express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally, straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and drawing are in the last degree barbarous ... the Lombard building is as sharp, precise and accurate as that of St Mark’s is careless. The Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to have put their stones together; and, in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect feeling here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more chaste, pure, or solemn.”[41]
A temple dedicated to Minerva is said to have stood here originally, and traces of this can yet be seen, though in point of size there is no difference whatever between the Pagan temple of the past and the Christian church of to-day. The outside decoration of the apses is very beautiful, and is formed of a frieze of carved and decorated work running along the upper lines, and giving an idea of care and finish to the exterior that is very effective. The chief entrance in some ways recalls that of St Zeno. It consists of a beautiful canopied porch, with two columns resting on colossal griffins, while around are scrolls, and carvings, and devices, not of such interesting workmanship as those at St Zeno, though from some lines on the archivolt they claim to be the work of the same man, one Niccolŏ of the eleventh century. Those lines are as follows:—
“Artificem quarum qui sculpserit haec Nicolaum
Hunc concurrentes laudent per saecula gentes.”[42]