There was in Lucca at the time a certain Magister Guido da Como, who had in 1187 built the church of S. Maria Corteorlandini. It was built for the feudal Lords Rolandinga, whose palace was called Corte Rolandinga, on the occasion of one of their family joining in the crusades.[176] There is mention of a Comacine sculptor named Guido before this date, at Corneto-Tarquinia, where in the church of S. Maria di Castello is a fine Ciborium, signed "Johannes et Guitto hoc opus fecerunt, MCLXVIII." This, being only nineteen years previous, may have been an earlier work of this same Guido. This Magister evidently had a son who followed his father's art, and was named after himself Guido, though called Guidetto, or young Guido, to distinguish him from his father. To these two men were confided the commission for the front of the Duomo. Probably the elder did not live to complete it, for although the commission was given to Maestro Guido Marmolario (sic), the inscription on the façade runs—"Mille C.C.|IIII.|condi|dit|ele|cti tam pul| chras. dextra|Guidecti."[177] Among the sculptures is one figure with a very young face, supposed to be a portrait of Guidetto. This façade is a perfect specimen of pure Comacine-Romanesque, and shows that the Saracen influence under which the Masters had been placed in the south, when employed by the Lombard Dukes of Beneventum, had not led them to change entirely their old style, but only to develop it into a species of Oriental richness which (so far we may agree with old Vasari) sometimes errs against truth and good taste. It shows also the close connection between the Pisan and Lucchese Lodges.
The row of archlets which used to form a cornice under the roof now, as at Pisa, run wild over the whole façade. The outlines which used to follow honestly the shape of nave and aisles, now, for the sake of heaping on more ornament, stretch up far beyond the roof-line, forming a mask.
A still more glaring instance of the same fault is seen in Guidetto's other church, S. Michele, at Lucca, where the two upper galleries are the frontage of a mere useless wall in the air.
As an architect, young Guido left something to be desired; as a sculptor he was marvellous. Variety seems to have been his aim. In both S. Martino and S. Michele, among all the hundreds of colonnettes, you can scarcely find a duplicate. They are plain, fluted, foliaged, clustered, inlaid; black, white, red, green, yellow or parti-coloured, in endless variety. As for capitals, you get every imaginable shape and style, symbol and ornamentation. He outdoes his prototype Rainaldus of Pisa, and no clearer proof of a guild, rather than a single mind, can be furnished, than by this infinite variety of detail, which plainly speaks of the imaginings of many minds.
Cathedral of Lucca (San Martino), erected 11th century; Façade 1204. By Guidectus.
The Comacines here are still in the transition stage, though near its end, for the sign of the lion of Judah holds its place above the pillar, under the spring of the arch. In the Italian Gothic, their next development, it is always beneath the column.