WE have traced in the early part of the previous chapter
the rise of the first Romanesque or early Lombard style
in northern Italy and its rapid expansion over south-eastern
France, Catalonia, and parts of central Europe. Its further
and fuller development in northern Italy must now engage
our attention, for not only was it the most vital expression
of Italian Romanesque but it formed one of the main inspira-
tions of Romanesque architecture in Germany, Scandinavia,
Hungary, and Dalmatia. The style is native to the provinces
of Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia, and parts of Venetia, and
may be said to be centred in Milan and the old Lombard
capital Pavia. Tuscany, on the other hand, developed rather
on lines of its own, centred at Pisa, Florence, and Lucca,
while Rome held firmly to its classical traditions and only
grudgingly admitted a few expressions of what may be termed
Romanesque art. Southern Italy, artistically, was largely cut
off from the northern half of the country and its Romanesque,
touched here with Lombard and there with Pisan influence,
is essentially different from either.

The first Romanesque buildings are distinguished, as we
have seen, by a return to the general use of the stone vault,
which was necessarily preceded by the substitution of the
pier-arcade for the column-arcade, the latter being struc-
turally quite unsuited to the support of a stone vault. In
Italy the column-basilica proved very difficult to supplant,
largely because of the almost inexhaustible supply of antique
columns, which led often to their incongruous use in an
otherwise purely Romanesque building. Stone-vaulting, either
of the groined or barrel form, had also never been entirely
abandoned in Italy though its use in a basilican church was
practically unknown save in the apse. Thus there is a groined

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