Good Master John of Campione did not long survive the execution of this masterpiece, for on the north porch is inscribed—"1360. Magister Johannes f. q. (filius quondam) Dom. Johannes de Campilio ... (abrasion) fecit hoc opus in Christi nomine. Amen."
This north porch, though so nearly coeval, shows a much greater advance in style. It is an eloquent proof of how architecture was progressing at this time by the grafting on of different influences. John the father, being older, kept more closely to his Lombard traditions. John the son, being youthful and more open to conviction, took up new ideas. He has kept the Lombard arch in his porch, the moulding of which is extremely rich, and the lions of Judah duly support his pillars, but he has filled in his arch with very Gothic tracery, in trefoil arches, and over the Lombard columns of the upper storey of the porch are arches and decorations decidedly Oriental in appearance. It is about as good a specimen of the rich chaos of ideas that marks a transition stage as one can get, and shows that John the younger had been influenced by the Saracen-Norman influence in Sicily.
Fergusson, in his Handbook of Architecture, p. 790, gives an illustration of this porch. The Campione family evidently came from a race of sculptor-architects, for the church of S. Maria at Bergamo contains a sculptural work of much merit for the time, by Ugo da Campione, the father of Giovanni senior. It is the tomb of Cardinal Longhi degli Alessandri, who died at Avignon in 1329. The almost mediæval artist compares not unfavourably with a very modern master from Como, Vincenzo Velada Ligurnetto, who in 1855 sculptured the neighbouring tomb of Donizetti placed near it.
Coming down the valley of the Pò to Cremona, we find ourselves on a scene of great Comacine industry. There is the Baptistery, dating before A.D. 1000, and the Cathedral begun in 1100. These were both works of the Lombard Masters; their style is identical, and over the architrave of the great cathedral door may be read in the Gothic characters used by them—
MCCLXXIIII.
Magister Jacobus Porrata.
da Cumis, fecit hanc Rotam.
Rotam refers to the wheel window, which is a remarkably fine one, and is not, as some writers think, an illiterate mis-spelling of portam (door). The rose window is prior to the one which Jacopo or Lapo, the so-called father of Arnolfo, placed in the façade of the Duomo of Arezzo, and is even superior to it in richness of design. To Jacobus Porrata is also attributed the principal entrance of Cremona cathedral, with the statues of the four prophets beside it. Over the architrave rises a species of porch, formed of little Lombard galleries, fringing as it were the arch. Below are the usual lion-supported pillars, the lions being carved in fine red marble. The vestibule above is formed of pointed arches, on each of which a lion crouches to sustain the finishing loggia. The Comacine Masters seem to have formed a school and laborerium at Cremona, for among the archives of the Duomo a deed has been found entitled laborerio, of the year 1289. It was drawn up by the notary Degoldo Malatesta on December 12 of that year, and on the part of the Revdo. P. Cozzaconte, Bishop of Cremona, and the monk Ubertini, director and treasurer to the works of the Duomo, making a contract with Bonino and Guglielmo da Campione to build a stone stairway on the north of the cathedral towards S. Nicolò, etc. etc. The stairs still exist, with remains of some little turrets which formed part of the design.