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The lowest part of the south-west tower presents a treatment different from that on the west side. There is here a doorway, and an additional window. Both are round-arched. The doorway is one of the most notable pieces of beautiful design on all the exterior of the building. It is treated solely with variations of the well-known chevron ornament.
Thus, the whole body of the Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts, added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic superstitions.
The church is an irregular rectangle in plan, divided into two naves which end in apses by two pillars and a pier. The pilasters are not upright, the arches are deformed, and the two altar niches have half-cupola vaults on a rectangular plan, with arches thrown across the corners. There are two original doors, both built up. The pier between the two apses has a round-arched niche in it.
The two bays of Early Decorated work, just alluded to, complete the nave eastwards. The transition from the round-arched to the pointed style is made still more conspicuous by an increase in the height of the arcades, which involved the discontinuance of the triforium; and the banded shafts of dark Purbeck marble clustered round the later piers also emphasize the change.
The house in itself was already an historic document, though not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family houses in University Place and lower Fifth Avenue. Those were of the purest 1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage-rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood consoles, round-arched fire-places with black marble mantels, and immense glazed book-cases of mahogany; whereas old Mrs.
The arcade was round-arched, the central and right-hand apses were square-ended, and the left had a semicircular niche. The under church was wagon-vaulted without architectural features. The foundation of a chapel was found on the Riva Nuova with five niches of a six-niched circle and an entrance passage in the sixth, which turned at right angles to the north to reach the street.
The objects are scarcely so interesting as those at the cathedral, but include several fine fourteenth-century reliquaries as well as one or two which were made, or remade, in Renaissance times. The reliquary of S. Gregory has on the front Christ enthroned between standing figures of SS. Mark and John beneath a round-arched arcade on twisted columns.
On the other side are lions and bears, figures fighting, a young man with a falcon, loose dogs, &C., all most carefully carved. Beneath the lintel two caps with amorini of the fifteenth or sixteenth century have been inserted. The south door is simpler, but in the same round-arched style.
The hybrid tower on the extreme left, with many round-arched windows and much florid ornament, is familiarly called the "Tour de Beurre," and, as its compeer at Rouen, was built from the contributions of those who were willing to forego themselves the luxury of butter. To the right is a much less imposing tower, but one that is much more true as to its style.
The corners are occupied by the patron saints, Hermagoras and Fortunatus. Round the apse, just above the patriarch's seat, runs a row of portraits of bishops of later date, half-lengths, beneath a round-arched arcade on a gold ground. On the left nave pier, near the door, are the remains of a painting of S. Helena, who has nimbus, cross, and book.
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