Identifier: historyofarchit01cumm (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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ared. Theformer was in Literdays connected withthe rotonda; and itstill forms the choirof the church of Sta.Maria della Kotonda,of which the rotondaitself forms the naveand aisles. The plan(Fig. 98) is verysimilar to that of theearly Christian bap-tisteries, — a centralring about sixty-fivefeet in diameter, ofrude stout piers sup-porting round arches,eight in number, onwhich a circular wallis carried up whichsupports a hemispher-ical dome, of whichthe crown is abouteighty-three feetabove the pavement;and outside the arcadea surrounding aisle about eighteen feet wide, divided into bays alter-nately square and triangular, by transverse arches, of which two springfrom each pier of the arcade to the outside wall, the square baysbeing covered by groined vaults. The exterior wall of the aisle ispierced by small round-arched windows. The whole interior is abso-lutely without ornament of any description. The piers are withoutbases or caps, the windows are without mouldings, the dome springs
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Fig. 99. Brescia. Duonio Vecchio. 158 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY from the walls of the drum without a cornice. On the exterior thesame plainness prevails, so far as the aisle wall is concerned. Butthe central wall, which rises nearly to the height of the dome, andis crowned by a low-pitched conical roof, is divided into twenty-fourbays by thin pilaster strips which terminate in an arched corbel-table.Each bay encloses a single round-arched recess, with the exceptionof three, in which the openings are circular, and are pierced throughthe masonry of the dome, serving as windows to light the interior.(Fig. 99.) The walls and piers both outside and inside are of rubble-stone,which, on the inside, is covered by a coat of plaster ; but the corbel-table of the exterior wall, with several courses of herring-bone orna-ment below it and a decorated cornice above, is of brick. The pave-ment of the church is now some ten feet below the ground outside,and is reached from without by the large staircases

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