imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while the Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not yet stiffened into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later cinquecento:  it is still distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and beautiful subordination of decorative detail to architectural effect.  Under these happy conditions we feel that the Gothic of the nave, with its superior severity and sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of choir and transepts like a flower unfolding.  In the one the mind is tuned to inner meditation and religious awe; in the other the worshipper passes into a temple of the clear explicit faith—­as an initiated neophyte might be received into the meaning of the mysteries.

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 Pieta in S. Peter’s, rumour gave it to this celebrated Lombard sculptor, and the Florentine was constrained to set his own signature upon the marble.  The same Solaro carved the monument of Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa of Pavia.  He was indeed in all points competent to criticise or to confirm the design of his fellow-craftsman.  Il Gobbo disapproved of the proportions chosen by Rodari, and ordered a new model to be made; but after much discussion, and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who is said to have increased the number of the windows and lightened the orders of his model, the work was finally entrusted to the master of Maroggia.