File:A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14781356501).jpg

Identifier: historyofarchit02cumm (find matches)
Title: A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Cummings, Charles Amos, 1833-1905
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
d bearing-arch with a quatrefoil in thehead. The wall below the windows is broken only by the dividingpiers, and is of superior thickness, so that at the point where thewall is thinned, sufficient breadth is left for a narrow gallery, whichruns quite around the church, cutting through the masonry of thedeep wall arches. In the side walls of transepts and choir, wherethere are no windows, this gallery is faced by a light and gracefularcade of narrow cusped arches, on slender columns with foliage capi-tals of a distinctly French type; and above the arcade is a secondgallery, protected by a low fence wall. It will be seen that the whole design of this interior is of thesimplest character. Except for the gallery arcade even the sternCistercians could not have built with more severe restraint, so far asthe architectural forms were concerned. But the decoration whichwas applied to these broad walls and arches and vaults made thechurch one of the richest and most sumptuous in Italy. With the
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 344. Assisi. S. Francesco. Lower Church. THE GOTHIC 165 exception of the mo-saic decorations ofPalermo and Venice,from fifty to a hun-dred years earlierthan the chnrch ofAssisi, we must goback to the sixthcentury to find anyexample of such acomplete and con-sistent decoration ofa church interior.But there is no mo-saic in S. Francesco;the decoration is infresco. Every por-tion of the surface iscovered with paint-ing, — whether offigure subjects repre-senting the legendsof the church, in-cluding a series oftwenty-eight pictures illustrating the history of St. Francis and attributed to Giotto; orof arabesques and bands of various design on the shafts and ribsand soffits, and in the borders of the vault cells; or of scatteredstars on a blue ground, as in the broad surfaces of the vaults. Thelower church is not less rich than the upper, and a series of headsand half-length figures enclosed in squares or lozenges on the soffitsof the broad vaulting ribs are of wonderful delicacy and

Note About Images