ation of
the pointed arch to the frequent Romanesque window, the large
semicircular arch divided by three small ones. Pointing both the
superior and inferior arches, and adding to the grace of the larger one
by striking another arch above it with a more removed center, and
placing the voussoirs at an acute angle to the curve, we have the truly
noble form of domestic Gothic, which--more or less enriched by moldings
and adorned by penetration, more or less open of the space between the
including and inferior arches--was immediately adopted in almost all the
proudest palaces of North Italy--in the Brolettos of Como, Bergamo,
Modena, and Siena---in the palace of the Scaligers at Verona--of the
Gambacorti at Pisa--of Paolo Guinigi at Lucca--besides inferior
buildings innumerable:--nor is there any form of civil Gothic except the
Venetian, which can be for a moment compared with it in simplicity or
power. The latest is that most vicious and barbarous style of which the
richest types are the lateral porches and upper pinnacles of the
Cathedral of Como, and the whole of the Certosa of Pavia:--characterized
by the imitative sculpture of large buildings on a small scale by way of
pinnacles and niches; the substitution of candelabra for columns; and
the covering of the surfaces with sculpture, often of classical subject,
in high relief and daring perspective, and finished with delicacy which
rather would demand preservation in a cabinet, and exhibition under a
lens, than admit of exposure to the weather and removal from the eye,
and which, therefore, architecturally considered, is worse than
valueless, telling merely as unseemly roughness and rustication. But
between these two extremes are varieties nearly countless--some of them
both strange and bold, owing to the brilliant color and firm texture of
the accessible materials, and the desire of the builders to crowd the
greatest expression of value into the smallest space.

42. Thus it is in the promontories of serpentine which meet with their
polished and gloomy green the sweep of the Gulf of Genoa, that we find
the first cause of the peculiar spirit of the Tuscan and Ligurian
Gothic--carried out in the Florentine duomo to the highest pitch of
colored finish--adorned in the upper story of the Campanile by a
transformation, peculiarly rich and exquisite, of the narrowly-pierced
heading of window already described, into a veil of tracery--and aided
throughout by an accomplished prec