The monuments on each side of the west door are good simple examples of
a favourite Italian type. They are, as we shall see, of all dates, and
even when developed to a great size, are still corbelled in the same way
out of the walls. In the North of Europe, we have no analogous treatment
of monumental memorials, and this rather enhances their value. The arch
to the monument on the left of the west doorway is painted in a
charmingly simple Giottesque style, and there is a painting also behind
a modern statue in the door-arch, of Our Lord surrounded by angels. In
the arcades above the monuments there were figures of saints painted,
with imitations of mosaic. All these details are worth mentioning in
order to give some idea to those who have not seen Verona, of the extent
to which everywhere the eye is feasted with remains of early art.
Indeed, one feasts uninterruptedly there on all that can delight the eye
in form and in colour!
With the mention of one more church I believe I may bring my notes in
Verona to an end, and this is a small chapel which stands just opposite
the south side of the Duomo, and whose name I could not learn. It is
much like San Pietro Martire in its general arrangement, but remarkable
for the exquisite beauty of its windows, the arrangement of the bricks
and stonework in which is beyond all praise. These windows are
constructed with trefoiled heads of stone, enclosed within an arch of
mixed stone and brick, round whose outer edge runs a band of delicate
terra-cotta ornament. The spandrels of the trefoils are filled in with
refined sculpture, instead of being pierced with the dark eye usually
found in northern Gothic. There is, too, an entire absence of mouldings,
yet, notwithstanding this, the general effect is one of combined
delicacy and richness of no common kind, so much does carefully-arranged
and contrasted colour do for architecture. A third window is entirely of
brick, save the trefoil head of the opening. The side elevation of this
little chapel is very singular in its whole arrangement; there are three
bays divided by pilasters, which finish at the top in an arcaded cornice
of brick; in each of the two western bays is a lancet window, and the
centre bay has in addition a doorway, and a corbelled out monument above
it; in the eastern bay the window looks just like one of those curious
English low side windows, as to the use of which we have had so many
ingenious theories; the east end has no trace of any window, and is
finished with a flat-pitched roof, and a brick corbel-table running up
the pediment. There is no stone used except in the window-heads and
arches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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