196 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

Gulf of Genoa,¹ that we find the first cause of the peculiar spirit of the Tuscan and Ligurian Gothic-carried out in the Florentine duomo to the highest pitch of coloured finish-adorned in the upper story of the Campanile by a transformation, peculiarly rich and exquisite, of the narrowly-pierced heading of window already described, into a veil of tracery²-and aided throughout by an accomplished precision of design in its mouldings which we believe to be unique. In St. Petronio of Bologna,³ another and a barbarous type occurs; the hollow niche of Northern Gothic wrought out with diamond-shaped penetrations enclosed in squares; at Bergamo another, remarkable for the same square penetrations of its rich and daring foliation;-while at Monza and Carrara the square is adopted as the leading form of decoration on the west fronts, and a grotesque expression results-barbarous still;⁴-which, however, in the latter duomo is associated with the arcade of slender niches-the translation of the Romanesque arcade into pointed work, which forms the second perfect order of Italian Gothic, entirely ecclesiastical, and well developed in the churches of Santa Caterina and Santa Maria della Spina at Pisa.⁵ The Veronese Gothic, distinguished by the extreme purity and severity of its ruling lines, owing to the distance of the centres of circles from which its cusps are struck, forms another, and yet a more noble school-and passes through the richer decoration of Padua and Vicenza to the full magnificence of the Venetian-distinguished by the introduction of the ogee curve without pruriency or effeminacy, and by the breadth and decision

¹ [Compare Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 53, above, p. 76 and n.]

² [See Seven Lamps, frontispiece and Plate ix., and ch. iii. § 18, ch. iv. § 43 (Vol. VIII. pp. 126, 187).]

³ [This church was founded in 1390, the architect being Antonio Vincenzi, ambassador of the Bolognese to the Venetian Republic in 1396. Some of its architectural features are drawn and described in Willis’ Architecture of the Middle Ages, p. 193 and Plate vi.]

⁴ [This feature of the Cathedral of Monza is more fully discussed in Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. viii. (Vol. IX. p. 123 and n.).]

⁵ [For a drawing of the latter church, see Vol. IV., Plate 4. For Ruskin’s special affection for the Veronese Gothic, see Seven Lamps (Vol. VIII. p. 13).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]