CHAPTER 17
On the Origins of Concordian Gothic
The Opera del Duomo wasted lifetimes in procrastination, wasted them as waves beating on the rocks are wasted, before it was dismissed in disgrace. In the Twenties, when a young Girolamo Bernoulli was making his name, the embarrassment of Concord’s unfinished cathedral was compounded by the triumphant completion of Rasenna’s. The subsequent appointment of an unconventional and relatively untested young man as capomaestro (St Eco’s youngest-ever) was either an inspired choice or a sign of how desperate the Curia had become.
Far from letting this task overawe him, Bernoulli caused a minor scandal by scathingly dismissing the Curia’s unrealised designs.6 He described St Eco’s walls as ‘squat, sober and thrifty, like a merchant’s wife, and just as ugly.’ The dome that had defeated generations of brilliant architects he pronounced ‘unambitious’.7 Before he would place a single brick atop another, he insisted on knocking down the walls that had stood for decades. That he was allowed to do so is revealing of the Curia’s desperation.8