File:A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14782099274).jpg

Identifier: historyofarchit02cumm (find matches)
Title: A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Cummings, Charles Amos, 1833-1905
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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Amalfi wished to provide bronzedoors: doors for the cathedrals of Amalfi and Atrani, and later,for other churches, it was found necessary that the work should bedone in Constantinople. Between 1066 and 1087 seven churcheswere thus furnished with bronze doors from the Byzantine capital.In most of these doors the treatment was essentially the same, —large panels either bearing simple inscriptions, or with emblematicdevices (a decorated cross the most frequent of these) or with figuresin outline generally very simple, all executed in niello; that is to say,with incised lines filled in with silver or some other precious material;the panels being enclosed in a frame or border decorated with moreor less richness. In the earliest of these doors, those of the cathedral of Amalfi, made in 1066, there are twenty-four oblong panels, disposed in four vertical rows. Of these panels, twenty bear only a large and rather ugly decorated cross, — the remaining four being THE SOUTHERN ROMANESQUE 73
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Fi^. 287. Chair at Monte Sant Ang-elo. filled each by a single standing figure in niello, of pretty rudedesign and execution ; the subjects are Christ the Virgin, St. Peter,and St. Andrew. In the doors of the grotto church of St. Michael at MonteSant Angelo,^ ten years later than those of Amalfi, the ^j Montedecoration is much richer and more complete. The number s. Angeio;and arrangement of panels are the same as at Amalfi, but, with theexception of a single panel which contains an inscription, all thepanels are filled with groups illustrating the legend of the archangelMichael and other angels. Both here and at Amalfi the panels areflat, the decoration being by means of lines incised with the chiselor graver, and filled in for the most part with cement variouslycolored, the lines of the figures being black, green, or blue, whilethose of the accessories — as foliage or architecture — are red ; theexceptions being in the faces and hands, where silver is used. Thebronze is in compa

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