File:A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14804312843).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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a portion of some other edifice now de-stroyed. It is separated from the original church of the admiral bya distance of some fifty feet, the intervening space being now coveredby the Renaissance addition, — two or three times as large as theoriginal church, — which was made in the middle of the fifteenth lands, and with ten serfs or villani attached thereto, whose names are g-iven. (G. Knig-ht,The Normans in Sicily, p. 260, note.) It is difficult in these prosaic days to appreciateduly the splendor of this exalted personage. In an epitaph quoted by Boito he is styled the radiant morning star, the marvel of the world, a friendly light to the Christians, adevouring: flame to the barbarians, etc., etc. 1 In another inscription, which records the consecration of the church in 1143, theadmiral excuses himself to the Virgin that the temple he has dedicated to her is sosmall. Mothes, p. 544. 2 See Dehli and Chamberlin, Norman Monuments of Palermo, pi. 25, et seq. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 87
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Fig. 294. Palermo. La Martorana. century. (Fig. 294.) The tower is in four well-marked stages, ofwhich the first two are plain and square, while the upper two aregreatly enriched by the addition of round angle turrets. The towerwas originally crowned by a hemispherical dome, which has now dis-appeared. With the exception of the open pointed arches of thefirst stage, all the openings of the tower are of two lights, divided bymarble shafts, and covered by pointed bearing arches. The orna-ment, which is profuse, is of a singular character, hardly to be calleddistinctively Saracenic, yet doubtless due to Saracenic influence, asis also the general use of the pointed arch. Very near the Martorana is the nearly contemporary, perhapsslightly later, church of S. Cataldo, with much the same generalcharacteristics. The principle of the Greek cross, here, as in theMartorana, governs the disposition, although the plan is not a square,but a rectangle measuring about twenty-five by thirty-three feet

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