tracery, elaborately carved though it be, more resemble the cusps of
early Western Gothic, executed at a time when tracery was beginning
its career, than work belonging to the period of full maturity to
which this feature, as a whole, undoubtedly belongs.

Where marbles were plentiful enough to be built into the fabric, the
national love of colour gave rise to the use of black and white--or
sometimes red and white--alternate courses, already mentioned. The
effect of this striped masonry may be partly judged of from the
illustration of the cathedral at Siena (Fig. 52), where it is employed
to a considerable extent. A finer method of surface decoration, less
simple, however, and perhaps less frequently practised, was open to
the Italian architect, in the use of panels of various coloured
marbles. A beautiful example of the employment of this expedient
exists in Giotto's campanile at Florence (Fig. 51).

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--ITALIAN GOTHIC WINDOW, WITH TRACERY
IN THE HEAD. (13TH CENTURY.)]

The flatness of the roofs, which the Italians never abandoned, was
always found difficult to reconcile with the Gothic tendency to height
and steepness. In many cases, the sharp pitched gables which the
buildings display, are only masks, and do not truly denote the pitch
of the roofs behind them. In other instances the walls finish with a
horizontal parapet, plain or ornamental, quite concealing the roof. In
the roofs of their campaniles, however, the Gothic architects of Italy
were usually happy; they almost always adopted a steep conical
terminal, with or without pinnacles, which is very telling against
the sky; even if its junction with the tower is at times clumsy.

The brightness of southern suns prevented the adoption of the great
windows, adapted to masses of stained glass, which were the ambition
of northern architects in the fourteenth century; and the tenacity
with which a love for squareness of effect and for strongly-marked
horizontal lines of various sorts retained its hold, tended to keep
Italian Gothic buildings essentially different from those of northern
nations; but the love of colour, the command of precious materials,
and of fine sculpture, the passion for beauty and for a decorative
richness, and the artistic taste of the Italians, display themselves
in these buildings in a hundred ways: all this lends to them a charm
such as few works of the middle ages existing elsewhere can surpass.

SPAIN.--CH