ower storey bold, simple, and vigorous; the
upper storey lighter, and ending in a mass of bold tracery. Above this
open work, and resting upon it, rises the external wall of the palace,
faced with marble in alternate slabs of rose-colour and white, pierced
by a few large pointed windows and crowned by an open parapet. Few
buildings are so familiar, even to untravelled persons, as this fine
work, which owes its great charm to the extent, beauty, and mingled
solidity and grace of its arcades, and to the fine sculpture by which
the capitals from which they spring are enriched.

The Gothic palaces are almost invariably remarkable for the skill with
which the openings in their fronts are arranged and designed. It was
not necessary to render any other part of the exterior specially
architectural, as the palaces stand side by side like houses in a
modern street, as can be seen from our illustration (Fig. 9). In
almost all cases a large proportion of the openings are grouped
together in the centre of the front, and the sides are left
comparatively plain and strong-looking, the composition presenting a
centre and two wings. By this simple expedient each portion of the
composition is made to add emphasis to the other, and a powerful but
not inharmonious contrast between the open centre and the solid sides
is called into existence. The earliest Gothic buildings in point of
date are often the most delicate and graceful, and this rule holds
good in the Gothic palaces of Venice; yet one of the later palaces,
the Ca' d'Oro, must be at least named on account of the splendid
richness of its marble front--of which, however, only the centre and
one wing is built--and the beauty of the ornament lavishly employed
upon it.

The balconies, angle windows, and other minor features with which the
Venetian Gothic palaces abound, are among the most graceful features
of the architecture of Italy.

_Central Italy._

Those towns of Central Italy (by which is meant Tuscany and the former
States of the Church), in which the best Gothic buildings are to be
found, are Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Siena, Orvieto, and Perugia. As a
general rule the Gothic work in this district is more developed and
more lavishly enriched than that in Lombardy.

In Pisa, the Cathedral and the Campanile (the famous leaning tower)
belong to the late Romanesque style, but the Baptistry, an elegant
circular building, has a good deal of Gothic ornament in its upper
storeys, a