It was this influx of Florentines, who were fresh from the humanistic influences of the classic revival of literature under the Medici, and therefore more open to further inspirations from the influences of antique Rome, which brought about the revival of classic forms in architecture in Rome. Bramante and San Gallo began it in 1503, Raphael and Michael Angelo carried it on; and such hold did the Renaissance style take on the minds of people in the late Cinque-cento era, that it spread, and overpowered the Gothic from end to end of Italy.
Vasari raved about the faults of the old architecture and its goffissima style, upholding the chastened order of the new, but whatever may have been the merits of Renaissance, as Bramante and Michael Angelo practised it, their later followers committed quite as many sins against reason and good taste as any Comacine or Romanesque architect ever did. Look, for instance, at the church of S. Carlo, in the Corso at Rome, with its gigantic pilasters running up the whole height of a front, which is, by its square windows, cut up into three storeys, giving the lie to the unity of space implied by the mock columns; and at San Firenze in Florence, where half an arch runs up into the air and stops short, as a defiance to all laws of gravity. Arches or pediments, with a hiatus where the key-stone should be, and which, logically speaking, can support nothing, are the most common blots on a late Renaissance building.
But we have nothing to do with this era. It was only a late survival of a side issue of the Comacine Guild which had been practically dissolved before Michael Angelo's time, although the influence of its smouldering ashes vivified the art even of that great genius.
The great family of sixteenth-century architects, the Fontana, was of Comacine origin, though I believe the guild was dissolved by their time. Domenico Fontana was born at Melide near Como; his elder brother Giovanni, famous for his stucco work, had preceded him in Rome, but Domenico was an artist of a wider kind. The Cardinal Felice di Montalto soon discovered his capacities, and entrusted him with the erection of the Cappella del Santissimo in S. Maria Maggiore. Here a very unusual episode occurred. The Cardinal had not means enough to finish the work, and the brothers Fontana, instead of suing him for their pay, lent him 1000 scudi. Of course the Cardinal was their great patron after this, and recommended them to Pope Sixtus V., who employed them in the Vatican to build the Belvedere and the Library. Domenico also enshrined the Scala Santa at S. John Lateran; he placed the obelisks on Piazza S. Giovanni and Piazza S. M. Maggiore; set up the Castor and Pollux on the Quirinal; built the bridge at Borghetto, the hospital of S. Sisto, and restored the Alessandrini-Felice aqueduct; embanked the Fiumicino near Porto; made the water conduit at Civita Vecchia, which implied tunnelling under a mountain; and the great aqueduct of Acqua Paola from Bracciano to Rome, thirty-five miles long; besides constructing fountains everywhere, in Rome and Frascati.
In fact, he nearly made Cinque-cento Rome. His brother Giovanni was nominated architect in general to Pope Clement VIII.; and Paul V. made him chief architect of St. Peter's, with his nephew Carlo Madernò. He too was employed in Ferrara. For a century the name and race of Fontana flourished in Rome, some of the family emigrating to Naples, where they became equally famous. The number of their buildings was legion; they and the family Della Porta, who also came to Rome from Lake Lugano, divided the renovation of Rome between them. Girolamo della Porta, like the Fontanas, was a naturalized Roman.
The Fontana family forms a link with Naples, though not the only connection of that city with the guild. The Comacine Masters kept up their connection with Naples long after the time of the Normans, when Maestro Buono built the Castel Capuana for William I. Merzario claims for one of his descendants, Buono dei Buoni, the credit of having first invented painting in oils, which he is supposed to have taught privately to Antonello of Messina.[304] Several names of the Solari family, so famous at Milan and Venice, turn up at Naples in the fifteenth century, and then a famous work was put into Lombard hands. When Alphonso of Aragon made his entry in 1443, the governors of the city decreed that a triumphal arch should be built to commemorate the event. It was placed at the entrance of Castel Nuovo, and consists of two round towers, with an arch between them, supported on Corinthian columns. The arch is surmounted by a frieze and cornice, with a parapet above, enriched with bas-reliefs representing the entry of King Alphonso. The whole is surmounted by statues of saints and the cardinal virtues.
The construction of this fine arch has been attributed to Giuliano da Majano, but as he was at the time only a boy of ten or twelve years old, this could not be. Sig. Miniero Riccio, after a diligent search in the Neapolitan archives, has found some acts, which give the names of sculptors employed on this. We find Pietro di Martino from Milan, head architect; Isaja da Pisa, Domenico di Montemignano, Antonio da Pisa, Francesco Arzara, Paolo Romano, and Domenico Lombardo. This authorship is confirmed by the epigraph in the church of S. Maria la Nuova in Naples, dated 1470, in memory of Pietro di Martino, Milanese, who, for his merit in erecting the arch at Castel Nuovo, was created Cavalier by King Alphonso, and a sepulchre was given in this church for him and his descendants.[305]
If the date had only been a little later, we might have supposed this to be Pietro Lombardo, son of Martino Solario, who had won such fame in Venice; but as he died in 1512, it is scarcely likely he would have been well-known enough to have obtained such an important commission in 1440. Knowing how a certain succession of names was, and is, kept up in Italian families, this Pietro and Martino might have been the father and grandfather of the Martino da Carona, father of Pietro Lombardo, especially as they had Domenico, also a Solari, with them.
King Alphonso was a good patron to the Comacine Masters, and greatly appreciated them. On February 16, 1456, a gentleman at Terracina wrote to the Duke Francesco Sforza, saying that some master builders from Como, in leaving the realm of Naples, had been made to forfeit 190 ducats, on which they appealed to the King. Alphonso ordered the restitution of the money, excepting a small tribute to the confiscators, which he made good to the Comacine Masters out of his own purse.[306]
From 1484 to 1508, a Maestro Tomaso da Como, sometimes called Tomaso delle parti di Lombardia, master sculptor, was living in Naples. He was paid for the carving of the principal door of the church of the Annunziata, which his son Giovanni finished after his death. His will still exists. It is dated July 2, 1508, and says that "Mastro Tomaso de Sumalvito (now Sanvito) de la terra de Como de la parti di Lombardia, marmorario habitante in Napoli: istituisce herede Joan Thomaso de Sumalvito de Napoli suo figlio," and declares besides that a debt of three ducats is still owing to him on the work for the great doorway of the church of the Annunziata. The fine monument to Signor Antonio d'Alessandro and his wife, Maddalena Riccio, in the church of Monte Oliveto, and that of the Bishop of Aversa in the same church, were sculptured by Tommaso de Sanvito, as he is called in the books of Orvieto, where he was head architect.