The palaces of the Scaligeri, now assigned to the drowsy courts of law, have been altered so often that an inalienable dignity of front is all that marks them for having once been princely habitations. We must look a few steps farther for the pomp of the Scaligers, where a small graveyard before the church of Santa Maria l'Antica contains the tombs of the dynasty. The whole space, as well as each separate grave, is enclosed by an iron trellis of the rarest delicacy: it is, in fact, a flexible network which shakes at a touch, but which has withstood the rough handling of five centuries, composed of open quatrefoils and the ladder (scala), the family bearing, and a few other fanciful patterns, constantly repeated: it is the lace of an iron age. Within this precinct rest ten princes of the line, who from being nobles of Verona were elected in 1261 by unanimous popular choice to succeed the atrocious Eccelin da Romano, the tyrant of Padua, who also held Verona under his execrable rule. There is every variety of tomb, from the plain, heavy sarcophagus of Mastino I. to the magnificent four-storied monument of Can Signorio surmounted by his equestrian statue, a rising succession of small columns, arches, niches, statuettes, canopies, pinnacles, embowered in leafage, bud and flower, as if the splendid art of the fourteenth century were blossoming before one's eyes. The tomb of Can Grande is fine, although much simpler: it has three stories. He lies on the lowest floor, in robes of state, composed to his last sleep, while on the summit he looks down from his horse, a full-armed warrior. Four big dogs, from whom he took his enigmatic cognomen (although the canine proclivity did not begin with him, as his ancestor was Mastino), support the tomb, each bearing a shield with the arms of the family.
Verona is rich in tombs. From our windows in the Due Torri we looked across to the monument of Guglielmo del Castelbarco, a friend of the Delle Scale, whose massive sarcophagus stands beneath a high Gothic canopy over the gateway of a building which once formed part of the convent of Sta. Anastasia. As we gazed down into the square, with its fountain and groups of old women drawing water, and sometimes setting down their ewers to go and say a short prayer in the beautiful old church of Sta. Anastasia, we used to think that if this outlook were included in the charge for our rooms, we were not paying too much. Another fine monument, by the architect Sanmicheli, to two brothers who rejoiced in the surname of Verità encrusts the front of the church of Sta. Eufemia; and in the cemetery of San Zenone are a tomb and sepulchral urn which claim that they contain the mortal remains of Pepin, king of Italy, the son of Charlemagne. Besides these, altar-tombs, pillared and canopied monuments and mortuary chapels meet the eye everywhere inside and outside of the churches. That which attracts most attention now-a-days is decidedly the least ornamental—the doubly-doubtful tomb of Juliet. It is so acknowledged a lion that the street-boys of the quarter beset you with offers to show you the way. This is no new celebrity: Murray assures us that in the last century, before readers of Shakespeare, native or foreign, were common in Italy, a sarcophagus was regularly exhibited as this sentimental relic. That no longer exists: the present one, which was formerly used as a washing-trough, looks so much like that or a horse-trough of the commonest sort that, even without knowing its claims to be apocryphal, the most credulous sentimental tourist would suspect that it had come up rather than gone down in the world. No matter: we were not dupes, but perhaps the full sweetness and sadness of the story never came home to us with such enfolding charm as on the gray autumn afternoon when we stood beside the pseudo relic in the forlorn little garden of the orphan asylum on the bank of the turbid Adige. The house which is pointed out as Juliet's is less palatial than we expected, though it is a lofty old brick edifice with rounded windows, a stone balcony and a large courtyard: on the keystone of the arched entrance, on the inner side of the court, is the cap (cappello) which gives its name to the street, and is supposed to be the heraldic badge of the family, armoiries parlantes, or punning devices, being a favorite fashion in old times all over Europe. If the balcony which remains was Juliet's, Romeo must have had a long ladder and a cooler head than he showed under other circumstances. There is a stone projection at the window of a lower story which once may have supported a small balcony. The Casa de' Cappelletti is now a livery-stable and inn, the Osteria del Cappello.
The street leads straight to the Piazza delle Erbe, the vegetable-market (literally, "grass-market"), the forum in ancient times, the most picturesque spot in all Verona, which seems to collect and concentrate in itself all the reminiscences and characteristics of the town. It communicates on one side with the Piazza dei Signori; and the imposing campanile, or bell-tower, of the latter, a shaft of brickwork nearly three hundred feet high, springing above the intervening palace-roofs, makes a companion to the tall, slender clock-tower at the farther end of the Piazza delle Erbe, one of the many munificent gifts of the Della Scala princes. In the centre of the square is a fountain, originally of great antiquity; near by it the market-cross; close to that a marble column on which once stood the lion of St. Mark, set up by the Venetians when they seized the city, and thrown down when the republic of Venice fell in 1799. Not far from these two pillars is a sort of stone dais beneath a stone canopy, which was the very focus of the historic and municipal life of the place in mediæval days. Here, when Verona was a free city, the capitano del popolo was inaugurated; proclamations were read from it; criminals heard their sentences pronounced from it. Here people who did not pay their debts were compelled to undergo the grotesque penalty common in the Italian republics for that offence, of sitting for a stated time on the pavement—in puris naturalibus as to the sitting portion of the person: flagstones are to be seen worn to a comfortable concavity by the delinquent convexity.
The buildings which enclose the square are of the utmost diversity of style and period—rich palaces of the Late Renaissance, cumbered with ornament; modern houses of light-colored stucco, with striped awnings and Venetian shutters; solemn old bits of architecture of sterner times; frescoed façades, arcades, balconies. And what balconies! Not the poor railing to which we give that name, but projecting parapets of stone, pierced into trefoils, quatrefoils, rosaces, cusps, brackets, balustrades—sometimes running across the whole house-front, more often guarding a single window, itself lofty, arched, mullioned and rich with tracery. It is here that, for the traveller coming from the North, Venetian architecture begins—not Byzantine of course, but the purest, noblest Cisalpine Gothic. It imparts a highly patrician air to the streets with their long lines of deserted palaces, which keep their caste through every change of fortune. Verona has not the fallen look of some old Italian capitals, nor the forsaken air of others, but suggests the idea that once her aristocracy closed their houses and withdrew to some retreat where they maintain their traditions, waiting for better times to return to their former homes. Many of the vaulted carriage-ways frame a glimpse of the rushing river which washes the massive foundations of the courtyards, the blue hills and lines of forked battlement.
In Verona one first sees Venetian painting too, on canvases which are to Titian and Tintoretto as the colors of dawn are to those of sunrise, but the glory is in them. The radiant pencil of Paul Veronese was early lost by his birthplace and given to Venice, in illustration of the parable, but even without her most glorious son native art makes a fair show in the picture-gallery and churches. The picture which struck me most was a fresco by Brusasorci in San Stefano, whither I had been drawn by the report of its antiquity, which is said to be greater than that of any other church in the town, going back to the seventh century. As on many other occasions, I found that a building may be too old, the pristine venerableness having been overbuilt by subsequent ages; but I was consoled for my disappointment by this beautiful fresco—Saint Stephen surrounded by the Holy Innocents. In the church calendar Saint Stephen is the first martyr, and the Innocents are commemorated two days later: in the picture the youthful deacon looks down with an air of paternal pride and affection upon the lovely babes trooping before him with palms in their little hands as he presents them to our Saviour, above in glory. There is a tenderness in the expression of the martyr's face and attitude, as well as in the conception of the group, which appeals to the simplest human feeling. The juxtaposition of the protomartyr and the children is a perfect instance of true ecclesiastical sentiment: it was not until long afterward that I knew it to be a fine work of art.
San Stefano is on the left bank of the river, in the smaller and less-frequented part of the town, and it was in further exploring the same quarter that I wandered into a curious church which had somehow the look of a cast-off garment, owing perhaps to the frequent patching it had evidently undergone, and its appearance of being owned by nobody. It stood open, empty of worshippers, with not even a beggar on the steps in receipt of charitable custom—alone on a little island. It is the church of San Tomaso Cantuariense, otherwise Thomas à Becket, whom it was odd to meet so far from home: he was revered all over Europe for a long time after his canonization, as this church proves, since he was adopted as its patron in 1316, nearly a hundred and fifty years after his so-called martyrdom; but to judge by its desertion he must be pretty well forgotten now. It is hereabouts that, on emerging from a cat's-cradle of little narrow cross streets, a very fine view of Sta. Anastasia from the rear breaks upon one, the pentagonal apse, the chapels, transepts, nave, and towers rising one above another, a beautiful specimen of early Italian Gothic, still strongly impressed with the Lombard spirit.
This Romanesque character is what gives the particular stamp to most of the sacred buildings in Verona, making them a study as distinct in their way as the Norman churches at Caen. They belong to one period and one style, although this is a transitional one: the slender pillars of the porches resting on crouching lions, the round-headed arches, the plain, square, soaring campanili, a majestic boldness and simplicity in general effect, an unconscious quaintness in detail, the line of the prevailing red marble contrasting gratefully with the layers of many-toned gray spread by time over the walls, produce a combination of form and color delightful to the eye. The older, original edifice is seldom visible from without: what remains of it is completely built in and over, and is generally to be found in the crypt. Notwithstanding the stateliness and interest of the cathedral, San Zenone was the church to which our steps returned most persistently. It is composed of three churches of very different date, the first having been erected soon after the year 800, the second in 1138, the third three hundred years later. The main building, which is of the twelfth century, is sunk far below the level of the ground: one descends into it from the main portal by ten steps; and this unusual mode of entrance, the depth, the great height, the rigid absence of ornament, the grave colors, the long unbroken lines of the nave, give the interior a remarkable solemnity, and create an impression and emotion as different as possible from those excited by churches of a later construction, with their florid architecture, their opulence of sculpture and carving, their statues and ornate monuments, their gorgeous paintings, their stained-glass windows—temples