Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy

by George Edmund Street

Upon the whole, therefore, the exterior is in no respect more Italian than it is German in its style; it belongs to no school, and has no fellows: from the beginning it has been an exotic, and to the end of time will probably remain so, without a follower or an imitator in the singular development of which it is the only example; and there does appear, if we consider the matter, to be some intrinsic probability that such a building must have been designed by a foreigner rather than by a native. It has, in fact, all the appearance of having been the work of a stranger who was but imperfectly acquainted with the wants or customs of Italian architecture, working to some extent with the traditions of his national school before him, but, at the same time, impressed with a strong sense of the necessity under which he lay, of doing something quite unlike what he had been taught to consider necessary for buildings in his native land. It will be found upon examination that there is absolutely hardly one point in which this vast building follows the traditions of Italian pointed work. Its plan has not any Italian characteristics in its arrangement or proportions. Its windows have moulded monials instead of shafts; its walls are buttressed instead of being marked with pilasters here and there; its pinnacles are Northern in their idea, for strength rather than (as Italian pinnacles were) only for ornament; its walls have no cornices, and there are no sham fronts or attempts at concealing the necessary features of construction; the walls are panelled instead of being arcaded, and there is a constant endeavour to break up plain surfaces of wall, unlike the predilection for smooth broad surfaces so usual in thoroughly Italian work, and destructive of the kind of breadth and dignity which this last generally has; finally, if rest and life may be taken—as by some they are—to be respectively the distinguishing features of Italian and Northern pointed work, then, assuredly, the lack of repose in Milan Cathedral—caused mainly by the degree to which the system of panelling is carried over the whole building, and the extent to which the use of the simple horizontal line is carefully excluded—goes far to consign its exterior to some school of life and restlessness of the most unsatisfactory character. The one point in which an Italian model has been at all followed is the section, where the proportions of the aisles to the nave and the pitch of their roofs certainly shew a knowledge of San Petronio, Bologna. But its architect appears to me to have been shocked at the necessity under which he lay of sacrificing the steep lines of roof so dear to him in his native land, and to have striven with all his might to provide a substitute for their effect by the vertical lines of his panelled buttresses and walls, by the gabled outline of his parapets, and by the removal even of such a slight horizontal mark as the commencement of the traceries of his windows on one line. And his work is a most remarkable standing proof of the failure of such an attempt; for, despite all these precautions, and I incline to believe in consequence of them, the general effect is, after all, entirely horizontal. Extremes meet, and so the attempt to avoid absolute horizontal lines has completely failed, because in their place we have a succession of vertical members placed side by side in such endless numbers that we really think more of the horizontal arrangement of these members, slight though they are, than we should of the simplest defined horizontal line.

And the same consequence followed the same kind of work in England. I know no building in which the horizontal line is more painfully predominant than in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster, where, nevertheless, it is broken endlessly by vertical lines of pinnacles, and where the walls are covered in all parts with perpendicular lines of panelling.

Indeed, I should have but little respect for such a building as this exterior of Milan were it not for its rare material (used though it is in a prodigal manner, and without particular reference to its nature) and its immense size—though this is far less in appearance than in reality. But my detraction and harsh criticisms must end here; for if, having first made the circuit of the entire church, the flight of steps which leads up to the west door is last of all mounted, the first feeling must be one of perfect amazement and delight—amazement that the same mind which conceived the exterior should have been able also to achieve anything so diverse from it as is the interior, and delight that anything so magnificent and so perfect should ever have been reared on the southern slope of the Alps, to exhibit, to the eyes as it were of enemies, the full majesty and power of the pointed architecture of the North. And mark, upon consideration, how very natural this was. Its architect had been tied down in his exterior by the wants, or supposed wants, of a climate unlike his own, and a material to which he was unused; his genius had thus been fettered and kept under; but here all shackles were undone, and he was free to carry out to its very greatest perfection what he had learnt or dreamt of in his Northern home. And what a result has he not achieved!—absolutely and without doubt one of the grandest interiors in the world is, I do believe, this noble work of his; its grandeur amazes one at first, and delights all the more afterwards as one becomes on more intimate terms with it, and can look at it with less emotion than at first. And how shall I describe it?—for to say that it has so many bays in length or in width is not sufficient; all this, and even the detail of its design, were familiar enough to me before I saw it, but still the reality was so very far beyond any description, that I felt, and feel still, averse from attempting it.

A few only of the most noticeable points, therefore, shall be touched; and, as it seems to me to teach less of Italian art or architecture than of Northern, I shall feel myself acquitted of neglect, inasmuch as the main, if not the sole, object of my Italian notes is as to the development of really Italian work. I was struck at first by the prodigious width and height of the building. The nave is enormously wide, and has two aisles on either side, those next to it being also of great size and height, and having clerestories in their outer walls. The outer aisles are lighted with large traceried windows, filled with stained glass, which gives the church a character very unlike that of the generality of Italian Gothic churches, in which coloured glass is so rarely seen in large masses.

There is, therefore, a regular gradation in the heights of the five main divisions of the church, which are well proportioned to their respective widths; and, resting as these divisions do upon four rows of clustered columns of immense size and height, a more magnificent internal effect is produced than I can recollect even any approach to in any other church; for not even in Köln or in Amiens is there any effect so magnificent as that of this forest of prodigious piers. They are finished at the top with capitals peculiar to this building, and quite unlike anything I have before seen—I suppose at least twelve feet deep, with a kind of arcade of tracery surmounted by a crocketed gable on each side, and finished above and below with courses of foliage, and with figures standing in the niche-like panels of the arcade.

Such a contrivance would be clumsy and absurd if attempted on a small scale, but here, at the summit of these immense columns, it is thoroughly successful, and, I believe, the only contrivance which could have been successfully adopted. The capitals vary very much in detail and in merit; but one of the finest is seen close to the west entrance, and recalls forcibly the best Northern pointed work, having indeed, neither in detail nor in design, one single trace of an Italian influence.

So grand are the columns that the excessive poverty and lightness of the arches which divide the nave from the aisles, which is perhaps the greatest defect of the interior of the church, is not for a long time noticed; they have, however, but little apparent work to do, and so their lightness may perhaps be a virtue.

Throughout the interior there is a very remarkable love shewn everywhere for a moulding which was never used by Italians, but was so much used among ourselves—the wave-mould. Then, again, all the shafts are filleted, and the fillet turning off gradually into the round line of the shaft, produces the same moulding; a fulness and richness are consequently very noticeable in all the interior, very different indeed from anything else that I saw in Italy. The solitary blot upon this otherwise noble work is one for which its architect is in no way responsible—the cells of the groining are all filled in with painted imitations of elaborate traceries in brown colour, an abominable device, which never ceases to offend and annoy the eye more and more every time it is observed.[72] The window tracery throughout is meagre, confused, and unmeaning, and the traceries introduced at mid-height most unsatisfactory; but the glass with which it is filled, though poor and late in its character, contains much rich colour, and gives the entire building a very grand and warm tone.

Compared with other foreign churches, there is in this—the largest of them all—a singular absence of side altars. There are indeed some three or four; but so great is the prominence given to the high altar in the choir, that one scarcely thinks of the possibility of the existence of any others, and has to look about a good deal before discovering where they are to be found.

In common with so many of the Italian churches the pavements here are very fine, and impart no small degree of additional magnificence to the interior.