Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/218

Rh After the fourteenth century the pointed style in Italy fell rapidly into disuse. This was a natural result of the Renaissance movement, which in architecture was ushered in by Brunelleschi's dome to the Cathedral of Florence, and by his design for the Church of S. Lorenzo, in which the

FIG. 108.

basilican scheme with the classic column and entablature was re-established. Henceforth in Italy the structural forms and decorative motives of the Roman antique were to supply the elements of architectural design; and the arts of mediæval Christendom were to be regarded as obsolete and even barbarous.

In Spain, during the second half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, an interesting class of buildings was erected, in which the pointed arch occurs in the vaulting and in the main arcades, but which nevertheless remains strictly Romanesque in character—that is to say, these buildings are massive structures in which there is never any Gothic concentration of vault thrusts, nor any Gothic system of buttresses. Characteristic features of these buildings are the dome on pendentives at the crossing of nave and transept and the semicircular apse vaulted with a semi-dome. In some cases, however, the dome at the crossing gives place to a quadripartite vault, like those of French Gothic churches, and the vault of the apse assumes the form that is peculiar to the French chevet. The piers