All the roofs are flat, but finish at the west at different levels, and not in one continuous slope. The eaves have heavy cornices, and under these, all the way up, is an arcade resting upon shafts supported on corbels. The windows are all filled with traceries which are certainly not at all equal to English tracery, as they are very flat in their effect, and have no proper subordination of parts. There is a large rose window in the centre division treated in a better manner than is usual, and set within a square line of moulding, with small circles in the spandrels, and a line of square panels on each side continued in the most unpleasing way above; five other smaller circular windows are similarly treated. In some parts of the wall the courses of black marble are continuations of the black arch-stones of the windows, which, though not uncommon in Italian pointed work, is never satisfactory in its effect. In the upper part of the front this is not the case.
The central division has a porch resting upon detached shafts, and with a semicircular arch, which is, however, richly cusped; and throughout the front semicircular and pointed arches seem to have been used quite indiscriminately. The buttresses which divide the front were originally finished with pinnacles, of which one only now remains; this is certainly very beautiful, of precisely the same type as the pinnacles on some of the tombs of the Scaligers at Verona, standing on detached shafts, with gables on either side, supported on trefoiled arches, and with small pinnacles between the gables, all of which are crocketed; the mouldings are very flat, but in the pure white marble seen against the deep blue sky of Italy this flatness is as much a virtue and a beauty as its counterpart executed in stone in chilly England would be poverty-stricken and tame. All the remainder of the exterior of the Duomo is of red brick, with some particularly good detail. I give one window from the south side of the choir as an example.
There is a large low cloister on the north side, and from this the central tower is best seen; it is an octagon of two stages in brick and stone, a good deal arcaded, and has a pyramidal tiled roof, with a square turret in the centre. This forms a dome internally, which is however (as is the whole of the church) miserably modernized.
The cornices under the eaves here are of brick of good detail, but of the common arcaded character. I noticed an inscription on the east end, referring to the erection of the church in 1390, a date which tallies very well with the character of most of the external detail. Internally there is a rather remarkable pulpit or ambon on the north side of the nave. It is a gallery measuring some twenty feet east and west, supported on detached shafts with a projection in the centre, and of combined Gothic and Renaissance detail; so large a pulpit certainly suggests rambling discourses.
On the whole, such a church as this is very interesting, and to some extent striking; but, much as I admired the conjunction of the two marbles, and the more than usually Gothic character of some of the details, there was yet enough in the ungainly outline of the sham front, and in the capricious use of round and pointed arches indifferently, to damp my pleasure, and make me cease to admire the work very decidedly. There is a difference in construction which ought to be noted between this marble front and the marble work at Venice; for, whilst the latter is not at