Southern Italy.
As already remarked, the architects of the southern half of the Italian peninsula were generally content to adopt the Romanesque plan of covering their naves with a wooden roof—for when an intersecting vault is found it is clearly a French or German interpolation—but they often employed one dome, generally over the altar, and used it as an ornament both external and internal. The two illustrations already given of the domes at Bari (Woodcut No. [470]) and Caserta Vecchia (Woodcut No. [472]) show the form these usually took in the province. They belong to a type not unusual in the East, but unknown to the Gothic architects of Europe.
481. Plan of Church at Molfetta. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
482. Section of Church at Molfetta. (From Schultz.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
When called upon to roof their churches with stone, they almost invariably adopted the domical in preference to the vaulted form, as at Molfetta (1162), where they make a pleasing form of roof, not unlike that of Loches Cathedral (Woodcut No. 585). The great defect of domes when thus employed is their height, which generally throws the whole of the building out of proportion; and unless light is introduced through openings in the drum, or in the dome itself, they are dark and gloomy. This is certainly the case at Molfetta, but otherwise the church seems well designed and of pleasing proportions. To be successful, domes should be low and flat internally; and any height required externally must be given by a false dome, as at St. Mark’s, or as done by the Renaissance architects generally.
483. Baptistery, Mont St. Angelo Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
484. Plan of Baptistery, Mont St. Angelo. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
This was not so much felt when the building was square, and covered by only one dome, like the baptistery or tomb of Mont St. Angelo, where effect of space on the floor was not aimed at so much as a combination of external dignity with limited dimensions in plan, and was attained by the arrangement adopted. As will be observed, the pointed arch, as in the tower at Gaeta (Woodcut No. [489]), is used in the basement, but above this round arches with balusters for pillars, such as we should call Saxon, though their age here may be the 12th century.
485. Tomb of Bohemund at Canosa. (From Schultz.)
Among the little bits of Orientalism that crop up here and there all over the province, one of the most pleasing is the little tomb of Bohemund at Canosa (1111). It is charming to find in Italy an Eastern Kibleh with its dome, erected to contain the remains of a Christian king. Though elegant, however, the dome is not fitted to the square, as it would have been in more experienced hands, and the whole design is somewhat badly put together. Its bronze doors are among its chiefest ornaments, and are elegant, though inferior to numerous examples of the same class in the churches of the province.
Many other examples of Byzantine domical forms might be quoted as existing in Southern Italy. It is not, however, so much in the forms as in the details that the Eastern influence is felt, and that no less in the churches which retain the basilican form of Ravenna than in those which assume the domical form of Constantinople.
The buildings of the Southern Province cannot certainly compete with those of the Northern either in size or in daring mechanical construction, but in detail they are frequently more beautiful, while their forms are more national and less constrained. Their great interest, however, in the eyes of the student, consists in their forming a link between the Eastern and Western worlds, and thus joining together two styles which we have hitherto been too much in the habit of considering as possessing no point of contact.