In Florence the Medici led the way, the Strozzi following them close. Then all the other old families, Guicciardini, Rinuccini, Antinori, Borghini, etc., also called in the masters of the Florentine Guild to make them palaces. Cronaca, Sangallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, all names whose ancestors were well known at either Siena, Orvieto, or in Lombardy, made the plans and directed the works. And one who compares these palaces one with another, cannot but confess that different as were the hands that fashioned them, one type and one style shows through them all, which is to say that the architects were all brethren of the same guild, and had received the same training. The Florentine palace bore on its face the imprint of its race; you can trace it gradually from the Brolio of Lombard times, through the mediæval fortress, and the republican public palace. Here in the Riccardi and Strozzi, the Pitti and Guadagni Palaces, is the same solidity of architecture; but instead of the smooth hewn blocks, the huge stones are left rough, alla rustica.[197] Here are the same shaped windows, enlarged and beautified with tracery and mullion in place of the ancient column, but directly derived from the older form. Here is the ancient crown of Lombard archlets diminished into a rich cornice; it is only in the older buildings that the battlements are seen above, as in the Palazzo Ferroni.

In the interior the cortile, with its arched and pillared loggie around it, holds its own in the centre of the building. There is little change of form between the Court of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299 and the Riccardi, Strozzi, and a score of other private palaces of the fifteenth century. The loggia, which was such an important feature in the private house of the Republic, is now either relegated to the garden front or the upper storey, where it is a delight to the family itself, and is no longer the public meeting-place. This is a difference entirely depending on a changed state of society.

As in Florence, so it was in Milan, Venice, and other cities where Masonic lodges were established in the great church-building era. The nobles employed the builders whose hands were craving for work. And what palaces they built, and what a wealth of rich Gothic decoration they lavished on them! We are indebted for most of the Venetian Gothic palaces to the Buoni and Lombardi families, whose course we have traced in the chapter on Venice. The Renaissance buildings belong chiefly to the members of the Florentine Lodge, such as Sansovino and San Michele, who went to Venice in the sixteenth century.

At Rome, where the Pope's rule was absolute, there was less palace-building, but the Lombard Guild was employed greatly in their old branch of fortress and bridge building. The Masters Bartolommeo and Bertrando of Como were engaged by Pope Pius II. to strengthen the fortifications of S. Angelo. Maestro Antonio of Como built the Ponte Lucano, Maestro Antonio da Castiglione the Ponte Mammolo and Ponte Molle. Maestro Manfredo da Como was commissioned by Pius II. to build a new fortress on the heights of Tivoli to defend the valley of the Anio from incursions on the Abruzzi side. The following entries from the registers prove Maestro Manfredo's employment there—

"1461. August 12. Twenty-five ducats given to the treasurer by command of his Holiness, to be paid to Maestro Manfred the Lombard, to begin the castle of Tivoli (roccha di Tiboli)."

"1462. May 14. To Maestro Manfredino, builder, 200 gold florins on account of the works at the fortress of Tivoli."

"1462. October 6. 400 ducats di camera to Master Manfredino the Lombard, who works at the castle of Tivoli."[198]

Master Manfred with Paolo da Campagnano, both Comacines, built the Ponte Sisto, which has been erroneously attributed to Baccio Pontelli.

Pope Sixtus IV. employed Giovanni di Dolci to build the citadel of Civita Vecchia, which Baccio Pontelli finished after Giovanni's death. Antonio di Giovanni da Canobbio built the fort at Zolfanella in the same reign, while Francesco di Pietro da Triviago, Francesco da Como, and Giorgio Lombardo were joint architects of the castle at Santa Marmella. So we see that nearly all the papal forts were the work of Lombards connected with the Roman Lodge. In their own native hills the Lombards were doing similar works.

In A.D. 1500 Maestro Jacopo Dagurro da Bissone, who was a most able engineer, constructed a splendid viaduct, forty-eight metres long, over the Natisone, among the rocks and beetling cliffs of Civitale in Friuli.

BOOK IV
ITALIAN-GOTHIC, AND RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTS

CHAPTER I
THE SECESSION OF THE PAINTERS

Painting is not generally supposed to be connected in any great degree with architecture: indeed it has now become a distinctly independent art. In the Middle Ages I believe the case was different. The great primitive Comacine Guild seems to have embraced all the decorative arts, though especially sculpture, as integral branches of architecture. There are indisputable proofs of the many-sided nature of the training in a Comacine laborerium. There were Magistri insigneriorum, or Master architects; Magistri lapidum, or sculptors, and Magistri lignorum, or master carpenters. These latter seem in old times to have been the designers of scaffoldings and makers of beams for roofing; wood-carvers and inlayers were called Maestri d'intaglio. Then there were certainly ironworkers and masters in metal, and fresco-painters, who also attained to the rank of Master. But no one branch was entirely separate from the others, until the fourteenth century, when the painters' companies were founded. We find the same man building, designing, sculpturing, painting, and even working in gold or iron, and seeming equally good in all styles, so that the training of the laborerium must have been especially comprehensive.

The reason appears to be that all the fine arts—painting, sculpture and metal-working—were considered by the Comacines as indispensable handmaids to architecture, and no builder was in their eyes fit to be a Master till he could not only erect his edifice, but adorn it. Their symbolic church was to them a kind of Bible, figuring all the points of creeds, but the building itself was but the paper and binding of the Bible; the sculptor put the frontispiece which explained its inner meaning, and the mosaicist and fresco-painter added as it were the letter-press and illustrations. The churches of Ravenna show how full and rich was this inner illustration, how Christ and the Apostles, angels and prophets, saints and martyrs, have shone on those walls, a beautiful Bible picture-book for ages. That this was the light in which the early Christians regarded their churches is plain from many passages in the early Fathers. St. Basil (A.D. 379) in preaching, says—"Rise up, now, I pray you, ye celebrated painters of the good deeds of this army. Make glorious by your art the mutilated images of their leader. With colours laid on by your cunning, make illustrious the crowned martyr, by me too feebly pictured. I retire vanquished before you in your painting of the excellences of the martyr, etc. etc."[199]

Here is the description of a Christian shrine by St. Gregory of Nyssa (fourth century)—"Whoso cometh unto some spot like this, where there is a monument of the just and a holy relic, his soul is gladdened by the magnificence of what he beholds, seeing a house as God's temple elaborated most gloriously, both in the magnitude of the structure, and the beauty of the surrounding ornament. There the artificer has fashioned wood into the shape of animals; and the stone-cutter has polished the slabs to the smoothness of silver; and the painter has introduced the flowers of his art, depicting and imaging the constancy of the martyrs, their resistance, their torments, the savage forms of their tyrants, their outrages, the blazing furnace and the most blessed end of the champion; the representation of Christ in human form presiding over the contest—all these things as it were in a book gifted with speech; shaping for us by means of colours, has he cunningly discoursed to us of the martyr's struggles, has made this temple glorious as some brilliant fertile mead. For the silent tracery on the walls has the art to discourse, and to aid most powerfully. And he who has arranged the mosaics has made this pavement on which we tread equal to a history." (From Father Mulroody's translation, in San Clemente, pp. 34, 35. St. Gregory wrote before A.D. 395.[200])

No doubt the richness of colour in these Byzantine mosaics inspired the taste for pictorial embellishment in the interiors of buildings, and the Comacines, not having Greek mosaicists at command, found an easier and quicker method of writing their scriptures on their walls—i.e. fresco. The first mention of frescoes is of those in the palace of Theodolinda, where her Lombards were portrayed on the walls. Several Lombard churches also retain signs of having been frescoed.

But if one desires to see what the early Christian Comacine could do in fresco, let him go to that interesting Roman church of San Clemente, where some excavations made in 1857 revealed the ancient fourth-century Basilica, almost complete under the present one, which dates from about the twelfth century. This ancient church was built by St. Clement, the third bishop of Rome, and in it Gregory the Great read his thirty-second and thirty-eighth homilies. From the subterranean remains, with their grand ancient marble pillars and the huge semi-circle of the tribune, masked and built in though they are by the foundations of the upper church, we judge that it was a far finer building than the one above. Its walls were moreover covered with frescoes, some of which are precisely similar in style to the ones at S. Piero a Grado, also said to date before the tenth century. The frescoes, which have been discovered on the subterranean walls, are, as will be seen by our illustrations of them, in three rows, which appear to be of three different eras—two certainly. The upper band of saints and martyrs are distinctly Byzantine in style, drawing, and colouring. They show the usual rows of immobile saints and martyrs in set robes with jewelled borders, which are seen in the mosaics of the Ravenna churches. These would, I believe, date from the fourth-century church, when the Roman builders were employing Byzantine decoration. The second row beneath this is of the more naturalistic Comacine school, and would probably date from Pope Hadrian's restoration in the eighth century. In these and the frescoes of S. Piero a Grado one gets the veritable link between the conventional Byzantine school and the naturalistic Renaissance in Tuscany. Here are no longer icons or abstract images of saints; the people are no longer rigid and set, but are full of action and expression, though both are imperfectly expressed. They are, in fact, real persons and their stories. The life of St. Clement is all told in scenes. There are even portraits of living people, such as Beno di Rapizo and his wife Maria, who "for love of the blessed Clement" caused the frescoes to be painted. Nor are their children, the boy Clement (puerulus Clemens) and little Atilia his sister, forgotten. They are veritable portraits, for the face of Beno in two different scenes is identical. The colouring, too, is unlike the Byzantine saints above. Those are rich with solid heavy tints; these are lighter, and more in the style of the early Sienese or Tuscan ones. Beneath this row of scenes are ornamental friezes, in which one recognizes Roman classical forms naturalized into floriated scrolls, and under these a line of panelling in fresco. One panel appears to be copied from the mosaic of the ceiling at the circular church of Sta. Costanza; another is suggestive of the emblematic circles and signs of the Catacombs. A third, the most interesting of all, is the one commemorating the building of the church to which we have before referred. Here stands Sisinius, and whether he be the hero of St. Clement's miracle, as Father Mulroody asserts, or not, he is certainly a Master architect standing in his toga, and wearing a Freemason's apron under it, directing his men, Albertus, Cosma, and Carvoncelle, in the moving of a column. The figures in this are so much more rude and out of drawing than the ones above, that they scarcely would seem to be by the same hands. I account for it by the fact that in representing a natural sketch from real life, the artist had no traditionary models to guide him, as he had for his saints and virgins, and consequently he found it difficult to depict his fellow-workmen in complicated attitudes. The art of the Catacombs has no affinity with these frescoes, which are of a more free and natural style, and the true ancestors of the Tuscan school of fresco-painting.

We might place these as the earliest revival of nature after the Byzantine conventional influence was withdrawn; the next link is to be seen in the church of S. Piero a Grado, three miles from Pisa, where are extant by far the finest specimens of Comacine fresco-painting. The church, which I have described in the chapter on the Carlovingian era, was built soon after the time of Pope Leo III. (795-816). The frescoes are said to date before A.D. 1000. Like those of St. Clement they are not Byzantine, and yet, though full of life and action, they have an Eastern air; they are not like the later Tuscan art, the colouring being lighter and the drawing of the figures different. The prevailing tint is a beautiful ethereal pale green, which is like nothing in Tuscan art, though Peruzzi produced a tint something like it in the sixteenth century. Standing at one end of the church and looking down the nave, one could imagine a Ravenna church, with its mosaics softened and toned down into frescoes. They are a valuable proof that among the Comacine Masters pictorial decoration was considered an integral part of a building. They told the articles of their creed in their sculptures outside, but they wrote the history of the church on the walls inside. The story of the church in the abstract is told in the line of popes above the arches, ending at Leo III.; the story of this church in particular is told in large scenes above them. Here is the church as it looked when built, and here is the ship of St. Peter cast ashore at Grado, and his preaching and baptizing, imprisonment, etc. In fact all his life still glows, though fading out on the south wall. The north wall is given to his death and miracles. Here is his crucifixion, near an obelisk on the Janicular Hill, and the beheading of his fellow-martyr St. Paul at the Tre Fontane, with the mysterious blood-red bird that drank his blood. Another scene shows the Pope Symmachus (A.D. 498) disinterring the bodies of the two Saints, and his vow of building S. John Lateran, and the last scene shows his consecration of that church. It is interesting to mark the Comacine influence in the drawing. The towers are Lombard towers, and the buildings all have round apses. The people who are not ecclesiastic or saints seem to be Longobardic, with reddish tunics, leather-thonged sandals, and long hair. As for the lions, which lie waiting before the cross of St. Peter, they are in the precise form of the crouching lions beneath a Comacine arch. The drawing of other beasts shows that the artists were less accustomed to them than to their traditional lions.

If it be true that these frescoes, like the ones beneath San Clemente, were really of the ninth or tenth centuries, and if they were by native artists, this would place Pisa far before Siena in the history of art, and Merzario would be wrong when he asserts that there was no school of art in Pisa before the cathedral was begun. The state of art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries strongly inclines me to place these Byzantino-naturalistic paintings, according to legend, in the ninth century—that is, before the fall of art, which took place during the times of German invasion and feudal oppression after Charlemagne.

Certainly Cimabue, who is called the "Father of Tuscan Art," could not have painted them, though in the revival of his time he may have studied them, as earlier works of his guild, for we have documental evidence of his connection as a Magister with the Pisan Lodge. The first great painter of that lodge was Giunta di Pisa, sometimes written Magister Juncte. He was the son of a still older painter, Guidotto dal Colle, who was a Master in A.D. 1202, and lived till 1255.[201] We give a facsimile of an old print showing two of his paintings, one a figure from the fall of Simon Magus, in the church of St. Francis at Assisi; another a St. John from an ancient crucifix in S. M. degli Angeli at Assisi. The Byzantine style in Cimabue's painting may be traced to the influence of Giunta, of whom an ancient writer, Padre Angeli, when speaking of his paintings at Assisi, says—"that though his teachers were Greeks, yet he learned his art in Italy, about A.D. 1210."[202] This is a proof of the connection of Eastern artists with the Western architects.

Giunta, who became a Magister in 1210, preceded Giotto by a century, in the frescoes of St. Francis of Assisi, where among other things he painted a crucifix with Frate Elias kneeling at the foot. Brother Elias was a scholar of St. Francis, and contemporary with Giunta himself, who has inscribed on his crucifix—

Morrona has reproduced, by a copper engraving, a veritable work of Giunta's—a crucifix with the Holy Father above, and the Madonna and St. John at the sides, which was for many years left in the smoke of the kitchen of the Monastery of St. Anna at Pisa. There is a decided effort to overcome the stiffness of his first Byzantine teachers, and a good deal of lifelike expression in the smaller figures. The same leaning toward nature is visible in the figures of his Fall of Simon Magus at Assisi. Del Valle and Morrona, judging by evidences of style, assert that Giunta di Pisa was the master of Cimabue. But as Giunta graduated as Magister in 1210, and Cimabue was not born till 1240, this does not seem possible. It is more likely, in regard to time, that Guido of Siena, painter of the famous Madonna in San Domenico, may have learned something of Giunta; but as all three of these primary Masters, each of whom became the head of the painting school in his own lodge, were members of the great guild, the source of instruction might have been common to all, and moreover that source must have been originally or partly Byzantine.

While mentioning that Giunta learned of Greek masters in Italy, we may note that Vasari, à propos of Cimabue, tells a story of the Florentines calling in Greek masters to teach painting there. The assertion has been much derided by modern authors, but it might contain a grain of truth after all. Taking it with the fact (which becomes impressed on us the more we study early Comacine churches) that the architecture is Roman, and the ornamentation shows a Greek influence naturalized, we get at what may be the truth; that the Byzantine brethren who joined the guild after the edict of Leo the Isaurian, still had their descendants in it, among the ranks of the painters, as the Campionese and Buoni families had for centuries theirs among the architects. This would account for Andrea Tafi working, together with Apollonius the Greek, at the mosaics in the tribune of the Florentine Baptistery.[203]

Del Migliore, in his Aggiunte to Vasari's Lives, says that in a contract dated 1297 he read "Magister Apollonius pictor Florentinus." Here we get one of the very Greek masters Vasari has been derided for mentioning, and he is certainly connected with the Masonic lodge.

With a common origin, each lodge nevertheless developed its own distinct style, yet so much was general to the whole guild, that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries one spirit seemed to permeate them all, and only experts can tell a Lorenzetti from a Memmi, or a Giotto from a Spinello Aretino. We find them working now in one lodge, now in another. Cimabue, though his principal work was in Florence where his school was, is found working in the Pisan Lodge in 1301.

The archives of the Duomo there have three documents of that year referring to him. One proves the payment of X solidi II libr. a day to "Magister Cimabue" and his famulus (apprentice) for their work there. Who knows whether the famulus may not have been young Giotto, or Joctus, as he is written in old deeds!

The second paper is Cimabue's receipt for the payment by the Lord operaio (Dominus operarius) for a figure of St. John, painted for that guild (Magiestatem).

The third seems to be the payment for a coloured glass window which had been painted on glass by Baccio, son of Jovenchi of Milan, from Magister Cimabue's design.[204]

Cimabue's school in Florence must have prospered greatly. A long list of names of painters between 1294 and 1296, who are qualified and who agree to teach their art in Florence, may be made from an ancient law register kept at that date by the notary Ser Matteo Biliotti, which is preserved in the general archives of Contracts in Florence.[205] Here we find several of the Masters trained at Pisa, such as Lapo de Cambio, Lapo di Beliotto, Lapo di Taldo, Corso di Buono, Andrea di Cante, Grifo di Tancredi, Tura di Ricovero, Vanni di Rinuccio, Michele di Pino, Ranuccio di Bogolo, Guiduccio di Maso, Cresta di Piero, Bindaccio di Bruno, Guccio di Lippo, Bertino della Marra, Rossello e Scalore di Lettieri, Dino and Lippo Benivieni, Asinello d'Alberto, Lapo di Compagno, called Scartapecchia, Vanuccio di Duccio, and Bruno di Giovanni, the companion of Buffalmacco and Calandrino, of whom Vasari tells such funny stories.

Another act, dated 1282, is a contract by which Azzo, son of the late Mazzetto painter, of the parish of S. Tommaso, engaged to teach his art for six years to Vanni di Bruno; probably Giovanni the father of Bruno mentioned above.

Rossello di Lottieri was the great-grandfather of Cosimo Rosselli. Vanuccio was the son of the famous Duccio of the Sienese Lodge. Indeed I think we could find, by close investigation, that most of these Magistri pittori were connected with one or other of the Tuscan Lodges.

Painters abounded in the guild at this era. There was Tommaso de Mutina (Modena) whose Madonna painted in 1297 is in the Gallery at Vienna. There was Margaritone of Arezzo (1216-1293), a great tre-cento painter of Madonnas and crucifixes, whose works are yet preserved in Florence, London, Siena, etc. He generally signed them "Margarit . . . de Aretio pingebat." A portrait of St. Francis, however, in the Capuchin Convent at Sinigaglia, is inscribed "Margaritonis devotio me fec. . ." A Madonna enthroned in the church at Monte San Savino is not only signed but dated 1284. Guido of Siena and Margaritone were the leaders of that flourishing school at Siena which culminated in Spinello Aretino and the Lorenzetti, one of whom, Lorenzo Monaco, rivalled our Fra Angelico.

Various painters are found in Pisa up to the fourteenth century, artistic descendants from the school of Giunta. Signor Morrona (Pisa Illustrata nelle Arti del Disegno, vol. ii. p. 154) gives a list of Giunta's scholars. There are Bonaventura and Apparecchiato da Lucca, Dato Pisano, Vincino da Pistoja, a list which proves the affinity between all the Tuscan schools. A little later in 1321 we find a certain Vicino of Pisa as Gaddo Gaddi's scholar in Florence, where he finished his master's mosaics in the Baptistery. Ciampi has written a long dissertation to prove that Vicino of Pisa ought to be Vincino of Pistoja, because he has found the latter name in some documents. But as his documents refer to paintings done by Vincino of Pistoja in 1290, and the mosaics of Vicino and Gaddi date 1321, it seems more probable they were really two different men—one, the Pistojan, being the scholar of Giunta at Pisa mentioned above; the other, the Pisan, a scholar of Gaddi in Florence somewhat later. In 1302 we find painters from all the lodges assembled in Pisa. Here are Magister Franciscus, painter from S. Simone, named as a Magister of the highest rank. He works with his son Victorius, and his apprentice Sandruccio. Here are Lapo of Florence, Benozzo Gozzoli,[206] and "Michaelis the painter"; Duccio and Tura of Siena, painters; and Datus Pictor, who might be that Dato Pisano mentioned as a scholar of Giunta.[207]

The books of the Duomo of Pisa contain among other things an entry which indicates the use of oil-painting long before the time of Antonello de Messina. It is nothing less than the payment by the Provveditore of the Opera for 29 lbs. of turpentine, 104 lbs. of linseed oil at 28 denari per lb., and 43 lbs. of varnish, all of which were for the use of the painters of the operam Magiestatis. The entry is dated 1301, and is No. 26 in the books of the Provveditore of the Opera at Pisa in the year MCCCI. "Johannes Orlandi sua sponte dixit se habuisse ad Operario libras duas den. pis. pro pretio libre viginti novem trementine operate adoreram Magiestatis.

"Libras quinquaginta quatuor, et solidos decem et octo den. pisanorum minutorum pro pretio centinarum quatuor olei linseminis ad operaio Magiestatis, et aliarum figurarium que fiunt in majori Ecclesia, ad rationem denariorum XXVIII pro qualibet libra."

Upechinus Pictor[208] pro libris quadraginta tribus vernicis emptis Comunis an. 1303, is named as a painter of Pisa.

These entries clearly prove what a large part the painters took in the work of the Masonic brotherhood, and how the frescoing of the wall was a component part of a Comacine church, and carried on, like their building, by the joint labour of many Masters. If proof of this is wanting, go where you will in Italy, and if you can find any church that has a wall of its original early Christian or mediæval building remaining, of any age between the fourth and the fourteenth century, scratch that wall, and you will find frescoes have been there. For instance, in Santa Croce, and San Miniato at Florence, and at Fiesole, wherever the restorer's plaster has been taken off, precious works of the old Masters have come to light. But in all these we have to imagine what a mediæval church was like from the fragments that remain: to see the real Comacine church of the twelfth or thirteenth century, one must go to the ancient city of San Gimignano with its many towers, where they remain untouched by the restorer, and unwhitewashed by the seventeenth-century destroyer. There the whole churches, every inch of them, are covered with scripture or saintly story in glowing colours. Our illustration shows one by Barna of Siena before the painters seceded.

The Spanish chapel at S. Maria Novella is another unspoiled and entire specimen of the profuse use of fresco by the guild. Most of these churches were decorated by fresco artists who belonged to the Masonic Guild before the secession of the painters, and being so, it is probable that they worked together, as the architectural Masters were accustomed to do, and this would account for the difficulty of distinguishing in the Spanish chapel between the work of the Memmi and that of the Lorenzetti, who certainly worked together at Siena, and probably also in Florence. Cimabue and Giotto were undoubtedly Magistri of the Masonic Guild, for both of them were builders as well as painters, and were employed together with other Masters.

When Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing his sheep, he took him into his school in the lodge, he being then a qualified Master. But the boy must have passed his novitiate, not only in Magister Cimabue's own atelier, but also in the wider teaching of the school and laborerium, or he would never have got the commission to build the tower, nor the power to sculpture his "Hymn of Labour" around it.

This was the era when pictorial art was freeing its wings from the shackles of tradition and set conventionalism, and from the bondage of working under the rule of another art like architecture. The painters, especially when the oil process was invented, saw a new and independent career open before them, and struck for freedom. The Sienese led the way. In 1355 they seceded from the Masonic Guild, and even forsook their four crowned Saints; inaugurating their own company under the banner and protection of St. Luke. They called it L' Arte de' Pittori Senesi. In reading their laws[209] one cannot but recognize that they were framed on the same lines as those of the Masonic Guild, the chief changes being the difference of patron saint, and the omission of some technical rules relating especially to architecture.

The names of the artists forming this first school of painting are sufficient proof of their former connection with the Comacine Guild. Here is Francesco di Vannuccio, who was called in a council of the Opera in 1356, and Lando di Stefano di Meo, whose name appears first in the Masonic Guild, and then among the painters; Andrea di Vanni, whose father and ancestors had been in it, and who in 1318 was himself working in the Duomo of Siena with his father, where he is entered in the books as Andreuccio (poor little Andrea) di Vanni. There are sundry other members of the Vanni family, some of whom were on the lists of the Masonic Guild before they are found as painters. Then there was Bartolo, son of Magister Fredi, with his son Andrea and grandson Giorgio. Bartolo must have been an old man at this time, so that his frescoes at S. Gimignano would have been done before the painters seceded. We find also Andrea and Benedetto di Bindo in 1363 inscribed in the roll of "Magistri lapidum," and in 1389 in that of the painters; several of their family have also enrolled themselves there. This Magister Bindo was a Lombard from Val D'Orcia; other Comacine names are there also, such as Domenico di Valtellino, and Cristofano di Chosona (Cossogna, near Pallanza).

I believe that after this secession the churches were no longer so entirely decorated with frescoes. Altar-pieces, introduced by Giotto and Lorenzo Monaco, partially took their place.

In 1386 the painters of the Florentine Lodge followed the example of their confrères at Siena, and put themselves also under the protection of St. Luke. They called themselves the Confraternità dei Pittori. The meeting-place of this Confraternity was in the old church of S. Matteo, now no more. Their first company lasted till the time of Cosimo I., who patronized it, and superintended its reorganization in 1562.

In Medicean times great fêtes were held on St. Luke's Day, by the Academy, and all the best pictures in Florence were hung in the cloisters of the Servite monks.

By the time of the Grand Dukes the Masonic Guild seems to have decayed. Owing to the new painting, sculpture, and gold-working companies, which had freed themselves from the old organization; and the secularizing of art which followed from these causes, and from the diminished zeal for church-building, the Freemasons must have dwindled away, and the guild died a natural death. Cosimo again revived and united the three sister branches of Art—Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting—in his Accademia delle Belle Arti, where they remain to this day. The ensign of the Academy was a group of three wreaths, bay, olive, and oak, with the motto—"Levan di terra al ciel nostro intelletto."

Lorenzo il Magnifico had paved the way to the revival of sculpture by the school he started in his gardens. The Academy has now a fine building for itself, and a very interesting collection of paintings, chiefly of the early schools.

Here we will leave the painters, who no longer have any connection with the great Masonic Guild. That fraternity, nevertheless, forms the link of connection between the old classic art and the Renaissance in painting, as in all the other branches. Without it we should have had no grand frescoes by Giotto, the Lorenzetti, the Memmi, and the Gaddi, for the lodges at Siena and Florence trained their art; and it is a certain fact that after the secession of the painters, the glorious days of fresco-painting were over. The painters no longer worked together to beautify every inch of the churches built by the brotherhood, but they painted for themselves, for personal fame and money. Madonnas, votive pictures, and portraits multiplied: the commission and the patron ruled the art. Imagination and inspiration rarely dominated, except in rare cases like Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolommeo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, and other of the greatest Masters who stand forth from the crowd of artists, endowed with true genius.

CHAPTER II
THE SIENA AND ORVIETO LODGES

THE SIENESE SCHOOL

At first sight it would not appear that the Italian-Gothic cathedrals at Siena and Orvieto could have much to do with the ancient Comacine church of S. Michele at Pavia, but they are undoubtedly its hereditary descendants, and in great part the work of Comacine architects.

Documents prove that a Lombard Guild, with schola, laborerium, and Opera, existed in Siena long before A.D. 1400. Legend, or rather tradition, says that this lodge began in Longobardic days, when the first Sienese Duomo was built by a certain Ava, descendant of Iselfred, a Longobardic prince. This Ava had, before going to Siena, caused a church (Aula Santa) to be erected "on an island near Borgonuovo by the lake" (Insula prope Borgonuovo juxta lacus). This must be the Comacine island on the lake near Como-nuovo, which was also called Borgonuovo.[212] It is also said that in 1180 Pope Alexander III. went to Siena, of which city he was a native, to consecrate the new Basilica.[213]

Here we have the first link of the Comacine Guild with Siena, and I think it offers an explanation of the early existence of the Sienese school of painting.

The Longobardic Masonic lodge seems to have been the only one of the kind then in Siena, and it held on for almost a century after the secession of the painters in A.D. 1355.

By that time so many native architects and sculptors had been trained that there were two distinct parties in the guild, and the Sienese clique began to feel the need of independent power. In 1441 a schism was made, the Sienese sculptors forming a branch of their own, called L'arte dei maestri di pietra, Senese, which had its laws and regulations in due form. The same schism had taken place in Venice in 1307, when the Arte de taglia pietre was formed, and a similar one took place later in Florence. The Sienese split was not very satisfactory, for on December 5, 1473, we find they called a meeting of the two guilds, to further the means of working in better accord with each other. The following compact was made—

(1) That all Masters, Lombard or Sienese, should pay ten soldi for right of entry on employment.

(2) That all, equally, should pay five soldi a year for the festa of the Santi Quattro; and that a Lombard camarlengo should be chosen to work together with the Sienese one, to collect these and other moneys; that the camarlengo should hold no more in hand than twenty-five soldi; all money above that to be immediately invested.

(3) That the Lombard camarlengo shall be subject to the same laws and rules and fines as the Sienese one.

(4) That the garzoni (novices or pupils) shall have no claims to receive pay, but manual labourers shall be paid three soldi a year each by the Masters employing them, as says the statute.

(5) That when it is necessary to "make a collection," the Lombard Masters shall be obliged to attend, equally with the citizens, and under the same penalties, as by the statute. Here follow the names of the contracting parties, as inscribed in the original report of the meeting.[214]

Et primo, nomina Magistrorum Senensium.

• Magister Laurentius Petri
• M. Urbanus Petri
• M. Franciscus Ducci
• M. Dominicus Andreae
• M. Petrus Zantebuoni
• M. Joannes
• M. Vitus Marci
• M. Marianus Sani
• M. Tullius magistri Marci
• M. Mannus Antonii
• M. Galganus Ioannis
• M. Iulianus Iacobi
• M. Iacobus Ioannis
• M. Antonius Ghini
• M. Dominicus Cambii
• M. Aloysius Ruggieri
• M. Franciscus Andreae
• M. Petrus Antonii

Sequntur nomina Magistrorum Lombardorum.

• Magister Guglielmus Joannis de Sanvito
• M. Franciscus Christophori de Cumo (Como)
• M. Joannes Guglielmi de Sanvito (son of No. 1)
• M. Stephanus Fidelis de Voltolina (Valtellina)
• M. Adamus Ioannis de Thori
• M. Ioannes Iacobi de Sanvito
• M. Alexus Ioannis de Sanvito (his son)
• M. Martinus Martii de Sanvito
• M. Ioannes Talentine de Sanvito
• M. Iacobus Dominici de Lamone
• M. Ioannes Iacobi de Lamone (his son)
• M. Guglielmus Antonii de Sanvito
• M. Paulus Thomae de Charazza
• M. Antonius Ioannis de Ponte
• M. Iacobus Petri de Condupino
• M. Antonius magistri Alberti de Lamone
• M. Ioannes Francisci de Lamone
• M. Ioannes de Ponte
• M. Guglielmus Andreae de Sanvito

Acta fuerunt, etc.

But even this did not succeed. On January 6, 1512, we find the Sienese Lodge making a petition to the Signoria to the effect that whereas in ancient times the brethren of the Masonic Guild were always accustomed to hold their meetings and unite for worship in their own chapel of the Santi Quattro in the cathedral, the "foreign" builders being now separated from that chapter (lodge), all the money which used to be collected to endow that chapel, is now collected among themselves, and sent to Lombardy, without consulting the said chapter (capitudine), "to the grave injury and shame of our city, and of the said chapel," "thus we pray of your Signoria that you will command that the said lodge shall meet according to the ancient rules of the order, under pain of penalties named in the ancient Breve ... the which shall be useful and honourable to our city and to the said chapel."[215] By this we realize that the Lombard Masters were not only the earliest guild of architects at Siena, but also the most powerful, as the Sienese branch could not even keep up the chapel of their patron saint without their aid.

It may be interesting to glance over the headings of the statutes of the Sienese Masonic Guild, which no doubt were similar to, if not identical with the original one; at any rate they will throw light on the organization.

Cap. I. On he who curses God or the Saints (a fine of twenty-five lire).

Cap. II. On he who opposes the Signoria of the city (a fine of twenty-five lire).

Cap. III. On the election of rettore and camarlengo. (In the Florentine Lodge which kept up the older Latin, these are called caput magister and provveditore.)

Cap. IV. On the forming of councils and their duration.

Cap. V. How to treat underlings (sottoposti).

Cap. VI. On those who disobey the rector or camarlengo.

Cap. VII. On he who refuses a citation (fine of twenty soldi).

Cap. VIII. Of one who swears by the blood or body of God.

Cap. IX. Of he who takes work on a risk.

Cap. X. All names of sottoposti to be written in the Breve.

Cap. XI. That no one may take work away from another Master.

Cap. XII. Contracts with pupils must be made before the camarlengo.

Cap. XIII. How the feast of the Four Holy Martyrs is to be kept.[216]

Cap. XIV. On the entry of a foreign Master into the guild.

Cap. XV. Di chi vietasse il pegno al messo. (I can get no clear translation of this; I think it means a pledge on receiving a commission.)

Cap. XVI. The camarlengo shall hand over all receipts to the Grand Master.

Cap. XVII. On the salaries of officials of the guild.

Cap. XVIII. How fêtes must be kept (fines of five soldi to all who work on feste. Forty-nine fête days are named).

Cap. XIX. One who is sworn to another guild cannot be either the Grand Master or camarlengo.

Cap. XX. That the camarlengo keeps for the guild all moneys received from sottoposti (brethren of lower rank).

Cap. XXI. On good faith in receiving a commission.

Cap. XXII. How members are to be buried.

Cap. XXIII. How to insure against risks.

Cap. XXIV. No arguments or business discussions to be held in the public streets.

Cap. XXV. How the fête of the guild is to be kept, the rectors to have full power to command.

Cap. XXVI. How wax candles shall be sent to the monks of the Mantellini for the festa.

Cap. XXVII. How tithes are to be paid.

Cap. XXVIII. That all orders come from the Grand Master.

Cap. XXIX. How the outgoing officials shall instruct the new ones. (i.e. The council of administration which was changed periodically.)

Cap. XXX. That no Master may undertake a second work till the first has been paid.

Cap. XXXI. Brick-makers and quarry-men must abide by the rules of the guild.

Cap. XXXIV. On those who lie against others.

Cap. XXXV. Those who demand a meeting or consultation shall pay fifteen soldi to the guild.

Cap. XXXVI. That the Grand Master on retiring from office shall call three riveditori[217] to examine his accounts.

Cap. XXXIX. That no master of woodwork shall work in stone.

Cap. XL. The Breve (statutes) shall be revised every year.

Cap. XLI. On the entry into the lodge, of Masters from the city or neighbourhood.

The statutes are very fair and well composed, and must certainly have been made from long experience in the guild.

In 1447 we find a further split. The Masters of wood-carving secede from the sculptors in stone, and form their own statutes. Little by little, as art becomes more perfect and requires more freedom, the Masonic monopoly of centuries is dissolving.

We must now return to the building of the Duomo by this multitude of brethren.

It was in 1259 that the civic Council decided to continue the work of restoration in the Duomo of Siena, and formed a council of nine influential citizens, together with the Magistri of the Masonic Guild, to superintend the work. By February 1321 their ideas and ambitions had so enlarged that they proposed to make the present church the transept, and to add a great nave, "to make a beautiful and magnificent church, with all rich and suitable ornamentation." The new nave was really begun, and a high bare wall with a fine window in it remains to this day to puzzle the tourist. This vast design was, however, abandoned, and the building continued on a less ambitious scale.

Now for details of all these changes. Before Giovanni Pisano's time we only get a few quaint names such as Magister Manuellus, son of the late Rinieri, who made the stalls in the choir in 1259; Luglio Benintendi, Ventura Diotisalvi, Magister Gratia or Gracii, Ristorus, Stefano Jordano, Orlando Bovacti, nearly all of whom were Masters from other lodges either in Lombardy or Pisa. There are besides two other Venture—one Ventura di Gracii, and one Ventura called Trexsa. All these are named as being called in a council of the guild of June 9, 1260, to consider the stability of some vaulting lately made, but I can find no capo magistro at this date. Several of these are names known in other cities where the guild had lodges. Ventura's father, Diotisalvi, built the Baptistery at Pisa; Magister Gracii came from Padua, Stefano Jordanus had a son, Johannes Stephani, who was witness to Niccolò di Pisa's receipt for payment by Fra Melano of 78 gold lire and IV denarii for his pulpit in the Duomo on July 26, together with Orlando, son of Orlando Bovacti, and Ventura di Rapolano. Niccolò himself had with him his son Giovanni, who also graduated in the guild from the school of his father. Here, too, were Arnolfo, Lapo (the younger), with Donato and Goro, who were students in Niccolò's school of sculpture, and who worked so well at the sculpture at Siena that when they became Magistri in 1271, the three last were given the freedom of the city.[218] They were not exclusively sculptors, however, any more than Arnolfo was. Lapo was employed in 1281 as architect at Colle, where Arnolfo's reputed father, the elder Lapo or Jacopo il Tedesco, had been engaged by King Manfred long before him. Goro di Ciucci Ciuti had three sons, Neri, Ambrogio, and Goro, all in the guild. In 1306 we find them all engaged together in the fountain of Follonica at Siena. In 1310 Neri's sons Ciolo and Nuto are mentioned; one of them, having graduated, is old enough to have a pupil, named Teri. Here is the deed of apprenticeship—