192 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

stilted and variously centred arch existed already: the pure ogive followed-where first exhibited we stay not to inquire;¹-finally, and chief of all, the great mechanical discovery of the resistance of lateral pressure by the weight of the superimposed flanking pinnacle. Daring concentrations of pressure upon narrow piers were the immediate consequence, and the recognition of the buttress as a feature in itself agreeable and susceptible of decoration. The glorious art of painting on glass² added its temptations; the darkness of northern climes both rendering the typical character of Light more deeply felt than in Italy, and necessitating its admission in larger masses; the Italian, even at the period of his most exquisite art in glass, retaining the small Lombard window, whose expediency will hardly be doubted by any one who has experienced the transition from the scorching reverberation of the white-hot marble front, to the cool depth of shade within, and whose beauty will not be soon forgotten by those who have seen the narrow lights of the Pisan duomo announce by their redder burning, not like transparent casements, but like characters of fire searing the western wall, the decline of day upon Capraja^.3

23. Here, then, arose one great distinction between Northern and Transalpine Gothic, based, be it still observed, on mere necessities of climate. While the architect of Santa Maria Novella admitted to the frescoes of Ghirlandajo scarcely more of purple lancet light than had been shed by the morning sun through the veined alabasters of San Miniato; and looked to the rich blue of the quinquepartite vault above, as to the mosaic of the older concha, for conspicuous aid in the colour decoration of the whole; the northern builder burst through the walls of his apse, poured over the eastern alter one unbroken blaze, and lifting his shafts like pines, and his walls like precipices, ministered to their miraculous

¹ [The evolution of the ogee is traced in Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. x. § 17 (Vol. IX. p. 162), ch. xi. § 20 (ibid., p. 173).]

² [See above, Introduction, p. lxv.]

³ [See note on Vol. IV. p. 288, where Ruskin makes another figure of the island of Capraja.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]