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Updated: May 10, 2025
After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems to have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some memory of classic art. Magistri Comacini is a title frequently inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier middle ages, as synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to account for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a race in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had never been wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers, Bernardino and Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the Gothic and the Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture with which the Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of Maroggia, a village near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out into the world between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of Campionesi would probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left their native province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the Duomo had been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of the fabric in 1487. To complete the work by the addition of a tribune was his duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the fashion of those times, for criticism in his bottega; and the usual difference of opinion arose among the citizens of Como concerning its merits. Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was called in to advise. It may be remembered that when Michelangelo first placed his Piet
"I have clambered up Monte Solaro and drunk vero Capri muddy stuff like cider at the summit." "Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell me you will know if this was indeed Capri. For in this life I have never been there. Let me describe it.
He replied that only Count Solaro de la Margherita and his friends could live on amicable terms with the oppressors of Italy; England was at liberty to renew her old alliance with Austria if she chose, but upon that ground he could not follow her; Lord Palmerston might end where Lord Castlereagh began, but they would remain faithful to their principles whatever happened.
To the west, up that vertical wall, by means of five hundred steps cut in the face of the rock, we go to reach the tableland of Anacapri, the primitive village of that name, hidden from view here; the medieval castle of Barbarossa, which hangs over a frightful precipice; and the height of Monte Solaro. The island is everywhere strewn with Roman ruins, and with faint traces of the Greeks.
Reaching the crest of the Solaro, we are well rewarded for our climb over the stony slopes by a wide-spreading view. Owing to the central position of the island, we can from its airy summit, some sixteen hundred feet above sea-level, command a glorious panorama of the three bays of the Neapolitan Riviera, each teeming with a thousand associations of classical or modern history.
The storm-clouds at this season, though it is the bloom of May, are daily piled in sulky or menacing masses over Vesuvius and the Abruzzi, frothing out their curls of moulded mist across the bay, and climbing the heavens with toppling castle towers and domes of alabaster. We made the most of a tranquil afternoon, where there was an armistice of storm, to climb the bluff of Mount Solaro.
"I have clambered up Monte Solaro and drunk vero Capri muddy stuff like cider at the summit." "Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell me you will know if this was indeed Capri. For in this life I have never been there. Let me describe it.
And out of that shadow rose Solaro straight and tall, flushed and golden crested, like a beauty throned, and the white moon was floating behind her in the sky. And before us from east to west stretched the many-tinted sea all dotted with little sailing boats.
This wonderful atmosphere softens even its ruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimes the haze plays fantastic tricks with it, a cloud-cap hangs on Monte Solaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rock seem to float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that the rising wind will carry away perhaps. I know now what Homer means by "wandering islands."
Over a ravine filled with masses of ilex and myrtle; past the fragment of the pirate Barbarossa’s aerial castle, perched on a rocky pinnacle and looking like some fantastic creation of Gustave Doré’s brush; the broad ribband of road leads across the steep northern flank of Monte Solaro, until it ends at Ana-Capri with its white houses nestling round a domed church.
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