. The builders of Florence . hooks. These galleries were contrived for the lower storeysas an airy escape from the dark and narrow tower-rooms—one ofthese only, remember, on each storey—and above, at the tower top,as a ready vantage for defence. Thus, in peace, and especially ondays of festa, the towers hung out rich stuffs of Florence, oreastern carpets, from their galleries ; filled these with youth and 76 THE BUILDERS OF FLORENCE beauty, and so made the dark streets bloom like a garden of , again, at the summons of war, all was changed as if by magic ;the towers stripped for actio
. The builders of Florence . hooks. These galleries were contrived for the lower storeysas an airy escape from the dark and narrow tower-rooms—one ofthese only, remember, on each storey—and above, at the tower top,as a ready vantage for defence. Thus, in peace, and especially ondays of festa, the towers hung out rich stuffs of Florence, oreastern carpets, from their galleries ; filled these with youth and 76 THE BUILDERS OF FLORENCE beauty, and so made the dark streets bloom like a garden of , again, at the summons of war, all was changed as if by magic ;the towers stripped for action like fighting ships of the line, takingin the lower galleries till the grim walls stood bare, their narrowwindows closed, and only above, far out of reach, a single project-ing battlement, piled with stones and filled with crossbowmen,frowned upon the street without a beam or ledge to aid a scalingparty, or break the sheer fall of its deadly artillery. Now all this garniture of the tower—its feasting fighting frame-. ELEVATION AND (RESTORED) SECTION OF ROMAN DANUBE ROAD work—is distinctly Roman ; a copy of constructive methodsfamiliar in classic building. We may call it the Architecture of theBracket from its most distinctive feature ; and indeed the Bracket,as we meet it in these Florentine towers, was no new invention, ithad already a long history of varied use and application. Theequivalent of the column capital,1 as the Arch of Titus shows, thebracket was freely used by the Romans, not only in decoration butconstructively, to carry moeniana, or balconies, as at the Villa ofSallust, or even important arches, as in the bridge of Caligulabetween the Palatine and the Capitol. The column of Trajan 1 cf. also the derivation of the word corbel, and the traditional origin of the Corinthian capital.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpub, booksubjectarchitecture
