Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Lombard style featured elaborately carved facades and exterior decoration featur-
ing bands and arches. Among its finest examples are the Lombard cathedral in Modena,
Pavia's Basilica di San Michele and Brescia's unusually shaped Duomo Vecchio.
Down south, the Sicilian Norman style blended Norman, Saracen and Byzantine influ-
ences, from marble columns to Islamic-inspired pointed arches to glass tesserae detailing.
One of the greatest examples of the form is the Cattedrale di Monreale, located just out-
side Palermo.
Gothic
The Italians didn't embrace the Gothic as enthusiastically as the French, Germans and
Spanish did. Its flying buttresses, grotesque gargoyles and over-the-top decoration were
just too far from the classical ideal that was (and still is) bred into Italian genes. The local
version was generally much more restrained, a style beautifully exemplified by Naples'
simple, elegant Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore. There were, of course, exceptions.
Never averse to a bit of frivolity, the Venetians used the style in grand
palazzi
(mansions)
such as the Ca' d'Oro and on the facades of high-profile public buildings like the Palazzo
Ducale. The fashion-obsessed Milanese employed it in Milan's flamboyant Duomo, and
the Sienese came up with an utterly gorgeous example in Siena's cathedral.
Michelangelo's
David
is no stranger to close calls. In 1527, the lower part of his arm was
broken of in a riot. In 1843, a hydrochloric 'spruce-up' stripped away some of the original sur-
face, while in 1991 a disturbed, hammer-wielding Italian painter smashed the statue's second
left toe.
Baroque
The Renaissance's insistence on restraint and pure form was sure to lead to a backlash at
some stage, so it's no surprise that the next major architectural movement in Italy was
noteworthy for its exuberant - some would say decadent - form. The baroque movement
took its name from the Portuguese word
barroco
, used by fishermen to denote a mis-
shapen pearl. Compared to the pure classical lines of Renaissance buildings, its output
could indeed be described as 'misshapen' - Andrea Palma's facade of Syracuse's cathed-
ral, Guarino Guarini's Palazzo Carignano in Turin, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini's baldachin
in St Peter's in Rome are dramatic, curvaceous and downright sexy structures that bear
little similarity to the classical ideal.
