Pisa
YOU will not find in all Italy anything that is placed quite so well with an eye to effective grouping as the Baptistery, Cathedral, and Campanile of Pisa. Nowhere does anything approach so near to the ecclesiastical exclusiveness of an English cathedral close as the great square of level green sward in which these three remarkable fabrics stand. From one corner of the Piazza del Duomo part of the university buildings looks over the turf to the Baptistery. Hard by the seat of learning is the Porta Nuova, a fine gateway that pierces the old walls of the city—walls of an almost unpaintable red. Within the walls, on the other side of the Cathedral—that is, to the north—the Campo Santo stands with bare façade and domed tower. Adjoining it on the east, conventual buildings and the Palace of the Archbishop occupy the angle of the Piazza. They face the Campanile. The one or two establishments which come next as we continue our giro are full of little marble “Leaning Towers” and other souvenirs which the tourist delights in. Save for the intrusiveness of these shops, there is nothing else in the surroundings of the vast square that detracts from the fascination of the wonderful group in the centre.
The Pisa of to-day cannot have changed much from the Pisa of two hundred years ago. It is true that, outside the old walls which encircle her, a straggling suburb is growing up, but within them noble palaces still front the River Arno, and others occupy the best positions in the city. Dwellings of the poorer classes line the narrow streets that connect the wider and more spacious thoroughfares; they crowd thickly together, and the life of the pavements is the life of Italy as the tourist loves to find it—the life of days gone by.
It has been said that all roads lead to Rome; in Pisa all roads lead to the Piazza del Duomo. In the centre stands the Cathedral; to the west of it, the Baptistery; to the east rises the Campanile, or Leaning Tower. Pisa had well-nigh reached the zenith of her power when in 1063 her people resolved to commemorate a great victory over the Saracens by building a new cathedral. Ninety years later, having destroyed their Southern rival Amalfi, the Pisans commenced the Baptistery. The year 1174 saw the first stone of the Campanile laid. Thus in a little over one hundred years these three buildings, which mark so important an epoch in Italian ecclesiastical architecture, were under construction. The advent of a man of unknown origin, Busketus, who designed the Cathedral, and whose epitaph is on one of its walls, heralded a new phase in the art of the country. And although he adapted something from the Romanesque, this grand church of his was the precursor of a style that we find amplified, but not improved upon, in Ferrara, Pavia, Parma, and, most notably of all, in the neighbouring city of Lucca. In the history of Italian ecclesiastical architecture Pisa stands pre-eminent.
The façade of the Cathedral is very striking. The seven round arches of the blind arcade that form the lowest tier or base are continued round the entire fabric. The pedestals from which the columns of this arcade spring rest on a bold but simple base-table that also encircles the building. These columns are round on the façade, the eastern apse, and the apse at the end of each transept, but become pilasters elsewhere. This extremely good arrangement does not break up the flat walls by too many obtrusive perpendicular lines. On the contrary, it enhances their noble length, and at the same time improves the semicircle of the apses. Three bronze doors occupy three arches of the façade arcade. They are good examples of the seventeenth century. Crude mosaics in the tympanums above are a jarring colour note which one would willingly suppress. It is otherwise, however, with the wonderful patterns of inlaid marble and the rich ornamentation of vine-leaves and floral forms, human heads and animals, that embellish the whole façade—a character of decoration that finds a fitting terminal in the crockets on the gables and the figures at their ends. Above the arcade four deeply recessed galleries fill the whole space of the façade. The lowest of these is on a level with the clerestory lights in the aisles. The next is cut off at either end by the angle of the gable; the columns diminish in size with the slope of the aisle roof. The third is in a line with the clerestory of the nave, and the topmost diminishes with the gable, which is carried beyond and above the ridge of the roof of the nave. The slender pillars that support the arches of these galleries have wonderfully carved capitals, and stand out in the brilliant afternoon sun from the deep shadow behind with marvellous effect.
One enters the Cathedral by the south and only door which escaped the great conflagration of 1596. Its bronze panels are by Bonannus, who has handed down twenty-four episodes of Gospel history in the very ingenuous style of his time. A lead-covered penthouse wards off the inclemency of the weather. The fine cupola which rises above the crossing is rather dwarfed by the Gothic arcade and finials which surround its base. The grand effect of the Cathedral is due in a measure to the mellowing of the white marble, which the sun has seemingly baked to a beautiful warm yellow and light red. On the north side, which is exposed to the bitter tramontana wind from the Monti Pisani, the marble is blistered and scored, and has acquired an ashen white that in this sunny land is not pleasant.
The interior is lofty. The effect obtained by the bands of black and white marble of which the walls are composed is not so embarrassing to the eye as in Siena’s holy fane. The nave is divided into ten bays; the columns that support the round arches are magnificent monoliths of granite. These bays are carried in a continuous colonnade across the transepts and along their east and west walls. The aisles are double. As a consequence the forest of columns and arches is almost bewildering; and if it were not for the fine proportions of the nave, the eye would have but little rest from a multiplicity of shadows and disturbing spots of light. The pointed triforium, that is borne by the arches of the nave, is continued across the transepts into the choir. The base of the cupola at the crossing is elliptical, the length being east and west and the narrow sides north and south. The interior of the dome is covered with frescoes. The design of the six altars in each aisle is attributed to Michael Angelo. The transepts are terminated by two apsidal chapels with mosaics in the semi-domes said to be designed by Cimabue. The same origin can be more justly claimed by that which decorates the vault of the choir apse, and in which the great artist has depicted our Lord in Glory, and S. John. The pavements of the choir and crossing are exceptionally fine opus Alexandrinum. The huge bronze lamp that hangs, swinging slightly, from the coffered and gilded roof of the nave is supposed to have suggested to Galileo the idea of the principle of the pendulum.
To the west of the Cathedral is Pisa’s beautiful Baptistery. This building was commenced by Diotisalvi in 1153, and continued later on in 1278. The lowest storey is of the first mentioned date, and, like the Cathedral, is composed of a blind arcade, pierced in this case with small round-headed windows. An open gallery circulates round the whole edifice above this. Its columns support round arches that are surmounted in piers by crocketed gables, pierced and cusped. A figure stands on the apex of each, while between every pair small open turrets thrust their pinnacles upwards. Above this gallery a series of windows with a similar arrangement breaks the base-line of the somewhat ugly pear-shaped dome. As a prevention against the corroding influence of the salt sea winds, this dome is tiled on its south-west surface. The other portion is covered with lead.
In the centre of the interior, generally entered by the door opposite the west façade of the Cathedral, stands the font in which baby Pisans have for many generations been baptized. Like others, it is made for total immersion. The walls which surround the appropriately “waved” black-and-white pattern of its floor are extremely beautiful. A delicately carved framework of marble encloses wonderful panels of inlaid mosaic somewhat in the style of the pulpit in the illustration to “Salerno.” Six small basins are let into the walls of the font and are used now for the Holy Rite. Near the altar stands Niccolò Pisano’s masterpiece. This hexagonal pulpit rests on seven slender columns of marble and granite. Some of these columns rise from their bases on the backs of lions, gryphons, and crouching human figures, thus in a way representing the dominion of the Word of God over creation. The rectangular panels of the pulpit stage are beautifully carved in high relief. Niccolò Pisano’s art, which bears evident traces of pagan influence, is seen at its best in these panels of the Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, Presentation in the Temple, the Crucifixion, and Last Judgment. On the steps is a red marble pillar standing on the back of a lion. It supports a small marble book-rest from which the Epistle was read. The desk on the pulpit itself is placed on an eagle, and was used for the reading of the Gospel. Eight marble piers and eight granite columns support the gallery beneath the dome. The whole of this noble interior is very light and airy, and Pisan mothers should have more cause to hope for a bright future for their babes than their sisters in Parma, if a comparison is permissible between the bright cheeriness of the one place and the mystical gloom of the other.
The Campanile stands to the east of the Cathedral. Its base is some feet below the restful green of the grass that covers the whole of the Piazza. Four different architects carried out its erection during a period that extended over nearly two hundred years. The base, another blind arcade, was begun in 1174 by Bonannus; the fourth gallery was added by Benenato, the next two by William of Innsbrück, and the topmost by Tommaso. The foundations were unfortunately laid in sea-sand, and the tower settled at an angle that causes it to lean towards the south thirteen feet out of the perpendicular. Galileo utilised this feature for experiments on the velocity of falling bodies.
The Campo Santo, the dome of which is seen in the illustration to the right of the Cathedral, is a quiet cloistered court on the walls of which are an extraordinary series of frescoes. Those on the north wall, by the Florentine, Benozzo Gozzoli, who was a pupil of Fra Angelico, are the most interesting. The Gothic arches and slender columns of the cloister, and the well-kept garden-plot in the centre, out of which tall cypress-trees rear themselves in ordered array, add much to the dignity of this quiet spot.
The old Dominican basilica of Sta Caterina stands in a corner of the piazza of the same name. Great plane-trees almost hide from view its beautiful façade, which, like that of the Cathedral, is gabled and arranged in galleries. Here, however, these are Gothic, with trefoil cusped arches, developing in the topmost to cinquefoil, and giving an air of elegance to the whole that is lacking in the Cathedral. A comparison of the two façades ends with the opinion that while in Sta Caterina there is more grace, the Cathedral possesses more architectural fitness for the design and proportions of the outline. Diotisalvi built the little octagonal church of S. Sepolcro for the Knights Templars, and Niccolò Pisano erected the fine campanile attached to the church of S. Francesco. This tower is partly supported by consoles, or brackets, within the church. The staircase runs up both inside and outside its walls.
S. Stefano, which contains a S. George by Donatello, is close to the Carovana in the Piazza dei Cavalieri. The piazza is thought to be the old Roman forum. The Carovana was the Palace of the Knights of S. Stephen, and was another of Niccolò Pisano’s works, and, although altered later on by Vasari, is a fine example of Domestic architecture. A double flight of steps leads up to the entrance-door, on either side of which are tall windows. The façade is covered with frescoes and adorned by six busts in niches of the first half-dozen Grand Dukes, Masters of the Order. The roof projects far out, and the eaves, supported by well-carved cantilevers, throw a deep shadow down the front of the palace. The Order of S. Stefano was founded in 1561 by Cosimo I., but never distinguished itself amidst the Orders of Chivalry, and was dissolved in 1869. A statue of the founder stands over a fountain in front of the steps.
Among the buildings that face the Arno, the Palazzo Lanfreducci, with the words “alla Giornata” and a chain pendant over the doorway, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, where Byron lived, and the fine old fortress-tower, the Torre Guelfa, are the most notable in a city that at one time disputed with the mighty Genoa the rule of the Mediterranean. The rivalry between these two maritime powers ended only when, after the disastrous battle of Meloria, the Genoese filled up the harbour of Pisa, and she became no longer of any account as a naval base.