"The Cathedral is grand and impressive from its very size, but the effect of the front is greatly injured by its incongruous style of architecture." B Taylor #QotD

"The Cathedral is grand and impressive from its very size, but the effect of the front is greatly injured by its incongruous style of architecture. There seems to have been no single design adopted, but after half had been built, the architect changed his plan and finished the remainder in a different style. The front, as high as the Cathedral roof, has a venerable appearance of age and neglect, while the two massive square, unadorned towers rising from it, are as brilliantly white and fresh as if erected yesterday. The front of the church adjoining is embosomed with very elaborate ornaments of sculpture, all showing the same disregard
of architectural unity."

Bayard Taylor, El Dorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (2 vols, New York, 1850), p. 298

Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author. He published a couple of books on Egypt which is where I'd first heard of him when writing my book on Egyptian travel accounts, Nile Notes of a Howadji (1992).


 

"I went into the main plaza, which is a beautiful square, shaded by orange-trees, and fianked on two sides by the picturesque front of the Cathedral and the Government Palace" B. Taylor #QotD

"I went into the main plaza, which is a beautiful square, shaded by orange-trees, and fianked on two sides by the picturesque front of the Cathedral and the Government Palace."

Bayard Taylor, El Dorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (2 vols, New York, 1850), p. 281

Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author. He published a couple of books on Egypt which is where I'd first heard of him when writing my book on Egyptian travel accounts, Nile Notes of a Howadji (1992).

QotD: "A cold, pale, yellow light lay upon the landscape; the towers of Upsala Cathedral ... rose dark against the sky"

"A cold, pale, yellow light lay upon the landscape; the towers of Upsala Cathedral, and the massive front of the palace, rose dark against the sky, in the south-west; a chill autumnal wind blew over the plains, and the yellowing foliage of the birch drifted across the mysterious mounds, like those few golden leaves of poetry, which the modern bards of the North have cast upon the grave of the grand, muscular religion of the earlier race. There was no melodious wailing in the wind, like that which proclaimed "Pan is dead!" through the groves of Greece and Ionia; but a cold rustling hiss, as if the serpent of Midgard were exulting over the ruin of Walhalla. But in the stinging, aromatic flood of the amber-coloured mead, I drank to Odin, to Balder, and to Freja". - Northern Travel Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland (1869) by Bayard Taylor 

A few years earlier (and again in the 1870s), Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author. He published a couple of books on Egypt which is where I'd first heard of him when writing my book on Egyptian travel accounts, Nile Notes of a Howadji (1992).

Henry James on the Duomo in Florence: "for all its solemn hugeness, strikes the same note of would-be reasoned elegance and cheer"

The Cathedral, externally, for all its solemn hugeness, strikes the same note of would-be reasoned elegance and cheer; it has conventional grandeur, of course, but a grandeur so frank and ingenuous even in its parti-pris. It has seen so much, and outlived so much, and served so many sad purposes, and yet remains in aspect so full of the fine Tuscan geniality, the feeling for life, one may almost say the feeling for amusement, that inspired it.

 Henry James, Italian Hours (1909)

Good morning from Florence, from me and John Ruskin: The Sixth Morning. The Shepherd's Tower

I had intended to give the best account of it in my power; but, when at Florence, lost all time for writing that I might copy the group of the Pope and Emperor for the schools of Oxford; and the work since done by Mr. Caird has informed me of so much, and given me, in some of its suggestions, so much to think of, that I believe it will be best and most just to print at once his account of the fresco as a supplement to these essays of mine, merely indicating any points on which I have objections to raise, and so leave matters till Fors lets me see Florence once more.

John Ruskin, Mornings in Florence (1881)

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Here are a couple of other views of Giotto's tower: