465. View of the Cathedral at Pisa. (From Chapuy’s ‘Moyen-Age Monumental.’)
The exterior, too, is almost equally pleasing. The side-aisles are adorned with a range of blind arches running all round, adorned with parti-coloured marble, inlaid either in courses or in patterns. Above this is a gallery, representing the triforium, carried all round, and in the façades formed into an open gallery; a second open gallery represents the sloping roof of the aisles, a third the clerestory, a fourth the slopes of the great roof. The difficulty here, as in almost all Italian designs, is caused by the sloping roofs; but, with this exception, the whole makes up a rich and varied composition without any glaring false construction, and expresses with sufficient clearness the arrangements of the interior. The dome is of later design, and, being oval in plan, cannot be said to be pleasing in outline.
466. Plan of Zara Cathedral. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
The Italians were evidently delighted with their new style. It was repeated with very little variation at Lucca, in the church of San Michele (1188), only that the arcades stood free on the sides as well as on the front. The façade of San Martino, in the same city, is in the same style; so is that of the cathedral at Pistoja, and so is Sta. Maria at Arezzo. The arrangement was probably suggested by the porticoes of Pagan temples; and were it not for the awkwardness caused by the sloping line of the roofs, it might be characterised as one of the most successful inventions of the age.
In some instances, as in the façade of the Cathedral at Zara in Dalmatia (Woodcut No. [467]), which according to Mr. Jackson[[306]] was not begun before the 13th century, the consecration taking place in 1285, the difficulties of the design of the façade are to a great extent conquered by reducing the arcades to mere decorative panelling, and more than this by separating the design of the centre from that of the aisles by a bold square pilaster. This is exactly the feature we miss at Pisa and Lucca, where the want of it imparts a considerable degree of weakness to the whole design.
467. View of Zara Cathedral. (From Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s ‘Dalmatia and Montenegro.’)
The plan of the Zara Cathedral (Woodcut No. [466]) is that usually adopted in churches of this class; but it possesses a lady chapel and baptistery, placed laterally in a somewhat unusual manner. Its dimensions are small, being only 170 ft. by 65 externally.
The east end of this church, its doorways and windows, show, as might be expected from its locality, a greater tendency towards Romanesque art than can be found on the western shores of the Peninsula, but in internal arrangements it belongs wholly to the Italian style.