A History Of Architecture In Italy Vol 1 Of 2 PDF Download

Excerpt from A History of Architecture in Italy, Vol. 1 of 2: From the Time of Constantine to the Dawn of the Renaissance I cannot hope that the present work will be found to meet with any completeness the requirements which its perhaps too ambitious title may suggest. A complete history of architecture in Italy would be the work of a lifetime, and could only be written during a prolonged residence in that country, and as the result of a' personal examina tion of all the important works and of the documents contained in the archives of many cities. I can only claim to have used, in writ ing this book, my best efforts towards substantial thoroughness and accuracy, and to have gone over the greater part of the ground after its completion, manuscript in hand, verifying, correcting, modifying, and amplifying, as far as my opportunities allowed. I make no claim to have written a philosophical history. In the confusion of traditions in which the annals of Christian Italy are involved, beginning with Imperial Rome, continuing with Gothic kings and Greek exarchs at Ravenna, Lombard kings at Pavia and Milan, Norman counts in South Italy and Sicily, German emperors beyond the Alps with their constant interference, Saracens on the neighboring coasts with their scarcely less constant invasions and harryings, and at the centre all the while the one portentous shape which never changed, the Papacy, it is no wonder that the story of architecture, like the story of the political and social life of the peo ple, presents no steady and logical development, but a bewildering mixture of styles and streams of influence, in the midst of which the thread which connects the form of architecture with the conditions out of which it grew is often lost to the student, who requires, to hold and follow it, a more adequate equipment of historical know ledge and training than I can pretend to. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.