Towers.

388. Tower of Boris, Kremlin, Moscow.

Next in importance to the churches themselves are the belfries which always accompany them. The Russians seem never to have adopted separate baptisteries, nor did they affect any sepulchral magnificence in their tombs. From the time of Herodotus the Scythians were great casters of metal, and famous for their bells. The specimens of casting of this sort in Russia reduce all the great bells of Western Europe to comparative insignificance. It of course became necessary to provide places in which to hang these bells: and as nothing, either in Byzantine or Armenian architecture, afforded a hint for amalgamating the belfry with the church, they went to work in their own way, and constructed the towers wholly independent of the churches. Of all those in Russia, that of Ivan Veliki, erected by the Czar Boris, about the year 1600, is the finest. It is surmounted by a cross 18 ft. high, making a total height of 269 ft. from the ground to the top of the cross. It cannot be said to have any great beauty, either of form or detail: but it rises boldly from the ground, and towers over all the other buildings of the Kremlin. With this tower for its principal object, the whole mass of building is at least picturesque, if not architecturally beautiful. In the Woodcut (No. [388]) the belfry is shown as it stood before it was blown up by the French. It has since been rebuilt, and with the cathedrals on either hand, makes up the best group in the Kremlin.

Besides the belfries, the walls of the Kremlin are adorned with towers, meant not merely for military defence, but as architectural ornaments, and reminding us somewhat of those described by Josephus as erected by Herod on the walls of Jerusalem. One of these towers (Woodcut No. [389]), built by the same Czar Boris who erected that last described, is a good specimen of its class. It is one of the principal of those which give the walls of the Kremlin their peculiar and striking character.

389. Sacred Gate, Kremlin, Moscow.

These towers, however, are not peculiar to the Kremlin of Moscow. Every city in Russia had its Kremlin, as every one in Spain had its Alcazar, and all were adorned with walls deeply machicolated, and interspersed with towers. Within were enclosed five-domed churches and belfries, just as at Moscow, though on a scale proportionate to the importance of the city. It would be easy to select numerous illustrations of this. They are, however, all very much like one another, nor have they sufficient beauty to require us to dwell long on them. Their gateways, however, are frequently important. Every city had its porta sacra, deriving its importance either from some memorable event or from miracles said to have been wrought there, and being the triumphal gateways through which all processions pass on state occasions.

The best known of these is that of Moscow, beneath whose sacred arch even the Emperor himself must uncover his head as he passes through; and which, from its sanctity as well as its architectural character, forms an important feature among the antiquities of Russia.

So numerous are the churches, and, generally speaking, the fragments of antiquity in this country, that it would be easy to multiply examples to almost any extent. Those quoted in the preceding pages are, architecturally, the finest as well as the most interesting from an antiquarian point of view, of those which have yet been visited and drawn; and there is no reason to believe that others either more magnificent or more beautiful still remain undescribed.

This being the case, it is safe to assert that Russia contains nothing that can at all compare with the cathedrals, or even the parish churches, of Western Europe, either in dimensions or in beauty of detail. Every chapter in the history of architecture must contain something to interest the student: but there is none less worthy of attention than that which describes the architecture of Russia, especially when we take into account the extent of territory occupied by its people, and the enormous amount of time and wealth which has been lavished on the multitude of insignificant buildings to be found in every corner of the empire.

BOOK II.
ITALY.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

CONTENTS.

Division and Classification of the Romanesque and Gothic Styles of Architecture in Italy.

If a historian were to propose to himself the task of writing a tolerably consecutive narrative of the events which occurred in Italy during the Middle Ages, he would probably find such difficulties in his way as would induce him to abandon the attempt. Venice and Genoa were as distinct states as Spain and Portugal. Florence, the most essentially Italian of the republics, requires a different treatment from the half German Milan. Even such neighbouring cities as Mantua and Verona were separate and independent states during the most important part of their existence. Rome was, during the whole of the Middle Ages, more European than Italian, and must have a narrative of her own; Southern Italy was a foreign country to the states of the North; and Sicily has an independent history.

The same difficulties, though not perhaps to the same degree, beset the historian of art, and, if it were proposed to describe in detail all the varying forms of Italian art during the Middle Ages, it would be necessary to map out Italy into provinces, and to treat each almost as a separate kingdom by itself. In this, as in almost every instance, however, the architecture forms a better guide-line through the tangled mazes of the labyrinth than the written record of political events, and those who can read her language have before them a more trustworthy and vivid picture of the past than can be obtained by any other means.

The great charm of the history of Mediæval art in England is its unity. It affords the picture of a people working out a style from chaos to completeness, with only slight assistance from those in foreign countries engaged in the same task. In France we have two elements, the old Southern Romanesque long struggling with the Northern Celtic, and unity only obtained by the suppression of the former, wherever they came in contact. In Italy we have four elements,—the Roman, the Byzantine, the Lombardic, and the Gothic,—sometimes existing nearly pure, at others mixed, in the most varying proportions, the one with the other.

In the North the Lombardic element prevailed; based on the one hand on the traditions of Imperial Rome, and in consequence influenced in its art by classical forms; and, on the other, inspired in all its details by a vast accumulation of Byzantine work. In the 5th and 6th centuries this work (chiefly confined to columns, screens, and altar pieces) was executed by Greek artists sent on from Constantinople. The 7th century seems to have been quite barren so far as architecture was concerned; but in the 8th century, owing either to the Saracen invasion or to the emigration caused by the persecution of the Iconoclasts in 788, the Byzantine influence became again predominant, but no longer with that same purity of design as we find in the earlier work of the 5th and 6th centuries.

In the South, the Byzantine forms prevailed, partly because the art was there based on the traditions of Magna Grecia, and more, perhaps, from the intimate connection that existed between Apulia and the Peloponnesus during the Middle Ages.

Between the two stood Rome, less changed than either North or South—the three terms, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, and Renaissance comprise all the variation she submitted to. In vain the Gothic styles besieged her on the north and the Byzantine on the south. Their waves spent themselves on her rock without producing much impression, while her influence extended more or less over the whole peninsula. It was distinctly felt at Florence and at Pisa on the north and west, though these conquests were nearly balanced by the Byzantine influence which is so distinctly felt at Venice or Padua on the east coast.

The great difficulty in the attempt to reconcile these architectural varieties with the local and ethnographical peculiarities of the people—a difficulty which at first sight appears all but insuperable—is, that sometimes all three styles are found side by side in the same city. This, however, constitutes, in reality, the intrinsic merit of architecture as a guide in these difficulties. What neither the language of the people nor their histories tell us, their arts proclaim in a manner not to be mistaken. Just in that ratio in which the Roman, Byzantine, or Lombardic style prevails in their churches, to that extent did either of these elements exist in the blood of the people. Once thoroughly master the peculiarities of their art, and we can with certainty pronounce when any particular race rose to power, how long its prevalence lasted, and when it was obliterated or fused with some other form.

There is no great difficulty in distinguishing between the Byzantine and the other two styles, so far as the form of dome is concerned. The latter is almost always rounded externally, the former almost always straight-lined. Again: the Byzantine architects never used intersecting vaults for their naves. If forced to use a pointed arch, they did so unwillingly, and it never fitted kindly to their favourite circular forms; the style of their ornamentation was throughout peculiar, and differed in many essential respects from the other two styles.

It is less easy always to discriminate between the Gothic and Lombardic in Italy. We frequently find churches of the two styles built side by side in the same age, both using round arches, and with details not differing essentially from one another. There is one test, however, which is probably in all cases sufficient. Every Gothic church had, or was intended to have, a vault over its central aisle. No early Christian church ever attempted it. The importance of the distinction is apparent throughout. The Gothic churches have clustered piers, tall vaulting-shafts, external and internal buttresses, and are prepared throughout for this necessity of Gothic art. The early Christian churches, on the contrary, have only a range of columns, generally of a pseudo-Corinthian order, between the central and side aisles; internally no vaulting-shafts, and externally only pilasters. Had these architects been competent, as the English were, to invent an ornamental wooden roof, they would perhaps have acted wisely; but though they made several attempts, especially at Verona, they failed signally to devise any mode either of hiding the mere mechanical structure of their roofs or of rendering them ornamental.

Vaulting was, in fact, the real formative idea of the Gothic style, and it continued to be its most marked characteristic during the continuance of the style, not only in Italy, but throughout all Europe.

As it is impossible to treat of these various styles in one sequence, various modes of precedence might be adopted, for each of which good reasons could be given; but the following will probably be found most consonant with the arrangement elsewhere adopted in this work:—

First, to treat of the early Christian style as it prevailed in Italy down to the age of Charlemagne, and to trace out its history down to the 11th century, in order to include all that work executed by Greek artists or copied from it by Lombardic artists; a phase which might appropriately be termed the Byzantine-Lombardic style.

Secondly, to follow the history of the formation of the round-arched style in Lombardy and North Italy, which constitutes the real Lombardic style.

Thirdly, to take up the Byzantine-Romanesque style as it was practised in the centre and South of Italy; because it follows chronologically more closely the art of the North of Italy.

Fourthly, to follow the changes which the influence of the Gothic style exercised in the 13th and 14th centuries in Italy.

Sicily will demand a chapter to herself; not only because a fourth element is introduced there in the Saracenic—which influenced her style almost as much as it did that of the South of Spain—but because such pointed Gothic as she possesses was not German, like that of Northern Italy, but derived far more directly from France, under either the Norman or Angiovine dynasties. Gothic architecture in Palestine also requires a chapter, and is best described here owing to its close resemblance to the style in the South of Italy.

CHAPTER II.
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE-LOMBARDIC STYLES.

CONTENTS.

Basilicas at Rome—St. Peter’s—St. Paul’s—Ravenna—St. Mark’s, Venice—Dalmatia and Istria—Torcello.

CHRONOLOGY.

DATES.
HonoriusA.D. 395
Valentinian425-435
Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths493-525
Justinian527
Alboin Longimanus, King of Lombardy568
Gregory I.590
Charlemagne768
Conrad I.911
Henry the Fowler918
Otho the Great936
Otho II.973
Otho III.983
Henry II.1002
Conrad II.1024
Henry III.1039
Henry IV.1056
Henry V.1106
Lothaire II.1125
Conrad III.1138
Frederick Barbarossa1152
Henry VI.1190
Frederick II.1212
Conradin1250