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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ywhere inNorthern Italy; either, as here, hanging on under the sillsof windows, or else running up the sides of gables, formingstring-courses and cornices, but always unsatisfactory, be-cause unmeaning and unconstructional. The origin of thissort of detail is to be found in the numerous brick buildingsnot far distant, where the facility of repeating the patternsof moulded bricks led (as it did in other countries also)to this rather unsatisfactory kind of enrichment. Thedetail of the arcades suj^porting the U2)per part of thebuilding is throughout bold and sim^jle, and I should sayof the thirteenth century; the bases are quite northernin their section, the caps rather less deej) in their cutting,but still in their general design, and in the grouping of tuftsof drooping foliage regularly one above the other, remindingone much of Early French work, though they are certainlynot nearly so good as that generally is. There is a flatnessabout the carving, too, which gives the imjiression of a
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Chap. IV.) SlA. MAKIA MAGGIOKE. 55 striifTgle, in the hand of the carver, between the Classic andGothic principles, in which the latter never quite assertedthe mastery. The lesson to be learnt from such a buildingas this Broletto appears to mc to be the excessive value ofsimplicity and regularity of parts carefully and construction-ally treated; for there are no breaks or buttresses in thedesign, and all its elements are most simple, yet neverthelessthe result is beautiful. To the west of the Broletto is a good open staircase(much like that in the Piazza dei Signori at Yerona),^forming a portion of one side of the Piazza, and leadingto the upper part of the buildings, and, I think, to thegreat clock-tower, which, gaunt and severe in its outline,undecorated and apparently uncared for, rears its greatheight of rough stone wall boldly against the sky, andgroups picturesquely with the irregular buildings aroundit. I have omitted to notice that the whole of theBroletto, with the exception

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