Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/216

Rh the tower, a particularly fine one, rises through the wall of the south aisle close to the west transept; but generally, as at Florence, the tower is placed at a little distance from the west façade. In form it is a simple storied edifice, rising without set-offs to a considerable height, and crowned either with a low pyramidal roof of timber, as in the Duomo of Florence and in that of Prato, or with a stone spire, as at S. Maria Novella (Fig. 1 06), and at the Badia in Florence. The magnificent campanile of the Florentine Duomo, though in many respects unique, may yet be taken as characteristic of these buildings generally. It consists of five stories of finely proportioned heights, with octagonal buttresses at the angles reaching from the pavement to the coping. The openings are exquisitely proportioned with pointed arches, and are divided by mullions and tracery. These openings increase in magnitude in the successive stories, the highest one of all being of vast proportions for Italy, and one of the most beautiful windows in the world. The walls are crowned by a deep and rich cornice, carried on corbels, and continued around the buttresses. In place of the low roof which now surmounts it, a spire, probably much like that of S. Maria Novella, is said to have been originally intended. But this tower, though a consistent and beautiful structure, can hardly be called a Gothic one.

The Italian poverty of structural invention is especially marked in those towers of Northern Italy which are crowned by octagonal lanterns. Of these the tower of the Scaligeri at Verona (Fig. 107) and that of S. Andrea of Mantua are conspicuous examples. In these erections no attempt whatever is made to prepare the square base for the superposed octagons; but, on the contrary, the walls are finished