St. Paul’s.
The church of San Paolo fuori le Mura was almost an exact counterpart of St. Peter’s both in design and dimensions. The only important variations were that the transept was made of the same width as the central nave, or about 80 ft., and that the pillars separating the nave from the side-aisles were joined by arches instead of by a horizontal architrave. Both these were undoubted improvements, the first giving space and dignity to the bema, the latter not only adding height to the order, but giving it, together with lightness, that apparent strength requisite to support the high wall placed over the pillars.
398. View of the Interior of St. Paul’s, at Rome, before the fire.
The order too was finer and more important than at St. Peter’s, twenty-four of the pillars being taken from some temple or building (it is generally said the mausoleum of Hadrian) of the best age of Rome, though the remaining sixteen were unfortunately only very bad copies of them. These pillars are 33 ft. in height, or one-third of the whole height of the building to the roof. In St. Peter’s they were only a fourth, and if they had been spaced a little farther apart, and the arch made more important, the most glaring defect of these buildings would in a great measure have been avoided.
Long before its destruction by fire in 1822 this church had been so altered as to lose many of its most striking peculiarities. The bema or presbytery was divided into two by a longitudinal wall. The greater number of its clerestory windows were built up, its atrium gone, and decay and whitewash had done much to efface its beauty, which nevertheless seems to have struck all travellers with admiration, as combining in itself the last reminiscence of Pagan Rome with the earliest forms of the Christian world. It certainly was the most interesting, if not quite the most beautiful, of the Christian buildings, of that city.[[267]]
The third five-aisled basilica, that of St. John Lateran, differs in no essential respect from those just described except in dimensions; it covers about 60,000 ft., and consequently is inferior in this respect to the other two. It has been so completely altered in modern times that its primitive arrangements can now hardly be discerned, nor can their effect be judged of, even assuming that they were peculiar to it, which, however, is by no means certain.
Like the other two, it appears to have been originally erected by Constantine, who seems especially to have affected this five-aisled form. The churches which he erected at Jerusalem and Bethlehem both have this number of aisles. From the similarity which exists in the design of all these churches we might easily restore this building, if it were worth while. Its dimensions can easily be traced, but beyond this nothing remains of the original erection.
Of those with three aisles by far the finest and most beautiful is that of S. Maria Maggiore, which, notwithstanding the comparative smallness of its dimensions, is now perhaps the best specimen of its class remaining. Internally its dimensions are 100 ft. in width by 250 to the front of the apse; the whole area being about 32,000 ft.: so that it is little more than half the size of the Lateran church, and between one-third and one-fourth of that of the other two five-aisled churches.
399. Plan of S. Maria Maggiore. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
Notwithstanding this, there is great beauty in its internal colonnade, all the pillars of which are of one design, and bear a most pleasing proportion to the superstructure. The clerestory too is ornamented with pilasters and panels, making it a part of the general design; and with the roof, which is panelled with constructive propriety and simplicity combined with sufficient richness, serves to make up a whole which gives a far better and more complete idea of what a basilica either was originally, or at least might have been, than any other church at Rome. It is true that both the pilasters of the clerestory and the roof are modern, and in modern times the colonnade has been broken through in two places; but these defects must be overlooked in judging of the whole.
Another defect is that the side-aisles have been vaulted in modern times, and in such a manner as to destroy the harmony that should exist between the different parts of the building. In striving to avoid the defect of making the superstructure too high in proportion to the columns, the architect has made the central roof too low either for the width or length of the main aisle. Still the building, as a whole, is—or rather was before the completion of the rebuilding of St. Paul’s—the very best of the older wooden-roofed churches of Christendom, and the best model from which to study the merits and defects of this style of architecture.
400. View of S. Maria Maggiore. (From Gutensohn and Knapp.)
401. Plan of S. Agnes. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
402. Section of S. Agnes. (From Gutensohn and Knapp.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
Another mode of getting over the great defect of high walls over the pillars was adopted, as in St. Lorenzo and Sta. Agnese, of using a gallery corresponding with the triforium of Gothic churches. In St. Lorenzo, where this feature first occurs, it would seem to have been derived from the Eastern Empire, where the custom of providing galleries for women had long been established; this is rendered probable by the fact that the sculpture of the capitals carrying the arches of the triforium is of pure Byzantine character, and by the adoption of what is virtually a dosseret,[[268]] or projecting impost above the capital to carry the arches, which at their springing are considerably wider and deeper than the abacus of the capital. According to M. Cattaneo[[269]] the earliest part of this church is the Eastern end, built by Constantine (see plan, Woodcut No. [403]), which first consisted of nave, aisles, and a Western apse. In the Pontificate of Sixtus III. (432-440) an immense basilica was added on the Western side with an Eastern apse built back to back with the original apse; and later on, in 578-590, galleries were added to the Western church by Pope Pelagius II. over the side aisles. In 1226-1227, when Honorius III. restored the whole building, he removed the two apses, continued the new arcade up to the early Western wall, and raised the choir of the early church to its present elevation (Woodcut No. [404]). Both in St. Lorenzo and St. Agnes the galleries may have been suggested if not required by the peculiarity of the ground, which was higher on one side than on the other; but whether this was the true cause of its adoption or not, the effect was most satisfactory, and had it been persevered in so as to bring the upper colonnade more into harmony of proportion with the other, it would have been attended with the happiest results on the style. Whether it was, however, that the Romans felt the want of the broad plain space for their paintings, or that they could not bring the upper arches into proportion with the classical pillars which they made use of, the system was abandoned almost as soon as adopted, and never came into general use.
403. Plan of St. Lorenzo.
It should be observed that this arrangement contained the germs of much that was afterwards reproduced in Gothic churches. The upper gallery, after many modifications, at last settled into a triforium, and the pierced stone slabs in the windows became tracery—but before these were reached a vaulted roof was introduced, and with it all the features of the style were to a great extent modified.
404. Interior of the Basilica of St. Lorenzo (fuori le Mura).
The church known as that of Sta. Pudentiana is one of the very oldest and consequently one of the most interesting of those in Rome. It stands on substructions of ancient Roman date, which probably formed part of the Thermæ of Novatus or the house of the Senator Pudens, who is mentioned by St. Paul at the end of his Second Epistle to Timothy, and with whom he is traditionally said to have resided during his sojourn in Rome. The vaults beneath the church certainly formed part of a Roman mansion, so apparently do those buildings, shown on the plan, and placed behind and on one side of the sanctuary; but whether these were used for Christian purposes before the erection of the church in the fourth century is by no means certain. In plan the church remains in all probability very much as originally designed, its most striking peculiarity being the segmental form of the apse, which may possibly have arisen from some peculiar arrangement of the original building. It was not, however, found to be pleasing in an architectural point of view, and was not consequently again employed.
405. Plan of Sta. Pudentiana. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
406. Section of Sta. Pudentiana. (From Hubsch.[[270]]) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
The annexed section probably represents very nearly the original form of the nave, though it has been so encrusted with modern accretions as to render it difficult to ascertain what the first form really was. The shafts of the pillars may have been borrowed from some older edifice, but the capitals were clearly designed to support arches, and must therefore be early Christian (fourth century?), and are among the most elegant and appropriate specimens of the class now extant.
407. Capital of Sta. Pudentiana. (From Hubsch.)
In some instances, as in San Clemente, above alluded to, in San Pietro in Vincula, and Sta. Maria in Cosmedin, the colonnade is divided into spaces of three or four intercolumniations by piers of solid masonry, which give great apparent solidity and strength to the building, but at the expense of breaking it up into compartments more than is agreeable, and these destroy that beauty of perspective so pleasing in a continuous colonnade. This defect seems to have been felt in the Santa Praxede, where three of these piers are introduced in the length of the nave,[[271]] and support each a bold arch thrown across the central aisle. The effect of this might have been most happy, as at San Miniato, near Florence; but it has been so clumsily managed in the Roman example, as to be most destructive of all beauty of proportion.
408. Half Section, half Elevation, of the Church of San Vincenzo alle Tre Fontane. (From Gutensohn and Knapp.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.
Some of the principal beauties as well as some of the most remarkable defects of these basilican churches arise from the employment of columns torn from ancient temples: where this has been done, the beauty of the marble, and the exquisite sculpture of the capitals and friezes, give a richness and elegance to the whole that go far to redeem or to hide the rudeness of the building in which they are encased. But, on the other hand, the discrepancy between the pillars—Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns being sometimes used side by side—destroys all uniformity, and the fragmentary character of the entablatures they support is still more prejudicial to the continuity of the perspective, which should be the greatest charm of these churches. By degrees, the fertile quarries of ancient Rome seem to have become entirely exhausted; and as the example of St. Paul’s proves, the Romans in the fourth century were incapable of manufacturing even a bad imitation, and were at last forced to adopt some new plan of supporting their arcades. The church of SS. Nereo ed Achilleo is, perhaps, the most elegant example of this class, the piers being light octagons; but the most characteristic, as well as the most original, is the San Vincenzo alle Tre Fontane, shown in section and elevation in Woodcut No. [408]. It so far deviates from the usual basilican arrangements as to suggest a later date. It has the same defect as all the rest—its pier arches being too low, and for which there is no excuse here—but both internally and externally it shows a uniformity of design and a desire to make every part ornamental that produces a very pleasing effect, notwithstanding that the whole is merely of brick, and that ornament is so sparingly applied as barely to prevent the building sinking into the class of mere utilitarian erections.
Among the most pleasing architectural features, if they may be so called, of these churches, are the mosaic pavements that adorn the greater number. These were always original, being designed for the buildings in which they are used, and following the arrangement of the architecture surrounding them. The patterns too are always elegant, and appropriate to the purpose; and as the colours are in like manner generally harmoniously blended, they form not only a most appropriate but most beautiful basement to the architecture.
A still more important feature was the great mosaic picture that always adorned the semi-dome of the apse, representing most generally the Saviour seated in glory surrounded by saints, or else some scene from the life of the holy personage to whom the church was dedicated.
These mosaics were generally continued down to nearly the level of the altar, and along the whole of the inner wall of the sanctuary in which the apse was situated, and as far as the triumphal arch which separated the nave from the sanctuary, at which point the mosaic blended with the frescoes that adorned the upper walls of the central nave above the arcades. All this made up an extent of polychromatic decoration which in those dark ages, when few could read, the designers of these buildings seem to have considered as virtually of more importance than the architectural work to which it was attached. Any attempt to judge of the one without taking into consideration the other, would be forming an opinion on hearing but half the evidence; but taken in conjunction, the paintings go far to explain, and also to redeem, many points in which the architecture is most open to criticism.