Part 15

When we look at the Cathedral from the square, the effect is ravishing: the whiteness of the marble, standing out from the blue of the sky, strikes you first; one would say that an immense piece of silver lace had been placed against a background of _lapis lazuli_. This is the first impression, and it will also be the last memory. Whenever I think of the Duomo of Milan, it always appears like this. The Cathedral is one of those rare Gothic churches of Italy, yet this Gothic resembles ours but little. We do not find here that sombre faith, that disquieting mystery, those dark depths, those severe forms, that darting up from earth towards the sky, that character of austerity which repudiates beauty as too sensual and only selects from a subject what is necessary to bring you a step nearer to God; this is a Gothic full of elegance, grace, and brilliancy, which one dreams of for fairy palaces and with which one could build alcazars and mosques as well as a Catholic temple. The delicacy in its enormous proportions and its whiteness make it look like a glacier with its thousand needles, or a gigantic concretion of stalactites; it is difficult to believe it the work of man.

The design of the façade is of the simplest: it is an angle sharp as the gable-end of an ordinary house and bordered with marble lace, resting upon a wall without any fore-part, of no distinct order of architecture, pierced by five doors and eight windows and striped with six groups of columns with fillets, or rather mouldings which end in hollowed out points surmounted by statues and filled in their interstices with brackets and niches supporting and sheltering figures of angels, saints, and patriarchs. Back of these spring out from innumerable fillets, like the pipes of a basaltic grotto, forests of little steeples, pinnacles, minarets, and needles of white marble, while the central spire which resembles frost-work, crystallized in the air, rises in the azure to a terrific height and places the Virgin, who is standing upon its tip with her foot on a crescent, within two steps of Heaven. In the middle of the façade these words are inscribed: _Mariae nascenti_, the dedication of the Cathedral.

Begun by Jean Galéas Visconti, continued by Ludovico le More, the basilica of Milan was finished by Napoleon. It is the largest church known after Saint Peter’s in Rome. The interior is of a majestic and noble simplicity: rows of columns in pairs form five naves. Notwithstanding their actual mass, these groups of columns have a lightness of effect on account of the grace of their shafts. Above the capitals of the pillars there is a kind of gallery, perforated and carved, where statues of saints are placed; then the mouldings continue until they unite at the summit of the vault, which is ornamented with trefoils and Gothic knots made with such perfection that they would deceive the eye, if the plaster, which has fallen in places, did not reveal the naked stone.

In the centre of the cross an opening, surrounded by a balustrade, allows you to look down into the crypt, where the remains of Saint Charles Borromeo rest in a crystal coffin covered with plates of silver. Saint Charles Borromeo is the most revered saint of the district. His virtues and his conduct during the plague in Milan made him popular, and his memory is always kept alive.

At the entrance of the choir upon a grille which supports a crucifix, surrounded by angels in adoration, we read the following inscription framed in wood: _Attendite ad petram unde excisi estis_. On each side there are two magnificent pulpits of wood, supported by superb bronze figures and ornamented with silver bas-reliefs, the subjects of which are their least value. The organs, placed not far from the pulpits, have fine paintings by Procacini, if my memory does not deceive me, for shutters; above the choir there is a _Road to the Cross_, sculptured by Andrea Biffi and several other Milanese sculptors. The weeping angels, which mark the stations, have a great variety of attitudes and are charming, although their grace is somewhat effeminate.

The general impression is simple and religious; a soft light invites you to reflection; the large pillars spring to the vault with a movement full of vitality and faith; not a single detail is here to destroy the majesty of the whole. There is no overcharging and no surfeit of luxury: the lines follow each other from one end to the other, and the design of the edifice is understood in a single glance. The superb elegance of the exterior seems but a veil for mystery and humility within; the blatant hymn of marble makes you lower your voice and speak in a hushed tone: the exterior, by reason of its lightness and whiteness, is, perhaps, Pagan; the interior is, most assuredly, Christian.

In the corner of a nave, just before ascending the dome, we glance at a tomb filled with allegorical figures cast in bronze by the Cavalier Aretin after Michael Angelo in a bold and superb style. You arrive straightway on the roof of the church after climbing a stairway decorated at every angle with prohibitive, or threatening inscriptions, which do not speak well in favour of the Italians’ piety or sense of propriety.

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MILAN: FLYING BUTTRESSES]

This roof all bristling with steeples and ribbed with flying-buttresses at the sides, which form corridors in perspective, is made of great slabs of marble, like the rest of the edifice. Even at this point it is higher than the highest monuments of the city. A bas-relief of the finest execution is sunk in each buttress; each steeple is peopled with twenty-five statues. I do not believe there is another place in the world that holds in the same amount of space so large a number of sculptured figures. One could make an important city with the marble population of the Cathedral statues. Six thousand, seven hundred and sixteen have been counted. I have heard of a church in the Morea painted in the Byzantine style by the monks of Mount Athos, which did not contain less than three thousand figures. This is as nothing in comparison to the Cathedral of Milan. With regard to persons painted and sculptured, I have often had this dream--that if ever I were invested with magical power I would animate all the figures created by art in granite, in stone, in wood, and on canvas and people with them a country which would be a realization of the landscapes in the pictures. The sculptured multitude of this Cathedral bring back this fantasy. Among these statues there is one by Canova, a Saint Sebastian, lodged in an _aiguille_, and an Eve by Cristoforo Gobi, of such a charming and sensual grace that it is a little astonishing to see her in such a place. However, she is very beautiful, and the birds of the sky do not appear to be scandalized by her Edenesque costume.

From this platform there unfolds an immense panorama: you see the Alps and the Apennines, the vast plains of Lombardy, and with a glass you can regulate your watch from the dial of the church of Monza, whose stripes of black and white stones may be distinguished....

The ascent of the spire, which is perforated and open to the light, is not at all dangerous, although it may affect people who are subject to vertigo. Frail stairways wind through the towers and lead you to a balcony, above which there is nothing but the cap of the spire and the statue which crowns the edifice.

I will not try to describe this gigantic basilica in detail. A volume would be needed for its monograph. As a mere artist I must be content with a general view and a personal impression. After one has descended into the street and has made the tour of the church one finds on the lateral façades and apses the same crowd of statues, the same multitude of bas-reliefs: it is a terrifying debauch of sculpture, an incredible heap of wonders.

Around the Cathedral all kinds of little industries prosper, stalls of second-hand booksellers, opticians selling their wares in the open air, and even a theatre of marionnettes, whose performances I promise myself not to miss. Human life with its trivialities swarms and stirs at the foot of this majestic edifice, which, like petrified fireworks, is bursting its white rockets in the sky; here, as everywhere, we find the same contrast of sublimity of idea and vulgarity of fact. The temple of the Saviour throws its shadow across the hut of Punchinello.

_Voyage en Italie_ (Paris, new ed., 1884).

THE MOSQUE OF HASSAN.

AMELIA B. EDWARDS.

The mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most beautiful in Cairo, is also perhaps the most beautiful in the Moslem world. It was built at just that happy moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and early Christian edifices. The mosques of a few centuries earlier (as, for instance, that of Tulûn, which marks the first departure from the old Byzantine model) consisted of little more than a courtyard with colonnades leading to a hall supported on a forest of pillars. A little more than a century later, and the national style had already experienced the beginnings of that prolonged eclipse which finally resulted in the bastard Neo-Byzantine Renaissance represented by the mosque of Mehemet Ali. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan, built ninety-seven years before the taking of Constantinople, may justly be regarded as the highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after it had used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and before its new-born originality became modified by influence from beyond the Bosphorus. Its pre-eminence is due neither to the greatness of its dimensions, nor to the splendour of its materials. It is neither so large as the great mosque at Damascus, nor so rich in costly marbles as Saint Sophia in Constantinople; but in design, proportion, and a certain lofty grace impossible to describe, it surpasses these, and every other mosque, whether original or adapted, with which the writer is acquainted.

The whole structure is purely national. Every line and curve in it, and every inch of detail, is in the best style of the best period of the Arabian school. And above all, it was designed expressly for its present purpose. The two famous mosques of Damascus and Constantinople having, on the contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidences of adaptation. In Saint Sophia, the space once occupied by the figure of the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the mosaic-work of the apse, filled in with gold tesseræ of later date; while the magnificent gates of the great mosque at Damascus are decorated, among other Christian emblems, with the sacramental chalice. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan built by En Nasîr Hassan in the high and palmy days of the Memlook rule, is marred by no discrepancies. For a mosque it was designed, and a mosque it remains. Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin.

[Illustration: MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN, CAIRO]

A number of small streets having lately been demolished in this quarter, the approach to the mosque lies across a desolate open space littered with débris, but destined to be laid out as a public square. With this desirable end in view, some half dozen workmen were lazily loading as many camels with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting rubbish. If they persevere, and the Minister of Public Works continues to pay their wages with due punctuality, the ground will perhaps get cleared in eight or ten years’ time.

Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great steps, which were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, we observed a long and apparently fast-widening fissure reaching nearly from top to bottom of the main wall of the building, close against the minaret. It looked like just such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake, and, being still new to the East, we wondered the Government had not set to work to mend it. We had yet to learn that nothing is ever mended in Cairo. Here, as in Constantinople, new buildings spring up apace, but the old, no matter how venerable, are allowed to moulder away, inch by inch, till nothing remains but a heap of ruins.

Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some more steps and along a gloomy corridor, we came to the great court, before entering which, however, we had to take off our boots and put on slippers brought for the purpose. The first sight of this court is an architectural surprise. It is like nothing that one has seen before, and its beauty equals its novelty. Imagine an immense marble quadrangle, open to the sky and enclosed within lofty walls, with, at each side, a vast recess framed in by a single arch. The quadrangle is more than 100 feet square, and the walls are more than 100 feet high. Each recess forms a spacious hall for rest and prayer, and all are matted; but that at the eastern end is wider and considerably deeper than the other three, and the noble arch that encloses it like the proscenium of a splendid stage, measures, according to Fergusson, 69 feet 5 inches in the span. It looks much larger. This principal hall, the floor of which is raised one step at the upper end, measures 90 feet in depth and 90 in height. The dais is covered with prayer-rugs, and contains the holy niche and the pulpit of the preacher. We observed that those who came up here came only to pray. Having prayed, they either went away or turned aside into one of the other recesses to rest. There was a charming fountain in the court, with a dome-roof as light and fragile-looking as a big bubble, at which each worshipper performed his ablutions on coming in. This done, he left his slippers on the matting and trod the carpeted dais barefoot....

While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the intricate Arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custode came up with a big key and invited us to visit the tomb of the founder. So we followed him into an enormous vaulted hall a hundred feet square, in the centre of which stood a plain, railed-off tomb, with an empty iron-bound coffer at the foot. We afterwards learned that for five hundred years--that is to say, ever since the death and burial of Sultan Hassan--this coffer had contained a fine copy of the Koran, traditionally said to have been written by Sultan Hassan’s own hand; but that the Khedive, who is collecting choice and antique Arabic MSS., had only the other day sent an order for its removal.

Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the proportions of this noble sepulchral hall, the walls of which are covered with tracery in low relief incrusted with discs and tesseræ of turquoise-coloured porcelain; while high up, in order to lead off the vaulting of the roof, the corners are rounded by means of recessed clusters of exquisite Arabesque woodwork, like pendant stalactites. But the tesseræ are fast falling out, and most of their places are vacant; and the beautiful woodwork hangs in fragments, tattered and cobwebbed, like time-worn banners which the first touch of a brush would bring down.

Going back again from the tomb to the courtyard, we everywhere observed traces of the same dilapidation. The fountain, once a miracle of Sarascenic ornament, was fast going to destruction. The rich marbles of its basement were cracked and discoloured, its stuccoed cupola was flaking off piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like wood tracery shredding away by inches.

Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with pretty confidence on the brink of the basin, and having splashed, and drunk, and preened its feathers like a true believer at his ablutions, flew up to the top of the cupola and sang deliciously. All else was profoundly still. Large spaces of light and shadow divided the quadrangle. The sky showed overhead as a square opening of burning solid blue; while here and there, reclining, praying, or quietly occupied, a number of turbaned figures were picturesquely scattered over the matted floors of the open halls around. Yonder sat a tailor cross-legged, making a waistcoat; near him, stretched on his face at full length, sprawled a basket-maker with his half-woven basket and bundle of rushes beside him; and here, close against the main entrance, lay a blind man and his dog; the master asleep, the dog keeping watch. It was, as I have said, our first mosque, and I well remember the surprise with which we saw that tailor sewing on his buttons, and the sleepers lying about in the shade. We did not then know that a Mohammedan mosque is as much a place of rest and refuge as of prayer; or that the houseless Arab may take shelter there by night or day as freely as the birds may build their nests in the cornice, or as the blind man’s dog may share the cool shade with the sleeping master.

_A Thousand Miles up the Nile_ (London, 2d ed., 1889).

THE CATHEDRAL OF TRÈVES.

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN.

The ancient capital of the Treveri has the privilege of being known by two modern names, native and foreign, each of which preserves a letter of the ancient name which is lost in its rival. _Treveris_ is by its own people contracted into _Trier_, while by its neighbours it is cut short into _Trèves_. But one who looks out from the amphitheatre beyond its walls on the city which boasts itself to have stood for thirteen hundred years longer than Rome, will be inclined to hold that the beauty of its position and the interest of its long history cannot lose their charm under any name. It was not without reason that the mythical Trebetas, son of Ninus, after wandering through all lands, pitched on the spot by the Mosel as the loveliest and richest site that he could find for the foundation of the first city which arose on European soil....

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF TRÈVES.]

Trier holds, north of the Alps, a position which is in some respects analogous to the position of Ravenna south of the Alps. The points both of likeness and unlikeness between the two cities may be instructively compared. In physical position no two cities can well be more opposite. No two spots can be more unlike than Trier, with its hills, its river, and its bridge, and Ravenna, forsaken by the sea, left in its marshy flat, with its streets, which were once canals like those of Venice, now canals no longer. In their history the two cities have thus much in common, that each was a seat of the Imperial power of Rome in the days of its decline. Each too is remarkable for its rich store of buildings handed on from the days of its greatness, buildings which stamp upon each city an unique character of its own. But, when we more minutely compare either the history or the surviving antiquities of the two cities, when we compare the circumstances under which each city rose to greatness, we shall find on the whole less of likeness than of unlikeness. The difference may be summed up when we say that Trier is the city of Constantine, that Ravenna is the city of Honorius....

Ravenna has nothing of any consequence belonging either to heathen Roman or to mediæval times; its monuments belong to the days of Honorius and Placidia, to the days of the Gothic kingdom, to the very first days of the restored Imperial rule. To these, except one or two of the churches of Rome, there is nothing in the West to answer. The monuments of Trier are spread over a far wider space of time. They stretch from the first days of Roman occupation to an advanced stage of the Middle Ages. The mighty pile of the Black Gate, the _Porta Nigra_ or _Porta Martis_, a pile to which Ravenna, and Rome herself, can supply no rival, is a work which it is hard to believe can belong to any days but those when the city was the dwelling-place of Emperors. Yet scholars are not lacking who argue that it really dates from the early days of the Roman only, from a date earlier than that which some other scholars assign to the first foundations of the colony, from the days of Claudius. The amphitheatre is said to date from the reign of Trajan. The basilica, so strangely changed into a Protestant church by the late King of Prussia, can hardly fail to be the work of Constantine. But, after all, the building at Trier which will most reward careful study is the metropolitan church. At the first glimpse it seems less unique than the Porta Nigra; its distinct outline is massive and picturesque, but it is an outline with which every one who has seen many of the great churches of Germany must be thoroughly familiar. Or, if it has a special character of its own, it seems to come from the blending of the four towers of the main buildings with a fifth, the massive tower of the _Liebfrauenkirche_, which, in the general view, none would fancy to be one of the most perfect and graceful specimens of the early German Gothic of the Thirteenth Century. It is only gradually that the unique character of the building dawns on the inquirer. What at first sight seemed to be a church of the type of Mainz, Worms, and Speyer, and inferior to them in lacking the central tower or cupola, turns out to be something which has no parallel north of the Alps, nor, we may add, south of them either. It is a Roman building of the Sixth Century--none the less Roman for being built under a Frankish king--preserving large portions of a yet earlier building of the Fourth. The capitals of its mighty columns peep out from amid the later work, and fragments of the pillars lie about in the cloister and before the western door, as the like fragments do in the Forum of Trajan. Repaired and enlarged in the Eleventh Century in remarkably close imitation of the original design, the church has gone through a series of additions and recastings, in order to change it into the likeness of an ordinary mediæval German church. Had St. Vital at Ravenna, had St. Sophia itself, stood where the _Dom_ of Trier stands, the same misapplied labour would most likely have been bestowed upon them. But, well pleased as we should have been to have had such a building as this kept to us in its original form, there is no denying that those who enjoy spelling out the changes which a great building has gone through, comparing the statements of the local chroniclers with the evidence of the building itself--a process which, like every other process of discovery, is not without its charm--will find no more attractive problem of the kind than is supplied by the venerable minster of Trier.

_Historical and Architectural Sketches_ (London, 1876).

THE VATICAN.

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.

The hollow of the Janiculum between S. Onofrio and the Monte Mario is believed to have been the site of Etruscan divination.

“Fauni vatesque canebant.”

_Ennius._