Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/138

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116
VAL D'ARNO.

thirteenth century work in such intricate harlequinade, that it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild.

138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a small church, which shows you the change at a glance, and attests it in a notable manner.

You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine people, and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine trunk was through Lucca, on Pisa.

Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the fa9ade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the Florentines, in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-de-lys, let into its masonry. The most important difference, marking the date, is in the sculpture of the heads which carry the archivolts. But the most palpable difference is in the Cyclopean simplicity of irregular bedding in the lower storey; and the delicate bands of alternate serpentine and marble, which follow the horizontal or couchant placing of the stones above.

139. Those of you who, interested in English Gothic, have visited Tuscany, are, I think,