es,
begun in 1298 from the designs of Arnolfo; and it is dedicated to S.
Maria del Fiore. Coming to us without the wonderful romantic interest,
the mysticism and exaltation of such a church as Notre Dame d'Amiens,
without the more resolute and heroic appeal of such a stronghold as the
Cathedral of Durham, it is more human than either, the work of a man
who, as it were, would thank God that he was alive and glad in the
world. And it will never bring us delight if we ask of it all the
consummate mystery, awe, and magic of the great Gothic churches of the
North. The Tuscans certainly have never understood the Christian
religion as we have contrived to do in Northern Europe. It came to them
really as a sort of divine explanation of a paganism which entranced but
bewildered them. Behind it lay the Roman Empire; and its temples became
their churches, its halls of justice their cathedrals, its tongue the
only language understood of the gods. It is unthinkable that a people
who were already in the twelfth century the possessors of a marvellous
decadent art in the painting of the Byzantine school, who, finding again
the statues of the gods, created in the thirteenth century a new art of
painting, a Christian art that was the child of imperial Rome as well as
of the Christian Church, who re-established sculpture and produced the
only sculptor of the first rank in the modern world, should have failed
altogether in architecture. Yet everywhere we may hear it said that the
Italian churches, spoken of with scorn by those who remember the
strange, subtle exaltation of Amiens, the extraordinary intricate
splendour of such a church as the Cathedral of Toledo, are mere barns.
But it is not so. As Italian painting is a profound and natural
development from Greek and Roman art, certainly influenced by life, but
in no doubt of its parentage; so are the Italian churches a very
beautiful and subtle development of pagan architecture, influenced by
life not less profoundly than painting has been, but certainly as sure
of their parentage, and, as we shall see, not less assured of their
intention. Just as painting, as soon as may be, becomes human, becomes
pagan in Signorelli and Botticelli, and yet contrives to remain true to
its new gods, so architecture as soon as it is sure of itself moves with
joy, with endless delight and thanksgiving, towards that goal of the old
builders: in such a church as S. Maria della Consolazione outside Todi,
for in