S. Paolo was a priory church. This, too, had been built in 748 by the first Comacines under the Longobards, and evidences still remain that it was originally turned from east to west, the façade being then where the choir is now. It was rebuilt when S. Atto was bishop of the city in 1133, and besides a very pretty frontal, has a good specimen of the upper external gallery surrounding the church.
I will end my chapter on Pistoja with a mention of an interesting old MS. from the archives of the Opera di S. Jacopo, which, with Signor Macciò's aid, we found to be the marriage contract of a certain Maestro Jacopo Lapi. The bridegroom is named as Jacobus Dominus Lapus, fili Turdi, di Inghilberti, who wishes to contract marriage with Marchesana filia Sannutini, and to "live with her according to Longobardic law." The deed then goes on to specify the lands and possessions he bestows on his bride as a morgincap. This might be interesting in art history, if it could be proved whether the Jacopo Lapi were that pupil of Niccolò Pisano's who worked with him and Arnolfo at Siena in 1266.
In that case it gives the Jacopo Lapi's family an added interest as of Longobardic origin through his grandfather, Inghilbert. We further learn by the document that his great-grandmother's name was Molto-cara (very dear). This, taken together with the name Tordo (thrush) given to her son, proves how the nickname outweighed the family or baptismal name in mediæval times.
CHAPTER IV
ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ORNAMENTATION
When the romantic style of building, which the Comacine Masters had imbibed in Sicily, came in, their serious set-by-rule building went out. The first use they made of their new ideas was to increase the richness of decoration, and this they did by the almost childish expedient of multiplying their old ornaments. Instead of one little pillared gallery on the top of a façade, they now put whole rows of galleries, or covered the fronts all over with them, as in Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo. There is a very early instance of this in the church of Santa Maria at Ancona, of which we give an illustration. Here the network of arches are not real galleries, but only sculpturesque simulations; each arch is simply placed on the top of the other, without architrave or frieze. The doorway has the usual Comacine interlaced knots and no lions, so the façade may stand as an early sample of the transition into Romanesque, dating about the eleventh century.
The style shows a much further advance in Magister Marchionni's façade to the church of Santa Maria della Pieve at Arezzo, which is a fine sample of Romanesque. It was done in 1216. The façade has four rows of arches, one on the other, "growing small by degrees and beautifully less" as they ascend. Of all the hundred columns which support them, no two are alike. They are round, square, octagonal, sexagonal, pentagonal, multi-angular, fluted, twisted, grotesque, crooked, Byzantine, Corinthian, Ionic, Doric, Gothic, Egyptian, Babylonian, caryatid, black, green, white, striped, or inlaid. Some have single bases, a round on a square, or vice versâ, and so on ad infinitum. Yet with all this variety there is a certain unity of design, which bespeaks a multitude of Masters, each one using his own fancy in his particular part of the work, but one chief to whose general design the masters of the parts are subservient. Ruskin realized the beauty of this variety of idea, though he had not perceived that it came from a multitude of minds working together, when he said—"The more conspicuous the irregularities are, the greater the chance of its being a good style." And again—"The traceries, capitals, and other ornaments must be of perpetually varied designs."
Church of S. Maria, Ancona.