Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/334

318 Part II. jia those utiful a . IS always .wo-thu,.is at least of .ne whole design (for orth), is generally solid inings as serve to admit the solid part one round- nd in the next story two ; lastly five, the lights being Jie uj^i^er story is virtually There is no doubt great rangement ; in point of taste Ae vigor and variety of the v^ings and such ancient examples a was a simple cone in the centre, angles, antern is added, and at Modena and ^^'^'- owned by a lofty spire, but these hardly come Wit.. ,^ the epoch of which we are now treating. So ^ greatly did me Italians prefer the round arch, that even in their imitation of the Northern styles they used the pointed shape only when compelled — a circumstance which makes it extremely diflicult, particularly in the towers, to draw the line between the two styles ; for though pointed ai-ches were no doubt introduced in the 13th and 14th centuries, the circular-headed shape continued to be employed from the age of the Romanesque to that of the Renaissance. One of the oldest, and certainly the most celebrated, of the Gothic towers of Italy is that of St. Mark's at Venice, commenced in the year 902; it took the infant republic three centuries to raise it 180 ft., to the point at which the square basement terminates. On this there must originally have been an open loggia of some sort no doubt with a conical roof. The present supersti'ucture was added in the 16th century, but though the loggia is a very pleasing feature, it is overpowered by the solid inass that it surmounts, and by the extremely ugly square extinguisher that crowns the whole. Its locality and its associations have earned for it a great deal of undue laudation, but in point of design no campanile in Italy deserves it less. The base is a mere unornamented mass of brickwork, slightly fluted, and pierced unsymmetrically with small windows to light the inclined plane within. Its size, its height, and its apparent solidity are its only merits. These are no doubt important elements in that
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