The Cathedral of Modena by Esther Singleton

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN

The student of the Romanesque who transports himself suddenly from the / Arno and the Apenines to the river-basin of the Po will find himself / spirited away into a new architectural world. Let him flit from Pisa / to Modena. Pistoia, a city of high interest on other grounds, will not / long detain him. A single noble campanile is attached to a basilican / _duomo_ which would hold a third or fourth-rate place at Lucca, / and which at Pisa no one would think of mentioning at all. But at / Modena his halt must be longer. The church of Pisa and the church of / Modena are contemporary buildings, and the Great Countess is honoured / as a benefactress by both; but they are as unlike one another as any / two buildings of the same date and general style well can be. At Modena / we get our first glimpse of the genuine Lombard form of the Italian / Romanesque, a form wholly unlike either the domical or basilican / type, and which makes a far nearer approach to the Romanesque of the / lands beyond the Alps. The approach is indeed only an approach; the / _duomo_ of Modena is Italian, and not English, French, or German; / still it is a form of Italian far less widely removed from English, / French, or German work than the style of Pisa or St. Vital. As at Pisa, / the architect seems to have halted between two opinions. The church / is cruciform, but the transepts have no projection on the ground-plan; / there are real lantern-arches, not obscured as they are at Pisa, but / they do not bear up any central dome or tower. The lantern-arches are / pointed; but here, as at Pisa, the pointed form is more likely to / be Saracenic than Gothic.