Studio: international art (23.1901)

Reviews

The Cathedral Builders. By Leader Scott.
(London: Sampson Low, Marston &Co.)—In this
beautifully and profusely illustrated volume Leader
Scott sets forth a most fascinating theory : the con-
tinuity of architectural art, with her handmaids
painting and sculpture, from Roman times down
to the fifteenth century.

By wide research among the cathedral and other
archives throughout the length and breadth of Italy,
Leader Scott has brought to light the existence, in
very early times, of a highly organised guild of
builders (architects, masons, decorators) having its
chief seat at Como. The members of the guild
(the Comacine Masters) were known as Liberi
Muratori, because, thinks Leader Scott with Mer-
zario, the Italian authority on the subject, they
were free from feudal bondage. In any case they
were a self-sufficing body, and, like the Free Lances
of later times, hired their services out to those who
had need of them. It is, moreover, interesting to
note that the tradition of the guild, though lost in
more recent times, seems to have survived, after the
extinction of the guild itself, till the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the modern Freemasons
sprang into existence ; for this body has apparently
borrowed not only its name but also its organisa-
tion from the mediaeval corporation.

The researches of both Leader Scott and of her
brother, the Rev. W. Miles Barnes, who writes the
admirable chapter on Saxon architecture, lead to
the conclusion that the Comacine guild was a
survival of a Roman collegium, which had either
existed in Como long before the Longobard
invasion (Leader Scott quotes Pliny as to the
excellence of the builders of the place), or had
taken refuge there after Rome had fallen to the
Goths.

When the Lombards began to build, under
Autharis and Theodolinda in the second half of the
sixth century, they employed men from Como;
hence the round-arched style, which in reality was
already traditional in the north of Italy, has becc me
known as Lombard. Having thus reasserted their
position as architects, the members of the Coma-
cine guild carried their distinctive style not only
into various parts of Italy, but also into the rest of
North-western Europe, being called by missionaries
and bishops to build churches and monasteries, and
by civil authorities to erect fortresses or fortify
towns. The style was modified by climatic influ-
ences and by natural development, but there is no
break in the continuities : it is to be found in
Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Germany, as
well as through the length and breadth of its native

Italy, and is in each case traceable to Comacine
Masters.

Such is Leader Scott's thesis. She supports it
not only by the evidences of similarity of style,
already observed by other writers on the subject,
but by actual documents, which enable her to give,
for Italy at leas , lists of the Comacine Masters
who were actually working in various cities at
definite dates. Her brother, moreover, arrives,
independently, at similar results with regard to
ecclesiastical architecture in England.

An interesting chapter is the one on the Towers
and Crosses of Ireland, which calls attention to the
fact that the knot distinctive of Comacine work
occurs continually in the crosses. It may be
remarked in passing that Mr. Romilly Allen's
article in The Studio of August 15, 1898, is here
drawn upon and quoted.

In the fifteenth century, when the Florentine
Duomo was being built, when artistic energy was
potent and expansive, the organism of the guild
proved too rigid for the new life. The painters
and the sculptors seceded; their art became an
end by itself, and the very tradition of its ancient
union with architecture was, until recent years, lost.

The book is certainly a very important addition
to the history of art. It is, moreover, eminently
suggestive, and should form the point of departure
for further profitable researches in England and
in Germany; in Italy Leader Scott's are already
extensive. The seed of their undertaking was sown
long years ago by the "Dorset Poet," who, reflecting
on the similarity of early architectural style in
England and on the Continent, observed: "It will
be found out some day that a grand masonic
guild or corporation existed in the ages of cathedral
building."

His prophecy has been fulfilled by his
daughter.

Sesam und Lilien, Der Kranz von Oliven Zweigen
and Die Sieben Leuchter der Bankunst. By John
Ruskin. Translated into German by Hedwig Jahn,
Anna Henschke, and Wilhelm Schoelermann re-
spectively. (Leipzig : Eugen Diedrichs).—These
volumes are admirable translations into German
of three of Ruskin's most popular works, and are
to be succeeded in due course by the rest of the
series. Put into forcible and idiomatic language,
they very fairly represent the text of the great
master, though here and there a shade of meaning
is missed, as in the title " Der Kranz von Oliven
Zweigen," which does not fairly represent the
expressive "Crown of Wild Olive." The trans-
lation on p. 407 of the "Sieben Leuchter" and again

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