. Brick and marble in the middle ages: notes of tours in the north of Italy . and at thesame time more unlike what I was accustomed to impression they left on my mind was decidedly thatthey were very inferior in almost every respect to churchesof the same size and degree of ornament in the North ofEurope, whilst in scarcely any point did they seem to meto have features which could with any advantage be imitatedby us. I had allowed myself to expect a very differentresult, and was proportionately disappointed. There is nochurch in Venice—(in what I am now saying I mean alwaysto exc
. Brick and marble in the middle ages: notes of tours in the north of Italy . and at thesame time more unlike what I was accustomed to impression they left on my mind was decidedly thatthey were very inferior in almost every respect to churchesof the same size and degree of ornament in the North ofEurope, whilst in scarcely any point did they seem to meto have features which could with any advantage be imitatedby us. I had allowed myself to expect a very differentresult, and was proportionately disappointed. There is nochurch in Venice—(in what I am now saying I mean alwaysto except S. Marks)—comparable either to Sta. Anastasisor to the cathedral at Verona in the interior; and th(exteriors, though fine as examples of the bold use of luickJare nevertheless not first-rate, nor at all sujDcrior to whatone sees elsewhere. Sta. Maria Gloriosa dci Frari ought first to be described]as being certainly the finest of its class. The first stone issaid to have been laid on April 3rd, 1250, Nicola Pisambeing the architect. The cam]3anile was begun in 13G1|. 23.—TNTERIOR OP 3TA. MARIA GLORIOSA DEI FRARI, VENICE. Page 177. Chap. VIIT.] CHURCH OF THE FRART. 177 under Jacopo Collega, and completed in 1396 by PietroPaolo his son. The first impression of the church on landing from thegondola on the desolate-looking piece of pavement which here,as in many of the Venetian churches, forms a court betweentlie canal and the west front, is not pleasing. The designof the west front is nothing short of being positively ugly;it is finished with a great sham gable, with a curved outline,somewhat akin to the degraded taste of our worst Jacobaeanart, and entirely without any beauty or even picturesquenessof appearance ; the doorways, too, are particularly poor, con-sisting of a succession of twisted and reedy mouldings, thinand shadowless, like so many cords stretched from cap tobase and round the arch, without any proper distinction ofjamb and archivolt. The internal efiect o
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