In most histories of Italian art we are conscious of a vast
hiatus of several centuries, between the ancient classic art of
Rome—which was in its decadence when the Western Empire ceased in
the fifth century after Christ—and that early rise of art in the
twelfth century which led to the Renaissance.
This hiatus is generally supposed to be a time when Art was
utterly dead and buried, its corpse in Byzantine dress lying
embalmed in its tomb at Ravenna. But all death is nothing but the
germ of new life. Art was not a corpse, it was only a seed, laid in
Italian soil to germinate, and it bore several plants before the
great reflowering period of the Renaissance.
The seed sown by the Classic schools formed the link between
them and the Renaissance, just as the Romance Languages of Provence
and Languedoc form the link between the dying out of the classic
Latin and the rise of modern languages.
Now where are we to look for this link?
In language we find it just between the Roman and Gallic
Empires.
In Art it seems also to be on that borderland—Lombardy—where
the Magistri Comacini , a
mediæval Guild of Liberi Muratori
(Freemasons), kept alive in their traditions the seed of
classic art, slowly training it through Romanesque forms up to the
Gothic, and hence to the full Renaissance. It is a significant
coincidence that this obscure link in Art, like the link-languages,
is styled by many writers Provençal or Romance style, for the
Gothic influence spread in France even before it expanded so
gloriously in Germany.
I think if we study these obscure Comacine Masters we shall
find that they form a firm, perfect, and consistent link between
the old and the new, filling completely that ugly gap in the
History of Art. So fully that all the different Italian styles,
whose names are legion—being Lombard-Byzantine at Ravenna and
Venice, Romanesque at Pisa and Lucca, Lombard-Gothic at Milan,
Norman-Saracen in Sicily and the south,—are nothing more than the
different developments in differing climates and ages, of the art
of one powerful guild of sculptor-builders, who nursed the seed of
Roman art on the border-land of the falling Roman Empire, and
spread the growth in far-off countries.
We shall see that all that was architecturally good in Italy
during the dark centuries between 500 and 1200 A.D. was due to the
Comacine Masters, or to their influence. To them can be traced the
building of those fine Lombard Basilicas of S. Ambrogio at Milan,
Theodolinda's church at Monza, S. Fedele at Como, San Michele at
Pavia, and San Vitale at Ravenna; as well as the florid cathedrals
of Pisa, Lucca, Milan, Arezzo, Brescia, etc. Their hand was in the
grand Basilicas of S. Agnese, S. Lorenzo, S. Clemente, and others
in Rome, and in the wondrous cloisters and aisles of Monreale and
Palermo.
Through them architecture and sculpture were carried into
foreign lands, France, Spain, Germany, and England, and there
developed into new and varied styles according to the exigencies of
the climate, and the tone of the people. The flat roofs, horizontal
architraves, and low arches of the Romanesque, which suited a warm
climate, gradually changed as they went northward into the pointed
arches and sharp gables of the Gothic; the steep sloping lines
being a necessity in a land where snow and rain were
frequent.
But however the architecture developed in after times, it was
the Comacine Masters who carried the classic germs and planted them
in foreign soils; it was the brethren of the
Liberi Muratori who, from their
head-quarters at Como, were sent by Gregory the Great to England
with Saint Augustine, to build churches for his converts; by
Gregory II. to Germany with Boniface on a similar mission; and were
by Charlemagne taken to France to build his church at
Aix-la-Chapelle, the prototype of French Gothic.
How and why such a powerful and influential guild seemed to
spring from a little island in Lake Como, and how their world-wide
reputation grew, the following scraps of history, borrowed from
many an ancient source, will, I hope, explain.
It is strange that Art historians hitherto have made so
little of the Comacine Masters. I do not think that Cattaneo
mentions them at all. Hope, although divining a universal Masonic
Guild, enlarges on all their work as Lombard; Fergusson disposes of
them in a single unimportant sentence; and Symonds is not much more
diffuse; while Marchese Ricci gives them the credit of the early
Lombard work and no more. I was led at length to a closer study of
them by the two ponderous tomes on the Maestri
Comacini [1] by Professor
Merzario, who has got together a huge amount of material from old
writers, old deeds, and old stones. But valuable as the material
is, Merzario is bewildering in his redundancy, confusing in his
arrangement, and not sufficiently clear in his deductions, his
chief aim being to show how many famous artists came from
Lombardy.
I wrote to ask Signor Merzario if I might associate his name
with mine in preparing a work for the English public, in which his
research would furnish me with so much that is valuable to the
history of art, but to my regret I found he had died since the book
was written, so I never received his permission; though his
publisher was very kind in permitting me to use the book as a chief
work of reference. With Merzario I have collated many other
recognized authorities on architecture and archæology, besides
archivial documents, and old chronicles. I have tried to make some
slight chronological arrangement, and some intelligible lists of
the names of the Masters at different eras. The researches of the
great archivist Milanesi in his Documenti per la
Storia dell' Arte Senese , and Cesare Guasti in
his lately published collection of documents relating to the
building of the Duomo of Florence, have been of immense service in
throwing a light on the organization of the Lodges and their
government. All that Signor Merzario dimly guessed from the more
fragmentary earlier records of Parma, Modena, and Verona, shines
out clear and well-defined under the fuller light of these later
records, and helps us to read many a dark saying of the older
times.
My thanks for much kind assistance in supplying me with facts
or authorities, are due to the Rev. Canonico Pietro Tonarelli of
Parma cathedral; the Rev. Vincenzo Rossi, Priore of Settignano;
Commendatore John Temple Leader of Florence; and to my brother, the
Rev. William Miles Barnes, Rector of Monkton, who has written the
"English link" for me. Acknowledgments are also due to Signor
Alinari and Signor Brogi of Florence, and to Signor Ongania of
Venice, for permitting the use of their photographs as
illustrations.