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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and delight in dainty variety which undoubtedly strikes usin most good Gothic works, and makes them so enjoyable. The church which inspired the design of this was, nodoubt, the cathedral at Florence. But of the two the designof San Petronio seems to me to be the more beautiful.The addition of chapels beyond the aisles and the traceriesin their windows make the design a little less bald and in-sipid, and also give a somewhfit truer impression of the realscale than one has at Florence, But at the best such workdoes not create enthusiasm. The principal eflbrt of thearchitect was to build something very big, and he succeeded;unfortunately he so contrived as very nearly to prevent onefrom quite realizing how vast his work is, and I hardly knowa more serious charge that can be made against an architectthan this.^ The complete oIiiirc)i was to have been 800 foet long, and 525 feet acrosstlie transepts, witli a central dome IM) Il^ct in dianieter.—Fergussons Historyof Architectnre, ii. 210.
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54-. SJi)^ PETFjvKIv. BOLO^pj^ 294. Chap. XI.) SAN DOMENICO. 295 From tliis clinrch T went to San Domenico, famous for avery elaborate tomb or shrine of the saint by Nicohi Pisano.This is not a work that entirely pleases me. It is a highcoped tomb covered with sculptiire on the sides, erectedbehind the altar. The history of its erection by NicolaPisano in 1*265 gives it value as a dated work by a greatartist. He seems to have been a good deal assisted by hisscholar, Fra Guglielmo Agnelli, whose work is by no meansequal to his masters. The tomb alone is the work of theseartists, the rest of the work about the altar having been fre-quently added to and altered in later days, and each sculptoremployed having done his best to glorify his own skill anddexterity instead of thinking, as Nicola Pisano evidently did,simply of telling his story in the most straightforward way. The stories represented in the bas-reliefs had more thancommon value for a sculptor of original power. In thecentre is

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