"But," as Selvatico remarks,[132] "these are isolated instances determined by static reasons, and do not point to a system." The Arab used the pointed arch as a decorative principle, as well as for stability. As the style spread in Europe it got modified, some countries keeping to the ancient type, and others changing its proportions. So the Arab arch became in the eleventh century the germ of the ogival arch, and in the twelfth expanded in the North into the most glorious forms of ecclesiastical Gothic architecture.
The Comacines made their first steps towards a more florid style, about the end of the eleventh century. The change, as in all such growths of circumstance, was a gradual one. First, a little more ornamentation, then a slight change in the forms of arches; next, a less fixed ground-plan of the churches, a mingling of the Greek cross with the square-walled Basilica. After these slight trials of their wings, came flights of imagination, and endless variety of form and ornamentation; that variety which could only spring from the ideas of many minds, united in one work.
To see the earliest signs of a wider scheme of design we must go to the region of Parma. Here in a little town called Borgo S. Donnino—the ancient "Fidentia Julia"—about fifteen miles north of Parma, is one of the finest early Romanesque churches in Italy. It was a great place for pilgrimages in the Middle Ages, as it contained the tomb of S. Domninus, who was martyred in the persecutions of Maximian. Great miracles were worked at his shrine, and religious fervour rose to such a height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that the devotees collected money enough to build a church, which they desired should be the finest and most majestic of those times.
The work was finished before 1195. An ancient document shows that the Rettori (civil governors) of Milan, Verona, Mantua, Modena, Brescia, Faenza, Bologna, Reggio, Gravedone, Piacenza, and Padua, with their suites, all met there in that year to form a league against Henry VI., son of Frederic Barbarossa, who seemed likely to carry on the hostility of his father.[133] We have no documents to show who was the architect of the fine Basilica of S. Donnino, but as the Comacines had their laborerium at Parma, and as the work is clearly and distinctly Romanesque, we may believe the old authors who say that it arose per lo scarpello dei Comacini.[134] If internal evidence is wanting, the three lion portals of the ornate façade bear witness to the hand of the Comacines of the Romanesque epoch.
Another of their buildings which shows a marked advance, was the cathedral of Trent—the gate of Italy leading into Germany. This had been built in the first Lombard style between 1124 and 1149, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch of Aquileja. In 1207 the Bishop Federigo Manga, Chancellor of the Emperor Otho IV., formed a design to enlarge and almost rebuild it. He commissioned a Magistro Comacino to superintend the works, as appears from an inscription in Gothic letters on the tomb of that very Magister. Anglicized it would run—"In the year of our Lord 1212, the last day of February, Master Adam of Arogno, of the diocese and district of Como (Magister Adam de Arognio cumanæ diocesis et circuito), began the work of this church and constructed it. He with his sons and his abbiatici (underlings) built the interior and exterior of this church with its adjoining parts. He and his sons lie below in this sepulchre. Pray for them."
Prof. Cipolla, in an article in Arte e Storia di Firenze, quotes a poem written in 1309, in honour of the Duomo of Trent and of the Comacine Master who had achieved so much with his potent and clever hands (Cumani Magistri qui potenti manu non inani complevit).
The church has since then undergone several restorations, but in none of them has its plan been materially altered. There is still the octagonal dome, the circular apse at one end of the building, and the narthex at the other. The façade still honestly follows the lines of the roof, and has its little rows of pillared galleries across. The outside of the apse shows the new tendency to Romanesque more than the façade does; here arches and friezes in horizontal circles around it, take the place of the perpendicular shafts, and the single row of archlets on the top. It is more in the style of the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Lucca churches. The arch of the north door rests on lions, which we may take as the secret sign of Romanesque Comacine work between the tenth and twelfth centuries, as the intreccio or Solomon's knot had been their mark in the Lombard period.
The church of S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo is a valuable specimen not only of this transition in its early stage, but of the culmination of the Romanesque, two centuries later. An inscription on the arch of the portico records that it was founded in the time of Pope Innocent II. and King Lothair II., i.e. about 1135, Rogerius being then the Bishop of Bergamo.[135] The builder's name is also recorded as Magister Fredus, probably short for Godfredus. Magister Fredus is not expressly said here to be of the Guild of Comacines, but as his work was entirely in Lombard style, with a few slight indications of a freer school, and as the architects who succeeded him were, as may be proved by documents, Comacine Masters chiefly from Campione, we may fairly make the hypothesis that he too was one of the guild. The little that remains of his work is to be seen in the interior, where the round arch still predominates, and in the exterior walls of the apse, with its crown of arches and colonnettes.
The parts due to the later brethren of the guild are the rich ornamentation of the two façades with their grand and characteristic Comacine porches, and also the Baptistery. It was in 1340 that Giovanni, son of Ugone (Big Hugh) of Campione, a celebre scultore ed architetto, was commissioned to build this Baptistery. According to the fixed laws of the Comacines he made it octagonal—the mystic sign of the Trinity, being formed of a threefold triangle. Around it entwine circles of arches and colonnettes, some lines having double columns; these reach to the cornice of the roof, which cornice is composed of reliefs allusive to the Sacrament of Baptism.
This work finished, Magister Giovanni went to Bellano on the east bank of Lake Como, together with two of his brotherhood, the Magister Antonio, son of the late Jacopo of Castellazzo da Peglio in the valley of Intelvi, and Magister Comolo, son of the late Magister Gufredo—probably a descendant of the Magister Fredus mentioned above—of Asteno, near Porlezza, to rebuild the church there, which had been ruined by age and repeated floods.[136] This church is in pure Lombard style, and has a façade in black and white marble, with a fine rose window, encircled with terra-cotta foliaged decorations. After this Magister Giovanni of Campione was recalled to Bergamo to adorn the façades of the church which Fredus had left in a rough state 200 years before. These two façades faced north and south. Strange to say, the part opposite the altar has no door. In this new emprise Giovanni brought as his assistants his son Nicolino, a relative named Antonio (probably the one who had worked with him at Bellano), and a certain Giovanni Cattaneo, also from Campione. Giovanni, who was head architect, decided not to renovate the whole south façade facing the Piazza on which he began first, but to concentrate his ornamentation on a fine vestibule and doorway, to form a species of frontal. The vestibule was finished in 1351, having taken only two years. On the architrave he has himself chronicled it—"1351, m. Johannes de Campillione C. B. (civis Bergomensis) fecit hoc opus." The whole front seems to have taken three years more, as on the base of the horse on which St. Alexander, patron saint of Bergamo, sits, may be read—"Filius Ughi de Campillione fecit hoc opus 1355."