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Updated: May 24, 2025
In Venice, the addition of the finial to the arch-head is the first sign of degradation; all her best architecture is entirely without either crockets or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be classed, with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to the diminution or expansion of the crocket.
The back was afforded by a grassy hillock, with a tuft or two of brake-fern throwing up their bronzy crockets among the sprayed russet of last year's pride. And beneath them a ledge of firm turf afforded as fair a seat as even two sweet lovers need desire.
On the next band are large curly leaves still Gothic in style and much undercut; and in the last, four-leaved flowers set some distance one from the other. At the top, the drip-mould grows into a large trefoil with crockets outside and an armillary sphere within.
§ IX. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered in architecture, what points and flashes of light are in the color of painting, or of nature.
But the day of the Jesuit has gone by, the day of the Yankee has succeeded, and there is no one left to care for the converted savage. The church is roofless and ruinous, sea-breezes and sea-fogs, and the alternation of the rain and sunshine, daily widening the breaches and casting the crockets from the wall.
We miss the crockets and finials, the ball-flower, and other ornaments that we meet with in so many fourteenth-century buildings; but the very simplicity of the work gives the church a dignity that is often wanting in more highly ornamented structures.
It seems as if in Perugia, as in London, you had the fountains in Trafalgar Square against Queen Elinor's Cross; or the viaduct and railway station contending with the Gothic chapel, which the master of the large manufactory close by has erected, because he thinks pinnacles and crockets have a pious influence; and will prevent his workmen from asking for shorter hours, or more wages.
The new building was in what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner. Its pinnacles and crockets and other ornaments were, like the body of the building, all of pine wood, an admirable material, as it is very soft and easily worked, and can be painted of any color desired.
But the day of the Jesuit has gone by, the day of the Yankee has succeeded, and there is no one left to care for the converted savage. The church is roofless and ruinous, sea-breezes and sea-fogs, and the alternation of the rain and sunshine, daily widening the breaches and casting the crockets from the wall.
These crockets are of the common vine-leaf shape such as was used in England and also in France early in the fourteenth century, while the two-storied pinnacles with shallow traceried panels on each face, and still more the square spirelets with rather large crockets and a large bunchy finial, are not at all French, but a not bad imitation of contemporary English work.
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