The interior of San Lorenzo is lofty and spacious. The nave and aisles alone measure about 150 feet by 90, and there are spacious transepts, choir, and chapels. The columns are circular, and have capitals so badly carved that it is somewhat difficult to say whether they have shells or tufts of foliage for enrichment. Very small circular windows in the clerestory, and a groined roof, complete the design. The best portion of the exterior is, I think, the elevation of the bays of the nave aisles. Here there are two simple trefoiled lancets with a shallow buttress between them, and a circular window above in each bay. This design is refreshingly pure and simple. The steeple is on the east side of the north transept. It is of six stages in height, the stages being marked by slightly sunk panels, and corbel-tables under string-courses, which are formed by a pattern in the bricks, not by any projecting moulding, so that the straight outline of the steeple is not broken. The result is not particularly good.
Santa Corona has, like the other churches, a single gable in front of the nave and aisles, with a western doorway and a large circular window above. I have a recollection of it as of one of the most ungainly of fronts. The campanile here is much like that of San Lorenzo, but has a low octagonal belfry-stage finished with a small circular brick spire.
Santa Corona may well be more visited, for a picture by John Bellini than for its own merits. This is a picture over one of the altars in the north aisle representing the Baptism of Our Lord—one so quiet and beautiful in colour, so dignified and solemn in its design, that it is impossible to admire it too much. Behind the group of angels who hold Our Lord’s garments, is a mountain landscape such as one sees from Vicenza. It is a sublime work. The marble reredos is coeval with the picture: it is furnished with two low screen walls right and left of the altar, a common and proper arrangement for its protection when, as here, the altar stands in the aisle itself and not in a chapel.
I did not find any other church worth noticing, and soon made my way to the Palazzo della Ragione. The great feature of this building is the enormous hall, no less than 72 feet wide inside, and covered with a great arched timber roof boarded on the under side, and divided into vertical panels by bold ribs painted black and white. This roof is held together by two tiers of iron ties, and being arched and boarded at the end as well as at the sides, has somewhat the look of the inverted hull of a great ship. The effect is imposing, though at the same time it is somewhat gloomy, owing to the absence of all high light.
This great hall was Gothic inside and out until Palladio cased the front with open arcades, standing out from the walls and entirely concealing from below the old windows. These were large single lights with moulded jambs, but not of very good style. The original staircase remains with good marble shafted balustrades. The old work here is said to have been done before the year 1444, the hall having been burnt in 1389. This date is of some importance, as the walls of the upper portion are faced like the upper stage
