Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/364

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348
ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Part II.

348 ITALLX ^VECHITECTURE. Paut II. Its three doorways are richly and beautifully ornamented with shafts and sculptured foliage, quite equal in detail to anything of the class to be found in Italy, and its great circular window would not be thought out of place at Chartres or Lincoln. The church of St. Pietro is probably a century later than that of Sta. ]raria, and its fa9ade is richer and more elegant — a difference arising more from those details being in this instance carved which in 777. View of the Interior of Sta. Maria, Toscanella. (From Gailhabaud.) the earlier churcji were painted. The design, however, deserves at- tention for its historical, perhaps, even more than its artistic claims; for it was this class of facade that Palladio and the architects of the cinque-cento period seized upon, and, aj)plying jiilasters and pediments of classical type, converted it into the fashionable churches which arc to be found in every ]>art of Europe.^ ^ The typical oxample of this class is the San Giorgio at Venice, thoitjxli it is not by any means the one most like St. Pietro; many attempts were made before it became so essentially classical as this (see Woodcut No. 89 in the " His- tory of Modern Architecture").