In design the Italian campaniles differ very considerably from those on this side of the Alps. They never have projecting buttresses, nor assume that pyramidal form which is so essential and so beautiful a feature in the Northern examples. In plan the campanile is always square, and carried up without break or offset to two-thirds at least of its intended height. This, which is virtually the whole design (for the spire seems an idea borrowed from the North), is generally solid to a considerable height, or with only such openings as serve to admit light to the stairs or inclined planes. Above the solid part one round-headed window is introduced in each face, and in the next storey two; in the one above this three, then four, and lastly five, the lights being merely separated by slight shafts, so that the upper storey is virtually an open loggia (see Woodcut No. [498]). There is no doubt great beauty and propriety of design in this arrangement; in point of taste it is unobjectionable, but it wants the vigour and variety of the Northern tower.
So far as we can judge from drawings and such ancient examples as remain, the original termination was a simple cone in the centre, with a smaller one at each of the angles.
At Verona an octagonal lantern is added, and at Modena and Cremona the octagon is crowned by a lofty spire, but these hardly come within the limits of the epoch of which we are now treating. So greatly did the Italians prefer the round arch, that even in their imitation of the Northern styles they used the pointed shape only when compelled—a circumstance which makes it extremely difficult, particularly in the towers, to draw the line between the two styles; for though pointed arches were no doubt introduced in the 13th and 14th centuries, the circular-headed shape continued to be employed from the age of the Romanesque to that of the Renaissance.
One of the oldest and certainly the most celebrated of the Gothic towers of Italy, is that of St. Mark’s at Venice, commenced in the year 902; it took the infant republic three centuries to raise it 180 ft., to the point at which the square basement terminates. On this there must originally have been an open loggia of some sort, no doubt with a conical roof. The present superstructure was added in the 16th century; but though the loggia is a very pleasing feature, it is overpowered by the solid mass that it surmounts, and by the extremely ugly square extinguisher that crowns the whole. Its locality and its associations have earned for it a great deal of undue laudation, but in point of design no campanile in Italy deserves it less. The base is a mere unornamented mass of brickwork, slightly fluted, and pierced unsymmetrically with small windows to light the inclined plane within. Its size, its height, and its apparent solidity are its only merits. These are no doubt important elements in that low class of architectural excellence of which the Egyptian pyramids are the type; but even in these elements this edifice must confess itself a pigmy, and inferior to even a second-class pyramid on the banks of the Nile, while it has none of the beauty of design and detail displayed by the Giralda of Seville, or even by other Italian towers in its own neighbourhood.
The campanile at Piacenza (Woodcut No. [448]) is, perhaps, more like the original of St. Mark’s than any other, and certainly displays as little beauty as any building of this sort can possess.
That of San Zenone at Verona is far more pleasing. It is, indeed, as beautiful both in proportion and details as any of its age, while it exemplifies at once the beauties and the defects of the style. Among the first is an elegant simplicity that always is pleasing, but this is accompanied by a leanness and poverty of effect, when compared with Northern examples, which must rank in the latter category.
Mr. Jackson, in his work on Dalmatia and Istria, gives illustrations of several towers in those countries which, in beauty of design, excel many of the Italian examples. The Romanesque style would seem to have had a much longer duration on the east side of the Adriatic than in Italy. Thus the tower of Spalato, a lofty campanile of six storeys in height, commenced in the beginning of the 13th century and not terminated till 1416 (except the upper octagon and spire), is virtually in the same pure Romanesque style throughout. Mr. Jackson notes also the continued influence of Roman work of the 3rd century, by which it is surrounded, and that fragments of ancient material, columns and capitals, have been used up in its construction. The campaniles of Zara and in the island of Arbe are both fine examples of Romanesque design.
CHAPTER V.
BYZANTINE-ROMANESQUE.
CONTENTS.
Cathedrals of Naples—San Miniato, Florence—Cathedrals of Pisa and Zara—Cathedrals of Troja, Bari, and Bittonto—San Nicolo, Bari—Cloisters of St. John Lateran—Baptistery of Mont St. Angelo—San Donato, Zara—Churches in South Italy—Circular Buildings—Towers—Civil Architecture.