Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/460

428 a mania for stone vaulted roofs, which led to most important modifications of the style. It may probably be correct to assert that no Romanesque or Byzantine Italian church has, or ever had, a vaulted nave. On the other hand, there is hardly a Barbarian church which the builders did not aspire to vault, though they were frequently unable to accomplish it. It was this vaulting mania which led to the invention of compound piers, pointed arches, buttresses, pinnacles, and all the numerous peculiarities of the Gothic style; and which, reacting on northern Italy, produced the Ghibeline or Italian Gothic style.

No exact boundary can be drawn between these two: modifications of style varied, as Byzantine or Gothic influences ebbed or flowed, during the Middle Ages. Venice and Pisa, and all Calabria, were generally influenced by their intercourse with the East, while the whole of the north of Italy and away from the coast as far down as Sienna and Orvieto the strong hand of the Teuton made itself felt.

Yet Italy cannot be said to have been successful in either style. Her superior civilization enabled her to introduce and use an elegance of detail unknown north of the Alps; but she did not work out the basilican type for herself: she left it to others to do that for her, and consequently never perfectly understood what she undertook, or why it was done. The result is that, though great elegance is found in parts, Italy can hardly produce a single church which is satisfactory as a design; or which would be intelligible without first explaining the basework of those true styles from which its principal features have been borrowed.