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 known as the Magistri Commacini was established, to whom were given the privileges of freemen in the Lombard State. These Commacini, so named from the island in the lake of Como whence they sprang, were trained masons and builders, who in the 9th and 10th century would seem to have carried the Lombard style through north and south Italy, Germany and portions of France. It was at one time assumed that they had influenced the church architecture throughout Europe, but this is not borne out by the evidence of the buildings themselves, except in the Rhenish provinces and in the districts on the slope of the Harz Mountains, where in sculpture a strange mixture is found of monstrous animals with Scandinavian interlaced patterns and Byzantine foliage, bearing a close resemblance to the early sculpture in Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan and San Michele at Pavia (Plate V, fig. 72). Although the earliest Lombard buildings in Italy (such as those of San Salvatore in Brescia, San Vincenzo-in-Prato at Milan the church of Agliate and Santa Maria delle Caccie at Pavia) were basilican in plan with nave and aisles, there are some instances in which the adoption of a transept has produced the Latin cross plan (e.g. San Michele at Pavia, Sant’ Antonino at Piacenza, San Nazaro-Grande at Milan, and the cathedrals of Parma and Modena), though to what extent this is due to subsequent rebuilding is not known. In the early basilicas above mentioned the columns, carrying the arcades between nave and aisles, were taken from earlier buildings, while the capitals, where not Roman, were either rude imitations of Roman, or Byzantine in style. The roofs were always in wood, and the exteriors of the simplest description. In the external decoration, however, of the apses of the churches of San Vincenzo-in-Prato, Santa Maria delle Caccie, the church at Agliate and the ancient portion of S. Ambrogio at Milan, we find the germ of that decorative feature which (afterwards developed into the eaves-gallery) became throughout Italy and on the Rhine the most beautiful and characteristic element of the Lombard style. In order to lighten the wall above the hemispherical vault of the apse, a series of niches was sunk within the arches of the corbel table, which gave to the cornice that deep shadow where it was most wanted for effect. In addition to the churches above named, similar niches are found in the baptisteries of Novara and Arsago, the Duomo Vecchio at Brescia and the church of San Nazaro Grande at Milan. Towards the close of the 11th century, the imposts of these niches take the form of isolated piers, with a narrow gallery behind, and eventually small shafts with capitals are substituted for the piers, producing the eaves-galleries of the apses, which in Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo (1137) and the cathedral of Piacenza are the forerunners of numerous others in Italy, and in the churches of Cologne, Bonn, Bacharach and other examples on the Rhine, constitute their most important external decoration. In the apses of San Vincenzo-in-Prato and of the church at Agliate (both of the 9th century) there is another decorative feature, destined afterwards to become one of the most important methods of breaking up or subdividing the wall surface, i.e. the thin pilaster strips, which, at regular intervals, rise from the lower part of the wall to the corbel table of the cornice.

The two most important churches of the Lombard Romanesque style are those of Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan and S. Michele at Pavia, their importance being increased by the fact that they probably represent the earliest examples of the solution of the great problem which was exercising the minds of the church builders towards the end of the 11th century, the vaulting of the nave. In the original church, of the 9th century, the nave and aisles of Sant’ Ambrogio were divided in the usual way with arcades, and were covered with open timber roofs. In the rebuilding of the church (fig. 35) the nave (38 ft. wide) was divided into four square bays, and compound piers of large dimensions were built, to carry the transverse and diagonal ribs of the new vault. To resist the thrust, the walls across the aisles were built up to the roof, and had external buttresses, the diagonal ribs instead of following the elliptical curve which the intersection of the Roman semicircular barrel-vault gave to the groin, were made semicircular, so that the web or vaulting surface which rested on these ribs rose upwards towards the centre of the bay, giving a distinct domical form to the vault. The aisles, being half the width of the nave, were divided into eight compartments, two to each bay of the nave, and were covered both in the ground storey and the triforium with intersecting groin vaults. When this rebuilding took place, the front of the church was brought forward, bearing a narthex, and the arcades of the atrium were rebuilt in the first years of the 12th century. The triple apse, to the external decoration of which we have called attention, the crypt underneath, and the south campanile, are the only remains of the 9th century church. The campanile on the north side was built 1125–1149, and the decoration with pilaster strips, semi-detached shafts, and arched corbel table, is repeated on the façade of the church and on the arcade round the atrium. In the rebuilding, portions of the sculptural decoration of the 9th century church were utilized; this would appear to have been a Lombard custom, as in the church of San Michele the lower part of the main front is encrusted with sculptured decoration taken from the earlier churches built on the site. These ancient sculptures are of special interest, as they constitute the best records of the rude Lombard work of the 8th and 9th centuries, and are intermingled with Byzantine scroll work and interlaced patterns. If the plan of Sant’ Ambrogio, with its comparatively thin enclosure walls suggests its original construction as an ordinary basilica, this is not the case with San Michele (fig. 36), where all the external walls are of great thickness, showing that from the first it was intended to vault the whole structure The church is much smaller than Sant’ Ambrogio, there being originally only two square bays to the nave (in the 15th century the vaults were rebuilt with four bays); the transept, however, projects widely beyond the aisles, and as there is another bay given to the choir in front of the apse, the area of the two churches is about the same. The existing church was probably begun shortly after the destructive earthquake of 1117, and was consecrated in 1132. In Sant’ Ambrogio the transverse and diagonal arches spring from just above the triforium floor, so that there was no room for clerestory windows, and consequently the interior is dark. In San Michele the ribs rise from the level of the top of the triforium arcades and two clerestory windows are provided to each bay. The crossing of the nave and transept is covered with a dome carried on squinches, which dates from the first building. The dome over the fourth bay of Sant’ Ambrogio replaced the original vault about the beginning of the 13th century.

The cathedral of Novara, originally of the ordinary basilica type of the 10th century with timber roofs, was reconstructed in the 11th century, compound piers being built to carry the transverse and diagonal ribs and walls built across the outer aisles to resist the thrust; on the other hand SS. Pietro and Paolo at Bologna is a 12th century church which was designed from the first to be vaulted. To these, and still belonging to the basilican plan, must be added San Pietro in Cielo d’oro (1136) and San Teodoro, both in Pavia; S. Evasio at Casale-Monferrato, having a comparatively narrow nave with double aisles on either side and a very remarkable narthex or porch. S. Lorenzo at Verona (lately restored), which in the 12th century was rebuilt with compound piers to carry a vault (the apse and the two remarkable circular towers in the west front belong to the ancient church); and Sant’ Abbondio at Como, often restored and partly rebuilt, retaining, however, some of the original sculpture of the early Lombard period.

Of churches built on the plan of the Latin cross, examples are Sant’ Antonino at Piacenza, with an octagonal lantern tower over the crossing, Parma cathedral (c. 1175), with an octagonal pointed dome over the crossing; Modena cathedral, rebuilt and consecrated in 1184; San Nazaro-Grande at Milan; and San Lanfranco at Pavia, the two latter without aisles.