ARCHITECT, Italian
(active 15th century in Lucca)

Interior view

15th century
Photo
Duomo, Lucca

In Tuscany and throughout Central and Southern Italy the surviving non-military architecture of the late fourteenth century consists of often attractive continuations of earlier traditions and of sometimes strange and occasionally distinguished architectural details. One of the most attractive architectural oddities is the internal reconstruction of the Duomo (Cathedral of St. Martin) at Lucca, started in 1372 and finished in the fifteenth century.

The distinctive feature of the design is the system of arcading. It roughly corresponds to the triforium in northern Gothic architecture and runs without a break across the transepts. There are two wide, traceried openings to each bay; the traceries are paper-thin, and the effect already striking in the nave, becomes extraordinary in the unusually wide transepts.




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