Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/514

456 ARCHITECTURE [COLOUR. key, but infinitely more agreeable to the eye than the cold expanse of plaster generally visible in new public buildings. Finally, throughout the 13th century the use of polished marble columns, of a colour much darker than that of the materials of the wall, is one of the most marked features in all the best English work, and cannot properly be omitted in any catalogue of modes of coloured construction. Every one of these arrangements is noticeable as having been introduced intentionally, and with a sole view to variety of colour. In France examples are much more numerous than in England, and the very interesting church at Vezelay is an early instance of the alternated use of dark and light stones in the interior as well as the exterior. Sta Maria in Capitolio, at Cologne, has some good remains of the same kind; and St Anne s Kloster, at Liibeck, is built with alternate courses of red brick and stone. It is in Italy, however, that we find the most plentiful store of examples of this kind of work, of which a few may be mentioned. The cathedral, baptistery, and the buildings generally in Pisa and Lucca are built, both inside and out, with white stone courses, with thin courses of black marble occurring at about every fourth course. This is a very delicate and effective mode of dividing the wall space. The baptistery and campanile of the cathedral at Pistoia, and the campanile of Siena, are built in almost equal courses of black and white. In Genoa we find the same equal division of the courses in the fa9ades of the cathedral, and of the churches of San Matteo and San Stefano. At Bergamo the porch of Sta Maria Maggiore is executed in red, white, and grey marble. It is of three divisions in height, the highest stage being entirely of grey marble ; the middle stage has all the moulded parts of red, and the arches and their spandrils of grey marble ; the space at the back of the porch and over its main arch are built iu equal courses of red and white marble ; the groining is in black, red, and white marble, fitted to diamond-shaped panels, and all the shafts are of red marble. The whole design depends for effect almost entirely upon the arrangement and counter-changing of the three primary colours, the white becoming by age sufficiently yellow to take its place very well as one of them. Similar to this in the colours of its marbles is the 13th century front of the Broletto or town-hall at Como ; but here the courses are very irregular in their height, and not arranged upon any symmetrical rule. The campanile of the cathedral at Florence is the last example of this class that need be mentioned, and it is the very finest of all ; here the component colours are red marble of Perugia, green serpentine, and white marble (the two latter have the effect at a slight distance of being black and yellow), but these colours are further varied by the introduction of very elaborate patterns inlaid in delicate marble mosaic on almost every available space, whilst glass mosaic is introduced behind sculpture in the stages near the ground, in order to make the figures as distinct as possible. It is important to observe that, in this unsurpassed work, Giotto showed not only hia sense of the value of colour, but equally his feeling for true architectural proportion. No building was ever more care fully designed in this way ; and the result is so great a success in outline, in detail, and in colour, as to make it one of the most worthy of study of any work in Europe. Here it may be observed, thai In the doorways of St Mark s, Venice, we have examples of exquisite beauty, of sculp ture of foliage and figures in marble set off by a ground filled in entirely with mosaic, similar in idea to the way in which figures are set upon a mosaic ground in Giotto s work at Florence. In the great church of San Petronio at Bologna, the flat space between tho two stone moulded plinths is of red laarble, and above the plinths the wai s are all of red brick. This coloured plinth is very fine in its effect, and dignities the whole building. The upper part of the Ducal Palace and the house called the Ca d Oro, at Venice, are examples of a coloured chequer-work over the whole surface of the wall. In the Ducal Palace this is arranged so as to form a regular diaper divided by lines of white and grey marble. The monument of Can Siguorio, one of the Scaliger family, in the churchyard of Sta Maria 1 Antica at Verona, is a good example of the successful application of coloured materials to works of delicate detail. It is a lofty erection, composed of a great canopied monument in the centre, with a number of smaller canopied niches rising out of it, or standing upon shafts around it. The base is all of red marble, the niches have red marble columns, white gables, and red pyramids above them. The central mass is mainly of a yellowish tint, with white marble niches and pinnacles of red marble, and, owing to the extent to which the colours are counterchanged, the effect is very good. The west doorway of Sta Anastasia, and the north doorway of San Fermo Maggiore, both at Verona, are beautiful examples of the simple alternation of white, red, and grey marbles in the jamb and arches ; and in both these cases the extreme beauty of the effect appears to be owing to the delicacy and harmony of the tints of the marble employed, and to the absence of the very violent contrasts of colour which are sometimes seen. There are other examples of buildings decorated with inlaid ornaments which belong to this class; such are some of the French churches, as, e.g., those throughout the Puy de Dome, of which we may select as a typical example Notre Dame-du-Port, Clermont Ferrand. Here the lower part of the walls is of uniform colour, the windows have alternate voussoirs of light and dark stone, and the wall above them is entirely covered with a mosaic diaper; the walls are crowned by a heavy cornice supported on corbels, between each of which the space is filled in with a star in mosaic. Similar examples occur at S. Etienne, Nevers, in Poitou, on the banks of the Loire, and frequently in volcanic districts where dark and light materials, tufa and scoria?, abound, and suggest the treatment which has been adopted. Some of the churches at Pisa are very beautifully and delicately enriched with inlaying. The little church of San Matteo has round all its arches inlaid chevrons, diamonds, or triangles, and a line of inlaying under the moulded eaves cornice of the aisle. The front of San Michele, also in Pisa, is covered with inlaid patterns filling in the spandrils, or following all the architectural lines of the arcading with which the whole upper portion is covered ; similar inlaid patterns are to be seen between corbels under the tympanum of the south door of San Paolo, Pistoia. An inlaid pattern is carried along under the string-course below the aisle windows of the Cathedral of Lucca, and here, as in the other examples which have been given, the inlaid material is dark, on the white ground of the stone wall, and the object of its introduction was, no doubt, to give as much emphasis as possible to important features. In the case of the windows at Lucca the label is of dark marble, whilst the rest of the head of the window is white. In the church of San Domenico, Perugia, a window arch is built of grey stone, with occasional voussoirs of red, and on these, in order to make them as conspicuous as possible, small rosettes are carved. Another window in the same church has alternate voussoirs of red and white stone, and a red shaft for a monial. In the Palazzo Publico of Perugia the cornices and strings have ranges of corbels, the spaces between which are filled in with red marble to make the shadow deeper and more effective ; in the windows, the shafts are of red marble ; and in the doorway the tympanum is of red marble, with figures in white in front of it.

The west front of Lucca Cathedral is inlaid in tho most