Another church has a Gothic brick front. The real roof is one of flat pitch, spanning nave and aisles; but in the façade the central portion is considerably higher than the sides, so as to give the idea of a clerestory. This is a foolish sham, and unhappily only too common in late Gothic work in Italy. The centre division of the front is divided into three by pilasters, which are semicircular in plan. In the central division are a door and a circular window, in each side division is a pointed window, and a brick cornice finishes the gable, crowned with five circular brick pinnacles.
Another church in Lodi has a very beautifully painted ceiling; this has been engraved by Mr. Grüner, but unluckily I did not know of its existence until I returned home; it seems to be an admirable piece of colour, and to be well worth careful study.
There seemed to be nothing else worthy of notice in Lodi; but, as in duty-bound we walked down to the bridge,—a rough, unstable-looking wooden erection over the broad rapid Adda, with nothing about it to recall to mind the great event in its history, its passage by Napoleon in 1796.
We left very early in the morning for Pavia: our way led us through a country most elaborately cultivated, and irrigated with a great display of science and labour; every field seemed to have some two or three streams running rapidly in different directions, and the grass everywhere was most luxuriant. No view, however, was to be had on either side, as the road found its way through a very flat line of country, and all the hedges were lined with interminable rows of Lombardy poplars. It was a country which would have done more good to the heart of a Lincolnshire farmer than to that of an architect!
The only remarkable building passed on the road was a castle at Sant’Angelo; a great brick building, with square towers set diagonally at the angles. The walls were finished with a battlement of the Veronese kind, and there were several very good early pointed brick windows with brick monials in place of shafts. A campanile, detached near one angle, has fine machicolations in stone, now, however, partly destroyed. The effect of the whole building was very grand.
We soon reached Pavia, and were, as we expected to be, well rewarded by its churches. The general aspect of the city is singular, owing to the number of tall slender brick towers which seem to have formed a necessary appendage to almost every house in the Middle Ages. They are entirely without openings or ornaments of any kind beyond the scaffold-holes, and one can compare them to nothing that I know so well as to the great shot-tower at Waterloo Bridge, save that they are always square and not circular.
We did our best to see the cathedral, but were unsuccessful; it was being repaired, and was so full of scaffolding that we could see nothing. It contains a shrine said to contain the body of S. Augustine, which I much wanted to see, but seemed in most respects to be an unprepossessing church.
From the cathedral we found our way to San Michele, a very celebrated church, and as interesting to an antiquary in search of curiosities as to an architect in search of the beautiful. The west end is very curious, and has a succession of sculptures, introduced in the most eccentric manner, and with but little method in their arrangement. There are three western doorways, and all of them are elaborately ornamented with carvings, the central door having above it a very singular figure of S. Michael.
San Michele, together with San Teodoro and San Pietro, seem all to be of about the same date, and are of the same character; the most remarkable feature being in each case the octagonal cupola, which rises above the crossing of the nave, choir, and transepts: externally these cupolas are arcaded all round under the eaves, and roofed with flat-pitched roofs, and are far from being graceful; open arcades are introduced under the eaves and up the gables, and everywhere there is a profusion of carving. It is likely enough that this Lombard-Romanesque style, as we see it at Pavia and elsewhere, did, as has been supposed, set the example which was very soon after followed in the great churches at Köln and elsewhere along the borders of the Rhine. In size, however, the children far exceeded their parents, for San Michele is not remarkable for its dimensions, except in the width of the transept.
The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, a transept of great length, a central lantern, and a short choir with circular eastern apse; small apses are also built in the east walls of the transepts. A fine crypt is formed under the whole of the eastern arm of the cross, and is entered by steps on each side of the thirteen steps which lead up to