Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/38

24 be worse, or evince less knowledge of art, than the works of that period; and we have proof of this, among other things, in certain figures which are over the door of the portico of St. Peter’s, at Rome; they are in the Greek manner, and represent certain holy fathers who had disputed for the Christian Church before some of the councils. Many works, of a similar manner, might be adduced in support of this assertion; examples may be seen in the city of Ravenna and in the whole Exarchate, some especially in the church of Santa Maria Rotonda, outside Ravenna, executed soon after the Lombards were driven from Italy. But I will not omit to mention that there is one thing most extraordinary and well worthy of notice in that church —the cupola, namely, which covers it. This is ten braccia in diameter, and serves as roof and crown to the fabric; it is formed of one single stone, and is so large and unwieldy (the weight being more than 200,000 lbs.) that one cannot but marvel at the means by which it was raised to that height. But to return to our subject. It is to the masters of those times that we owe the fantastic images and absurd figures still to be seen in many old works. And a similar inferiority is perceptible in architecture, for it was necessary to build ; but all good methods and correct forms being lost by the death of good artists and the destruction of their works, those who devoted themselves to that employment were in no condition to give either correct proportion or grace of any kind to their designs. Then arose new architects, and they, after the manner of their barbarous nations, erected the buildings in that style which we now call Gothic, and raising edifices that, to us moderns, are rather to the discredit than glory of the builders, until at a later period there appeared better artists, who returned, in some measure, to the purer style of the antique ; and this may be seen in most of the old (but not antique) churches throughout Italy, which were built in the manner just alluded to by these last-named artists. The palace of Theodoric, king