Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/376

360 360 ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part XL the one hand and its own rude old belfry on the other, makes up an extremely pleasing groupj One of the most important buildings of this style is the Great IIos])ital, Milan. It was founded in the year 1456, and consequently belongs to an age when the style was dying out. It still retains more of the pointed style and of Gothic feeling than could have been found in any city farther south, or in any one less impregnated, as it were, with German blood and feelinn. Almost all the windows in the part originally erected are pointed in form and divided by mullions. Their principal ornament consists of garlands of flowers interspersed with busts and masks and figures of Cupids, which surround the windows, or run along the string-courses. 788. Ornamental Brickwork from the Broletto at Brescia. (From Street.) The whole of these are in terra-cottn, and make up a style of orna- mentation as original as it is beautiful. It is besides purely local, and far superior to the best copies of Northern details, or to the misapplied forms of Gothic architecture which are so common in Italy. There is perhaps nothing in the North of Italy so worthy of ad- miration and study, as the way in which moulded bricks of various kinds are used for decoration, especially in the civic buildings, and also occasionally in the churches. Sublimity is not perhaps to be attained in brickwork ; the parts are too small ; and if splendor is aimed at, it may require some larger and more costly material to produce the desired effect ; but there is no beauty of detail or of design on a small scale that may not be obtained by the use of ^ Similar buildings at Bergamo, Brescia, and Monza are illustrated in Mr. Street's beautiful work on the archi- tecture of the North of Italy, from which the two last illustrations are borrowed.