and unmeaning than in its classical prototypes. In this example the style is evidently beginning to feel its own strength and learning to
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308. Palazzo dlle Torre, Turin (From Osten's "Bauwerke in der Lombardei.")
dispense with the traditional forms that had so long governed it. In this building, to which no more precise date can be assigned than that of the age between Justinian and Charlemagne, is probably seen the last expiring effort of Romanesque architecture in a Gothic country, though the paucity of contemporary examples renders it extremely difficult to trace the exact history of the style at this age.
In so progressive an art as architecture it is always very difficult, sometimes impossible, to fix the exact date when one style ends and another begins. In an art so pre-eminently ecclesiastical as architecture was in those days, it will probably be safer to look in the annals of the Church rather than in those of the State for a date when the Romanesque expired, giving birth, Phœnix-like, to the Gothic. Viewed from this point there can be little doubt but that the reign of Gregory the Great (A.D. 590 to 603) must be regarded as that in which the Latin language and the Roman style of architecture both ceased to be generally or even commonly employed.
After this date we wander on through five centuries of tentative efforts to form a new style, and in the age of another Gregory—the VII.—we find at last the Gothic style emancipated from former traditions, and marching steadily forward with a well-defined aim. What had been commenced under the gentle influence of a Theodelinda at Florence in the year 600, was completed in the year 1077 under the firmer guidance of a Matilda at Canossa.
