CONSTRUCTION VIII. THE SHAFT 123

far when, in either school, there has been determined search for every possible variety of decorative figures; and accidental circumstances may reverse the usual system in special cases: but the evidence drawn from this character is collaterally of the highest value, and the tracing it out is a pursuit of singular interest. Thus, the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be pronounced to have been formed under some measure of Lombardic influence, from the oblique square set under its arches; and in it we have the spirit of Northern Gothic affecting details of the Southern;-obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted Romanesque. At Monza, on the other hand, the levelled square is the characteristic figure of the entire decoration of the façade of the Duomo,¹ eminently giving it Southern character; but the details are derived almost entirely from the Northern Gothic. Here then we have Southern spirit and Northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the shaft, a still more positive test of Northern work, we shall have more to say in the 28th Chapter; we must at present note certain farther changes

¹ [Ruskin was much interested in the Cathedral of Monza which he studied in 1849. The following notes are from the pages in the diary devoted to it:-

(November 1).-“Monza is remarkable for its engrafting of Renaissance feeling on the Round arch; it is, as I believed, deserving of special notice as a separate school of Gothic, never developed. The main idea of the front is the surrounding a wheel (circular) window with a square, divided into square panels, the ribs dividing the panels cut deep and enriched with exquisite classical mouldings, and each panel filled with a circular tracery or star. Rose windows may evidently be fitly associated with a square panelled surface ornament, with more dignity even than with a diamond; and this idea of Monza is nothing else than the rose of St. Etienne, Beauvais, with its diamond panelling set vertical; its bars, instead of a mere roll, turned into a flat classical moulding, with rich flower work on the sides, and the roses of the fillings turned into hollow tracery. Evidently this enrichment would be an improvement if the traceries were fine; they are, however, impure, and many of them ugly and like ventilators or iron work; the stars, many of them, harsh and stiff. The wheel window itself has an exquisitely deep and rich classical moulding substituted for the crude Norman one. .... Below, on each side of the porch, there are two remarkable windows, one on each side of a superb round arch, filled with tracery, very elegant, in the southern one, and surrounded by a twisted column, moulding only inferior to Florence in grace and completion. It is Florence without its mosaics, and founded on a Romanesque idea instead of a Gothic one.... The gem of the façade is, however, its porch ... [reference to sketch-book]. It unites in the most graceful way apparently discordant elements. Round arches, rich foliation, pointed gables enclosing circles of most rich and strange tracery above, and classical mouldings of exquisite delicacy.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]