Coincident with the political re-establish ment of the Western Empire, Carlovingian art endeavored to reconstitute fragments of classic days. Through Cassiodorus' influence ancient manuscripts were transcribed in the monasteries. There was, also, a revival of architecture; and the Italian, Teodulfo, built the basilica of Germigny-des-Pres. Lombardy, being influenced greatly by the Carlovingians, built churches and illuminated manuscripts. The golden altar of Saint Ambrosius, in Milan, the gift of Arch bishop Angilberto II, was the work of Vuol vinio. Completed in 835 A.D.,— in the Carlovin gian era,—it is the chef-d'oeuvre of Italian gold-work.
In various parts of Italy there were, at this time, artistic revivals; but before Italian art assumed its own, peculiar form it was to be influenced by the art of Byzantium that flour ished during the 11th century, whose beauty was similar to that of ancient Greece. After the 11th century art sought to adapt itself to out of-doors, air and light. New expressions ap peared and in the 12th century romantic art was flourishing. Towers now rose like lances from plains teeming with life; castles were built and cities were encompassed by walls and fortifications. • And amidst all these rose the cathedral. 'Rude at first were these expressions of life's activities; but work refined them, and for their erection stones were chiseled and caverns cleft in the mountains of Luni, Verona, Lombardy and Istria. Few were the produc tions that exemplified the value of ancient art, except in Etruria, where various Artinians seemed to have descended from above at Ris torn d'Arezzo:— Wiligelmo and Nicola deco rated the cathedrals of Emilia, borrowing ideas and methods from sarcophagi and classic mar bles. Nicola established a lasting style upon the Italo-Greek vases of Apulia, and Syracuse took the columns of the Athenian temples as models for her Christian edifices.
In the soul of Romanesque art ancient art survives; there remain in it traces of triumphal arches, thermae, theatres, forums, reflections of provincial rustic Roman forms, the legionaries, the sarcophagi of the Roman decadence (Bassi tempi) and primitive Christians; but the aspect of the fine arts changes and varies, owing to the tendency of the indigenous Latin elements to resolve themselves into national forms, just as the longue d'oc and longue &oil are different from the language del bel paese dove it si suona. From the ancient stem of Roman art new sprouts appeared wherever the standards of the Roman legions had once passed. Of the edi
fices erected in the Romanesque period few remnants exist. The houses were usually of wood, thatched with matting and straw. Not until the 12th century were laws enacted for roof-construction, in order to prevent fires. In the 13th century palaces were built in the shadow of the towers :— palaces of Reason, palaces of the Podesti and of the Capitano. We still find in Mantua, Cremona, Piacenza, Milan, Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Padua, Vicenr. and Monza some of these so-called Palaces-of the-People, or of the Commune, of the Public, of Reason, of the Consuls, of the Prmorium or of the Broletto. The timidity and the fe rocity of medimval man are shown in the jux taposition of humble homes nestling under the grim towers of these palaces, as if for protec tion and preparedness against attack. In the 12th century when civil discords were raging, the cities of Lombardy so bristled with these towers that °Pavia, the towered) became espe cially famous. The very high tower erected at Bologna in the beginning of the 12th century by Gherardo Asinelli and that erected about the same time in the vicinity, near the house of Garizendi, are both famous. Meanwhile, upon the summits of the Apennine hills many cas. ties arose; • and chronicles tell of continual in cendiary fires and destructive assaults there upon. The towers of the gates and fortifica tions were crowned with battlements in which were loopholes, the gates themselves being for tified barbicans. The 13th century added draw bridges. From tower to tower men fought as from grappling warships; the vanquished one was razed to the ground. There was a marked advance in the development of Romanesque architecture in Piedmont and Montferrato dur ing the 11th and 12th centuries. Here, as in Liguria, French forms were introduced. The oldest example of the new style in Lombardy is the church of Saint Ambrosius, dating from the of the 12th century. Then in Pavia arose San Michele, a stimulus for the revival of architecture; and in Modena the cathedral, whose architect was Lanfranco. Subsequently arose the cathedrals of Cremona, Piacenza. Ferrara and Verona; the abbeys of Nonantola, San Benedetto di Polirone and San Zene di Verona. Several of these structures ultimately lost their primitive form; but traces Of their ancient common origin were not lacking.