The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8)Vasari, Giorgio
History
The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8)
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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