I have now, I think, exhausted the distinguishing features of an Italian church, with the exception of its campanile. This, as I have said before, is always a single steeple (with the perhaps unique exception of Genoa Cathedral, which has two), generally detached from the main fabric, planted wherever it happened to be most convenient; sometimes as at Vercelli, not even at right angles to the building to which it is attached, and with but little reference to its effect upon the remainder of the building. There are no features of Italian buildings which are so universally remembered with pleasure; and similar as they are in their general scheme, there is nevertheless a considerable variety in their treatment in detail. The first thing to be noted is, that they are never supported by buttresses, and that the usual mode of ascent was by a staircase in the thickness of the wall, and not by any such excrescence as a staircase turret. The outline is severely square and simple, and, unlike as it is to most of our English steeples, generally exceedingly striking. No doubt the apparent height of these towers is enormously increased by the absence of buttresses. The originals of all Italian campanili seem to be the early steeples of the Roman churches, divided into a series of stages of equal height, pierced with windows not varying much in design throughout. The most exact reproductions of these steeples may be found so far from the centre of Italy as at Susa at the foot of the Mont Cenis, and in other very similar erections all over the North of Italy. With certain broad general features of resemblance there are, however, several local variations, which may be divided roughly into the following separate classes or schools:—(1) The Pisan: (2) the Venetian and Veronese: (3) the Genoese: and (4) the Florentine: of which I need here only speak of the Venetian and Veronese, which are undoubtedly among the finest. In the Veronese there is a very distinct imitation of the pure Romanesque examples, whilst in the Venetian there is generally less subdivision into stages, the walls being arcaded with very slightly recessed lofty arcades, and the horizontal divisions being much fewer in number. Of these, San Giacomo del Rialto is one of the best examples; it is executed, as all the Venetian examples are, in brick. In all these examples the pilasters at the angles are carefully marked. But there is another variety of distinctly Italian towers in which this is not the case. The finest example of this is the tower of the Scaliger Palace, at Verona, where the simple unbroken mass of masonry and brickwork shoots up into the sky all but unpierced until the belfry stage. Of this kind of tower the examples are not unfrequent in the smaller churches in Lombardy, and in the public halls and private houses of many of the cities described in these pages. The tower at Asti is one of the best of these.
There remain two other subjects which, more than any others, meet us at every stage of our study of Gothic architecture in Italy. These are, first, the use of brick; and secondly, the introduction of coloured materials in construction, of both of which, as we have seen, there are so many valuable examples.
It has been by far too much the fashion of late years to look upon brick as a very inferior material, fit only to be covered with compo, and never fit to be used in church-building, or indeed in any buildings of any architectural pretension, so that I suspect many people, trusting to their knowledge of pointed architecture in England, would be much surprized to find that, throughout large tracts of the Continent, brick was the natural, and indeed the popular material during the most palmy days of architecture in the Middle Ages. Yet so it was that in Holland, in the south-west of France, in Northern Germany, and the Low Countries, in large tracts in Spain, and throughout Northern Italy, stone was either scarce or not to be obtained, and brick was therefore everywhere and most fearlessly used.
In all these countries, just as in Italy, it was used without any concealment, but each country developed its practice in this matter for itself, and there is therefore considerable diversity in their work. They are all unlike, and far superior to what remains to us of ancient brickwork in England, for I need hardly say that, with a rare exception here and there, and in comparatively small districts, brick was not used in England between the time of the Romans and the fifteenth century, and, when used afterwards, was seldom remarkable either for any singular beauty or originality of treatment. In this matter, therefore, we are obliged to go to the Continent for information.
Italian brickwork is remarkable as being almost always executed with nothing but red bricks, with occasional but rare use of stonework; the bricks for the ordinary walling are generally rather larger than ours, in no way superior in their quality, and always built coarsely with a wide joint of mortar. Those used for windows, doorways, and generally where they were required to attract attention and to be ornamental, were made of much finer clay and moulded with the greatest care and skill. The transepts and campanile of Cremona Cathedral are instances of red brick used without any intermixture of stone save in the shafts of the windows, and their effect is certainly very grand. The mouldings are elaborate, and the way in which cusping is formed singularly successful. This, it must be observed, was not usually done by means of bricks moulded in the form of a cusp, but with ordinary bricks, built with the same radiating lines as those of the arch to which they belonged, and cut and rubbed to the necessary outline. Sometimes, as, e.g., in the windows at Mantua,[88] which are some of the very best I have ever seen, the points of the cusps and key-stones of the arches are formed in pieces of stone, the alternation of which with the deep-red hue of the bricks produces the most satisfactory effect of colour. This sort of treatment is common at Brescia, Verona, Mantua, and Venice, but unknown at Cremona.