"It was painted a little time before Rubens's death. The body and head of the saint are the only good parts in this picture, which, however, is finely coloured and well drawn; but the figure bends too suddenly from the thighs, which are ill drawn, or, rather, in a bad taste of drawing; as is likewise his arm, which has a short interrupted outline. The action of the malefactors has not that energy which he usually gave to his figures. Rubens, in his letters to Gildorp, expresses his own approbation of this picture, which he says was the best he ever painted; he likewise expresses his content and happiness in the subject, as being picturesque; this is likewise natural to such a mind as that of Rubens, who was perhaps too much looking about him for the picturesque, or something uncommon. A man with his head downwards is certainly a more extraordinary object than if the head were in its natural place. Many parts of this picture are so feebly drawn, and with so tame a pencil, that I cannot help suspecting that Rubens died before he had completed it, and that it was finished by some of his scholars."[{266}]
St. Maria in Capitola, one of Cologne's famous churches, stands on the site of the ancient capital of the Romans. It is one of the most perfect examples extant of a triapsed church, though the three apses themselves are supposed to have been an afterthought added in the twelfth century, whereas the nave dates from the century before. The nave, too, has an interpolation or addition to its original form in that a Gothic roof was added some three hundred years after it had first been covered with a plain wooden ceiling.
The three apses unfold grandly, with the high altar in the most easterly or middle termination.
The general effect of the interior is decidedly high coloured, with much polychromatic decoration and painted glass. In the Hardenrath chapel are found the most striking of these mural decorations, which are interesting as illustrating a certain phase of art, if not for their supreme excellence.
St. Pantaleon's claims to be the most ancient church in the city, dating as far back as A. D. 980, when it was reared from the stones of the Roman bridge which before that time stretched across to Deutz. The chapel of the Minorites contains the tomb of Duns Scotus,[{267}] and a horrible tale is told of his entombment alive, of his revival in his coffin, his struggle to escape, and his body being found afterward at the closed door of the sepulchre, with the hand eaten off by himself ere he died of hunger.
A peculiarity of Cologne's churches—for it is possessed by the Apostles' Church, St. Cunibert's, and St. Andrew's—is the western apse.
Such a member is not unique to Cologne, for it exists in the cathedral at Nevers, in France, and there are yet other examples in Germany; but its use is sufficiently uncommon to warrant speculation as to its purpose.[{268}]
The Apostles' Church has this feature most highly developed. The edifice is a noble pile dating from early in the eleventh century, but reconstructed two centuries later, to which period it really belongs so far as its general characteristics are concerned.
Not all the church architecture of Cologne is Gothic; indeed the churches of the Apostles and St. Martin each show the Lombard influence to a marked degree. The three apses, and their round arches and galleries, are like a bit of Italy transported northward.