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Milizia says of Theodoric, "Is this the language of a Gothic barbarian, the destroyer of good taste? Pericles, Alexander, Adrian, or one of the Medici could not have reasoned better." And again, "Can these Goths be the inventors of that architecture vulgarly called Gothic? and are these the barbarians said to have been the destroyers of the beautiful monuments of antiquity?
A building so colossal in extent, and so monotonously meagre in conception, could not but have been a failure. Vol. II., Revival of Learning, chap, 1. The following passage quoted from Milizia, Memorie degli Architetti, Parma, 1781, vol. i. p. 135, illustrates the contemptuous attitude of Italian critics to Gothic architecture.
Peter's at Rome, which is now so mutilated and altered as to leave little of the original design. As an architect, Giotto attained considerable eminence, according to Milizia, and erected many important edifices, among which is the bell-tower of S. Maria del Fiore. The thickness of the walls is about ten feet; the height is two hundred and eighty feet.
Milizia. According to Tacitus, Nero's famous golden palace was one of the most magnificent edifices ever built, and far surpassed all that was stupendous and beautiful in Italy. It was erected on the site of the great conflagration at Rome, which was attributed by many to the wickedness of the tyrant.
Milizia says that in the church of S. Lorenzo there are two antique Ionic capitals with a lizard and a frog carved in the eyes of the volutes, which are probably those alluded to by Pliny, although the latter says pedestal. Modern painters and engravers have frequently adopted similar devices as a rebus, or enigmatical representation of their names.
This tomb is remarkable as the earliest instance of the canopy withdrawn by attendant angels from the dead man's form, afterwards so frequently adopted by the Pisan school. Giov. Villani, viii. 26. See Milizia, vol. i. p. 135. These walls were not finished till some, time after Arnolfo's death. They lost their ornament of towers in the siege of 1529, and they are now being rapidly destroyed.
The substructions of this famous labyrinth still exist, and Milizia says, "as they were not arched, it is wonderful that they should have been so long preserved, with so many stupendous edifices above them."
Milizia gives the following interesting account of the removal of the immense mass of granite, which forms the pedestal or base of the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, from the bogs of the Neva to St. Petersburg, a distance of about fourteen miles. He also cites it as an instance of extraordinary ingenuity and skill in mechanics.
The Chinese annals record 3636 men who have merited triumphal arches." Milizia also says, the friezes of the Chinese arches are of great height, and ornamented with sculpture. The highest arches are twenty-five feet, embellished with human figures, animals, flowers, and grotesque forms, in various attitudes, and in full relief.
Ancient medals often bear signs of this species of architecture, and some of them represent arches that have ceased to exist for centuries. Triumphal arches seem to have been in use among the Chinese in very ancient times. Milizia says, "There is no country in the world in which those arches are so numerous as in China.
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