In the earlier transition stage, even this actual representation was more or less allegorical. As an interesting instance of the allegorical nature of Comacine sculpture, we may take the relief of the Crucifixion in the cathedral at Parma (third chapel on the right), carved by Benedetto da Antelamo in 1178. In this almost mediæval relief, the artist has managed to put a symbolical history of the greatest events of his own times—the defeat of Barbarossa, the fall of Victor Antipope, the triumph of Pope Alexander III., the cessation of schism, and the gleams of coming peace on Italy. Around the cross where Christ hangs, he represents the Church as a symbolic personage waving the flag of victory; and the schismatic enemy with his banner broken. Every figure in the composition has its meaning, and the whole displays a thinking mind, even though the hand be still a little heavy and mediæval. That this is a veritable Comacine work the sculptor himself has chronicled. On the top of the relief is written in the Lombard Gothic characters—
"Anno milleno centeno septuageno
Octavo scultor patravit M͠se secundo
Antelami dictus scultor fuit, hic Benedictus."
An old chronicler of the sixteenth century tells us that this relief once ornamented an ambone or pulpit supported on four columns, which was destroyed in 1566.
Another very interesting work is the font for immersion in S. Frediano at Lucca, sculptured by Maestro Roberto in the twelfth century. The figures which surround it are as usual full of meaning but grotesque in proportion; though one can see in the draperies a foreshadowing of that return to classicality which Niccolò Pisano afterwards advanced towards perfection. We have here a queer representation of Adam and Eve, both clad in classical garments and standing by a conventional fig tree, out of which looks the head of the Eternal Father in a cloud like a medallion. Eve is clutching the tail of a monstrous serpent. In the next compartment the four Evangelists carry their emblems on their shoulders. St. Mark, with his lion, sits in a curule chair, and looks like a Roman Prefect, mediævalized. St. John has his eagle standing on a Roman altar beside him, while St. Matthew carries the child on his shoulder like a St. Christopher. As the work of a forerunner of Niccolò Pisano in the same brotherhood, the font is intensely interesting.
The cathedral at Beneventum (one of the Lombard dukedoms) has some beautiful Comacine arabesques on the pilasters of the great door. We give an illustration from one of them. The interlaced maze is formed by a conventional vine, in the branches of which are symbolical animals. Here is the Lamb of God, signed as divine and eternal by numberless circles all over it. The eagle, symbol of faith, is strangling sin in the form of a serpent; above, is a calf, emblem of the Christian, overcoming evil in the form of a bird of prey. In meaning, the intention is the same as the old sculptures on San Michele, executed six centuries previously; but speaking technically, sculpture as an art has advanced greatly. There is rich and clear relief, and intelligibility of design in this work.
Pilaster of the door of the Cathedral of Beneventum, 12th century.