chele, whose wings seem to brood over the city, you come
upon that strange fantastic and yet beautiful fagade which Guidetto
built in 1188. Just Pisan work you think, but lacking a certain
simplicity and sincerity even, that you find certainly in the Duomo. But
if it be true that this fagade was built in 1188, and that the fagade of
the Duomo of Pisa was built in 1250, and even that of S. Paolo a Ripa
d'Arno there, in 1194, Guidetto's work here in Lucca is the older, and
the Pisan master has made but a difficult simplification, perhaps, of
this very work. A difficult simplification!--simplicity being really the
most difficult achievement in any art, so that though it seem so easy it
is really hard to win. Guidetto seems to have built here at S. Michele
as a sort of trial for the Duomo, which is already less like an
apparition. And if the facade of S. Michele has not the strength or
the naturalness of that, leading as it does to nothing but poverty in
the midst of which still abides a mutilated work by a great Florentine,
Fra Lippo Lippi, it is because Guidetto has gradually won to that
difficult simplicity from such a strange and fantastic dream as this.

[Illustration: THE TOMB OF THE MARTYR S. ROMANO IN S. ROMANO, LUCCA

_Matteo Civitali_

_Alinari_]

It is quite another sort of beauty we see when, passing through the
deserted, quiet streets, we come to S. Frediano, just within the Porta
S. Maria, on the north side of the city. Begun by Perharlt, the Lombard,
in 671, with the stones of the amphitheatre, whose ruins are still to be
seen hard by, it stood without the city till the great wall was built in
the twelfth century, the apse being set where formerly the great door
had stood, and the marvellously impressive fagade taking the place of
the old apse. Ruined though it be by time and restoration, that mosaic
of Our Lord amid the Apostles and Angels still surprises us with a
sudden glory, while the Campanile that rises still where of old the door
stood is one of the most beautiful in Italy. Within, the church has
suffered too from change and restoration. Once of basilical form, it is
now spoiled by the chapels that thrust themselves into the nave, but
cannot altogether hide the nobility of those ancient pillars or the
simplicity of the roof. A few beautiful ancient things may still be
found there. The font, for instance, with its rude sculptures, that has
been forsaken for a later work by Niccolo Civitali, the neph