DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29899#0023
Bk. II. Ch. YII.
TOWERS.
3
broad at the surainit as at the base. With very few exceptions, they
are without buttresses, or any projection on the angles, to aid in giving
them even an appearance of support. In consequence, when a spire
was placed on such an edifice it always fitted awkwardly. The art by
which a tower was prepared for its termination, first by the graduated
buttresses at its base, then by the strongly marked vertical lines of its
upper portion, and above all by the circle of spirelets at the top, out of
which the central spire shot up as an absolute necessity of the com-
position—this art, so dear and so familiar to the ISTorthern builders,
was never understood by the Italians. If they, on the contrary, placed
an octagon on their square towers, it looked like an accident for which
nothing was prepared, and the spire was separated from it only by bold
horizontal cornices, instead of by vertical lines, as true taste dictated.
In fact, the Italians seem to have benefited less by the experience
or instruction of their Northern neighbours in tower-building than in
any other feature of the style, and to have retained their old forms in
these after they had abandoned them in other parts of their churches.
The tvpical tower of its class is the Toraccio of Cremona. It is a
monumental tower commenced in 1296 to commemorate a peace made
between Cremona and the neighbouring states after a long and tedious
515.
View of the Duomo at Prato. (From Wiebeking.)
TOWERS.
3
broad at the surainit as at the base. With very few exceptions, they
are without buttresses, or any projection on the angles, to aid in giving
them even an appearance of support. In consequence, when a spire
was placed on such an edifice it always fitted awkwardly. The art by
which a tower was prepared for its termination, first by the graduated
buttresses at its base, then by the strongly marked vertical lines of its
upper portion, and above all by the circle of spirelets at the top, out of
which the central spire shot up as an absolute necessity of the com-
position—this art, so dear and so familiar to the ISTorthern builders,
was never understood by the Italians. If they, on the contrary, placed
an octagon on their square towers, it looked like an accident for which
nothing was prepared, and the spire was separated from it only by bold
horizontal cornices, instead of by vertical lines, as true taste dictated.
In fact, the Italians seem to have benefited less by the experience
or instruction of their Northern neighbours in tower-building than in
any other feature of the style, and to have retained their old forms in
these after they had abandoned them in other parts of their churches.
The tvpical tower of its class is the Toraccio of Cremona. It is a
monumental tower commenced in 1296 to commemorate a peace made
between Cremona and the neighbouring states after a long and tedious
515.
View of the Duomo at Prato. (From Wiebeking.)