The ornaments of these openings are composed in a manner which appears to be peculiar to this region. The portal (Fig. 82) of the south side, for instance, has the mediæval scheme of a shafted round arch of two orders reproduced in neo-classic details, with an entablature for a lintel passing through the imposts, and another entablature with a pediment placed over the crown of the arch on spandrels in relief. To associate the entablature with the arch in any way is unreasonable, but to put one entablature under the arch and another one over it in this manner is childish composition. Yet illogical and puerile as the scheme is, I believe it is derived from a common form of Lombard Romanesque porch which is entirely reasonable in design. A comparison of this portal with the porch of San Zeno of Verona (Fig. 83) will illustrate this. In San Zeno we have a sheltering porch and a portal, and each is reasonable in itself, while they are equally reasonable in combination. But if the porch were eliminated, with exception of its façade, and this façade were drawn back into the plane of the wall, so as merely to frame in the portal, the result would resemble, in composition of lines, the portal of Como, and would be as illogical. The first, or encompassing, order of the portal of Como is like the façade of such a mediæval porch wrought in relief against the wall as an ornamental framework. For the Lombard columns the Renaissance designer has substituted pilasters, for the plain lintel an entablature, and for the mediæval gable a classic pediment with an entablature. A curious instance of a somewhat similar composition of lines in a Lombard Romanesque portal without an overhanging porch occurs in the façade of the San Pietro in Cielo d’Oro in Pavia (Fig. 84). Here the arched opening is flanked by tall engaged shafts which carry a narrow string course surmounted by a gable over the crown of the arch, while another string course, on short colonnettes resting on the capitals of the larger shafts, passes over the apex of the gable. But in this case it is only the childish association of members without structural meaning that offends the eye. There is no introduction of forms, like the classic pilasters and entablatures of the portal of Como, that are foreign to the architectural system. [Illustration: FIG. 85.--Window of nave of Como.] This scheme, with various modifications, became a characteristic one in the Lombard and Venetian Renaissance, and was extensively applied to windows, as in the nave of the same cathedral of Como. The windows of this nave are splayed, and are flanked with pilasters from the capitals of which their archivolts spring, while in some of them diminutive pilasters rise from the same capitals and carry an entablature and pediment over the crown of the arch (Fig. 85).