CHAPTER I
DEFINITION OF GOTHIC
Since the decline of Gothic architecture the ideas which have prevailed respecting it have been for the most part confused and incorrect. Indeed, until within the last fifty years only the most vague notions of it were entertained even by students of architecture. The very name Gothic, though not wholly inappropriate, originated in a spirit of contempt, which naturally precluded any disposition to study attentively enough to understand it, this splendid manifestation of human genius. The architects and amateurs of the schools of Sansovino and Palladio in Italy, where the revival of taste for classic forms of art had set in as early as the time of Brunelleschi, could not be expected to admire anything so far removed from the spirit of the art which was in fashion with them. The manicra Tedesca, as they called such Gothic as they possessed—supposing Gothic art to be of German origin, because their own pointed style was an importation from Germany—was regarded by them as barbaric and without principles, in comparison with their grammatical Vitruvian orders. It was not unnatural that such distaste for the pointed style should be felt in Italy, for the style was foreign to Italian genius and Italian traditions. It had been adopted merely as a fashion, and the very modifications which the Italians wrought in it show how little suited it was to their wants. It is, indeed, impossible for a people possessed of an art, which is a natural outgrowth of their wants and tastes, and hence proper to them, to adopt and practise rationally, and to make their own, another art which is an outgrowth of other and different needs and predilec-
