File:A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14597822709).jpg

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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intogroups of four, five, and six round arches supported by slendercolumns, alternately single and coupled, of various design, restingon a high stylobate. (Fig. 325.) Over the western arcade is aninscription in mosaic, which shows the cloister to have been, at leastas far as its decoration is concerned, the work of the Cosmati, thecelebrated family to whom were due the sculpture and mosaics ofthe more beautiful cloister of the Lateran at Rome. Cosmus etfilii Luc. et Jac, alt. Romani cives in marmoris arte periti hoc opusexplerunt, abbatis T. de Laudi. The walls of the arcades were covered with frescoes now nearlyobliterated, representing the popes, emperors, princes, and otherdignitaries who were reckoned among the benefactors of the monas-tery. The arcades support a high second story which had formerlyan open arcade of broad and high arches on square piers. Of the upper monastery of the Sacro Speco, none of the buildingsappear to be older than the middle of the eleventh century. The
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 325. Subiaco. Third Cloister. 136 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY church embraces, as at Assisi, three churches, one above another, ofvarious dates and styles. The lowest, dating from 1053, has pointedgroined vaults and round apse; the uppermost dating from 1116, butprobably more or less changed in its interior, is Gothic in some ofits details, but with round barrel vault and no apse, and is profuselydecorated with frescoes, mostly of the early thirteenth century. Con-nected with it is a long and intricate succession of chapels, partlyexcavated from the rock, and in which the same decoration is con-tinued.^ In the upper church the place of the apse is occupied by acave in the rocky hillside, in which is placed the altar, lighted by ashaft from the surface above, — an extremely effective and pictur-esque arrangement. At Monte Cassino, as at Subiaco, repeated rebuildings have leftnothing of the original work, and but very little of the work of thegreat abbot Didier, or Desiderius, afterwar

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