Ib.
See Grüner's Terra Cotta Architecture of North Italy, plates 3 and 4.
Compare what Alberti says in his preface to the Treatise on Painting, Opere, vol. iv. p. 12. "Chi mai sì duro e sì invido non lodasse Pippo architetto vedendo quì struttura si grande, erta sopra i cieli, ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti i popoli toscani, fatta sanza alcuno aiuto di travamenti o di copia di legname, quale artificio certo, se io ben giudico, come a questi tempi era incredibile potersi, così forse appresso gli antiqui fu non saputo nè conosciuto?"
What the church of S. Petronio at Bologna would have been, if it had been completed on the scale contemplated, can hardly be imagined. As it stands, it is immense, and coldly bare in its immensity. Yet the present church is but the nave of a temple designed with transepts and choir. The length was to have been 800 feet, the width of the transepts 625, the dome 183 feet in diameter. A building so colossal in extent, and so monotonously meagre in conception, could not but have been a failure.