Before these were built we have at Cologne, S. Gereon's Kirche, with circular arches, date 1227, and S. Pantaleon, 980, but there is not a sign of Gothic in either. Bonn cathedral, built in 1151-1270, is also round-arched. Coblenz is Carlovingian. Mayence, round-arched of the tenth and eleventh centuries (the Gothic side-chapels date from 1260 to 1500). Treves, with round arches, early Romanesque of the eleventh century; choir, later Romanesque of the twelfth century; some parts which are pointed were of the thirteenth century. Hildesheim, a Romanesque Basilica, built in the eleventh century. Dom Insel at Breslau, 1170, is tripartite, on the Comacine plan, and very quaint. Worms, 996-1016, Lombard style, with round arches; the parts with pointed architecture are much more modern. This list proves that the earliest churches were built by Italian Masters, or at least in the Italian style.
Indeed Hope classes most of them as Lombard. The Germans themselves expanded the Lombard style into the pointed, which also came up through Italy, its first signs being seen at Assisi, next at Pisa, and then Florence.
Milan was a later reflex of the perfected German Gothic, though chiefly executed, as we shall see later, by the hands of Comacine Masters.
As I have before remarked, climatic influences greatly determine the style of a national architecture. To the sunny south belong the flat roof; the shady colonnade; the horizontal line and frieze; the fountained court; the smaller windows; and the solid tower. To the north the pointed roof, that snow and rain shall not decay it; the solid buttress to resist the greater outward pressure of the high and aspiring sloped roof; the perpendicular tendency in design; the larger windows for a less sunny atmosphere; and the pointed spire to carry up the general lines.
On these lines of fitness the Germans and French perfected their style, and imported it into England. The differences are great, between this northern Gothic and the Italian Gothic, which is always more or less Romanesque. Now if in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries[169] the Germans had not begun to build their glorious pointed minsters, what did Vasari mean by quei Tedeschi? I will show from his own description. In his chapter called "dell' Architettura," forming the introduction to his Lives, after discussing the three classical orders, he says (I will translate literally)—"There is another kind of work which they call Tedesco (German), in which the ornamentation and proportions are very different from the ancient or the modern. (Modern in Vasari's time would be the Renaissance style of Michael Angelo.) This is not used by good architects of these days, but is shunned by them as monstrous and barbarous. Every sign of order is forgotten, it ought rather to be called confusion and disorder. In the buildings, which are so many that they have infected the whole world, you see the portals adorned with thin columns twisted like a vine, and so slight that they could not be supposed to support the weight. And then on their façades and other places they made a cursed mass of little tabernacles (archlets) one on the other, with many pyramids and points, and such foliage (here Vasari evidently has his eye on Pisa Baptistery), that it seems impossible how they clung together; they seem made of paper, rather than of stone or marble. In these works there are many protuberances, broken lines, brackets, and intrecci, quite disproportionate to the building; and frequently, by piling one thing on another, they run up so high that the top of a door touches the roof. (Here Vasari is certainly thinking of the porches of San Zeno at Verona, and the cathedral of Bergamo.) This style was invented by the Goths (does he mean Longobards perhaps?), who having ruined the buildings, and murdered the architects, made the ones who remained build in this way. They arched their roofs with acute quarti (vaulted roofs) and filled all Italy with this cursed style of building.... God save any country from coming to such ideas and orders of architecture, which, being utterly deformed and unlike the beauty of our buildings, do not deserve that we should speak any more of them."
Again, in the Proemio delle Vite, when praising the solid buildings of the Goths in Ravenna, especially the tomb of Theodoric, with its huge monolithic roof, he goes on to speak of the Dark Ages—"After which," he says, "there arose new architects, who from their barbarous nation derived the kind of buildings which we of to-day call tedeschi, the which seem ridiculous to us, although to them they may have appeared to be praiseworthy."
Here are tirades from the old chronicler of art, who swore by the three classic orders, and worshipped Michael Angelo and the Renaissance style! Certainly the flat pilaster, triangular pediments, and straight unadorned lines of that art were as far removed as the poles from the florid but meaningful sculpture-architecture of the Comacines in Romanesque times, or its rich Norman and Gothic developments.
However, we gather plainly from this, that when Vasari calls a master Tedesco, he means merely Lombard. The reason is easy to see. Lombardy and North Italy, down to Lucca, were from about 1170 under the rule of the German Emperors, consequently the Comacines were no longer Lombards, nor French as in the Carlovingian times, but Germans.
This is curiously emphasized by an episode in the building of the cathedral at Pisa. When the Pisans wanted to endow the building fund of the church, they wished to buy some land on the Serchio, near Lucca, to help to form a revenue. They had, however, to send Gualando Orlandi and Aldebrando de' Visconti as ambassadors to Germany to obtain permission from the Emperor Henry IV., that the lands close by Lucca might be ceded to Pisa.[170]
The tower of Pisa is too well known to need any description here. The joint masters were Bonanno of Pisa, and a very confusing Tedesco. In some authors he is called Giovanni d'Innspruck, in others Guglielmo from Germany. On inquiry as to how Innspruck comes into the question, we find the following perplexing passage in Morrona. After quoting the inscription on the tower, "A.D. MCLXXIV campanile hoc fuit fundatum mense Agusti," he continues—"We find from ancient documents belonging to the Opera, that the building was begun on the vigil of San Lorenzo, and the two above-mentioned architects (Bonanno and Guglielmo) are precisely indicated, excepting only that instead of Guglielmo Tedesco, it is written Giovanni Onnipotente of Germany—a misinterpretation of the word Œnipons or Œnipontanus, which signifies native of Innspruck."[171] The italics are my own, and emphasize what Sig. Morrona styles a precise indication! The passage is an astounding bit of unreason, but as neither Giovanni nor Guglielmo is a German form of name, I do not think this theory need trouble us. Whether the builder were German or Italian, whether named John or William, he only carried out the general design of the two buildings, and made a veil of Lombard archlets all over his leaning tower.