The Pistoja Baptistery is a graceful specimen of Italian
Gothic, in which we observe the increasing use of sculpture
for external decoration, and, in the interior, the proof
(important for the history of Ritual) of the practice, con^
tinued up to the comparatively modern date when San
Giovanni was built, of baptising by immersion. The
octagon, which has a square-ended chancel attached to it,
is vaulted with an eight-sided cupola ; the chancel having
a quadripartite domical vault, with ribs (trefoiled in
section) springing from corbels. The chancel arch is of
two plain orders, with a roll in the nook ; the capitals are
banded — stiff flowers under a moulded abacus ; and the
piers are half engaged, with a mutilated figure in relief
upon each nook shaft. In each alternate side is a large
Pointed window, not much splayed ; inside there is a plane
of stone, filling the head of the plain opening of the window,
which diminishes the orifice, and which being cut into the

shape of an unfoliated arch thus becomes the actual head

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THE GOTHIC : PISTOJA

of the window. We see the same feature in Giotto's Chapel
of the Arena, at Padua. At the end of the chancel is a
similar window, now blocked. There are three doors, on
the east, north and south sides (the Baptistery it should
be observed being, to use an Irishism, orientated to the
west, and its principal door facing the west end of the
Cathedral). This door is of two plain orders, with coupled
nook shafts banded capitals, heavy horizontal lintel and
round-headed tympanum ; all under a Pointed crocketed
and pinnacled canopy with an elaborate panel in it like a
wheel-window. In the tympanum is a beautiful relief of
the Madonna with two Saints. The north and south doors
have each a Pointed tympanum.
