We ought not to be surprised that mediæval bridges were connected in a self-evident manner with all the principal motive-powers of social life. They were excellent places where kings and nobles could show off their military ambition, and where the Church could be active in good work done for the safety of wayfaring. Shops on a bridge were valued because of the continuous traffic that brought trade to their doors; and a few private houses on a market bridge gratified a middleclass vanity, that took pride in paying the higher rents of a business thoroughfare. To live on Old London Bridge was a distinction; to be a tradesman on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, or on a timber bridge in Paris, was to be prosperous, for no bridge of shops was wide enough to be unpopular among those who had money to spend. Can anyone explain why the feminine joy of going to market has ever been most adventurous in narrow streets, or in short streets of a medium width?[83]
Whatever the reasons may be, here is a point to be remembered when we study such a bridge as the Rialto, at Venice, which carries three little streets on an arch twenty-four feet six inches high, and ninety-one feet in span, with a soffit about seventy-two feet wide. To-day the Rialto shops are trivial and mean, but in the great time of the Republic they displayed the most luxurious oddments of fashion, and delighted the idle rich. Very often it is said that the Rialto was built from a design by Michelangelo, as if this wonderful master of a tragic and supreme dignity could have amused his leisure with such a pretty whim in ornate building! Modern criticism shows a very poor taste when it repeats this old fallacy, or when it describes the Rialto as a masterpiece of architecture dating from the Renaissance. In comparison with the bridges of Isfahan, which belong to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Rialto is a mere toy. Its origin is the subject of Rondelet’s “Essai Historique sur le Pont de Rialto,” where we watch a great competition between Palladio and Antonio da Ponte. Palladio was the greater man, but the Senate rejected his designs, [84] and in 1588 Antonio da Ponte built his arched scaffold or centring and laid the first blocks of Istrian marble.
In Brangwyn’s picture the Rialto is gay enough to belong to the joyous times of the Republic; and by comparing this picture with the pen-drawings of the bridges at Isfahan, in Persia, it is easy to note the difference in spirit between two cities that attained in the same age their greatest prosperity. In 1590, Isfahan became the capital of Persia; and by this year Venice had recovered from the destructive fire of 1577, and was beautifying herself in many ways, as with the Piazza di San Marco.
THE RIALTO, VENICE DESIGNED IN 1588 BY ANTONIO DA PONTE, ARCHITECT
At Isfahan no fewer than five old bridges cross the Zendeh Rud, the most ancient being the Pul-i-Marnun, which was built by Shah Tahmasp, who reigned from 1523 to 1575. It is not a great bridge, so it stands apart from the Pul-i-Khaju and the vast Bridge of Ali Verdi Khan, which undoubtedly are among the finest bridges in the world. Their beauty has such a gracious power, such brightness and grandeur, that even the Roman bridge at Alcántara may seem to rival it unsuccessfully. Brangwyn has drawn these Persian masterpieces, but the Pul-i-Khaju alone belongs to this section on housed bridges—except in some architectural points common to both. Their arches are Moorish, and their builders may have borrowed from the Romans an idea which has come down to our time in at least one antique monument, namely, the ruined aqueduct at Lyon, not far from Saint Irénée. Through the piers of this aqueduct arches are cut transversely, so as to form a side arcade all along the length of the structure. These lateral arches vary much in size, and some of them have been built up. I know not for what purpose they were used; but they lighten the piers, which are uncommonly massive. It is this arrangement—a vaulted gallery cut through the sides of piers—that we find also at Isfahan in the two historic bridges of the Sefi kings.
THE PUL-I-KHAJU OVER THE ZENDEH RUD AT ISFAHAN, PERSIA