File:A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14781431691).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

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e. If this tower does not astonish the beholder like the tower ofthe Palazzo Vecchio, it can never fail to impress and charm him.At its base is the square loggia built in 1376 as a votive chapel to CIVIL ARCHITECTURE 285 commemorate the deliverance of Siena from the desolating plague of1348, which is said, with the usual exaggeration of the old chroni-clers, to have killed in a single summer no less than eighty thousandof the population, even as Florence is said to have lost in the sameyear ninety thousand. The one statement is doubtless as true as theother. The loggia is about thirty-two feet square, with a broad andhigh round arch in each face, — that on the front, which forms theentrance, being closed by a magnificent gate of wrought iron, ofthe simplest design. great vigor but ofand effect. The de-tail of the loggia isof great elegance,and partakes some-what of the characterof that of the Bigalloat Florence, thoughwith less purity, —the influence of thecoming Renaissance being
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plainly to beseen. The side of thepalace, particularlywhen taken in con-nection with the ad-jacent building ofsomewhat later date,containing in thebasement the prisonsof the commune, wasscarcely less strikingthan the front in thegreat square. Thetwo buildings werejoined by a broad lowsegmental arch sup-porting a battle-mented terrace which afforded communication between the two,and under which a broad stair descended to the lower level of thecourt from which the basement story was entered. All this is now Fig. 439. Doorway, Ducal Palace. 286 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY abolished. The form of the great arch (of some thirty-five feetspan) can still be distinguished, but a rough brick wall fills all theopening between the two buildings. The interior disposition of the older building is interesting. Thegreater portion of the ground floor is taken up by storerooms forvarious sorts of merchandise ; the remainder, perhaps a third part ofthe whole, is occupied by the usual cortile, which bears an u

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