DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29899#0033
Bk. II. Ch. VII.
CIYIC BUILDINGS.
13
>•
architecture o£ the best age in the North of Italy, ancl standing as it
does between the cathedral on the one hand and its own rude old
belfry on the other, rnakes up an extremely pleasing group. 1
One of the most important buildings of this style is the Great
Hospital, Milan. It was founded in the year 1456, and consequently
belongs to an age when the style was dying out. It still retains more
of the pointed style and of Gothic feeling than could have been found
in any city farther south, or in any one less impregnated, as it were,
with German blood and feeling.
Almost all the windows in the part originally erected are pointed
in form and divided by mullions. Their principal ornament consists of
garlands of flowers interspersed with busts and masks and figures of
Cupids, which surround the windows, or run along the string-courses.
523,
Ornamental Brickwork from the Broletto at Brescia. (From Street.)
The whole of these are in terra-cotta, and make up a stylc of orna-
mentation as original as it is beautiful. It is besides purely local, and
far superior to the best copies of Northern details, or to the misapplied
forms of Gothic architecture which are so common in Italy.
There is perhaps nothing in the North of Italy so worthy of admi-
ration and study, as the way in which moulded bricks of various kinds
are used for decoration, especially in the civic buildings, and also
occasionally in the churches. Sublimity is not perhaps to be attained
in brickwork ; the parts are too small ; and if splendour is aimed at, it
may require some larger and more costly material to produce the
desired effect ; but there is no beauty of detail or of design on a small
1 Similar buildings at Bergamo,
Brescia, and Monza arc illustrated in
Mr. Street’s beautiful work on tlic
arckitccture of the Nortli of Italy, frotn
whicli thc two last illustrations are
borrowed.
O-
k
CIYIC BUILDINGS.
13
>•
architecture o£ the best age in the North of Italy, ancl standing as it
does between the cathedral on the one hand and its own rude old
belfry on the other, rnakes up an extremely pleasing group. 1
One of the most important buildings of this style is the Great
Hospital, Milan. It was founded in the year 1456, and consequently
belongs to an age when the style was dying out. It still retains more
of the pointed style and of Gothic feeling than could have been found
in any city farther south, or in any one less impregnated, as it were,
with German blood and feeling.
Almost all the windows in the part originally erected are pointed
in form and divided by mullions. Their principal ornament consists of
garlands of flowers interspersed with busts and masks and figures of
Cupids, which surround the windows, or run along the string-courses.
523,
Ornamental Brickwork from the Broletto at Brescia. (From Street.)
The whole of these are in terra-cotta, and make up a stylc of orna-
mentation as original as it is beautiful. It is besides purely local, and
far superior to the best copies of Northern details, or to the misapplied
forms of Gothic architecture which are so common in Italy.
There is perhaps nothing in the North of Italy so worthy of admi-
ration and study, as the way in which moulded bricks of various kinds
are used for decoration, especially in the civic buildings, and also
occasionally in the churches. Sublimity is not perhaps to be attained
in brickwork ; the parts are too small ; and if splendour is aimed at, it
may require some larger and more costly material to produce the
desired effect ; but there is no beauty of detail or of design on a small
1 Similar buildings at Bergamo,
Brescia, and Monza arc illustrated in
Mr. Street’s beautiful work on tlic
arckitccture of the Nortli of Italy, frotn
whicli thc two last illustrations are
borrowed.
O-
k