Archaeological Journal/Volume 7/On the Transitions, in Various Styles of Art, from the Original Type of Campanili in Italy to the Usual Bell Towers of the Present Time
At a period of criticism, when peculiarities of style in ecclesiastical architecture are most rigidly considered, not only by professional men, but by connoisseurs, it seems desirable to enounce the principles in various stages of the progress of design in Campanili, which it appears to me were discoverable in the opportunity afforded of comparing not only the most striking examples, but also a great number of the more ordinary Italian mediæval bell towers.
If remarkable exceptions to the following classification should appear to exist, they will be found to be more strictly military towers, and generally so named: such as the Torre del Podestà, at Pistoia; the Asinelli and Garibaldi towers at Bologna;—or else they have been converted to their present uses; such is the campanile of the church at Villanuova, formerly part of the feudal tower of the San Bonifazii, and, in like manner, that march-tower between Lombardy and the Venetian States, near the Porta del Consilio at Vicenza, has been perverted into the belfry of a church.
The first class (A.D. 500—750) is only to be found at Ravenna, where the earliest towers may be deemed to have been cylindrical without stringcourses, as seen in S. Apollinare; the next step would be to build them square, also without stringcourses, as in S. Giovanni Evangelista; next came those which were round, but ornamented with stringcourses, as in S. Giovanni Battista; and when square, and similarly ornamented, they served as the type for the next class.
The date of the erection of these towers at Ravenna may be fairly placed after the introduction of the use of bells, which they were evidently intended to contain, and, from their architectural character, not much later than the time of Theodoric. These details are most important where they appear in the construction of the windows; and resemble those arches in the building called the Palace of Theodoric, which spring from capitals, projecting as double corbels in the direction of the thickness of the wall over them, and where they appear in England, as in the churches of Lincolnshire, termed by Professor Whewell, "cushion capitals." The building just named appears to give the only examples of this form of constructive decoration apart from the Campanili, wherein they prevail not only in Italy, but in Germany and France, of which the cathedral at Uzès is an instance.
In this class the windows generally widen in each story, as they each gain nearer to the top of the tower, being usually a single light at bottom, over which is a couplet, and above all a triplet. The style may be called Byzantine.
The second class (A.D. 750—1000), will best be identified by a consideration of the tower of Sta. Francesca Romana, built by Adrian I., which became the model for most of those of the ancient churches of Rome: they are all, like it, square towers of brick, plain at least up to the height of the principal roof, which runs against it, and afterwards with the stories marked by stringcourses. Each story has a greater or less number of small arches, with or without single columns for divisions. Medallions, sometimes of different kinds of marbles, as porphyry or serpentine, sometimes of terracotta, ordinarily coloured bluish-green and glazed, are let into the walls of these towers as ornaments, and at the summit, immediately under the eaves, there is frequently a corbelled projecting canopy, with a niche for the image of the Virgin. Such are the Campanili of Sta. Maria Maggiore, SS. Giovanni and Paolo, S. Eusebio, Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme and Sta. Maria in Cosmedin. Their style may be considered Lombard.
The next class (A.D. 1000—1250) comprehends the greater part of the Romanesque towers of the north of Italy; which present a considerable difference in architectural character. They are marked by a vertical tendency: the stringcourses, usually flat, become secondary features, the arcades are not perforated to the same extent, and the cushion capital is not used. The best examples of this class may be found at Modena, Mantua, Prato, in S. Francesco at Assisi, in S. Nicolo at Pisa, and in S. Antonio at Padua, and were erected even after the year 1250.
When the more pointed style from Germany travelled into Lombardy, the great country of brick, small round cylinders were employed to erect the spires; and such are seen at Bologna, Cesena, Forli, Faenza, Milan, Otricoli, Parma, Pavia, Piacenza, and Verona.
Then, as the art advanced, some very great improvements were introduced: such as giving a slight diminution to the square tower, and surmounting it with the elegant square turret which we admire in the exquisite composition at Cremona; and by arranging, with much skill, the openings, so as to give lightness to the summit, while the lower portion, left imperforated, imparted solidity to the design.
Of the fourth class of the pointed epoch (A.D. 1250 or 1350—1500) but two examples occur to me of sufficient importance to be quoted,—the Campanile of Sta. Maria del Fiore at Florence, and the tower of S. Andrea at Mantua.
The list of the mediæval designs for Campanili may be closed with a fifth class (? 1250—1500),—namely, those of Venice, where all the bell-towers are square, and without external stringcourses, but divided on each side into two or three panels, running uninterruptedly from their base to their top, crowned by a square or octagonal belfry,[1] such as those of S. Maria, Sta. Maria Gloriosa, S. Giacomo del Orto, S. Simeone Grande, &c., in that city.
In the early times, the Campanile, like the Baptistery, was not considered an essential portion of, or embodied with, the church. On the contrary, like the Baptistery again, it was placed at some little distance from the house of worship. Thus it is seen in every place in Italy—where the Lombard or Romanesque style is preserved—and where the Baptistery stands near the cathedral, as at Cremona, at Florence, at Pisa, and elsewhere, the steeple makes the third distinct edifice of the sacred group.
It seems, also, that the same features of design referred above to separate styles, were followed in the Renaissance by the several schools; thus might be formed three other classes (A.D. 1500—1750) :—the revival in the Roman school, the Florentine school of the same date, and the later Venetian style; but as the object of this notice is only to point out the peculiarities of epochs of design, which our own country does not furnish, and thus to supply dates for the ecclesiologist in works of styles older than the period of our Early English art, it is not necessary to go further into detail of these later styles. JOHN W. PAPWORTH.
- ↑ Unless examples can he adduced of earlier dates, this condemns most of the newly-erected English Campanili of this sort, when added to Norman churches.