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

by George Edmund Street

Those who wish for further archæological details as to the age and history of buildings, will not find great difficulty in supplementing what I have written. For myself I confess at once that I have not had time or opportunity for examining the documentary history of the buildings I have described, and that the dates where I have given them are generally obtained at second-hand, though never given save where they accord with the architectural character of the work. It was never for merely archæological purposes that I made my many journeys in Italy. Before I first travelled there I had made myself well acquainted with all the best remains of the Middle Ages in England: I had travelled, sketch-book in hand, through France and Germany, and I knew, therefore, something of the art of our fathers in most districts north of the Alps. But so far I had found no time or opportunity for the study of those early Italian buildings which give the key to the history and style of ours, or of those later works in which, with more or less distinctness, the architects north of the Alps repaid the debt they had previously incurred to the South.

I felt then, as I do now, that no study of architecture was complete which did not proceed exhaustively with the study of all European varieties, and above all of that of Italy. Moreover, there was something in the practice and tendencies of our own day which gave special interest and fascination to such a study. We had gone on in our old paths, studying the works of our own country, which in some respects were deficient in their teaching. We wished to combine the best architecture, the best painting, and the best sculpture in our works. The world seemed to respond to our aspirations, and it is south and not north of the Alps that examples of such a combination have to be looked for. So again it was desirable at any rate to meet the demand which was naturally arising for colour in construction, and here again it was in Italy only that numerous ancient examples of such a combination were to be found. These were the special inducements to me in my earliest journey to Italy, and their influence is as strong as ever upon me. I feel, indeed, even more now than then, the importance of such study to the English architect of to-day. The more men educate themselves by the study of ancient examples, the more is their work likely to become refined and scholarly, whilst at the same time there is no real risk of its becoming less original.

It is quite possible, and one wishes above everything to see it usual, for architects to design all their work without special reference to, or really copying from, any old work. But before doing this they ought at least to put themselves in the same position as to knowledge of what had been done before as that in which their forefathers were. Unless they do so, the desire for originality will only be satisfied by the production of excesses and monstrosities, whose only claim is that they are new—one which, in spite of those who demand a new style, I venture to declare to be their sufficient condemnation.

It remains only to say, that since I first visited Italy two works have been published which add infinitely to our knowledge of the sister arts of painting and sculpture, and enable the artist to travel with a full certainty that he will not lose anything by reason of the ignorance or carelessness of his guide. I need hardly say that I refer to Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s ‘History of Painting in Northern Italy,’ and to Mr. C. C. Perkins’s admirable volumes on ‘Italian’ and ‘Tuscan Sculptors.’ To the latter, indeed, I owe I know not how many acknowledgments for the information I have derived from him. He has done that for the History of Mediæval and post-Mediæval sculpture in Italy which had before hardly even so much as been attempted, and his facts and conclusions are almost always so stated as to command the assent of his readers.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

IN these days of railways and rapid travelling there is scarcely any excuse for ignorance of Continental art. The most busy man finds some short holiday in the course of the year, and, if wise as well as busy, spends it not in quiet sojourn at home, but in active search of the picturesque, the beautiful, or the old, in nature or in art, either in his own country or abroad.

And as the holidays of busy men are short, and therefore to be made as much of as possible, I conceive that I shall be rendering some service, and providing myself with a fair excuse for my presumption, if I venture to shew, by a simple narrative of a tour undertaken in the course of the year before last, how much it is possible to accomplish with pleasure, and, when one has some definite object in view, with profit of no common kind, even in a short holiday.

There are many classes of travellers, and each doubtless flatters itself that its own is the very best of all modes of travelling; and sorry should I be to attempt to disabuse any one of so pleasant a self-deceit. But the more I think of it, the more certain it appears that the reasons and objects which always take me away from home are precisely such as make up the sum of happiness and pleasure to a traveller.

Indeed, without some definite object before him, beyond the mere desire of relaxation and pleasure, few travellers know that thorough joy of heart which an architect feels as he begins the journey which bears him away from home on some ecclesiological or architectural ramble.

Such an one, hard-worked for more than five-sixths of the year, may, if he will, press into the short remainder left to him for a holiday as much both of profit and of pleasure as it is possible to conceive. He goes, sketch-book in hand, with some ancient town or thrice noble cathedral set before him as his goal; and, passing along smiling valleys, or over noble mountains, drinks in all that he sees, not the less gratefully or delightedly in that he views it as the preface only to his more intense enjoyment in the study and pursuit of his own well-beloved art.