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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thenave, springing from oc-tagonal piers, support alofty clerestory wall,pierced, as are also theaisle walls, with simplehigh, narrow, pointedwindows. The nave iscovered with a simpleopen timber roof quitewithout adornment. Theaisles are roofed in apeculiar way, being di-vided into bays bytransverse arches, andeach bay being coveredby a double pitched roofwhose ridge is at rightangles with the aisle.The exterior thus pre-sents a succession ofsharp gables, with roofsbehind them serving as buttresses for the high clerestory. The exte-rior of Santa Croce is not more interesting than the interior, having ^ Had the choir followed the usual Italian plan, and been made of the same width asthe nave, the church would have had, in a vaulted polygonal apse, sixty feet broad, afeature which would have gone far to redeem the interior from the bareness and cheap-ness which now characterize it. But the width of the nave now includes not only thechoir, but the first of the chapels on each side of it.
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Fig. 373. Florence. Cathedral. 206 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY scarcely any architectural character. The faQade was, as so oftenhappened, left unfinished, and was only completed in the middle ofthe nineteenth century, through the liberality of an English gentle-man, its design following a drawing by Cronaca found in the archivesof the convent attached to the church. It is an uninterestins: com-position, with central and side gables, the surface laid off monoto-nously with vertical panels in white, red, and green marbles. Up to the end of the thirteenth century Florence had no cathedralFlorence whicli bore any proportion to the greatness and importanceCathedral, ^f ^.j^g ^.j^y ^j, ^q ^j^g pride of its people. The small churchof Sta. Reparata was of extreme antiquity, its origin going backprobably to the eighth century, and perhaps yet farther, though ithad served as the cathedral only since the church of S. Giovanni wasmade the baptistery, some time in the twelfth century. The work which the

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