Then, as the art advanced, some very great improvements were introduced: such as giving a slight diminution to the square tower, and surmounting it with the elegant square turret which we admire in the exquisite composition at Cremona; and by arranging, with much skill, the openings, so as to give lightness to the summit, while the lower portion, left imperforated, imparted solidity to the design.
Of the fourth class of the pointed epoch (A.D. 1250 or 1350—1500) but two examples occur to me of sufficient importance to be quoted,—the Campanile of Sta. Maria del Fiore at Florence, and the tower of S. Andrea at Mantua.
The list of the mediæval designs for Campanili may be closed with a fifth class (? 1250—1500),—namely, those of Venice, where all the bell-towers are square, and without external stringcourses, but divided on each side into two or three panels, running uninterruptedly from their base to their top, crowned by a square or octagonal belfry,[1] such as those of S. Maria, Sta. Maria Gloriosa, S. Giacomo del Orto, S. Simeone Grande, &c., in that city.
In the early times, the Campanile, like the Baptistery, was not considered an essential portion of, or embodied with, the church. On the contrary, like the Baptistery again, it was placed at some little distance from the house of worship. Thus it is seen in every place in Italy—where the Lombard or Romanesque style is preserved—and where the Baptistery stands near the cathedral, as at Cremona, at Florence, at Pisa, and elsewhere, the steeple makes the third distinct edifice of the sacred group.
It seems, also, that the same features of design referred above to separate styles, were followed in the Renaissance by the several schools; thus might be formed three other classes (A.D. 1500—1750) :—the revival in the Roman school, the Florentine school of the same date, and the later Venetian style; but as the object of this notice is only to point out the peculiarities of epochs of design, which our own country does not furnish, and thus to supply dates for the ecclesiologist in works of styles older than the period of our Early English art, it is not necessary to go further into detail of these later styles. JOHN W. PAPWORTH.
- ↑ Unless examples can he adduced of earlier dates, this condemns most of the newly-erected English Campanili of this sort, when added to Norman churches.
