The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors Architects, Volume 1 | Page 8

the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista in the
same city built by Galla Placida about the year of grace 438, of S.
Vitale which was built in the year 547, and of the abbey of Classi di
fuori, and indeed of many other monasteries and churches built after
the time of the Lombards. All these buildings, as I have said, are great
and magnificent, but the architecture is very rude. Among them are
many abbeys in France built to S. Benedict and the church and

monastery of Monte Casino, the church of S. Giovanni Battista built by
that Theodelinda, Queen of the Goths, to whom S. Gregory the Pope
wrote his dialogues. In this place that queen caused the history of the
Lombards to be painted. We thus see that they shaved the backs of their
heads, and wore tufts in front, and were dyed to the chin. Their clothes
were of broad linen, like those worn by the Angles and Saxons, and
they wore a mantle of divers colours; their shoes were open to the toes
and bound above with small leather straps. Similar to the churches
enumerated above were the church of S. Giovanni, Pavia, built by
Gundiperga, daughter of Theodelinda, and the church of S. Salvatore in
the same city, built by Aribert, the brother of the same queen, who
succeeded Rodoaldo, husband of Gundiberta, in the government; the
church of S. Ambruogio at Pavia, built by Grimoald, King of the
Lombards, who drove from the kingdom Aribert's son Perterit. This
Perterit being restored to his throne after Grimoald's death built a
nunnery at Pavia called the Monasterio Nuovo, in honour of Our Lady
and of St Agatha, and the queen built another dedicated to the Virgin
Mary in Pertica outside the walls. Cunibert, Perterit's son, likewise built
a monastery and church to St George called di Coronato, in a similar
style, on the spot where he had won a great victory over Alahi. Not
unlike these was the church which the Lombard king Luit-prand, who
lived in the time of King Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, built at
Pavia, called S. Piero, in Cieldauro, or that which Desiderius, who
succeeded Astolf, built to S. Piero Clivate in the diocese of Milan; or
the monastery of S. Vincenzo at Milan, or that of S. Giulia at Brescia,
because all of them were very costly, but in a most ugly and rambling
style. In Florence the style of architecture was slightly improved
somewhat later, the church of S. Apostolo built by Charlemagne,
although small, being very beautiful, because the shape of the columns,
although made up of pieces, is very graceful and beautifully made, and
the capitals and the arches in the vaulting of the side aisles show that
some good architect was left in Tuscany, or had arisen there. In fine the
architecture of this church is such that Pippo di Ser Brunnellesco did
not disdain to make use of it as his model in designing the churches of
S. Spirito and S. Lorenzo in the same city. The same progress may be
noticed in the church of S. Mark's at Venice, not to speak of that of S.
Giorgio Maggiore erected by Giovanni Morosini in the year 978. S.

Mark's was begun under the Doge Giustiniano and Giovanni Particiaco
next to S. Teodosio, when the body of the Evangelist was brought from
Alexandria to Venice. After the Doge's palace and the church had
suffered severely from a series of fires, it was rebuilt upon the same
foundations in the Byzantine style as it stands to-day, at a great cost
and with the assistance of many architects, in the time of the Doge
Domenico Selvo, in the year 973, the columns being brought from the
places where they could be obtained. The construction was continued
until the year 1140, M. Piero Polani being then Doge, from the plans of
several masters who were all Greeks, as I have said. Erected at the
same time, and also in the Byzantine style, were the seven abbeys built
in Tuscany by Count Hugh, Marquis of Brandenburg, such as the Badia
of Florence, the abbey of Settimo, and the others. All these structures
and the vestiges of others which are not standing bear witness to the
fact that architecture maintained its footing though in a very bastard
form far removed from the good antique style. Further evidence is
afforded by a number of old palaces erected in Florence in Tuscan
work after the destruction of Fiesole, but the measurements of the doors
and the very elongated windows and the sharp-pointed arches after the
manner of the foreign architects of the day, denote some amount of
barbarism. In the year after 1013 the art appears to have received an
access of vigour in the