This being the case, it is safe to assert that Russia contains nothing that can at all compare with the cathedrals, or even the parish churches, of Western Europe, either in dimensions or in beauty of detail. Every chapter in the history of architecture must contain something to interest the student: but there is none less worthy of attention than that which describes the architecture of Russia, especially when we take into account the extent of territory occupied by its people, and the enormous amount of time and wealth which has been lavished on the multitude of insignificant buildings to be found in every corner of the empire.
BOOK II.
ITALY.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
CONTENTS.
Division and Classification of the Romanesque and Gothic Styles of Architecture in Italy.
If a historian were to propose to himself the task of writing a tolerably consecutive narrative of the events which occurred in Italy during the Middle Ages, he would probably find such difficulties in his way as would induce him to abandon the attempt. Venice and Genoa were as distinct states as Spain and Portugal. Florence, the most essentially Italian of the republics, requires a different treatment from the half German Milan. Even such neighbouring cities as Mantua and Verona were separate and independent states during the most important part of their existence. Rome was, during the whole of the Middle Ages, more European than Italian, and must have a narrative of her own; Southern Italy was a foreign country to the states of the North; and Sicily has an independent history.
The same difficulties, though not perhaps to the same degree, beset the historian of art, and, if it were proposed to describe in detail all the varying forms of Italian art during the Middle Ages, it would be necessary to map out Italy into provinces, and to treat each almost as a separate kingdom by itself. In this, as in almost every instance, however, the architecture forms a better guide-line through the tangled mazes of the labyrinth than the written record of political events, and those who can read her language have before them a more trustworthy and vivid picture of the past than can be obtained by any other means.
The great charm of the history of Mediæval art in England is its unity. It affords the picture of a people working out a style from chaos to completeness, with only slight assistance from those in foreign countries engaged in the same task. In France we have two elements, the old Southern Romanesque long struggling with the Northern Celtic, and unity only obtained by the suppression of the former, wherever they came in contact. In Italy we have four elements,—the Roman, the Byzantine, the Lombardic, and the Gothic,—sometimes existing nearly pure, at others mixed, in the most varying proportions, the one with the other.
In the North the Lombardic element prevailed; based on the one hand on the traditions of Imperial Rome, and in consequence influenced in its art by classical forms; and, on the other, inspired in all its details by a vast accumulation of Byzantine work. In the 5th and 6th centuries this work (chiefly confined to columns, screens, and altar pieces) was executed by Greek artists sent on from Constantinople. The 7th century seems to have been quite barren so far as architecture was concerned; but in the 8th century, owing either to the Saracen invasion or to the emigration caused by the persecution of the Iconoclasts in 788, the Byzantine influence became again predominant, but no longer with that same purity of design as we find in the earlier work of the 5th and 6th centuries.
In the South, the Byzantine forms prevailed, partly because the art was there based on the traditions of Magna Grecia, and more, perhaps, from the intimate connection that existed between Apulia and the Peloponnesus during the Middle Ages.