Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/52

36 36 RHENISH ARCHITECTURE. Part II. nave, and eitlier two or three small spires were placed on this frontal screen. This, however, does not appear to have been the case here ; for though the two towers that now adorn it are modern, the intention seems originally to have been the same. Had they been intended to flank the portal, and give dignity to the principal entrance, their motive would have been clear, but where no portal was intended, it is curious that the Germans should so universally have used them, while the Italians, whose portals were almost as universally on their west fronts, should hardly ever have resorted to this arrangement. The east end, as will be observed, is square, an arrangement not unusual in Switzerland, though nearly unknown in the Gothic churches of Italy and Germany. The lateral chapels have apses, especially the southern one, which I believe to be either the oldest part of the cathedral, or to have been built on the foundations of that of Otho the Great. The most beautiful and interesting parts of this church are the northern doorway and the cloisters, both of nearly the same age, their date certainly extending some way at least into the 12th century. As specimens of the sculpture of their age, they are almost unrivalled, and strike even the traveller coming from Italy as superior to any of the contemporary sculpture of that country. One of the doorways of the cathedral of Basle (Woodcut No. 488) is in the same style, and perhaps even more elegant than that of Zurich. Both in the elegance of its form and in the appropriateness of its details it is quite equal to anything to be found iu Italy of the 11th or 12th century. Its one defect, as compared with Northern examples, is the want of richness in the archivolts that surmount the doorway. But, on the other hand, nothing can exceed the elegance of the shafts on either side, the niches of the buttresses, or of the cornice which surmounts the whole composition. These details of the Swiss buildings are well worthy of the most attentive consideration, inasmuch as they equal those of Provence or the North of Italy in elegance of feeling and design, while they are free from the classical trammels which so frequently mar their appro- priateness in those provinces. In Switzerland they are as original as in Northern Germany, and as picturesque, while they are free from the grotesqueness that so frequently mars the beauty of even the best examples in that country.