Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice

by Edward A. Freeman

To our mind this palace, to which Sir Gardner Wilkinson hardly does justice, and of which Mr. Neale takes no notice at all, really deserves no small place in the history of Romanesque art. It shows how late the genuine tradition lingered on, and what vigorous offshoots the old style could throw off, even when it might be thought to be dead. One or two capitals show that the Ragusan architect knew of the actual Renaissance. But it was only in that one detail that he went astray. In everything else he started from sound principles, and from them vigorously developed for himself. And the fruit of his work was a building which thoroughly satisfies every requirement of criticism, and on which the eye gazes with ever increased delight, as one of the fairest triumphs of human skill within the range of the builder's art.

But the palace must not be spoken of as if it stood altogether alone among the buildings of the city. There is another civic building, which, though it does not reach the full perfection of its great neighbour, must also be treated as a true fruit, in some sort a more remarkable fruit, of the same spirit which called its greater neighbour into being. This is the building which acted at once in the characters of mint and custom-house, the second character being set forth by its name wrought in nails on the great door. This building stands just where the main street and the piazza join, close by the arch leading to the town-gate. Here we have an arcade of five, the columns of which are crowned with capitals, Composite in their general shape, but not slavishly following technical precedents, nor all of them exactly alike. They have a heavy abacus, which, as well as the soffit of the round arch, is enriched with flowered work. One or two of them are none the better for being new chiselled in modern times. Here is something which is quite unlike Northern Romanesque, but which still is absolutely identical with it in principle. The column and the round arch are there in their purity, and the enrichment is of a kind which we instinctively feel is in place at Ragusa, though it would be out of place at Caen or Mainz or Durham. Whatever the date may be, the thing is thoroughly good, incomparably better than either the Italian Gothic or the cosmopolite Jesuit style. Above the arcade are windows with the usual Venetian attempt at tracery, a large square window between two with ogee arches; above is a stage with square windows, which we may hope is a later addition. The merits of the three stages lessen as they get higher. Yet from the date, when we come to find it out, it seems not impossible that the arcade and both the stages above it may really be of the same date. In the inner court there are no such discordant elements as there are without, though the forms of different styles are quite as much mingled. Octagonal piers support round arches; pointed doorways with thoroughly Ragusan tympana open into the chamber behind them. On this arcade rests another, with round arches on the short sides of the court, and pointed arches on the long sides, rising from columns and square piers alternately. Above is a range which might as well be away. Square windows, round Ragusan windows, might well be endured; but Renaissance shields and Renaissance angels show that the infection had begun. Now this beautiful piece of Romanesque work—we give it that name in defiance of dates—was finished in 1520, when the world on the southern side of the Alps was, for the most part, running after the dreariest forms of the mere revived Italian. This amazingly late date makes this building even more wonderful than the palace, though it certainly is not its rival in beauty. The arcades, good as they are, cannot be compared to those of the palace, and the Venetian work above is still more inferior. Still, the later the date, the more honour to the architect who designed such a work at such a time. And the later the date, the more likely that he built his arcade according to the promptings of his own genius, and added the two ranges of windows in deference to the two rival fashions of his time.

DOGANA, RAGUSA.

The arcade of this building, taken alone without reference to the windows above, is the last link in a chain which shows that the preservation of good architectural ideas at so late a time is no mere accident. Indeed, if we pass from public buildings within the city to private buildings outside of it, we shall begin to doubt whether the dogana is the last chain, and whether there are not still later buildings which are fairly entitled to the Romanesque name. The best of the houses of the Ragusan patricians are to be found, not within the city, but by the port at Gravosa, and further on on the way to Ombla. Several of those, while their other features are Venetian Gothic, or even later still, have—commonly in their upper loggie—a column or two supporting a round arch, which are certainly not vulgar Renaissance, and which keep on the sound tradition of the palace and the dogana. The finest of these is the house of the Counts Caboga, known as Batahovina, on the coast on the way to Ombla. Here, as in the palace, as in the dogana, an arcade of this late local Romanesque supports an upper story of Venetian Gothic, very inferior and most likely much later than that in either of the civic buildings. It has however at each end an open loggia matching the arcade below. The columns, plain and with twisted flutes—distant kinsfolk of Waltham, Durham, Dunfermline, and Lindisfarn—have capitals such as we might look for in much earlier Romanesque.

CABOGA HOUSE, GRAVOSA.

This, we may note by the way, is the house in whose garden the column from the palace, wrought with the Judgement of Solomon, still lies hid. Indeed we might go further away from the palace than the loggie of the houses. At Ragusa art extends itself to objects which might have been thought hardly capable of artistic treatment. Stone is common, and it is used for all manner of purposes. Among other things stone vine-props are common. In not a few cases these take the form of columns, slenderer doubtless than the rules of classical proportion, realizing the description of Cassiodorus about the tall columns like reeds, the lofty buildings propped as it were on the shafts of spears. Sometimes the columns are fluted or twisted; in a great many cases they have real capitals, with various forms according to taste. It often happens that a row of such columns, whether on a house-top or in a vineyard, really becomes an architectural object, a genuine colonnade. Here the style, the construction at least, is Greek rather than Romanesque; but the principle is the same. A good and rational artistic form is kept in use, and is applied to a purpose for which it is fitted.