The porch, with its knotted pillars supported on lions, is adjudged by Ricci to be the work of Anselmo of Campione in 1209. The sculpture on the façade by Nicolaus and Guglielmo is said to date from early in the twelfth century, and probably belonged to Lanfranco's design before Anselmo put this doorway. They are to our eyes most naïve Bible stories told in rude sculpture--the one side representing the Creation, the other the first men as far as Noah. To contemporary eyes, however, they were great works, for an old grandiloquent low Latin inscription on the façade says--"Inter scultores quanto sis dignus honore Claret scultura nunc Viligelme tua." "Worthy of honour art thou among sculptors. So shines, O William, this thy sculpture." Marchese Ricci, from the peculiar spelling of Guglielmo, thinks that he might have been a German, but as in the Ferrara inscription he is spelt in the Italian way, I think the Viligelme may be only one of those queer reversals of consonants so common in illiterate Italians. If a poor Florentine has a son named Arturo, he will surely call him Alturo, or if Alfredo, he will always be Arfledo. In any way we can descry in this artist, as in many others of his age, the forerunner of Niccolò Pisano, and see in the art of Niccolò only a link in development, not a new art entirely. To Nicolaus and Guglielmo are also attributed the sculptures in the choir, representing the Passion. We shall find them again at Ferrara. We see, then, that the family of Anselmo, hereditary sculptors and architects of Modena, were certainly the founders of the great school of the Campionese, which lasted some centuries, and to whose hands may be attributed nearly all the great churches in North Italy. The schools, _laborerium_, and _fabbricerie_ of Modena furnish another prototype of the threefold organization, which becomes so distinct in the Opera of Florence and the Lodges of Venice, Siena, and Orvieto. Tiraboschi publishes a notarial Act, dated January 7, 1261, which speaks of the _laborerium_ near the Duomo, where the stones for the fabric were carved; and that there was a covered way between the church and this building which must not be removed or changed.