Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/319

Rh bk. vin. ch. II. NOVARA. 303 r-io. Half Section, half Elevation, of the Baptistery of Novara. (From Usten.) No scale. the springing of the arch. But it was by no means necessary that this additional wall should be so solid as that below it, and it was necessary to introduce light and air into the space between the stone and the wooden roofs. Add to this the incongruity of effect in placing a light tiled wooden roof on a massive solid wall, and it will be evident that not only did the exigencies of the building, but the true principles of taste, demand tliat this part should be made as light as possible. Such openings as these found in the baptistery at Novara suggested an expe- dient which ])rovided for these objects. This was afterwards carried to a much greater extent. At first, however, it seems only to have been used under the roofs of the domes with which the Italians almost universally crowned the intersections of naves and transepts, and round the semi-domes of the apses; but so enamored did they after- wards become of this feature, that it is frequently carried along the sides of the churches, under the roof of the nave and of the aisles, and also — where it is of more questionable taste — under the sloping eaves of the roof of the principal facade. There is nothing in the style of Avhich we are now speaking either so common or so beautiful as these galleries, the arcades of which have all the shadow given by a cornice Avithout its inconvenient pro- jection, while the little shafts with their elegant capitals and light archivolts have a sparkle and brilliancy which no cornice ever pos- sessed. Indeed, so beautiful are they, that we are not surprised to find them universally adopted ; and their discontinuance on the intro- duction of the pointed style was one of the greatest losses sustained by architectural art in those days. It is true they would have been quite incompatible with the thin Avails and light piers of pointed architecture ; but it may be safely asserted that no feature Avhich those ncAv styles introduced Avas equally beautiful with these galleries Avhich they superseded. The church of San Michele at Pavia, Avhich took its present form either at the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, is one of the most interesting of this age, and presents in itself all the