Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/354

338 338 ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE. j Takt II. there is a singular deficiency of either constructive or constructed ornament. On this side of the Alps an architect w^ith vaulting shafts, string-courses, galleries, and fifty other expedients, would have relieved the bareness of the walls. At Bologna it probably was intended they should be painted, and this never having been executed may account for most of its apparent defects. In Gothic architecture one of two systems seems indispensable : either painted glass with strongly-marked carved mouldings over the whole of the interior, or white glass with flat surfaces suitable for opaque paintings. Few cathedrals are complete in both respects at the present day, but in their imperfect state the Northern system has an immense advantage over the Southern. The architecture of our cathedrals is complete and beautiful even in ruins. An Italian church without its colored decoration is only a framed canvas without har- mony or meaning. Were San Petronio as complete in its colored decoration as the Certosa at Pavia or Monreale at Palermo, it miaht stand a fair competition with the best interiors on this side of the Alps. As it is, it is only a splendid example of ornamental but unor- namented construction, and, as was attempted to be exj^lained in the Introduction, both elements are wanted for success in architectural design. The exterior of the church is in too unfinished a state to enable us to judge of what its effect might have been if completed, but many of its details, especially of the facade, are of very great beauty, in many respects superior to what is to be found on this side of the Alps. Its central dome, however, never could have been a feature worthy of so vast a church. In diameter it is equal, or nearly so, to that of Florence, but the points of support are so small, and so far apart, that it must have been mainly if not Avholly of wood. No such towering structure as Arnolpho's vast substructures show that he intended, could have stood on the slim supports of the Bolognese church.^ The cathedral of Milan — at once the most remarkable and one of the largest and richest of all the churches erected in the Middle Ages — was commenced in the year 1385, by order of Gian Galeazzo, first Duke of Milan, and consecrated in 1418, at Avhich date all the essential parts seem 'to have been completed, though the central spire was not finished till about the year 1440, by Brunelleschi. The design is said to have been furnished by a German architect, Heinrich Arlez von Geraunden, or as the Italians call him, " da Gamondia," — a statement which is corroborated by the fact that the 1 If we may trust Wiebeking, the first two bays of the nave from the front were vaulted in 158S, but the work was suspended till 1647. and completed only in J 659. Yet no difference can be per- ceived in the details of the design.