480. Cloisters of St. John Lateran. (From Rosengarten.)
Although throughout the Middle Ages Rome went on building large churches, it was in the debased-Roman style already referred to, fitting together Roman pillars with classical details of more or less purity, but hardly, except in their cloisters, deserving the name of a style.
Perhaps the most original, as it certainly is one of the most beautiful, things the Romans did, is the cloister of St. John Lateran. There the little arcades, supported by twisted columns, and adorned with mosaics, are as graceful and pleasing as anything of that class found elsewhere; and as they are encased in a framework of sufficient strength to take off all appearance of mechanical weakness, their unconstructive forms are not unpleasing. The entablature, which is the ruling feature in the design, retains the classical arrangement in almost every detail, and in such purity as could only be found in Rome in the 13th century, when this cloister appears to have been erected; but the style never extended beyond the limits of that city, and thus has little bearing on the thread of our narrative.
The cloister of the Benedictine monastery adjoining the basilica of St. Paul’s outside the walls, is another example of the same kind in which the columns present almost every variety of form; spiral, twisted, fluted, and sometimes two or three of these combined, many of them, as well as the entablature, being covered with mosaics.
Southern Italy.
As already remarked, the architects of the southern half of the Italian peninsula were generally content to adopt the Romanesque plan of covering their naves with a wooden roof—for when an intersecting vault is found it is clearly a French or German interpolation—but they often employed one dome, generally over the altar, and used it as an ornament both external and internal. The two illustrations already given of the domes at Bari (Woodcut No. [470]) and Caserta Vecchia (Woodcut No. [472]) show the form these usually took in the province. They belong to a type not unusual in the East, but unknown to the Gothic architects of Europe.
481. Plan of Church at Molfetta. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
