Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/217

Rh with a heavy cornice, within which the lantern rises abruptly. The windows of Italian pointed buildings are always small, usually very small; when large enough for subdivisions, they are provided with mullions, above which are pierced tympanums, or simple geometric tracery. Both the pierced tympanum and the tracery seem to occur at all periods during the continuance of the style, and they sometimes appear together in the same building, and apparently of the same date, as in Sta. Croce of Florence, two of the aisle windows of which are shown in Fig. 108. Of the two forms that of the pierced tympanum is rather the more frequent, being variously modified by cuspings and featherings, and often very richly subdivided, as in Or San Michele of Florence.

The portals of these buildings present no important peculiarities except in the placing of their sculpture, which shall be referred to further on.

There is little more of importance to notice regarding the structural principles of Italian pointed buildings. Throughout the whole length and breadth of Italy, so far as the pointed influence extended, which was, with few exceptions, not far south of Naples, the same general characteristics prevail, the same lack of real Gothic principles may be remarked. The only conspicuous exception is that of the almost purely German Cathedral of Milan, which is, however, in many respects, but a travesty of Gothic. From the time of the building of St. Francis of Assisi to that of the building of S. Petronio of Bologna, a period of nearly a century and a half had elapsed without bringing about any material departure from the structural principles of Roman antiquity. Structural invention in architecture was, as a general thing, not a gift of the Italian genius in the Middle Ages.