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Updated: June 10, 2025
A small boy, whom I watched gathering figs last year, informed me that the fig-tree was innamorato delle pietre e cisterne enamoured of stones and cisterns; meaning, that its roots are searchingly destructive to masonry and display a fabulous intuition for the proximity of water. He also told me, what was news to me, that there are more than two or three varieties of figs.
These pietre commesse are better calculated for cabinets, than for ornaments to great buildings, which ought to be large masses proportioned to the greatness of the edifice.
Gian Giacomo Dolcebono, architect and sculptor, called by his fellow-craftsmen magistro di taliare pietre, gave the design, at once simple and harmonious, which was carried out with hardly any deviation from his plan. The church is a long parallelogram, divided into two unequal portions, the first and smaller for the public, the second for the nuns.
C. C. Perkins thus describes it: "Built of white marble in the Gothic style, enriched with every kind of ornament, and storied with bas-reliefs illustrative of the Madonna's history from her birth to her death, it rises in stately beauty toward the roof of the church, and, whether considered from an architectural, sculptural, or symbolic point of view, must excite the warmest admiration in all who can appreciate the perfect unity of conception through which its bas-reliefs, statuettes, busts, intaglios, mosaics, and incrustations of pietre dure, gilded glass, and enamels are welded into a unique whole."
The second story of the building is occupied by a great number of artists employed in this very curious work of marquetry, representing figures with gems and different kinds of coloured marble, for the use of the emperor. The Italians call it pietre commesse, a sort of inlaying with stones, analogous to the fineering of cabinets in wood.
Farther down the stream, where the road into the village joins the main road to La Bassée, the Germans had fortified a group of ruined buildings which was known as Port Arthur. From there was a great network of trenches which extended northwestward to the Pietre mill. There were also German troops in the Bois du Biez, and in the ruined houses along the border of the wood.
Doubts and Fears As the day wore on the news was not so good. The Meerut Division, which had delivered the containing attack in front of us on the Moulin du Pietre, was where it had been before it attacked, so the wounded said, with the exception of some units, notably Leicesters and Black Watch, who had apparently disappeared. Perhaps all that had been intended had been achieved.
It was effective over the greater part of the front attacked, and in the centre and on our right the Fourth and Indian Corps quickly overcame the dazed and decimated Germans and pushed beyond Neuve Chapelle to the Bois du Biez and slopes of the Aubers ridge beyond. But our left had no such fortune in the north of the village and at the neighbouring Moulin de Piétre.
Another fortified bridge, farther to the left, checked the Twenty-fifth Brigade; and machine-gun fire stopped the Twenty-fourth Brigade, this fire being from the German troops at the crossroads northwest of Pietre village. The Seventh Division was held by the line of the Des Layes, and the defense of the Pietre mill.
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