The Italians concentrated chief ornateness on the west façade; the most celebrated examples being those of Siena (1243-1284) and Orvieto (1290). They present elaborate compositions of vari-coloured marble, charmingly diversified, nicely balanced, sumptuously elegant and graceful. But compare, for example, Siena with, say, Rheims or Amiens, and how it sinks into insignificance!
In the French examples the pointed door-arches start an upward movement which is continued to the top in the organic relations of the parts to one another and to the interior arrangement. But in the Siena façade, the round arches hold the eye down; for their feeling is not repeated in the upper part, which, notwithstanding the gables, turrets, finials, and culminating gable, has no suggestion of growth-up, but is rather a geometric design of curves and triangles, horizontals and verticals, carried up to a height. It is not organically structural; it is a built-up pattern. The designer was a sculptor—Giovanni Pisano.
Campanile.—The campanile is usually attached to the building. In place of string courses and mouldings are alternate courses of black and white masonry; the sole contrast being supplied by the rectangular window openings, which, possibly to offset the diminishing effect of perspective, increase in number upwards. The low spire is typically Italian Romanesque.
Fine examples of the period are to be found in Verona, Mantua, and Pistoia, while the most beautiful is that of Florence, designed and begun by Giotto and completed after his death by Andrea Pisano. It is distinguished from other bell-towers of the Italian Gothic by the projections which mark its four stories and the bold cornice with machicolated ornament. The surface is further varied with geometric designs, composed of coloured marbles; while the windows are embellished with tracery of an elementary design, corresponding to that of the adjoining Cathedral windows. The sides of the lowest story, broken only by a small light, are enriched with statues and bas-reliefs, some of which were designed by Giotto and executed partly by him and partly by Andrea Pisano, others being added later by Luca della Robbia. In character of subjects they correspond to the selections at Amiens from the Encyclopædia of Vincent of Beauvais. Ruskin says of this building that it is the only one in the world, so far as he knows, in which the characteristics of Power and Beauty exist “in their highest possible relative degrees.” But power is a term that connotes varied qualities to different minds; and still more different to various temperaments and experiences is the term beauty. Perhaps if he had said that it combined strength and grace, or stability and tenderness, it would be easier to appreciate his judgment. For Giotto’s Campanile has an exquisiteness allied to dignity which is characteristic of Italian Gothic at its best, yet to the taste of many will ill compare with the vigour of the French and English styles.
Suggestive of the persistence of the Romanesque style during the Gothic period the most notable instance is the Certosa, or Church of the Carthusian Order, in Pavia. The façade and lantern over the crossing are Renaissance additions; otherwise this splendid edifice, constructed of brick and terra-cotta, is, except for the Gothic refinement of the rib-vaulting, purely Romanesque. A gift to the monastery by Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti, it was begun in 1396, nine years after this patron of art and letters had begun to build Milan Cathedral, the most important example in Italy of the Gothic style.
Yet Milan involves peculiarities that may be due to the dissensions of the Italian architects with the German and French who were called in at various times to collaborate in the work. So strong a German influence is perceptible in both the character and details, that the main design has been attributed to Heinrich of Grund. Constructed entirely of white marble, the exterior is distinguished not so much by structural grandeur as by decorative richness. The windows, said to be the largest in any Gothic Cathedral, have intricate and lace-like tracery; the walls are panelled with vertical string courses; the buttresses embellished with canopied niches, holding statues; lace-like again is the enrichment of the parapets of the roofs, while from them rises a forest of spiring finials, surmounted by the marble spire which was designed in 1440 by Brunelleschi.
And in the interior, also, organic relation is sacrificed to imposing display and delight in embellishment. The dominating feature is the avenue of nave columns, nine on each side. They are 12 feet in diameter, over 100 feet high, and crowned above their capitals with a cluster of canopied niches, containing statues—a German feature. The columns isolate themselves in the design; count only as an avenue of columns, while their immense size dwarfs the height of the vaulting, the more so that the height of the side aisles made a triforium impossible, and reduced the clerestory to insignificant proportions, with mean small windows. And the impression of squatness in the vaulting is increased by the rupture which the canopied niches make between the pier shafts and vault ribs. Upward growth is arrested; organic relation violated by a merely decorative intrusion. To realise fully the diminution of structural impressiveness thereby produced, one may compare the Milan interior with that of Amiens or St. Ouen in Rouen.
Secular Gothic.—It was in their secular architecture that the Italians used the Gothic with the greatest freedom. The official buildings of this period, when the government of the cities and communes still preserved a popular form, comprised the city hall or podesta and the council hall, which was variously known as the palazzo publico, palazzo communale or palazzo del consiglio.
The most important example of a podesta is the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, which was designed, 1298, by Arnolfo di Cambio, the first architect of the Cathedral. We shall study it later in comparison with the beginnings of the Renaissance (p. 358). Opposite to it stands the Loggia dei Lanzi, an example of the open-air tribunes erected for popular ceremonies. Built in 1376 by the architects Benci di Cione and Simone di Talenti, its design is rather Romanesque than Gothic. Its name is derived from the fact that it was used as a guard house by the German spearmen of Cosimo I, after he had usurped the government of Florence and established his residence in the Palazzo Vecchio.
The finest examples of Gothic domestic architecture are to be found in the northern cities, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bologna, and particularly in Venice, where the immunity from social disorder and outside attack, combined with commercial prosperity, encouraged a more luxurious mode of living. We shall refer to the Ca d’Oro as a type of the Gothic Venetian palace of a merchant prince, in the chapter on the Early Renaissance (p. 360). Here let us study the Ducal or Doge’s Palace, which adjoins St. Mark’s, the two buildings, one civil and the other religious, representing in visible union, the mind and the soul of Venice.