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Remarks on Wilton Church. 



appears almost one whose vocation it was to obstruct Gothic art, or 

 at least to maintain the round arch. From the beginning* of the 

 eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century when the Gothic 

 pointed arch, in spite of all resistance, made its way into northern 

 Italy, and Sienna, and Florence, and Milan cathedrals were erected 

 — through these 200 years the Lombards were occupied in perfecting 

 as far as could be the old round arch — in righting might and main 

 for external flat walls, innocent wholly of buttress — and in producing 

 some few ornamental effects distinctly their own. In the course of 

 these 200 years No vara cathedral was built, in which the Basilica 

 form is retained, in which the nave is separated from a much longer 

 apse than ever belonged to a pure Basilica, by a square space covered 

 by a dome within, and a tower without, and in which piers as well 

 as columns abound. I mention this last-named fact, because the 

 pier rendered needful where the weight of the roof was great, is a 

 thoroughly Gothic as well as Byzantine feature, and because in the 

 early Basilican church, they are rarely if ever met with. At No vara 

 moreover, the windows are all very small, though here and there 

 parted by small central shafts, and the round arch is found all 

 dominant. Of other examples of this Lombard time, I might name 

 S. Ambrogio at Milan, S. Michele at Pavia, the cathedrals of Parma^ 

 Moderna and Piacenza, and lastly S. Zenone at Verona, wherein 

 there are two or three note-worthy Lombard characteristics, for 

 instance, the round wheel window surmounting the porch. This 

 window, put in, when the rest of the church was built towards the 

 end of the twelfth century, and therefore late Lombard, is spoken of 

 in an inscription in the Baptistry as a wonder in those times. 

 Perhaps it was borrowed from France, for there such windows reached 

 their greatest perfection — but at any rate it is also essentially 

 Lombard, and appears in our Church, as well as in its model at 

 Toseanella. Then again the porch below — -projecting, and not re- 

 cessing as in Gothic churches, flanked by its two columns, supported 

 by lions, is peculiarly Lombard. The Lombards were given to 

 representation of monsters and animals. We see them worked into 

 their capitals, studding here and there their facades, and lining some- 

 times their panellings. The sacred emblems the lion, the man, and 



