THE FIELD OF ART
Venetian Balcony. Close of Fifteenth Century: Modern Arcade.
ONE WAY OF DESIGNING A MODERN HOUSE
This is set forth in a monograph, the title of which may be translated and abbreviated thus: Drawings of the house of the brothers Bagatti Valsecchi in Milan at No. 7 Via di Santo Spirito. One very general, very abstract, very little detailed ground-plan explains what the house is, considered as a building occupying a piece of ground, and doing certain definite work. Evidently it was thought that more should not be allowed the public, concerning a house of habitation. From this it appears that the house is a single very large dwelling of which the dimensions on the ground may be taken at one hundred feet of frontage by sixty feet or rather less of depth. This, however, is the measurement of the whole plot of ground; for the house covers it all, and light for the rearmost rooms and corridors is obtained by three separate courts surrounded by arcades. The front on the street is deeply recessed so as to give a façade of some fifty-five feet at the bottom of the court; with two projecting wings of different widths; the projection, or depth of the court, being of about eighteen feet. And now comes the essential thing—that which forms the peculiarity of the building, and the immense and radical diversity between the scheme proposed by its designer and that adopted by any Parisian master-workman who may have a hotel privé to build. The Milan house is in every respect, in its general design and in the minutest detail, that which might have been built about 1475 in the same town and on the same street. The front is of brick and terra-cotta, except that the door-piece in the middle of the recessed façade, the podium, so to speak, or sub-wall of the basement story, standing some four feet high, is of stone; and that a part of one of the wings where it is opened up in the large doorway below communicating with a kind of shop or business-room, and, above, into arcades with a projecting balcony, is also of cut stone. This stone would have been taken to be marble but that the legends expressly speak of pietra, and it is probable that Istrian or some other hard white or light gray stone is used. Of stone also are the pillars which carry the vaulting of the cloisters, or galleries, which surround the courts within, and many pilasters, jamb-pieces, dadoes, parapets, and balustrades of the interior; as well as the columns of the logetta which crowns one of the wings projecting on the street, and a similar and larger one on the court within. The walls of the courts, except for the stone work above described and for certain cornice bands which are evidently of terra-cotta, are entirely finished in sgraffito; or scratched decoration on hard plaster, fit to bear the moderate climate of Milan, together with certain modelling in very low relief, which is intermingled with the scratched or incised work, and closely harmonizes with it. One interesting detail of the undertaking must be mentioned here: pieces of ancient work have been built into the structure rather freely, and these are so perfectly in the style that they do not attract attention to themselves. They need, in fact, the legends which announce their presence. This is one way of saying that the collected fragments of antiquity have been carefully chosen with the view to being of one style, of one epoch, of one character, and that the building has been built in the style so fixed. At the principal doorway there are four ancient medallions of the character which sculptors of the fifteenth century enjoyed; that is to say, they are enlargements of Roman coins. The secondary or wing doorway, spoken of above as communicating with what seems to be a kind of shop, is entirely antique, with pilasters filled with carving in the sunken panels. In the spandrels of the arch above are two more antique medallions, and an antique pilaster in marble from Mantua is set in the small reëntrant angle formed between this piece of the front and the adjoining house, which projects slightly beyond the Casa Bagatti. Ancient iron work is used for the two windows which flank the central doorway, and by way of emphasis the other windows on that story are without grilles. Iron work in the head of the side doorway already described as antique is announced as made up of ancient parts; and it may be admitted here that all this wrought iron is of somewhat earlier date than the structure generally; a breach of that harmony which has been insisted on above, but one which might easily be considered as quite characteristic of good, fine, imaginative fifteenth century work, when the Renaissance builders would have rejected carvings in the Gothic spirit, but would have admitted iron work of that character without trouble. Above this ancient doorway an ancient Venetian balcony, also of stone, is worked into the double arcade, of which mention has been made. Two large and elaborate wooden ceilings are used in the open cloisters which surround the courts, and it is worthy of commendation that they seem to have been put in place without restoration, with nothing more than necessary repairs or necessary strengthening, and that no attempt has been made to give them a freshly finished modern look. An ancient doorway of carved wood opens upon one of these porticoes; an ancient vera di pozzo, or cistern head, from Venice stands in the middle of that court; an ancient marble fountain and basin; an ancient triple tabernacle with sculptured figures of saints; another tabernacle with an Adoration, and a multiplicity of minor pieces of carving, are worked into the building, including an admirable lion, of heraldic character and supporting a shield of arms, set upon a newel at the foot of the great staircase; and, finally, a very great amount of ancient ironwork in the way of hinges, door-handles, knockers, awning-rings, and the like, is used in the work.
Graffito: the Certosa near Pavia. Unfinished; from an Old Picture.
The use of this ancient material suggests the true solution of the difficulty which every one must feel; how such a thing as this can be fine when we generally find such imitative work rather mean, rather lazy, rather expressive of the disposition to shirk one's duty than a thing to be commended. It might be objected in the first place that here evidently there has been no reluctance to undertake hard work, for the fitting of old and new details into the same general design, while the character of the old decoration has not been marred in the least, is difficult work enough for any workman. This, however, it is not necessary to urge. The essential thing in the whole situation is this: The reproduction of the fifteenth century house is practicable where the real fifteenth century house might have stood. In Milan, on a quiet by-street of the old city, we can imagine this house having remained intact and unaltered from some time in the second half of the fifteenth century until now. Had any family been rich enough and possessed of the spirit of continuity, that building would have been so preserved. The climate allows of it; the habits of the people would make it easy; one family, or, as perhaps in this case, the families of two brothers, may inhabit such a mansion, and might have inhabited it at any time from 1575 onward for three hundred years. Moreover, there is no time when such a house might not have been built. At least, if we admit that the artists of earlier days were incapable of deliberate and faithful copying of details—that is all that would separate a house built on these lines in the eighteenth century from this one of to-day. The traditions have remained, the masons have worked on these lines, the stone-cutters have wielded the chisel just as their forefathers did before them; nothing but a deliberate resolve to call into prominence the traditional knowledge and the traditional habits which have lingered among the workmen has been necessary in order to call into existence this memory of the past.
Largest Inner Court with Graffiti; Vestibule with Ancient Wooden Ceiling.
You could not build in that way in another country. This house on the streets of Paris would have been an absurdity. In Milan it represents the wholesome feeling of national and local sentiment, family pride perhaps, a sense of what is fitting, a sense of continuity, all that is noble and dignified in the sentimental or theoretical side of fine art—it is this and nothing worse or lower than this which has directed this interesting piece of work. In France, as we have said, and still more strongly in the United States, such a piece of work would have been a mere tour de force, a mere piece of deliberate copying, and, still more, a deliberate avoidance of the critical problem—how to plan and build an American city house. In north Italy it is the legitimate and wholly sensible scheme of building an old-fashioned Milanese house to serve new Milanese purposes—and anyone may respect and sympathize with such an undertaking as that.
Smaller Inner Court: Graffiti and Stucco Ornaments in Low Relief.
The full title of the work above-mentioned is as follows:
QUI SI CONTENGONO LE TAVOLE RAPPRESENTANTI LI DISEGNI DE LA CASA DE LI FRATELLI BAGATI VALSECHI CHE RITROVASI IN MILANO AL Ñ. 7 DE LA VIA DE SAN SPIRITO FEDEL RIPRODOTTI DAL VERO CON LA NUOVA INVENTIONE DE LA ELIOTIPIA.
Fausti et Iosephi Frarum de Bagatis Opus An. Dei. MDCCCXCV.
The reader will note in the Italian title the difference in spelling, as of the proper names, caused by the antique form in which it is cast.