Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/191

Rh VERONA 171 contemporary with the building. The vaults are very gracefully painted with floreated bands along the ribs and central patterns in each &quot; cell,&quot; in rich soft colours on a white plastered ground. The eastern portion of the vault ing, including the choir and one bay of the nave, has the older and simpler decorations; the rest of the nave has more elaborate painted ornament, foliage mixed with figures of Dominican saints, executed in the 15th century. W On the walls below are many fine frescos, ranging from c. 1300 to the 15th century, including Pisanello s beautiful painting of St George (mentioned below). This church also contains a large number of fine sculptured tombs of the 14th and 15th centuries, with noble effigies and reliefs of saints and sacred subjects. It is mainly built of red brick, with fine nave columns of red and white marble and an elaborate marble pavement inlaid in many different patterns. Its general proportions are specially noble. Church The church of S. Fermo Maggiore comes next in interest, sf S. With the exception of the crypt, which is older, the exist- Fermo. -^ e( jifl ce was re built in the 14th century. Its plan is very unusual, consisting of a large nave without aisles, the span being between 45 and 50 feet ; it also has two shallow transepts and an apsidal east end. The roof, which is especially magnificent, is the finest example of a class which as a rule is only found in Venetia : l the fram ing is concealed by coving or barrel-vaulting in wood, the surface of which is divided into small square panels, all painted and gilt, giving a very rich effect. In this case the 14th and 15th century painted decorations are well preserved. Delicate patterns cover all the framework of the panelling and fill the panels themselves ; at two stages, where there is a check in the line of the coving, rows of half-figures of saints are minutely painted on blue or gold grounds, forming a scheme of indescribably splendid de coration. A simpler roof of the same class exists at S. Zeno ; it is trefoil-shaped in section, with a tie-beam join ing the cusps. The church of S. Maria in Organo, rebuilt 1 Or in churches built by Venetian architects in Istria and other subject provinces. by Sanmichele, contains paintings by various Veronese Other masters. Though not built till after his death, the church churches, of S. Giorgio in Braida, on the other side of the river, was also designed by Sanmichele, and possesses many good pic tures of the Veronese school. There are several other fine churches in Verona, some of early date. One of the 14th century is dedicated to Thomas a Becket of Canterbury. The strongly fortified castle built by the Delia Scala Bridges lords in the 1 4th century stands on the line of the Roman an(l wall, close by the river. A very picturesque battlemented ca bridge leads from it to the other shore, sloping down over three arches of different sizes, the largest next to the castle and the smallest at the other end. There are four other bridges across the Adige; one, the graceful Ponte di Pietra, was designed by Fra Giocondo. The 16th-century lines of fortification enclose a very much larger area than the Roman city, forming a great loop to the west, and also including a considerable space on the left bank of the river. In the latter part of the city, on a steep elevation, stands the castle of St Peter, originally founded by Theodoric, mostly rebuilt by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1393, and dismantled by the French in 1801. This and the other fortifications of Verona were rebuilt or repaired by the Austrians, but are no longer kept up as military defences. Verona, which is the chief military centre of the Italian province of Venetia, is now being surrounded with a circle of forts far outside the obsolete city walls. The early palaces of Verona, before its conquest by Palaces. Venice, were of very noble and simple design, mostly built of fine red brick, with an inner court, surrounded on the ground floor by open arches like a cloister, as, for example, the Palazzo della Ragione, an assize court, begun in the 12th century. The arches, round or more often pointed in form, were decorated with moulded terra-cotta enrich ments, and often with alternating voussoirs of marble. The Scaligeri Palace is a fine example, dating from the 14th century, with, in the cortile, an external staircase leading to an upper loggia, above the usual arcade on the ground floor. It has a very lofty campanile, surmounted by a graceful octagonal upper story. This palace is said to have been mainly built by Can Signorio (Della Scala) about 1370. After the conquest by Venice the domestic build ings of Verona assumed quite a different type. They became feeble copies of Venetian palaces, in which one form of window, with an ogee arch, framed by the dentil moulding is almost always used. The monotony and utter lifelessness of this form of architecture are shown in the meaningless way in which details, suited only to the Vene tian methods of veneering walls with thin marble slabs, are copied in the solid marbles of Verona. From the skill of Fra Giocondo (see below), Verona was for many years one of the chief centres in which the most refined and graceful forms of the early Renaissance were developed. The town-hall, with its light open loggia of semicircular arches on the ground floor, was designed by Fra Giocondo towards the end of the 15th century; its sculptured en richments of pilasters and friezes are very graceful, though lacking the vigorous life of the earlier mediaeval sculptured ornamentation. Verona contains a number of handsome, though somewhat uninteresting, palaces designed by San michele in the 16th century. The finest are those of the Bevilacqua, 2 Canossa, and Pompei families. The last of these is now the property of the city, and contains a gallery with some good pictures, especially of the Verona, Padua, and Venice schools. As in Venice, many of the 16th-cen tury palaces in Verona had stuccoed fa9ades, richly deco rated with large fresco paintings, often by very able painters. One of these, the house of the painter Niccolo 2 The valuable collection of works of art once preserved in the Bevilacqua Palace has long since been dispersed.