A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14761480426)

Identifier: historyofarchit02cumm (find matches)
Title: A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Cummings, Charles Amos, 1833-1905
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto



Text Appearing Before Image:
tal work on the cathedral of Monreale is some-what lessened in value by the fondness of its author for startling and ill-foundedtheories. SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 111 unnatural, from one point of view, but it fails to remove the dif-ficulty, since it is as easy to imagine the fault to belong to the origi-nal design as to a reconstruction, and there is no other evidence thatthe parts of the cloister were not contemporaneous. Furthermore, asimilar awkwardness is to be seen in the cloisters of Cefalii, and inthose of the church of Santa Trinita, known as the Maggione, atPalermo, a small church contemporary with the cathedral. The lavatory of the monks is in one angle of the square, and is agraceful feature of this beautiful cloister, with its own little squareenclosed by three arches on each side.^ I have said that little remains of the buildings of the monasterywith the exception of the cloister. There are, however, some frag-ments of the south and west sides of the enclosing square, which
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Fig. 313. Monreale. Cloisters. show above the arcades of the cloister. On the south, the wall is intwo stories separated by a narrow band of inlay. The lower story 1 The enclosed square of these cloisters is laid out as a beautiful garden, with fountainsrising- amid orang-es and palms, presenting- a strong- contrast to the sombre cloisters ofthe Northern cathedrals, — the whole effect here being- gay rather than grave, — a sortof monastic Alhambra, to use the words of Dantier. 112 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY has a range of narrow blind arches, coupled, with dividing columns,— the upper a tall blind arcade of pointed arches surrounded bymouldings, each arch enclosing a coupled arch divided by columns,as in the lower story, the alternate couples being pierced for windows.The west arm has the look of older work, and consists of a continu-ous arcade of high narrow pointed arches of rude masonry, withoutmouldings, with a single window in the upper half of each alternatearch.i It is an inte