The Cathedral itself is a wonderful vision from the top, with its vistas of flying buttresses and crocketed pinnacles, and all its immensity of intricate stone-work. The colour of the marble, and the play of light and shade upon the fretted surfaces give it a peculiar enchantment. Looked at closely, however, it all becomes rather frivolous and wearisome. Nothing could be more monotonous than the uninventive likeness in difference of the endless ornamentation. No one detail is the same as another, yet the lines are all alike, for ever and ever repeated. The actual work is mostly modern. The most conspicuous and interesting feature is, of course, the great octagonal cupola, the main part of which was built in the early years of the sixteenth century by Amadeo. He was prevented, however, by the continual objections and disputes of the experts whose advice was called in about it, from finishing the work, and the ornate construction of rampant arches and pinnacles and central spire which surmounts it belongs to the eighteenth century. Of the four spiral turrets at the corners, with staircases in them, three were not built till the last century, but the one on the north-east was designed by Amadeo himself, who perhaps set his own hand to some of the excessively flamboyant ornamentation. It is called the _Guglia di Amadeo_, but the upper part was rebuilt in 1799. The loggetta connecting it with the body of the structure is encrusted with charming reliefs, but though the delightful medley of putti, and angels dancing and playing instruments of music round the medallions of Madonna on one side, and the Pietà on the other, have much of the gaiety and abandon of Amadeo’s work, their execution is too weak for him. The attractive infants, swinging and playing in the openings of the stone-work on either side of the passage lower down are more like his handiwork, and the New Testament scenes carved in low relief at the base are probably by a late follower of the master.[7] At the top of the staircase in this _Guglia_, now kept locked, in the little passage in the loggetta, there is a medallion portrait in bas-relief, by an unknown hand, of Amadeo himself, showing the deep-lined bony profile of an old man, with scanty locks flowing from under his beretta. Footnote 7: Malaguzzi Valeri, _G. A. Amadeo_, p. 232. [Illustration: GIANT STATUES ON THE DUOMO.]