Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/215

Rh terminations of gabled roofs, and from the gables in this case it would appear that the building was divided into two aisles, each covered by a gabled roof, and that a third gabled roof rose between them, covering their inner sides—a very curious arrangement certainly, yet one that the façade plainly suggests. Attentive scrutiny, however, discloses the fact that none of these forms have any relation whatever with the roof of the building, which is a single low trussed gable of the ancient basilican type, whose outline may be traced in part behind the false gables of the façade. The building is not divided internally at all, but consists of a single broad aisle beneath the spreading roof. The rich canopied pinnacles which surmount the gables and the angle pilasters are purely decorative features set up in a thoroughly childish fashion, and the doors with flat lintels surmounted by low segmental arches have as little affiliation with Gothic design as it would be possible to devise. It is true that this façade is not a design of one epoch, but is made up of parts that were wrought at different times from 1230 to I3O4. It is, however, none the less a fair illustration of the Italian constructive inaptness in pointed design.

The east end of the Italian church, which is sometimes rectangular, as at Siena, but is more commonly polygonal, as in the Frari in Venice, is always a heavily walled structure, though its effect is occasionally lightened by the introduction of large windows, divided by mullions and tracery. Its roof is sometimes a portion of a polygonal (dome, as at Florence, and sometimes consists of a nearly true Gothic vault, as at Sta. Croce. The apsidal aisle never occurs, and the apse is never provided with really Gothic buttresses.

Transept ends are usually square with plain walls, as in S. Maria Novella, though the apsidal form occurs, as we have seen, in the Cathedral of Florence.

The towers of the Italian pointed style do not differ in structural character from those of the Lombard-Romanesque, from which they are derived. They are rarely incorporated with the church edifice, and they never form parts of the western façades as similar towers do north of the Alps. At Prato