present the pure unmingled Gothic of the North.* Classical influences, far less propitious to the symbolical than the positive in Art, still lingered there, and necessarily modified it. A new school of architects arose during the latter half of the thirteenth century, and filled Italy with churches and cloisters, public palaces and halls, in a style of much beauty, but superficial and essentially Southern in its character. Niccola Pisano was the founder of this schoolthe parent of Sculpture and Painting through his judicious use of antiquity, a man of whom in that respect it would be impossible to speak too highly, but whose fame would have stood higher had he adhered strictly to his Transalpine models in Architecture. The church of S. Antony at Padua, part of the Duomo at Pistoja, and the campaniles of that church and of S. Niccolò at Pisa (the latter a most ingenious structure) are works of Niccola,—his son, Giovanni, built the Campo Santo, or cemetery of Pisa, for the reception of the sacred earth brought from Jerusalem by the Archbishop Ubaldo after the expulsion of the Christians by Saladin, the most beautiful cloister perhaps in the world, and, next to the church of Assisi, the principal sanctuary of early Italian

* Not indeed that these are pure Northern Gothic, except in comparison with those of Italian erection. For Dr. Whewell's criticisms on Milan Cathedral, see his 'Architectural Notes,' p. 34,-still it is a glorious pile. The palace of the Doges exhibits a most curious tinge of the Arabesque or Saracenic. The Gothic influence was strongest at Naples, even during the middle ages, through the Normans and the dynasty of Anjou, closely connected with the North.

painting.—In 1279, the year after the Campo Santo was begun, Fra Ristoro, Fra Listo, and some other Dominican monks, pupils evidently of the same school, laid the first stone of their monastery at Florence, S. Maria Novella; and about five years afterwards, the sculptor Arnolfo, pupil of Niccola, settled there, relinquished sculpture for architecture, and spent the rest of his life in the service of the republic, then in the spring-tide of her greatness, rearing those vast and splendid piles which stamp the fair city with a character so peculiarly her own.* His first work was the Ultimo Cerchio, or outer circle, of the walls; in 1284, he commenced that singular building, originally a granary, now a church surmounted by a record-office, the Orsanmichele,—the following year, the Loggia de' Priori, now no more; the date of the Palace of the Podestà, now called the Bargello, and used as a public prison-an awful pile, gloomy without and most characteristic within-is less certain, but it was probably built during the years that immediately succeeded. In 1294, he began the Franciscan church of S. Croce, and incrusted the Baptistery with black and white marbles, after a fashion possibly of Saracenic origin, and of which the first example had been set by Buschetto in the Duomo at Pisa. In 1295, he built a fortress in the Val d'Arno, which gave such satisfaction that he was admitted to the citizenship, and shortly afterwards he seems to have begun the Palazzo Vecchio, the most striking building at Florence, and which certainly gains in * Vasari, Life of Arnolfo.

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character from the popular prejudice which would not permit him to extend its foundations over the site of the demolished palaces of the Ghibelline Uberti-a space still preserved free and unencroached upon, under the name of the Piazza del Gran Duca. Finally, in 1298, according to Vasari, but probably five or six years earlier, he commenced the Duomo, under the responsibility of making it the loftiest, most sumptuous and most magnificent pile that human wit could conceive or labour execute" the wisest of this city," says the decree, being of common counsel and consent, that the republic should undertake nothing unless with the determination to carry it forth from idea into performance commensurate with the grandeur of a soul composed of the minds of the whole community united and resolved into one single will and purpose," the most ample and fearless commission, surely, ever awarded to man or architect.* The building was begun at once, and

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* The words are as follows, in the 'Libro alle Riformagioni,' for the year 1294. "Atteso che la somma prudenza d'un populo d'origine grande sia di procedere nelli affari suoi di modo, che dalle operazioni esteriori si riconosca non meno il savio, che magnanimo suo operare, si ordina ad Arnolfo capo maestro del nostro comune, che faccia un modello osia di segno della rinovazione di Santa Reparata, con quella più alta e somma magnificenza, che inventar non si possa nè maggiore nè più bella dall' industria e potere degli uomini, secondo che da più savj di questa città è stato detto e consigliato in pubblica e privata adunanza, non doversi intraprendere cose del comune, se il concetto non è di farle corrispondenti ad un cuore, che vien fatto grandissimo, perchè composto dell' animo di più cittadini uniti insieme in un sol volere, molto più doversi ciò, considerata la qualità di quella catedra." From Dr. Ernst Förster's 'Beiträge zur neuern Kunstgeschichte,' Leipz. 8vo., 1835, p. 152.

prosecuted with such vigour, that the three tribunes were already yaulted over at the death of the architect in 1300. Andrea Pisano, Giotto-who reared the beautiful Campanile—and Orcagna successively held the office of Capo-Maestro, or chief architect, during the following century, but after the death of the latter it was left unfinished for many years, till the celebrated Brunellesco completed the pile by rearing the cupola, a hundred and fifty years after the death of the first projector, Arnolfo.-But the name of Brunellesco announces a new era in architecture, that of the Cinquecento or revived antique: -many intimations of the approaching revolutionof a tendency, that is to say, to relapse into the Lombard, as transitional to the Classic--had appeared during the fourteenth century, the arches of the Campo Santo at Pisa are an instance of this; they are not pointed but round, the delicate tracery being of later insertion; so were those of the Orsanmichele, previous to the intercolumniations being built up,and such are the three reared with such surpassing grandeur and elegance by Orcagna, in the Piazza del Gran Duca (then del Popolo), as a Loggia for the priors and standard-bearer of the republic,* and which similarly have exchanged their original name of Loggia de' Priori, for that of Loggia de' Lanzi,

* It is described as the 'Loggia Dominorum Priorum et Vexilliferi,' and 'Loggia Dominorum Priorum,' in contemporary documents, cited by Baldinucci, Notizie de' Professori del Disegno, da Cimabue in qua,' tom. ii, p. 142, edit. Manni, Flor. 1767.

commemorative of the Swiss lanz-knechts, or guards of the Medici; they form the most beautiful portico in Italy, and Michael Angelo, on being consulted by Cosmo I. on the decorations of Florence, recommended him to extend them all round the piazza. But for the Gothic cornice, this lovely Loggia might have been cited as one of the earliest specimens of the Cinquecento.*

Another branch of the Pisan school had in the meanwhile settled at Siena, nowise behindhand in architectural enterprise during these stirring times. Like Pisa, her predecessor and ally in power, she had commenced her cathedral in the eleventh century, but it had been much longer in hand, and when completed, the façade proved unsatisfactory; it was destroyed, and a new design was obtained from Giovanni Pisano in 1284; Lorenzo Maitani, a Sienese, but evidently of the Pisan school, completed it in 1290, and laid the foundations, that same year, of the equally celebrated Duomo at Orvieto, where

* This loggia was begun between 1374, in which year the houses on which it stood had not been bought, and 1377, when it was in progress, as appears by documents cited by Niccolini, (the poet,) in his 'Elogio d' Andrea Orgagna,' Florence, 1816, p. xl. The poet's estimate of its beauty is not exaggerated; "Alla vista," he says, "di questo portico, il più bello del mondo, rimane il core commosso, l'occhio occupato e soddisfatto, l'unità non vi produce la noia; e quantunque nei pilastri decorati d' un ordine Corintio di barbara maniera, poco il nostro artefice si discosti dallo stile de' suoi contemporanei, pure le modinature, gli aggetti, gl' intagli son così bene adattati alla massa generale, che ne risulta quell' armonica quiete per cui l'anima soddisfatta s'appaga." p. xxiv.