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Reliefs of the tenth century are encrusted in the wall of a house on the site of the ancient church of S. Peter; and the Casa dei Santi in the Via Predol, which probably occupies part of the area of the convent and church of S. Cassiano, has two figures on brackets between the windows of the first floor, apparently late eleventh-century work.
The Austrians, however, after their desperate straits at two o'clock recovered to so great an extent that, had Zedwitz returned with his cavalry, as the Emperor was hoping that he would, the day might still have been theirs. Even as it was, MacMahon's corps swerved under Zobel's repulse of his attack on San Cassiano, and Niel, in the plain, was dangerously hard pressed by Schwarzenberg.
What dost thou want more? Pazienza!" There was a commotion on the Piazzetta; the first barge, heading the long procession from the Palazzo Cornaro in San Cassiano far up the Canal Grande, was coming in sight, bearing the brilliant Compagnia della Calza, the noble youths of the Company of the Hose, whose gilded duty it was to appear at State Ceremonials in all the extravagance of fantastic elegance with which Venice had decreed their costumes.
For Pisa herself is soon lost in the vagueness of a world thus delicately touched by sun and cloud, and seemingly so full of ruinous or deserted things like the beautiful great Church of Settimo, whose tower you may see far away in the golden summer weather standing quite alone in a curve of the river; so that you leave the highway and following a little by-road come upon Pieve di S. Cassiano, a basilica in the ancient Pisan manner set among the trees in a shady place, and over the three doors of the façade you find the beautiful work of Biduino da Pisa, as it is said, sculptures in relief of the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, a fight of dragons, and certain subjects from the Bestiaries.
On the strength of this passage topographers have been in the habit of attributing to the mausoleum all the works of statuary discovered in the neighborhood; like the Barberini Faun now in Munich, the exquisite statue of a River God described by Cassiano dal Pozzo, etc., as if such subjects were becoming a house of death.
After the beautiful convention of Byzantium had passed away, and Gruamone and Adeodatus had carved at Pistoja, Biduinus at S. Cassiano, Robertus at Lucca, Bonamicus and Bonannus at Pisa, and Guido da Como again at Pistoja, in the work of Niccolò Pisano at Pisa we come upon the first thought of the Renaissance, the reliefs of the pulpit in the Baptistery, in which the Middle Age seems to have passed over the work of Antiquity almost like a caress.
Three other façades he has painted in chiaroscuro, very large and covered with various scenes one at S. Moisè, the second at S. Cassiano, and the third at S. Maria Zebenigo.
Andrea Cornaro hath never been one to keep himself at rest in his palace at San Cassiano, and through his wandering hath come this royal alliance for Venice; and to-morrow he goeth again to Cyprus as auditor to the young queen, his niece. The Contarini, the Giustiniani as thou knowest well have already vast holdings on those Mediterranean shores."
Thus in a moment this Southerner transforms the rude art of his time here in Tuscany, the work of Bonannus, for instance, the carvings of Biduinus, and the bas-reliefs at San Cassiano, with the faint memory of Rome that lingered like a ghost in the minds of men, that already had risen in the laws and government of the cities, in the desire of men here in Pisa, for instance, for liberty, and that was soon to recreate the world.
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