Identifier: historyofarchit02cumm (find matches)
Title: A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Cummings, Charles Amos, 1833-1905
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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hat I ventureto translate it. In 1781-1801 the interior was completely transformed, or rather deformed by Ferdi-nando Fuga, (the royal architect) in spite of the strenuous remonstrance of the Palermitanarchitects under the lead of G. V. Marvuglia, well known for his advocacy of the classicstyle. Fuga walled up the groups of nave columns with massive piers, substituted roundfor pointed arches in the arcades, opened the aisles into fourteen lateral chapels, set arow of domes over each aisle, thus hiding on the exterior the clerestory windows, coveredthe crossing with a clumsy Barock dome, destroyed the apse decoration of Gagini, andreplaced the sumptuous wood ceiling by a whitewashed vault. Of the marble, porphyry,lapis lazuli, jasper, mosaics, statues, monuments, — some were sold, others disappearedwithout leaving a trace. His impious hand was laid also on the exterior of the churcl),but the breaking out of war fortunately interfered with the completion of the Erostraticwork. P. 558.
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SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE 101 from it across the street on which it faces, to the tower of the arch-bishops palace, and which divide the fagade into three compart-ments. The two slender towers which rise from the angles are verylike those of the east end. The central door and the light windowswith pointed bearing arches have columns whose shafts are decoratedwith the Norman chevron, while the crowning feature of the fagadeis an intersecting arcade running from tower to tower, in which, how-ever, the arches are round instead of pointed, as in nearly all theother examples in Sicily, and are pierced with windows. On thesouth flank, which is the principal front of the church, many changeshave been made. The three-arched open porch at the main door-way, with its broad high-stilted pointed arches supported on slendercolumns, exhibits some of the forms of the Saracenic arcades, and itscolumns themselves are old, one bearing an Arabic inscription. Butthe flanking towers and the low gable are anyt

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