[M2.131L]                                                             [M2.131]								131
                                                                      
                                                                      		two large piers with face shaft and two flanking shafts
                                                                      		on each side;  rich groups of seven: variously sculptured
                                                                      		- only to half or not quite half the height of the front,
Some of the flanking shafts are covered with leafage of the common vine pattern.		and one much higher than the other.  The two main face
The windows to the front have been double	[drawing]                   		shafts are both fluted, the one uprightly, the other a
both the first order and the bracket of                               		spiral, with section [drawing] a flat cavetto in groove,
second carved into a rude head                                        		another has a rude twist with section [drawing]
But most of the windows are deep                                      		The capitals of the main door, peculiarly elaborate in their
many ordered - alternate -round and square                            		figures of {fierce} apes or devils, with moustaches and teeth,
                                                                      		half crouching with their hands impertinently on their
                                                                      		knees, is of some hard dark stone;  and so I think the
                                                                      		capitals of another porch:  but all the rest is in a coarse
                                                                      		crumbling sandstone, which has rotted away at the
                                                                      		bases almost entirely into great cellular cavities, whose
                                                                      		edge is crumbling away in the hand, all owing - for the
                                                                      		most part to the abuse of the church by the brutal
                                                                      		Italians (look for effect of ammoniacal gas on sandstone)
                                                                      		The pilasters of the main door are covered with flat
                                                                      		sculpture - not the bold monsters of the northern.  Note
                                                                      		the Knights shields all the shape fig 1 p 21 Verona book
                                                                      Cremona.	The indiscriminate mingling of the round and pointed arch
                                                                      		and the addition of the element of foliation and that luxuriant
                                                                      		distinguish this cathedral from all others that I remember;
                                                                      		For though in Italian Gothic the round arch as in the
                                                                      		Frari is constantly associated with the point, still the
                                                                      		Spirit of the thing

[Version 0.05: May 2008]