ITALIAN ROMANESQUE, TENTH TO TWELFTH CENTURY.
The political relations of Italy were such that its art diverged in more directions than did that of Germany. In describing Byzantine and "Aloorish art we have noticed that both held sway in the territories of the Eastern Roman empire until the twelfth century, and even longer. We have seen that Venice built St. Mark's Church in Byzantine style, and that its other buildings also followed Oriental tendencies. But Rome held fast to the old basilica, the superficies of which decreased, while, owing to Northern influences, the proportion of height became greater.
Old Rome had even in the fourth century been compelled to give up a portion of its magnificent structures for the erection of new edifices, and later on history has more to tell of subversion than of construction. The ruins offered materials so rich and so abundant that they, more than the influence of those ancient structures which yet stood erect, impeded Rome's progress; so that from the ninth to the twelfth century, or even longer, though the metropolis of the Church, she did not advance a single independent architectonic idea in church-construction. Even the palaces were but patchwork formed of antique fragments, except for the introduction of the element of fortification, which antique art had not cared to admit into the streets of the city, but had confined to its walls. Examples of this barbarous patchwork are the so-called " House of Pi late " and a palace of Nicolas the Great, son of Crescentius, who was beheaded in 99S.
The Roman basilicas of the twelfth century still show the combination of the architrave with the range of columns, as in the more modern parts of San Lorenzo, in San Crisogono (Ir28), and in Sta. Maria in Trastevere (1139). SS. Vincenzo ed Anastasio is a sufficiently rude pillar-basilica. Novel, but erected under influence, is a series of brilliantly-deco rated and ornately-detailed works of small area which are ascribed to the artist-family of the Cosmati. Here belong the transepts of S. Paolo (pt. 27, Jig. 5) and S. Giovanni in Laterano, together with ambones, tabernacles, etc., in S. Lorenzo, S. Clemente, Sta. Maria in Cosmedin,
and other churches.
The ArchilecIzere of c,pperand Mledddie Italy displayed a more independ ent development, for here there was not that abundance of antique monu ments awaiting the spoiler nor that uninterrupted tradition which swayed Rome. Two factors were important in the development of Italian archi tecture. One was the Empire, whose rule was acknowledged hs well here as in Germany, although conflicting interests manifested themselves here more defiantly than in the native land of the emperors. The Empire established relations with the North which could not remain without influence upon the development of Architecture. Another still more essential factor was the circumstance that it was neither the emperors nor the princes, nor yet princely bishops, who erected the Italian architectural monuments, but powerful cities which had at that period an independence and a political influence that the most important German cities were only beginning to acquire. In Italy the cities were already the centres of culture—not because of the splendor of a bishopric or of a princely court, but because of the wealth, intelligence, refinement, and artistic taste of their citizens.
In Italy as well as in Germany the church-architecture, being the real exponent of architectonic ideals, had retained the plan of the basilica together with smaller circular structures. The churches are mostly edifices with two aisles and a more elevated nave, the walls of which latter rest on columned arcades. Along with vaulting, piers came from the North— partly from Germany, and partly from France. What essentially distin guishes Italian churches from the German is the greater freedom of the spaces and the lack of towers in actual combination with the church itself. There is in the German architecture of that period, in the elevated, majes tic calm and solemn severity which are so harmoniously combined into a characteristic whole, something of the ascetic and monkish to which the freer ways of Italy were opposed, and which is only realized in individual works that were evidently erected under Northern influence.