Identifier: brickmarbleinmid00stre (find matches)
Title: Brick and marble in the middle ages: notes of tours in the north of Italy
Year: 1874 (1870s)
Authors: Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
Subjects: Architecture, Medieval Architecture -- Italy Architecture, Gothic
Publisher: London : J. Murray
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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xtraordinary pro-fusion one behind the other. The centre of the threedivisions of the west front is almost wholly filled with a veryfine porch of three stages in height, and finished with gableson its front and sides. The lower stage of this porch, asindeed of the whole church, is round-arched, and belongsprobably to the church consecrated here in 1135. Theknotted shafts which carry the front wall rest on figuressitting on lions. The doorway is deeply recessed, and hasfigures of saints with scrolls. The tympanum of the archhas a sculpture of S. George and the Dragon, and the lintelIxlow it eight subjects, beginning with the Salutation, andending with the Baptism, of Our Lord. At the top of thisstage is an inscription which contains the date given above. Said to liiivc been carvoil by Nicolo, who is supposed to be the same manwlio wrought on the west dooi- of San Zenone, Verona. This does not appear tomo to be likely ; the work at Verona being, 1 tliink, earlier than that at Ferrara. m
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Ph or ATW Chap. XI.) THE CATHEDLAL. 280 Tlio next stage is later, and lias throe arches with traceriescarried upon chevroned and twisted shafts, with a statue ofthe Virgin and ChikI in the centre. This stage forms a sortof balcony. The upper stages are covered with sculpture.In the gable is Our Lord as Judge in a vesica-shaped aureole ;around and above Him are saints and angels, and below agroup of angels dividing the good from the bad. The subjectis continued on to the wall on each side of the porch, whereon one side are represented the souls of the just in the lap ofGod, and on the other the descent of the wicked into the jawsI of Hell. The whole scheme is a picturesque and unusually disposed treatment of the Last Judgment. There is, how- • ever, not much merit in the sculpture as a work of art,; though as an enrichment of the buildings it is most effective. • The statue in the centre is said to be by Nicola Pisano.The south front of the cathedral has a long range of ar

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