+EARLY BUILDINGS.+ It is hard to determine how and by whom Gothic forms were first introduced into Italy, but it was most probably through the agency of the monastic orders. Cistercian churches like that at Chiaravalle near Milan (1208-21), and most of those erected by the mendicant orders of the Franciscans (founded 1210) and Dominicans (1216), were built with ribbed vaults and pointed arches. The example set by these orders contributed greatly to the general adoption of the foreign style. +S. Francesco+ at +Assisi+, already mentioned, was the first completely Gothic Franciscan church, although +S. Francesco+ at +Bologna+, begun a few years later, was finished a little earlier. The Dominican church of +SS. Giovanni e Paolo+ and the great Franciscan church of +Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari+, both at Venice, were built a little later. +Sta. Maria Novella+ at Florence (1278), and +Sta. Maria sopra Minerva+ at Rome (1280), both by the brothers _Sisto_ and _Ristoro_, and +S. Anastasia+ at Verona (1261) are the masterpieces of the Dominican builders. +S. Andrea+ at +Vercelli+ in North Italy, begun in 1219 under a foreign architect, is an isolated early example of lay Gothic work. Though somewhat English in its plan, and (unlike most Italian churches) provided with two western spires in the English manner, it is in all other respects thoroughly Italian in aspect. The church at Asti, begun in 1229, suggests German models by its high side walls and narrow windows. [Illustration: FIG. 147.--DUOMO AT FLORENCE. PLAN. a, _Campanile_.] +CATHEDRALS.+ The greatest monuments of Italian Gothic design are the cathedrals, in which, even more than was the case in France, the highly developed civic pride of the municipalities expressed itself. Chief among these half civic, half religious monuments are the cathedrals of +Sienna+ (begun in 1243), +Arezzo+ (1278), +Orvieto+ (1290), +Florence+ (the +Duomo+, Sta. Maria del Fiore, begun 1294 by Arnolfo di Cambio), +Lucca+ (S. Martino, 1350), +Milan+ (1389-1418), and +S. Petronio+ at Bologna (1390). They are all of imposing size; Milan is the largest of all Gothic cathedrals except Seville. S. Petronio was planned to be 600 feet long, the present structure with its three broad aisles and flanking chapels being merely the nave of the intended edifice. The Duomo at Florence (Fig. 147) is 500 feet long and covers 82,000 square feet, while the octagon at the crossing is 143 feet in diameter. The effect of these colossal dimensions is, however, as in a number of these large Italian interiors, singularly belittled by the bareness of the walls, by the great size of the constituent parts of the composition, and by the lack of architectural subdivisions and multiplied detail to serve as a scale by which to gauge the scale of the _ensemble_. [Illustration: FIG. 148.--NAVE OF DUOMO AT FLORENCE.]