een checked in its development
by the intrusion of the German Gothic. Had it run its course unthwarted, a
national style suited to the temperament of the people might have been
formed, and much that was pedantic in the revival of the fifteenth century
have been obviated.

The place of Gothic architecture in Italy demands fuller treatment. It was
due partly to the direct influence of German emperors, partly to the
imperial sympathies of the great nobles, partly to the Franciscan friars,
who aimed at building large churches cheaply, and partly to the admiration
excited by the grandeur of the Pointed style as it prevailed in Northern
Europe, that Gothic--so alien to the Italian genius and climate--took
root, spread widely, and flourished freely for a season. In thus
enumerating the conditions favourable to the spread of Gottico-Tedesco, I
am far from wishing to assert that this style was purely foreign. Italy,
in common with the rest of Europe, passed by a natural process of
evolution from the Romanesque to the Pointed manner, and treated the
latter with an originality that proves a certain natural assimilation. Yet
the first Gothic church, that of S. Francis at Assisi, was designed by a
German; the most splendid, that of Our Lady at Milan, is emphatically
German.[13] During the comparatively brief period of Gothic ascendency the
Italians never forgot their Latin and Lombard sympathies. The mood of mind
in which they Gothicised was partial and transient. The evolution of this
style was, therefore, neither so spontaneous and simple, nor yet so
uninterrupted and complete, in Italy as in the North. While it produced
the church of S. Francesco at Assisi and the cathedrals of Siena, Orvieto,
Lucca, Bologna, Florence, and Milan, together with the town-halls of
Perugia, Siena, and Florence, it failed to take firm hold upon the
national taste, and died away before the growing passion for antiquity
that restored the Italians to a sense of their own intellectual greatness.
It is clear that, as soon as they were conscious of their vocation to
revive the culture of the classic age, they at once and for ever abandoned
the style appropriate to northern feudalism. They seem to have adopted it
half-unwillingly and to have understood it only in the imperfect way in
which they comprehended chivalry.

The Italians never rightly apprehended the specific nature of Gothic
architecture. They could not forget the horizontal lines, flat roofs, and