Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice. Freeman Edward Augustus

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СКАЧАТЬ a Lombard building of the kind, the simpler and truer forms which were in vogue before the Venetian Gothic set in. It marks the true position of that style that, though we cannot help admiring many of its buildings when we look at them, we find it a relief when we come to something earlier and more real. The buildings of which Venice set the type are very rich, very elegant; but we feel that, after all, England, France, Germany, could all do better in the way of windows, and that Italy left to herself could do better in the way of columns and arches. Old or new, rebuilt or simply repaired, there is nothing very wonderful in the municipal palace of Treviso; but in either case it is pleasing as an example of the genuine native style of Italy. It has arcades below, groups of round-headed windows above, and the tower looks over the palace with the more effect, because it is not parallel to it. The arcades of the palace, continued in the form of the arcades of the streets, are a feature of Treviso, as of all other southern cities that were built by rational men in rational times, and were designed, unlike Venice and Curzola, for the passage of carriages and horses. At Treviso we have arcades of all kinds, all shapes, all dates, some rude enough, some really elegant, but all of them better than the portentous folly which has offered up modern Rome and modern Athens as helpless victims to whatever powers may be conceived to preside over heat, dust, and their consequences. Treviso is not a first-class Italian city; it is hardly one of the second class; but it is pleasant to thread one's way through the arcades, to try to spell out the geography of the streams that are crossed by many bridges; it is pleasant to mount here and there on the wall, to look down on the broad foss below, and across it on the rich plain with its wall of mountains in the distance.

      In the ecclesiastical department what there is of any value above ground belongs mainly to the friars. The interest of the duomo, as a building, lies wholly in its crypt, a grand and spacious one, certainly not later than the twelfth century. It may be that some of the smaller marble shafts which support its vault had already done duty in some earlier building, and there is no doubt as to the classical date of a fragment of a large fluted column which in this same crypt serves the purpose of a well. The church above has been mercilessly Jesuited; yet, as it keeps more than one cupola, those cupolas give it a certain dignity; the stamp of Constantinople and Venice, of Périgueux and Angoulême, is hard wholly to wipe out. Otherwise a few tombs and a fine piece of mediæval gilded wood-carving are about all that the church of Treviso has to show. The great Dominican church has been more lucky. The guide-book of Gsel-fels, commonly the best of guide-books, but which cuts Treviso a little short, rather sets one against it by saying that it has been wholly modernized within. Repaired and freshened up it certainly has been; but it can hardly be said to have been modernized; the old lines seem not to have been tampered with. And there is something far from lacking in dignity in the effect of its vast interior, even though its style be the corrupt Gothic of Italy. One merit is that the arches which spring from the huge pillars, though wide, are not sprawling – not like those which those who do not dare to think for themselves are called on to admire in the nave of the Florentine duomo. Unlike the work of Arnolfo, the Dominican church of Treviso does not look one inch shorter or lower than it is. It has too the interest of much contemporary painting and other ornamental work. The smaller Benedictine church hard by, whose bell-tower groups so well with Saint Nicolas, employs in that bell-tower a trefoil arch, a strange form to spring from mid-wall shafts. Within there is not much to look at, beyond a tablet setting forth the glories of the Benedictine order, how many emperors, empresses, kings, queens, popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and so forth, belonged to it. Dukes, marquesses, counts, and knights, were unnumbered. It is a strange thought that to that countless band Bec added the full manhood and long monastic life of Herlwin, that Saint Peter of Shrewsbury and Saint Werburh of Chester had severally the privilege of enrolling Earl Roger and Earl Hugh, each for a few days only, as members of the brotherhood of Benedict and Anselm.

      The other friars' church, that of Saint Francis, has been less lucky than its Dominican rival. Desecrated and partitioned, its inside is now inaccessible; the outside promises well for a church of its own type. Yet how feeble after all are the very best of these Italian buildings which forsook their own native forms for a hopeless attempt to reproduce the forms of other lands. We are always told that Italian Gothic cannot be Northern Gothic, because Italy is not like Northern lands. True enough; but what that argument proves is that Italy should have kept to her own natural Romanesque, the true fruit of her own soil, and should never have meddled with forms which could not be transplanted in their purity. The great fact of Italian architectural history is that the native style never was thoroughly driven out, but that, alongside of the sham Gothic, true Romanesque lived on to lose itself in the earlier and better kind of Renaissance. The open arcades of streets and houses, and the bell-towers of the churches, largely remain really Romanesque in style at all dates. For the working out of the same law in greater buildings we must make our way south-eastward. The chronicler of the eleventh century hinted that Treviso was near to Venice, and the men of the fourteenth century acted on the hint. But the wise Doge, who a generation later told his people to stick to the sea and leave the land behind, knew better where the true subject and neighbour lands of Venice lay. We cannot fully obey him as yet, as we have still points on the Italian mainland to visit. But we may still keep the true goal of our pilgrimage before our eyes, and we may remember that the lands which were most truly near to Venice were those lands, subject and hostile, to which the path lay by her own element. The lessons of which we begin to get a glimpse at Treviso we shall not learn in their fulness till we have reached the other side of Hadria.

      UDINE AND CIVIDALE

1875 – 1881

      Ought the antiquarian traveller who has taken up his quarters at Udine and has thence made an expedition to Cividale to counsel his fellow-inquirers to follow his example in so doing or not? The answer to this question may be well made largely to depend on the state of the weather. It would be dangerous to say, from an experience of two visits only, that at Udine and Cividale it always either rains or has very lately rained; but those are the only two conditions in which we can speak of those places from personal knowledge. Now it is wonderful how a heavy rain damps the zeal of the most inquiring spirit, especially if he be carrying on his inquiries by himself. If he has companions, a good deal of wet may be shaken off by the process of talking and laughing at the common bad luck. If he be alone, every drop sticks; he has nothing to do but to grumble, and he has nobody to listen to his grumblings but himself. The land may be beautiful, but its beauties are half hid; the buildings may have the most taking outlines, but it is impossible to make a drawing of them. Even interiors lose their cheerfulness; the general gloom makes half their details invisible; and his own depression of spirit makes the inquirer less able than usual to understand and appreciate what he can see. Udine and Cividale on a fine day are something quite unlike Udine and Cividale in the rain. But even in this more cheerful state of things, when the rain has to be spoken of in the past tense, it may happen that the past puts serious difficulties in the way of the enjoyment of the present. Cividale is undoubtedly more pleasant and more profitable to see when the rain is past than when the rain is actually falling. But then, to judge from our two experiences, Cividale is easier to get at while the rain is actually falling than when it has ceased to fall. What in the one state of things is the half-dry ghiara of an Alpine stream becomes a flood covering the road for no small distance, and suggesting, to all but the most zealous, the thought of turning back. It is only those for whom the attractions of the spot which once was the Forum Julii are strong indeed, who will pluck up heart to go on when their carriage has sometimes to be helped on by men who are used to wade through the flood, or else is forced to leave what should have been the high road for a narrow and difficult path across the fields. It is well to record these things, that those who stay at home may be put in mind that, even in perfectly civilized lands, topographical knowledge is not always to be got without going to some little trouble in the search after it. We have seen Udine and Cividale wet, and we have seen them dry, but then it was when they had been wet only a very short time before. We are tempted to think that we might understand them better at some time when the rainfall was neither of the present nor of the very recent past.

      One thing however is certain, that, wet or dry, not many Englishmen make the experiment of trying to find out what this corner of Italy may have to show. Not an English name, save that of one specially famous and adventurous traveller, СКАЧАТЬ