Identifier: brickmarbleinmid01stre (find matches)
Title: Brick and marble in the Middle Ages: notes of a tour in the north of Italy
Year: 1855 (1850s)
Authors: Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
Subjects: Architecture, Medieval Architecture Architecture, Gothic
Publisher: London, J. Murray
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ike so many cords stretched from cap to base, andround the arch without any proper distinction of jamband archivolt. The internal effect of the church of the Frariis much finer than its west front would lead one toexpect. The plan is simple ; a nave and aisles of sixbays, transepts with three eastern chapels to each, anda choir of one bay with an apse of four bays. Thecolumns are simple, cylindrical, and very loffcy, theircapitals carved with foliage, which looks late and poorin its execution, though grouped in the old way inregular tufts or balls of foliage. The arrangement ofthe wall above the main arcade is very similar to thatof the Veronese churches, and, indeed, to that of mostItalian pointed; a plain wall is carried up to thegroining, relieved only by a small clerestory windowat the highest point. One is apt to compare thisarrangement with the noble arrangement of clerestoryand triforium in oui own churches : but herein we donot fairly to Niccolo Pisano (who designed the Frari)
Text Appearing After Image:
16—INTERIOR OP 3TA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI, VENICE. Page 133. Chap. VIII. CHURCH OF THE FRARI. 133 and his brethren. They had to work in a eountrywhere hght must be admitted very sparingly, andwhere therefore it is impossible to revel in the richtraceries which fill the bays of the churches of theNorth; and they lived among a nation of artists, anddeemed, perhaps, that these plain surfaces of wall wouldone day glow with colour and with scripture story.For these reasons then I defend them for the bare-ness and over-great plainness which is certainly atfirst felt to be so remarkable in their work. But thereal beauty of these interiors is owing, I believe,more to the noble simplicity and purity of the quad-ripartite groining which arches them in, and which,even where other features would seem to tell of de-basement and absence of feeling, invariably recalls usto a proper recollection of the infinite value of simpli-city in this important feature, a point lost sight of inEngland almos

Note About Images