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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with the flight of time, and the aspect of the tortuousand hilly streets is somewhat gloomy. Much variety and irregular-ity distinguish the old houses, — projecting balconies, broad recessedloggias, outside staircases, and other striking features treated withthe native and unforced picturesqueness which is characteristic ofthe Italian builder everywhere, make the town one of the most inter-esting in all Italy. I give the elevations of two of these houses,which will afford some idea of the resources of the mediaeval build-ers. One has a frontage of about thirty-two feet; the other is some-what broader. In the one (Fig. 418) a short staircase along theface of the wall gives access through a sort of open gateway at mid-height, similar to that which is so familar in the court of the Bar-gello at Florence, to a balcony some eight or ten feet above thestreet, supported by a flat arch which starts under the ramp of thestair, the fence of which is carried partly on small decorated corbels.
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Fig. 416. Murano. Palazzo da Mula. 262 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY A segmental arched doorway under the balcony gives entrance to the basement, and from the balcony itself a small round-arched door-way opens into the entrance hall of the house. The story is highand finishes with a delicate moulded string with a fine nail-headdecoration, carried on small corbels like those of the balcony below.A flat pilaster rising on one angle of the front, and stopping at this string, bears on itsface a square panelenclosing a shield.The upper story isperfectly plain, witha single segmental-arched window in themiddle. The other front isless irregular, butscarcely less interest-ing. Its principalfeature is a broadopen loggia coveredby a low segmentalarch, with a slightlyprojecting balconyfront with much thesame character asthat in the last men-tioned example. Aplain doorway at theside opens into a ves-tibule, from which ashort stair leads to the balcony. Abovethis story is a deco-rated string - courseclose-s

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