Perino has his columns; his cusped pointed arches with high gables above them; his tabernacles, pinnacles, and pyramidal roof, with an equestrian statue on the summit; but his lines are simple, direct, and unbroken, though enriched here and there with reliefs and figures. In Bonino's the columns are richly carved, the arches lavishly cusped, the tympanum filled with sculptured medallions. The tabernacles are richer and more emphatically Gothic in their lengthened lines and multiplied pinnacles. The figures even have grown into more true proportions, and are elongated into gracefulness. Every inch of the whole design is foliated and rich to a degree—as beautiful a bit of Gothic sculpture as any German or English cathedral can show, but yet the work of pure Italians, and men of the Comacine Guild.
The sepulchral monument of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the Certosa of Pavia is of an entirely different style to those of the Scaligers. It is principally the work of Gio. Antonio Amedeo, and has the same ornate Renaissance style as the façade of the Certosa in which he assisted. An arched base contains the sarcophagus, on which rests the beautiful and dignified figure of the Duke, guarded at head and foot by classic angels. Above this is a statue of the Virgin and Child in a central niche, flanked by reliefs of scenes from the life of the Duke. The whole surface of the marble is covered with sculpture, but of a style removed as far as the poles from the work of the Comacine Guild, 800 years back. There all was life and naïveté, here all is classical decorum and convention. Pilasters covered with armour and coats of mail like a Roman trophy, friezes of set garlands and shields like a Roman pediment, vases with conventional plants rising stiffly out of them. The severe architectural lines are straight and unbroken; here are no Gothic pinnacles and graceful shrines, no ornamental gables or pyramids, only the plain arch and pediment classically set and correct. The Italians had revived the Roman; and the Renaissance style was the result. Comacine art began with true Roman, and ended with a return to a false classicism, that with rule and line crushed out the life of the rich Gothic floriation.
Tomb of Mastino II. degli Scaligeri, at Verona. Sculptured by Magister Perino, of the Milan Lodge.
CHAPTER V
CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE ERA
The Comacines were always fine fortress builders from the early times, when they fortified not only their own island and city against the Goths, and against their civil foes at Milan, etc., but also other cities which had foes to keep off. Their towers and forts were so solid and strong that their builders were taken by Justinian to the East to build castles there, with the strong battlemented walls which aroused Procopius's admiration, and which he confesses were called Castelli, because that was the Italian name for them.
After the eleventh century, when the Communes were formed, the building of the fortress was less frequent, and the Communal Palace took its place. The guild was always gradual in its adoption of new styles, and the palace of the Podestà or the "Signoria" differed only in form, and not in style, from the older castle. There is the same solid masonry—either opus Gallicum of smoothly-hewn stones fitted with nicety, or opus Romanum of flat wide bricks welded together with cement till they are strong as a Roman wall. There are the same battlements and cornice of arches supported on brackets; and wherever a window is needed, high enough to be safe without an iron grating, it is invariably of the old Lombard form, with its two round arches enclosed in a larger one. There was the same pillared courtyard with its flight of steps to the upper floor. Jacopo Tedesco's Bargello at Florence, his Castle at Poppi, and his Palazzo Pubblico at Arezzo are the most beautiful examples of this style.