it is little likely to occur to you that this nave and two rich aisles required also, for your complete present comfort, walls at both ends, and a roof on the top. It is just possible, indeed, you may have been struck on entering, by the curious disposition of painted glass at the east end;--more remotely possible that, in returning down the nave, you may this moment have noticed the extremely small circular window at the west end; but the chances are a thousand to one that, after being pulled from tomb to tomb round the aisles and chapels, you should take so extraordinary an additional amount of pains as to look up at the roof,--unless you do it now, quietly. It will have had its effect upon you, even if you don’t, without your knowledge. You will return home with a general impression that Santa Croce is, somehow, the ugliest Gothic church you ever were in. Well, that is really so; and now, will you take the pains to see why?

There are two features, on which, more than on any others, the grace and delight of a fine Gothic building depends; one is the springing of its vaultings, the other the proportion and fantasy of its traceries. _This_ church of Santa Croce has no vaultings at all, but the roof of a farmhouse barn. And its windows are all of the same pattern,--the exceedingly prosaic one of two pointed arches, with a round hole above, between them.

And to make the simplicity of the roof more conspicuous, the aisles are successive sheds, built at every arch. In the aisles of the Campo Santo at Pisa, the unbroken flat roof leaves the eye free to look to the traceries; but here, a succession of up-and-down sloping beam and lath gives the impression of a line of stabling rather than a church aisle. And lastly, while, in fine Gothic buildings, the entire perspective concludes itself gloriously in the high and distant apse, here the nave is cut across sharply by a line of ten chapels, the apse being only a tall recess in the midst of them, so that, strictly speaking, the church is not of the form of a cross, but of a letter T.

Can this clumsy and ungraceful arrangement be indeed the design of the renowned Arnolfo?

Yes, this is the purest Arnolfo-Gothic; not beautiful by any means; but deserving, nevertheless, our thoughtfullest examination. We will trace its complete character another day: just now we are only concerned with this pre-Christian form of the letter T, insisted upon in the lines of chapels.

Respecting which you are to observe, that the first Christian churches in the catacombs took the form of a blunt cross naturally; a square chamber having a vaulted recess on each side; then the Byzantine churches were structurally built in the form of an equal cross; while the heraldic and other ornamental equal-armed crosses are partly signs of glory and victory, partly of light, and divine spiritual presence.

But the Franciscans and Dominicans saw in the cross no sign of triumph, but of trial. The wounds of their Master were to be their inheritance. So their first aim was to make what image to the cross their church might present, distinctly that of the actual instrument of death. And they did this most effectually by using the form of the letter T, that of the Furca or Gibbet,--not the sign of peace.

Also their churches were meant for use; not show, nor self-glorification, nor town-glorification. They wanted places for preaching, prayer, sacrifice, burial; and had no intention of showing how high they could build towers, or how widely they could arch vaults. Strong walls and the roof of a barn,--these your Franciscan asks of his Arnolfo. These Arnolfo gives,--thoroughly and wisely built; the successions of gable roof being a new device for strength much practised in his day.

This stern humour did not last long. Arnolfo himself had other notions; most of all, Nature and Heaven. Something else had to be taught about Christ than that He was wounded to death. Nevertheless, look how grand this stern form would be, restored to its simplicity. It is not the old church which is in itself unimpressive. It is the old church defaced by Vasari, by Michael Angelo, and by modern Florence. See those huge tombs on your right hand and left, at the sides of the aisles, with their alternate gable and round tops, and their paltriest of all sculpture, trying to be grand by bigness, and pathetic by expense. Tear them all down in your imagination; fancy the vast hall with its massive pillars,--not painted calomel-pill colour, as now, but of their native stone, with the rough true wood for roof,--and a people praying beneath them, strong in abiding, and pure in life, as their rocks and olive forests. That was Arnolfo’s Santa Croce. Nor did his work remain long without grace.

That very line of chapels in which we found our St. Louis shows signs of change in temper. They have no pent-house roofs, but true Gothic vaults: we found our four square type of Franciscan Law on one of them.

It is probable, then, that these chapels may be later than the rest--even in their stonework. In their decoration, they are so, assuredly; belonging already to the time when the story of St. Francis was becoming a passionate tradition, told and painted everywhere with delight.

And that high recess, taking the place of apse, in the centre,--see how noble it is in the coloured shade surrounding and joining the glow of its windows, though their form be so simple. You are not to be amused here by patterns in balanced stone, as a French or English architect would amuse you, says Arnolfo. “You are to read and think, under these severe walls of mine; immortal hands will write upon them.”

THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA

The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been driven round together with the crew of sightseers can carry little away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze work, inlaid agates and labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens with rows of pink primroses in Spring and bigonia in Autumn, blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking contrast between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance façade, each in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and thoughts of the two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride of power it is a monument, may be blended with the recollection of art treasures alien to their spirit.

Two great artists, Ambrognio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo are the presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the accurate investigation of records and comparison of styles, must be left the task of separating their work from that of numerous collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of the whole music is struck by them. Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the façade of the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento inspiration is that the façade is a frontispiece, with hardly any structural relation to the church it mocks: and this, though serious from the point of view of architecture, is no abatement of its sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems a wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues--of angel faces, fluttering raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details to the main design, clear, rhythmical and lucid, like the chant of Pergolese, or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in Italy to find the instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous in its expenditure of rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of the costliest workmanship on ornamental episodes, brought into truer keeping with a pure and simple structural effect.

All the great sculptor-architects of Lombardy worked in succession on this miracle of beauty; and this may account for the sustained perfection of style, which nowhere suffers from the languor of exhaustion in the artist or from repetition of motives. It remains the triumph of North Italian genius, exhibiting qualities of tenderness and self abandonment to inspiration which we lack in the severer masterpieces of the Tuscan school.

To Borgognone is assigned the painting of the roof in nave and choir--exceeding rich, varied, and withal in sympathy with stately Gothic style. Borgognone, again, is said to have designed the saints and martyrs worked in _tarsia_ for the choir-stalls. His frescoes are in some parts well preserved, as in the lovely little Madonna at the end of the south chapel, while the great fresco above the window in the south transept has an historical value that renders it interesting in spite of partial decay.

The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From Borgognone’s majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini’s Christian grace, or mark the influence of Leonardo on that rare Assumption of Madonna by his pupil Andrea Solari. Like everything touched by the Leonardesque spirit, this great picture was left unfinished; yet Northern Italy has nothing finer to show than the landscape outspread in its immeasurable purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles, and the ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy region between the Alps and Lombardy, where there are many waters--_et tacitos sine labe lacus sine murmure rivos_--and where the last spurs of the mountains sink in undulations to the plain, has passed into this azure vista, just as all Umbria is suggested in a twilight background of young Raphael or Perugino.

The portraits of the dukes of Milan and their families carry us into a very different realm of feeling. Medallions above the doors of sacristy and chancel, stately figures reared aloft beneath gigantic canopies, men and women slumbering with folded hands upon their marble biers--we read in all these sculptured forms a strange record of human restlessness resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, _il gran Biscione_; the blood-thirst of Gian Maria; the dark designs of Fillipo and his secret vices; Francesco Sforza’s treason; Galeazzo Maria’s vanities and lusts; their tyrant’s dread of thunder and the knife; their awful deaths by pestilence and the assassin’s poniard; their selfishness, oppression, cruelty and fraud; the murders of their kinsmen; their labyrinthine plots and acts of broken faith;--all is tranquil now, and we can say to each what Bosola found for the Duchess of Malfi ere her execution:

Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay’s now competent:
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed!

From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters flooded with sunlight, where the swallows skim and the brown hawks circle and the mason bees are at work among the carvings. The arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such facility and felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the arches among grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some grave, ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints stationary on their pedestals and faces leaning from the rounds above; crowds of cherubs and courses of stars and acanthus-leaves in woven lines and ribands incessantly inscribed with Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich red light and purple shadows of the brick, than which no substance sympathizes more completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad plain space of waving summer grass beneath our feet.

It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes the train will take us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to rest tired eyes and strained spirits among the willows and poplars by the monastery wall. Through that grey-green leafage, young with early spring, the pinnacles of the Certosa leap like flames into the sky. The rice-fields are under water, far and wide, shining like burnished gold beneath the level light now near to sundown. Frogs are croaking; those persistent frogs whom the muses have ordained to sing for aye in spite of Bion and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the water snakes, the busy rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat, well watered soil. Nightingales here and there, newcomers, tune their timid April song. But, strangest of all sounds in such a place, my comrade from the Grisons jodels forth an Alpine cowherd’s melody--_Auf den Alpen droben ist ein herrliches Leben!_

Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo’s convent ever wake to such a tune as this before?

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