Bk. VIII. Ch. VII. SOUTHERN ITALY. 395 200 ft. in length distorts the proportion, and, with the ill-understood details of the whole, spoils what narrowly escaped being one of the most successful interiors of that part of Italy. Southern Italy. As already remarked, the architects of the southern half of the Italian peninsula were generally content to adopt the Romanesque plan of covering their naves with a wooden roof — for when an inter- secting vault is found it is clearly a French or German interpolation — but they often employed one dome, generally over the altar, and used it as an ornament both external and internal. The two illus- trations already given of the domes at Bari (Woodcut No. 804) and Caserta Vecchia (Woodcut No. 806) show the form these usually took in the province. They belong to a type not unusual in the East, but unknown to the Gothic architects of Europe. When called upon to roof their churches Avith stone, they almost invariably adopted the domical in preference to the vaulted form, as at Molfetta (1162) where they make a pleasing form of roof, not unlike -^ ^ //
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825. Plan of Church at Mol- fetta. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 826. Section of Church at Molfetta. (From Schultz.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. that of Loches Cathedral (Woodcut No. 351). The great defect of domes when tluis employed is their height, which generally throws the whole of the building out of proportion, and unless light is intro- duced through openings in the drum, or in the dome itself, they are dark and gloomy. This is certainly the case at Molfetta, but other- wise the church seems well designed and of pleasing proportions. To be successful, domes should be low and flat internally ; and any height required extemally must be given by a false dome, as at St. Mark's, or as done by the Renaissance architects generally. This was not so much felt when the building was square and covered by only one dome, like the baptistery or tomb below Mont St. Angelo, where effect of space on the floor was not aimed at so
