How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

Italian Romanesque.—Since the Romanesque style was coloured by the locality in which it appeared, it is necessary to study examples of it as they are found respectively in Italy, France, the Rhine Provinces, Spain, and England.

The Italian examples are conveniently subdivided into those of Northern, Central, and Southern Italy, or, more specifically, into the examples found in the districts north of the River Po, between the Po and the Tiber, and south of the latter. Of these the northern, to be considered later, are the most important, since they show, as we have noted, a more adventurous spirit in the matter of construction.

Central Italy.—On the other hand, the builders of Central and Southern Italy still followed the simple basilican plan and retained the wooden roofs and, in consequence, clerestory windows. They raised, however, in many cases the level of the choir and placed a crypt chamber beneath it; which sometimes, as in S. Miniato, Florence, is open to the nave. But their inventiveness was displayed rather in the details of decoration. Central Italy being rich in marbles, the use of this material for embellishing the exterior and the interior with bands and geometric designs was carried to such a perfection as virtually to constitute a style. The most beautiful example is that of S. Miniato, where, too, the open woodwork of the roof has been restored to its original colouring of gold, green, blue, and red.

Another notable example of this developed style of decoration is presented at Pisa, in the group of buildings comprising the Cathedral, Campanile, and Baptistry. Here the façades are embellished—one might almost say composed, for the embellishment is applied so constructionally—with tiers of blind arcades or of open arcades of red and white marble. Those of the Baptistry received in the fifteenth century additions of Gothic canopies and traceries, but the front of the Cathedral and the circular Campanile retain their original character. The Baptistry, also circular in plan, is crowned by an outer hemispherical dome, through which penetrates a conical dome, which in the interior is supported on four piers and eight columns. The influence of Byzantine workmen is seen here as well as in the dome which crowns the crossing of the Cathedral. The transepts of the latter are prolonged beyond the basilica plan and terminate in apses.

The Campanile, which comprises eight stories embellished with arcading, is known as “The Leaning Tower,” since it inclines from the perpendicular about 13 feet in a height of 179, the greatest inclination being in the ground story, after which there is a slight recovery toward the perpendicular. It was begun in 1174 and completed in 1350. Vasari, the historian of Italian artists, writing some 200 years later, ascribes this lean to a settlement of the foundations. His explanation, though occasionally disputed, had been generally accepted, until the investigations of Professor William H. Goodyear, in 1910, established the fact that the inclination was intentional and provided for from the start of the work.

The tower is constructed of an exterior and an interior cylinder of masonry, the space between them being occupied by a spiral staircase. The steps of the latter were individually measured by Professor Goodyear, who has set forth the results in a Bulletin of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (Jan. 21, 1911). Briefly, they show that the treads of the steps vary in height and that they incline sometimes toward the inner wall, sometimes toward the outer. In this way they tend to create a balance of strains on the whole structure, which is further secured by increasing the strength of the inner walls, where the inclination is inward. That the careful calculation involved in this was not due to an afterthought or the necessity of remedying the effects of a settlement is proved by the fact that the inclination begins at the lowest step.

Why then was this design adopted? Professor Goodyear furnishes the answer in two subsequent Bulletins. Reduced to briefest terms it is this: The Pisan Baptistry also has an inclination from the normal, both perpendicular and horizontal. Thus, in the south façade there is an inclination in the horizontal lines of 2 feet 2 inches toward the choir. Meanwhile, the vertical lines of the west façade are perpendicular to this slope and, consequently, the front inclines inward toward the nave. And these are only instances of a number of asymmetries that occur throughout the cathedral, all of which are proved to have been intentional in the original design.

Further, the asymmetries at Pisa bear a close analogy to the numberless asymmetries that appear in S. Mark’s, Venice. The latter was built by Byzantine workmen, who therein followed the Oriental and the Hellenic dislike of formal mathematical regularity; and it is the Byzantine tradition again which in this respect, as in other details of decoration, domes and so forth, influenced the Romanesque group of buildings at Pisa. The order in which they were erected is, the Cathedral, Baptistry, and Campanile; so that in the Leaning Tower the architects merely carried the principle of asymmetry to an extreme pitch.

The influence of Pisa is found in S. Michele and S. Martino in Lucca, and in the Cathedral of Pistoia.

South Italy.—The most important Southern examples are found in Sicily, which in the tenth century was overrun by the Saracens, who in the following century were routed by the Normans. Consequently, the Saracenic influence is mingled with the Byzantine in the Cathedral of Monreale, near Palermo. The plan is basilican, with apses at the eastern ends of the nave and aisles. The choir is raised. The arches of the nave are pointed but not recessed, and are supported on columns, with Byzantine capitals. The aisle walls have a dado of white marble, twelve feet high, inlaid with borders, composed of porphyry, while the arches and clerestory of the nave are embellished with mosaics of biblical subjects, framed in arabesque borders. Of a sombre richness of colour, they display the Byzantine characteristic of severity of design, and impart to the interior a solemn grandeur.