Fig. 81.—East end of Como.
The cathedral of Como affords further illustration of the style of early Renaissance design that is peculiar to north Italy. The building, however, has parts which belong to different periods ranging from 1396 to the early part of the eighteenth century. The features most worthy of attention are chiefly those of the exterior,—the east end and the sides of the nave. It is said that Bramante worked here also, and certainly as viewed from the east the composition bears a striking likeness to the church of the Consolazione at Todi (pp. [74–77]). It is, however, in the larger features alone that the likeness holds. The details of Como are not, as at Todi, of purely neo-classic character; they are mediæval Lombard modified by neo-classic elements. Instead of superimposed orders of pilasters we have here (Fig. [81]) Lombard Romanesque buttresses reaching from the ground to the cornice. The cornice has the neo-classic profiling, and is broken into ressauts over the buttresses, and at a lower level a subordinate band of mouldings is carried along the wall and around the buttresses, the whole forming a likeness to an entablature. The traditional Lombard features peculiar to this region are further reproduced in the arcades of each bay just beneath the pseudo-entablature; but instead of mediæval colonnettes these small arches are supported by diminutive pilasters. The walls are divided into three stages by string courses of classic profiling, and a rectangular window with plain classic jambs and lintel opens in each bay of the middle stage, while the basement wall is unbroken by openings. Disks, one in each bay, adorn the frieze of the simulated entablature, and a sculptured figure is worked on the corresponding part of each buttress. The bases of the half domes over the apses are, as at Todi, treated like attics, but the central dome, with its high drum, is not by Bramante. It is of a later period, and has a more advanced neo-classic character. The scheme of the Lombard buttresses is extended along the walls of the nave, but the details of the window openings, and of the portals here are very different from anything in the apses, and are in a more florid style.
Fig. 82.—Portal of Como.
Fig. 83.—Porch of San Zeno, Verona.
Fig. 84.—Portal of San Pietro in Cielo d’Oro, Pavia.
The ornaments of these openings are composed in a manner which appears to be peculiar to this region. The portal (Fig. [82]) of the south side, for instance, has the mediæval scheme of a shafted round arch of two orders reproduced in neo-classic details, with an entablature for a lintel passing through the imposts, and another entablature with a pediment placed over the crown of the arch on spandrels in relief. To associate the entablature with the arch in any way is unreasonable, but to put one entablature under the arch and another one over it in this manner is childish composition. Yet illogical and puerile as the scheme is, I believe it is derived from a common form of Lombard Romanesque porch which is entirely reasonable in design. A comparison of this portal with the porch of San Zeno of Verona (Fig. [83]) will illustrate this. In San Zeno we have a sheltering porch and a portal, and each is reasonable in itself, while they are equally reasonable in combination. But if the porch were eliminated, with exception of its façade, and this façade were drawn back into the plane of the wall, so as merely to frame in the portal, the result would resemble, in composition of lines, the portal of Como, and would be as illogical. The first, or encompassing, order of the portal of Como is like the façade of such a mediæval porch wrought in relief against the wall as an ornamental framework. For the Lombard columns the Renaissance designer has substituted pilasters, for the plain lintel an entablature, and for the mediæval gable a classic pediment with an entablature.