ng-house in the truly Byzantine period. But so soon as the Gothic
influence began to be felt, and the pointed arch forced itself upon
them, their first concession to its attack was the adoption, in
preference to the round arch, of the form 3 _a_ (Plate XIV., above); the
point of the Gothic arch forcing itself up, as it were, through the top
of the semicircle which it was soon to supersede.

Sec. XXVII. The woodcut above, Fig. XXVI., represents the door and two of
the lateral windows of a house in the Corte del Remer, facing the Grand
Canal, in the parish of the Apostoli. It is remarkable as having its
great entrance on the first floor, attained by a bold flight of steps,
sustained on pure _pointed_ arches wrought in brick. I cannot tell if
these arches are contemporary with the building, though it must always
have had an access of the kind. The rest of its aspect is Byzantine,
except only that the rich sculptures of its archivolt show in combats of
animals, beneath the soffit, a beginning of the Gothic fire and energy.
The moulding of its plinth is of a Gothic profile,[86] and the windows
are pointed, not with a reversed curve, but in a pure straight gable,
very curiously contrasted with the delicate bending of the pieces of
marble armor cut for the shoulders of each arch. There is a two-lighted
window, such as that seen in the vignette, on each side of the door,
sustained in the centre by a basket-worked Byzantine capital: the mode
of covering the brick archivolt with marble, both in the windows and
doorway, is precisely like that of the true Byzantine palaces.

[Illustration: Fig. XXVII.]

Sec. XXVIII. But as, even on a small scale, these arches are weak, if
executed in brickwork, the appearance of this sharp point in the outline
was rapidly accompanied by a parallel change in the method of building;
and instead of constructing the arch of brick and coating it with
marble, the builders formed it of three pieces of hewn stone inserted
in the wall, as in Fig. XXVII. Not, however, at first in this perfect
form. The endeavor to reconcile the grace of the reversed arch with the
strength of the round one, and still to build in brick, ended at first
in conditions such as that represented at _a_, Fig. XXVIII., which is a
window in the Calle del Pistor, close to the church of the Apostoli, a
very interesting and perfect example. Here, observe, the poor round arch
is still kept to do all the hard work, and the fantastic ogee t