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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conservatism of the Italians should have been so much more obstinate in the exterior of their buildings than in the interior ; and especially why so little Absence . , . , . of spires concession should have been made in the architecture oftheir towers. But this is the rule all through Italy up tothe time of the Renaissance, and few exceptions can be cited. Thereare, to be sure, some towers in which the Lombard features are lessinsisted on, and in which the pointed arch is used in the openings;but there is no example in Italy, so far as I know, of a tower endingin a true spire, — the Gothic form of roof, prepared for from the THE GOTHIC 167 foundation, and forming the only logical and consistent terminationto the desion. AYe find, indeed, examples in which the tower roof is so steep ^ndhigh as to approach the proportion of a spire, as S. M. Novella inFlorence and S. Gottardo in Milan, and we hear of towers, like thecampanile of Giotto at Florence, in which a spire had been a part of
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Fig-. 846. Assisi. S. Francesco. Exterior. the original design, but, whether from failure of resources or a rad-ical disaffection towards that termination, was never executed. But.every such instance does but confirm the conviction that the spirewas never a congenial feature in Italian architecture. The interest of S. Francesco is greatly heightened by its connec-tion with the great monastery of which the buildings lie adjacent to iton the west and south. They are of srreat extent, surround- „ •^ ^. , Monastery ing several cloisters and courts of various sizes and shapes, of Santhe principal cloister lying directly behind the apse of thechurch. Owing to their position on the sharply slojDing hillside,they are carried on long lines of tall battering arcades, and the viewof them from the lower country is most imposing and picturesque.The buildings have been allowed to fall much into dilapidation, butthe refectory is still a fine apartment enclosed on one side and one 168 ARCHITECTUR

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