for the most part with a manifest bias in favour of Michael Angelo.
Thus one of these writers proposes that the outer covering of lead
should be stripped off on account of its weight, and be replaced with
copper, to which Poleni objects,[62] affirming that the weight is an
advantage, and tends to hold the dome together. Another writer suggests
that the lantern be removed in order to relieve the fabric of its
weight. Another thinks that the buttresses should be heavily weighted
with statues. It was also proposed that additional buttresses should
be set against the attic of the drum, and carried up against the dome
itself; and again it was proposed that massive abutments be built up
over each of the four great piers, but to this it was objected that
the additional weight of such abutments would dangerously overcharge
the substructure. The most radical suggestion was that both dome and
drum be demolished and rebuilt in a more pointed form. All of these
suggestions were rejected, and it was finally decided to employ the
additional chains proposed by Poleni as already stated.

The dome of St. Peter’s (Plate III) was conceived in a grandiose
spirit, which, while it drew inspiration in part from the ancient Roman
source, recklessly disregarded the lessons which Roman art should teach
as to principles of construction. I have said that Brunelleschi led
the way in a wrong direction when he set his great dome on the top
of its drum, and had resort to clamps and chains for the resistance
to its thrusts that should have been given by abutment. In following
his example, Michael Angelo wandered still farther from the path of
true and monumental art. To make a dome on a large scale a conspicuous
object, from the springing to the crown, is a thing that cannot be
safely done in stone masonry. To make it stand at all, resort must be
had to extraneous and hidden means of support, and even these are of
uncertain efficiency for any length of time. The ancient Roman and
the Byzantine builders settled, I think, for all time the proper mode
of constructing domed edifices. Bramante had recognized this, and
while striving to include in his design for the dome of St. Peter’s
as much as he could of the new character embodied in Brunelleschi’s
dome, he tried at the same time to keep safely within the limits of
the principles that had governed the ancient practice. He gave as much
elevation to his dome as he thought these principles would allow, but
even this, as we have seen, was too much, and in greatly increasing
this elevation, so as to leave the dome entirely without abutment,
Michael Angelo took unwarrantable risks, and lent his genius to the
support of false principles.

That this has not been generally recognized is due to the fact, already
remarked, that the architects and leaders of taste of the Renaissance
have made too little account of structural propriety, and structural
expression, as a necessary basis for architectural design.

Recent writers have ignored the condition of this monument. They do
not appear to be aware of it; and although it has been fully set
forth, and discussed at great length by the earlier Italian writers,
few of them have found the true cause in its flagrant violation of the
fundamental laws of stability. They attributed the alarming progress
of disintegration, as we have seen, to accidents and circumstances
of various kinds; and have sought to shift the responsibility to the
shoulders of Bramante. They have affirmed that he did not take enough
care to make his foundations secure. There appears to be some justice
in this, though since his work was strengthened by his immediate
successors[63] the ruptures in the dome cannot, according to the
mathematicians, be attributed to this. The remarks of the old writers
on Bramante must, I think, be taken with some allowance. Their bias
against him is very marked. Thus Poleni quotes Condivi, a disciple
of Michael Angelo, as saying, “Bramante being, as every one knows,
given to every kind of pleasure, and a great spendthrift, not even the
provision given by the Pope, however much it was, sufficed him, and
seeking to expedite his work, he made the walls of bad materials, and
of insufficient size and strength.”[64]

A great deal has been said of the beauty of St. Peter’s dome. It
has been held up as a model of architectural elegance by countless
writers from Vasari down. But no abstract beauty, no impressiveness
as a commanding feature in the general view of the ancient city
that it may have, can make amends for such structural defects. Its
beauty has, however, I think, been exaggerated. Its lack of visible
organic connection with the substructure makes it inferior in effect
to the dome of Florence, where the structural lines of the edifice,
from the ground upward, give a degree of organic unity, and the
buttressed half-domed apses, grouped in happy subordination about the
base of the drum, prepare the eye to appreciate the majesty of the
soaring cupola as it rises over them. The dome of St. Peter’s has
not the beauty of logical composition. Beauty in architecture may, I
think, be almost defined as the artistic coördination of structural
parts. As in any natural organic form, a well-designed building
has a consistent internal anatomy, and its external character is a
consequence and expression of this. The dome of St. Peter’s violates
the true principles of organic composition, and this I believe to be
incompatible with the highest architectural beauty.

                               CHAPTER V

             CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMAN RENAISSANCE

As for the rest of the church of St. Peter, we need give attention to
that part only which was designed by Michael Angelo on the basis of
the original scheme of Bramante, namely, all to the eastward of,[65]
and including, the first bay west of the crossing. The western bays
of the nave as it now stands were, as is well known, added at a later
time by the architect Maderna. The plan (Fig. 31) of the earlier part
is thoroughly fine, and if the elevation had been made consistent with
this plan, St. Peter’s might have been one of the noblest monuments
in Christendom. But the architects of the Renaissance rarely sought
consistency in design; they were prone, from first to last, to mix
incongruous elements. The essentially Byzantine plan here adopted
could not be carried out in elevation with classic Roman details
with a noble result; and the attempt which Michael Angelo made to
produce an architectural effect foreign to the real structural system
led of necessity, not only to such inconsistencies as are common in
Renaissance motives, but to some awkward makeshifts which have not, I
believe, been hitherto noticed by writers on this edifice.

Following what appears to have been Bramante’s intention, Michael
Angelo constructed barrel vaults over the arms of the cross,[66]
supporting them on piers and arches which had been begun by Bramante.
To this simple and reasonable scheme he applied a colossal order of
Corinthian pilasters, a pair against each pier, as Alberti had done on
a smaller scale at Mantua, and as Bramante appears to have intended in
the great piers of the crossing, if not in all of the others. Apart
from the superficial and purely ornamental character of the order, and
its inappropriateness as ornament in such a system, its exaggerated
scale dwarfs the effect of magnitude in the whole interior. The eye
naturally estimates this magnitude by the customary proportions of a
large classic order, and while these are by no means fixed, there is an
approximate mean scale upon which we base our judgment. No beholder on
entering St. Peter’s can, indeed, fail to be impressed with the unusual
size of the order; but he is not apt to realize how far it exceeds
the largest orders of antiquity. The order of the Parthenon is about
forty-five feet high, and that of the portico of the Pantheon is about
sixty feet. These are exceptionally large among the orders of Greek and
Roman antiquity[67] but the order of St. Peter’s is one hundred feet
high.

  [Illustration: FIG. 31.--Plan of St. Peter’s, from
  Fontana.]

The lack of due effect of scale in this interior has been often
remarked, and it is generally attributed to the great magnitude of the
structural parts. The size of these parts could not, however, well be
different from what they are. Their magnitude is determined by the
scale of the great dome and the width and altitude of the arms of the
cross. The piers of the crossing are masses of masonry measuring on
their longer sides more than fifty feet on the pavement, while the
pendentive arches are one hundred and fifty feet high, and those of
the arms of the cross are seventy-five feet high. But with appropriate
treatment their scale might have been made more apparent. To adorn such
piers and frame such arches with a classic order is to destroy the
proper effect of scale, as well as to violate the true principles of
architectural design by using structural members without any structural
meaning.

Apart from the barbarism already remarked (p. 29) of springing a vault
from a classic entablature, the effect of the gigantic order is unhappy
in other respects; the great salience of its cornice cuts off from view
the lower part of the vaulting, and this pronounced overhanging ledge,
extending around the whole interior, breaks the continuity of the
upright lines into the vaulting, and diminishes the effect of altitude.

  [Illustration: FIG. 32.--Section of aisle of St.
  Peter’s.]

But not only did Michael Angelo employ this incongruous and ineffective
ornamental scheme for the interior of St. Peter’s, he also adopted a
corresponding design for the exterior which wholly contradicts the real
character of the structure and led the architect into some curious
makeshifts. For this exterior he used another gigantic order surmounted
with an attic story. This obliged him to carry up the enclosing walls
of the aisles to a height equal to that of the nave, and led to
difficulties within. For the aisle vaulting was now far down below the
top of these walls, and it therefore became necessary, unless the space
above this vaulting was to be left open to the sky, with the enclosing
wall standing as a mere screen answering to nothing behind it,[68] to
construct a flat roof at the level of the attic cornice. Figure 32, a
section through this part of the structure, will explain this and some
other awkward expedients to which the architect was driven by the use
of this colossal external order. Of the two compartments through which
the line _AB_ (plan, Fig. 31) passes, one has a barrel vault
and the other a dome, and, as each of the other corresponding parts of
the plan are vaulted in the same way, there are four small domes in
all. The effect of four smaller domes grouped around the great central
one would be happy for both internal and external effect, if they were
properly related in proportions, and the scheme were carried out in a
structurally consistent and rational way; but such a scheme could not
be developed here. For from the level of the aisle arches a dome, even
on a proportionately high drum, could not be made to reach the level
of the cornice of the enclosing wall unreasonably elevated for the
sake of the gigantic external order. But Michael Angelo nevertheless
constructed such a dome (_A_, Fig. 32), although it had to be sunk
up to its crown beneath the aisle roof, and then, for external effect,
he built another dome over it (_B_, Fig. 32). To light the lower
dome it was necessary to sink oblique openings, _a_, through the
massive masonry of the roof, and to light the useless vaulted chamber,
_b_, which he was obliged to make over the barrel vault of the
inner compartment (the crown of which is still farther down below the
roof), the well, _c_, had to be sunk. Thus instead of making a
reasonable design with ornamental details appropriate to its structural
forms, Michael Angelo first conceived an ornamental scheme consisting
of the inappropriate colossal order, and then fitted the building to
it, filling up vacant spaces with extravagantly massive solids and
useless voids, and resorting to other tortuous devices to piece out a
fundamentally irrational system.

Such is St. Peter’s church, which, though it has been much criticised,
has been more generally lauded as a model of architectural greatness.
Its real character has rarely been analyzed or rationally considered.
That it has qualities of majesty and grandeur need not be denied; but
these qualities are mainly due to its vast magnitude, and to what
it retains of the design of its first, and greatest, architect. The
manner in which the scheme of Bramante was modified and distorted
by his successors, and chiefly by Michael Angelo, notwithstanding
his professions of admiration for Bramante’s intentions, is far
from admirable, as I think the foregoing account of its structural
and artistic aberrations must show. The building as a whole is
characterized by incongruity and extravagance, and when we consider
further that the ornamentation of the interior is for the most
part a cheap deception, the rich coffering of the vaulting and the
pilasters of the great order being wrought in stucco on a foundation of
brickwork, we get the measure of the ideals and architectural standards
of men who, like Vasari, could write of it that, “not in Christendom,
nor in all the world, can a building of greater magnificence and
grandeur be seen.”[69] And this short-sighted admiration did not abate
as time went on, as we learn from the estimates quoted by Fontana in
his well-known book,[70] among which are the following: “Temple more
famous than that of Solomon,” “Unique miracle of the world,” “Chief
among the most celebrated of Christendom,” “Compendium of the arts,”
“Basis of the Catholic faith,” “Unique edifice of the orb of earth,”
etc., etc.

Before leaving St. Peter’s a word may be said of a project for the
building which was prepared by Antonio San Gallo the younger, Michael
Angelo’s immediate predecessor as architect for the fabric. This
design, no part of which was ever carried out, is embodied in a wooden
model preserved with that of Michael Angelo in the existing edifice.
The most meritorious feature of this model is the dome which, from
a structural point of view, is better than the one that was built,
since it is well abutted both at the springing and at the haunch. This
important condition is secured, however, by an architectural treatment
that cannot be commended, and consists of two superimposed concentric
arcades, the lower one surrounding the drum and abutting the vault at
the springing, while the upper one is set in retreat and fortifies the
haunch. The architectural effect of these arcades, which are of course
adorned with classic orders, is not happy because an arcade with a
classic order is not an appropriate form of abutment, though it may be
made mechanically effective, and also because the upper circle, rising
from within the circumference of the lower one, gives the composition
an unpleasantly telescopic effect.

Our consideration of St. Peter’s has led us to an advanced phase of the
church architecture of the Roman Renaissance, and we must now go back
and examine a few of the earlier structures in Rome and elsewhere that
were produced under the distinctly Roman influence.

  [Illustration: FIG. 33.]

The church of Sant’Agostino is spoken of as a building of the early
Roman Renaissance, and is said to have been built by the architect
Giacomo da Pietra Santa between 1471 and 1484. But it is incredible
that such a church could have been designed by any architect of the
Renaissance, or by an Italian architect of any time. Letarouilly says
of it that from the thirteenth century the Augustinians had a convent
and small church in Rome, and that two centuries later they resolved to
enlarge the church, and employed as architects Giacomo da Pietra Santa
and a Florentine named Sebastiano.[71] The character of the building is
such, however, as to warrant the belief that it is a mediæval structure
with slight interior ornamental additions of the Renaissance, which
may be by Pietra Santa, and a façade, dating from before the close
of the fifteenth century, by Baccio Pintelli. In general character
the church is in the style of the Rhenish Romanesque architecture of
the twelfth century. It has a nave with groined vaulting in square
compartments, each embracing two vault compartments of the aisles. It
has also the Rhenish alternate system with plain square piers, and
archivolts of square section, originally without mouldings, and the
main piers have each a broad pilaster-strip carried up to the springing
of the vaults. The triforium space has no openings, and the clerestory
has plain round-arched windows. It is thus a thoroughly northern
Romanesque scheme, entirely logical in its simple construction and fine
in its proportions. The Renaissance interpolations consist of a few
ornamental details only. A stilted composite column is set against the
pilaster-strip of each main pier (Fig. 33), this column is crowned with
an entablature-block reaching to the level of the triforium, and upon
it is set a short pilaster surmounted with a smaller entablature-block
at the vaulting impost. This superfluous and irrational compound,
breaking the reasonable and effective continuity of the mediæval
pilaster-strip, greatly disfigures the originally noble design. The
only other neo-classic details of the interior are mouldings at the
arch imposts and on the archivolts, and coffering on the soffits of
the arches. These are quiet and less injurious in effect, though
equally superfluous and inappropriate. Thus did the sophistication
of the Renaissance designers often blind them to real architectural
excellence, and lead them to fancy that they could improve such an
admirable and consistent interior by incongruous and meaningless
features.

  [Illustration: FIG. 34.--Façade of Sant’ Agostino.]

The façade (Fig. 34) is wholly of the Renaissance, and has no mediæval
character except in its general outline, which conforms with that of
the building itself. It is a simple design, and foreshadows those of
Vignola and Della Porta for the church of the Gesù, to which it is
superior in merit, being more reasonable and quiet. Shallow pilasters
of considerable elegance mark the divisions of the interior, the
portals are framed with simple classic mouldings without orders, and
the aisle compartments are surmounted with reversed consoles after the
manner of those introduced by Alberti in the façade of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence. These consoles are, however, so different in
character from the rest of the façade, having their details in higher
relief and being set a little in retreat, that they would appear to
be later interpolations. Answering to nothing in the building, they
are superfluous ornaments, and do not improve the composition, which
without them is as reasonable as a composition made up of superficial
classic details can well be. A peculiar feature of this front is the
truncated pediment that crowns the lower division, and forms the basis
of the clerestory compartment. The small rectangular tablets that break
the wall surfaces are also noticeable as foreshadowing a treatment
that was subsequently much affected by Vignola. Contemporaneously
with the façade, and by the same architect, a dome on a drum resting
on pendentives was built over the crossing. The present dome rising
directly from the pendentives is an alteration of a later time.

  [Illustration: FIG. 35.--Exterior of Santa Maria della
  Consolazione, Todi.]

In the earlier churches that were wholly built under the Roman
Renaissance influence, the Byzantine scheme largely prevails in the
plan and structural forms, probably because it lent itself to the most
effective display of a high central dome. Among the first of these
buildings is the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione outside the
wall at Todi. The design is attributed to Bramante,[72] and it seems
to bear enough resemblance to what we know of his work to justify the
attribution. The arms of the cross here take the form of apses, the
eastern one being semicircular on plan, and the others polygonal.
The dome (Fig. 35) is raised on a high drum, and is almost an exact
reproduction of that of San Pietro in Montorio. Its thrusts are thus
entirely unbuttressed, but it is probably bound with chains, as was
the custom at this time in domes constructed in this manner.[73] The
half-domes of the apses are better adjusted. They spring from within
the supporting walls, which are carried up high enough to give
effective abutment, and are loaded at the haunch by stepped rings of
masonry, as in the Pantheon. The details of the interior (Fig. 36)
consist of two superimposed orders of small pilasters, with great
pilasters on the angles of the crossing reaching from the pavement to
the springing of the pendentive arches, and from ressauts of the upper
entablature converging ribs rise against the surfaces of the vaults.
Several further awkward results are here noticeable as a consequence
of this application of the inappropriate classic details to the
Byzantine structural scheme. The entablature which is carried around
the whole interior at the springing of the vaults, has to do duty at
once for the small order of the upper stage and for the great angle
pilasters, and thus in so far as it is in good proportion for the one
it cannot be so for the other. Then the true magnitudes of the piers
and the pendentive arches are falsified by the pilasters and simulated
archivolts which spring from them. These piers and arches really
embrace in width both the pilasters and archivolts and the spaces of
wall and vaulting between them and the pilasters of the smaller orders
and ribs which spring from them. The proper and impressive massiveness
of the essentially Byzantine system employed is thus contradicted by an
apparent skeleton of classic orders simulating an organic structural
scheme which has no real existence.

  [Illustration: FIG. 36.--Interior of Todi.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 37.--Plan of San Biagio.]

The exterior of this monument (Fig. 35) has much merit in its general
form and proportions. The great central square mass, visible from the
ground upward, gives the sense of support for the dome which the eye
demands, and the apses with their half-domes are effectively grouped
in subordination to the crowning feature. But this merit, which Todi
shares with many other buildings of the Renaissance, is primarily due
to the Byzantine scheme adopted, and cannot, therefore, be wholly
credited to the Renaissance architect.

  [Illustration: FIG. 38.--Interior of San Biagio.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 39.]

A variation of this scheme occurs in the church of San Biagio at
Montepulciano by Antonio San Gallo the elder, and begun in the year
1518. Here the arms of the cross (Fig. 37) are square, with an apse
added to the eastern arm. The interior is ornamented with a single,
and very heavy, Doric order (Fig. 38), framing arched recesses in the
imperial Roman manner. The use of pilasters on the angles makes the
awkward combination of a pilaster coupled with a column necessary,
and since the entablature is in the plane of the wall, it has to be
broken into very salient ressauts in order to cover these members.
Above the entablature is a low ledge in retreat, broken into ressauts
in conformity with those of the entablature, and from these ressauts
coffered archivolts are sprung under the ends of the barrel vaults
which cover the arms of the cross. The Doric order is designed here,
for the most part, in close conformity to ancient models, save for
the pilaster on the angle, which does not generally occur in Roman
monuments. The common Roman treatment of the angle is shown in the
arch of Septimius Severus (Fig. 20, p. 41), where the end column of
the order is placed at some distance from the end of the façade, which
is left in retreat without any pilaster. But Serlio[74] describes the
ruins of an ancient Roman building (Fig. 39) that appears to have been
a sort of open arcade or stoa, used as a meeting place for merchants,
on the angles of which pilasters are set together with columns,
somewhat as they were by Alberti in Santa Maria Novella, by San Gallo
here in San Biagio, and by many other architects of the Renaissance. He
speaks of the treatment of the angles of this building as follows: “The
corner pilasters are larger than the others, and were truly made with
excellent judgment, for they strengthen the angle with good effect;
and from this architects may learn how to design angles with columns
and pilasters bound together, in order that the corner may be brought
into line with the column, which gives more solidity to the angle. If
the said angle were withdrawn into line with the middle pilasters,
the façade, when viewed obliquely, with the round column on the angle,
would appear imperfect, and for this ... I strongly commend this form
of angle because it may be fully seen from all sides.”

  [Illustration: FIG. 40.--San Biagio, Montepulciano.]

Externally the composition is remarkably good in its larger features
(Fig. 40). The dome, of slightly pointed outline, on a high drum, rises
grandly from the substructure, and is well proportioned in relation
to it. The wall surfaces are treated broadly, with no orders carried
across them. They are divided into two stages, with a pediment over
each façade. Super-imposed pilasters are set on the angles, and a Doric
entablature, carried across the whole front, with ressauts over the
lower pilasters, divides the two stages. The wall of the lower stage is
entirely plain, with a severely simple rectangular portal surmounted
by a pediment. The wall of the upper stage is divided into rectangular
panels, as in the attic of the Pazzi chapel in Florence, the central
panel being pierced with a square-headed window and framed with an
order of which the capitals are Ionic and the entablature Doric. The
cornice of the top story and the raking cornice of the pediment of
each façade are broken into ressauts over the pilasters, and an order
of Ionic pilasters, with a very high entablature broken into ressauts,
surrounds the drum which supports the dome. Square detached towers
are set in the reëntrant angles of the west side, only one of which
was carried to completion. The completed one is in three stages, each
adorned with a heavy order, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian respectively.
In these orders half-columns are coupled with angle pilasters, as in
the interior, and the entablatures have ressauts on the angles over
these members. An octagonal spire-like lantern, with a tall drum
adorned with an order of Corinthian pilasters and surmounted by an
attic, crowns the tower. Small obelisks set on the tower angles and
reversed consoles against the angles of the attic give a simulation
of Gothic form to the neo-classic scheme, and show the strong hold
that mediæval ideas still retained upon the minds of the designers.
The first of these spire-like towers of the Renaissance appears to
be that of the church of Santo Spirito in Florence, which is spoken
of by Milizia as the most beautiful of Italian bell towers.[75] It
was designed by Baccio d’Agnolo, who, beginning as a wood carver,
imbibed the new enthusiasm for the antique, and after studying the
ancient monuments of Rome[76] began the practice of architecture.
This campanile is thus noteworthy as the first of a large class of
modern towers with spires of which Wren’s famous steeples were the
ultimate outcome. The scheme is based on the mediæval campanile, the
earliest form of which is the Lombard Romanesque tower. The Lombard
tower is characterized by its simple rectangular outline, the walls
rising sheer from the ground to the cornice, and strengthened and
adorned with shallow pilaster-strips, corbelled string-courses marking
the successive stories, and by small grouped openings. The tower of
Santa Maria Novella in Florence is designed on this model, and the
neighbouring tower of Prato and Giotto’s famous campanile are later and
richer modifications of the same type. In the tower of Santo Spirito
(Fig. 41) Baccio d’Agnolo has taken the Lombard scheme and clothed it
with a pseudo-classic dress. While his classic details have much of
that elegance which belongs to the best Italian work, they are out of
place in such a structure. The tall pilaster-strips of the mediæval
tower gave an expression as of an organic skeleton running through the
building. They had been developed out of the classic pilaster to meet
the needs of the mediæval type of structure, and in substituting the
superimposed classic orders for the appropriate continuous members, the
artist did violence to the true principles of design.

  [Illustration: FIG. 41.--Tower of Santo Spirito.]

The lantern with which this tower is crowned is an adaptation of
Brunelleschi’s lantern on the dome of the cathedral, but made more
aspiring in form, so that the general outline is like that of a Gothic
spire. But the form of a Gothic spire is far removed from anything that
is proper to classic composition.

Returning to San Biagio, it may be said that the orders here have a
closer conformity with those of classic antiquity than occurs in the
earlier monuments already mentioned, except the Tempietto of San Pietro
in Montorio by Bramante.

  [Illustration: FIG. 42.--Santissima Annunziatta, Arezzo.]

In the nave of the church of Santissima Annunziatta in Arezzo, the same
architect produced a different design. The nave (Fig. 42), of only
three bays, is covered with a barrel vault, and the aisles have small
domes on pendentives. The supporting piers are square with a shallow
Corinthian pilaster on the face of each and an entablature passing over
the crowns of the arches. The archivolts are deep, and each one is
moulded on the face and plain on the soffit. These are carried on plain
pilasters with simple impost mouldings. The wall above the entablature
is plain and unbroken, except by a round-arched window over each bay of
the ground story, and is crowned with a heavy cornice from which the
vaulting springs. We have here a structural system of imperial Roman
massiveness, necessitated by the use of the great barrel vault.

After the early part of the sixteenth century Italy produced few
architects of a high order of genius. Most of the more advanced
neo-classic art is the work of mediocre men who, while professing to be
ardent advocates of grammatical correctness according to the ancient
rules, were hardly less capricious in their misuse of classic elements
than their predecessors had been. To enter upon the examination of any
large number of buildings in this later Renaissance style would be
tedious and unnecessary; but in addition to what we have already seen
of it in the work of Michael Angelo in St. Peter’s, we may give some
attention to a few characteristic works of the two leading architects
of the later time: Vignola and Palladio.

Few men did more to make the neo-classic ideas authoritative than
Giacomo Barrozzi, called Vignola. Beginning like so many others with
painting, Vignola was led early to the study of architecture, in which
he strove to gain an exact knowledge of classic Roman forms by drawing
and measuring the remains of the ancient edifices. He thus became a
devoted partisan of the antique, and he wrote a treatise on the Five
Orders which has been widely accepted as an authoritative guide in
modern architectural practice. To him, says Milizia, “Architecture is
under lasting obligations because he established it upon system, and
prescribed its rules.”[77] And the same author tells us further that
Vignola “purified architecture from some abuses which neither his
contemporaries nor the ancients had perceived”; yet nevertheless, he
adds, “his book has produced more harm than good, for to make the rules
more general, and more easy of application, he has altered the finest
proportions of the antique.” No system of architecture, Milizia says
further, “is more easy than that of Vignola, but the facility of it is
obtained at the expense of architecture itself.”

In his book,[78] which is made up largely of drawings and diagrams,
Vignola shows how the proportions of an order may be regulated by a
module down to the smallest details. He explains how to construct Ionic
volutes and other curves from centres, and how to describe the details
of Corinthian and composite capitals by means of plan and elevation.
He thus introduces a mechanical system modelled after the formulas of
Vitruvius.

  [Illustration: FIG. 43.--Vignola’s entablature.]

But notwithstanding his ardent advocacy of the principles of ancient
Roman art, Vignola, in his own practice, not only altered the
proportions of the orders as Milizia says, but made many fanciful
changes in them. He introduced details which have no counterparts in
correct Roman design, and freely mixed those of different orders. An
instance of this occurs in an entablature figured in his book,[79]
which he calls his own invention. In this composition (Fig. 43) we have
a pseudo-Doric frieze between an architrave with multiplied faciæ, and
a cornice on modillions. In the place of triglyphs this frieze has
consoles with two channels, like those of a triglyph, on the curved
face of each. To such travesties of classic design did the striving
after novelty, which was curiously mingled with their ardour for the
antique, lead the men of the later Renaissance. For an advocate of
classic correctness such aberrations are the more surprising as they
are expressly condemned by Vitruvius, who warns his readers against
them as follows: “If dentiled cornices are used in the Doric order,
triglyphs applied above the voluted Ionic, thus transferring parts to
one order which properly belong to another, the eye will be offended,
because custom otherwise applies these peculiarities.”[80] The Roman
writer might, indeed, have given a better reason why the purity of the
orders ought to be maintained, namely, because to each of them the fine
artistic genius of the Greeks had given its appropriate details.

  [Illustration: FIG. 44.--Half plan of Sant’Andrea.]

In designing entire buildings Vignola shows no less freedom in
unclassic and incongruous combinations. This is manifested in the
earliest of his church edifices, that of Sant’Andrea di Ponte Molle
outside of the Porta del Popolo at Rome (Figs. 44, 45, and 46). It is a
small, oblong, rectangular enclosure covered with a dome of oval plan
on pendentives. The structural scheme is thus primarily Byzantine,
but the architectural treatment is Roman. The dome is built in a
praiseworthy form, and follows the construction of the dome of the
Pantheon. An enclosing drum is carried up from the pendentives to a
considerable height, and the haunch of the vault is well fortified by
stepped rings of masonry. These rings are criticised by Milizia[81] as
awkward and unnecessary because, he affirms, the vault might have been
made secure without them. He probably means that it might have been
bound with chains in the usual manner of the Renaissance. As in the
Pantheon, the drum rises so high above the springing that but little
of the dome is visible externally. The character of the rectangular
substructure is puzzling to the eye of a beholder who looks for meaning
and congruity in architectural forms. Wrought in shallow relief upon
its façade is an order of Corinthian pilasters surmounted by a classic
pediment, and the entablature of the order is returned on the sides
of the building. The effect of the whole may be compared to that of a
Greek temple with an attic supporting a dome built upon it. So awkward
is the combination that it might be supposed to be a piece of patchwork
in which a building of Greek temple form had been altered to gain more
height within, were it not that we find in the architect’s own book
the plan and section reproduced in Figs. 44 and 45, which show that
the building as it now exists was originally designed in its present
form.[82]

  [Illustration: FIG. 45.--Longitudinal section of
  Sant’Andrea, from Vignola’s book.]

On reflection we discover that the scheme suggests a derivation
from the Pantheon. Not only is the dome shaped and adjusted as in
that ancient monument, save for its oval plan, but the rest of the
composition is pretty clearly from the same source. To realize this it
is necessary only to eliminate, in idea, the portico of the Pantheon
with the exception of its pediment, and to conceive this pediment as
drawn back into the plane of the rectangular façade. The pediment
would then surmount the order of Corinthian pilasters which adorn this
façade, and the resulting composition would be substantially identical
with that of the façade of St. Andrea. The minor differences are
unimportant, as where Vignola has placed a pair of pilasters, instead
of only one, at each end of the façade, has given the whole order more
shallow relief, and has omitted the fluting on the pilasters. Even the
niches on either side of the portal are reproduced from the Pantheon,
though Vignola has pierced them with windows.

  [Illustration: FIG. 46.--Sant’Andrea di Ponte Molle.]

The likeness extends farther. The return of the entablature along
the side walls and the cornice of the attic are the same in both
instances; but the second pediment in the Pantheon façade Vignola has
not reproduced. St. Andrea is thus a close, though a modified, copy of
the rectangular part of the Pantheon, with the rectangle elongated and
surmounted by a dome designed on the Pantheon model. It was not known
in the sixteenth century that the ancient monument is not a homogeneous
structure, but an awkward patchwork, the result of successive
alterations and additions.[83] Vignola took it entire as an example
of that ancient style which he regarded as authoritative, and based
his design for St. Andrea upon it, just as many modern architects have
taken motives from Vignola himself. If it were proposed to erect a dome
upon the Parthenon, few people would fail to see that the result would
be an architectural monstrosity, yet this would not be very different
from what was done in St. Andrea by an architect who has been looked
upon as a champion of classic correctness in design.

M. Palustre has called attention to the fact that, in the interior
of St. Andrea (Fig. 45), the two parts of the entablature which have
no _raison d’être_ under a vault have been omitted.[84] But the
impropriety of a complete entablature in connection with vaulting is
no greater than that of any part of a classic order, which has no
justification in such connection, as we have already remarked.

The pilgrimage church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built over the
oratory of St. Francis at Assisi, is a more extensive monument which
was begun by Vignola in the year 1569. Though completed by other
architects, and extensively restored in 1832, the building as it now
stands is uniform in style throughout, and bears the marks of Vignola’s
manner of design. It is cruciform in plan, with a long nave and aisles,
and a square chapel opening out of each bay of each aisle. The nave and
transept have barrel vaulting, a half-dome covers the apse, and a dome
on a high drum resting on pendentives rises over the crossing. The
aisles have domical groined vaulting with transverse ribs, and the side
chapels have barrel vaults with their axes perpendicular to that of the
nave. These chapels thus form abutments to the inner vaulting, so that
no external buttresses are needed. The entire fabric is of brick, but
the details, including the orders of the interior, of the west front,
and of the drum, are wrought in stucco. For the interior the architect
has employed a great order of Doric pilasters, a single pilaster on
the face of each pier, and on the sides of the piers, under the aisle
archivolts, he has placed pairs of smaller pilasters. The soffits
of the archivolts are very wide, and have each a pair of salient
sub-archivolts corresponding with the pilasters. It had been common for
the architects of the Roman Renaissance to break the entablature into
ressauts over the columns or pilasters of the orders when used in this
way, as San Gallo had done in Montepulciano and Michael Angelo in St.
Peter’s. But the effect of thus breaking the continuity of the cornice
line is unpleasing, and Vignola has avoided it here by confining the
ressaut to the architrave, frieze, and bed-mouldings, leaving the
corona of the cornice unbroken as in Figure 47. The great piers of the
crossing show the influence of St. Peter’s in being splayed, and the
forms of the pendentives lose their spherical surfaces in being fitted
to the straight line of the splay, as they do in St. Peter’s. The
design of the façade expresses with unusual truthfulness the divisions
of the interior, which are marked by pilasters like those of the great
order within, and by an arch coinciding with the curve of the vaulting.

  [Illustration: FIG. 47.--Order of Santa Maria degli
  Angeli.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 48.--Plan of the Gesù.]

The Gesù in Rome, another large church by Vignola, and built at about
the same time as Santa Maria degli Angeli, is a variation of the
same scheme, and shows in a more marked degree the influence of St.
Peter’s. A plan of this building, the intended façade which Vignola
did not live to construct, and the existing façade by Jacomo della
Porta are given in the addendum to the edition of the architect’s book
on the Five Orders published in 1617 already referred to (p. 84),
and are reproduced in Figures 48, 49, and 50. The aisles are omitted
here so that the side chapels, which communicate with each other by
narrow openings in the dividing walls, open directly out of the nave.
The transept is short, and extends on either side beyond the nave
only by the thickness of its walls. An elevated dome on pendentives,
circular on plan within and octagonal on the outside, rises over the
crossing, and barrel vaults cover the nave and transept arms. The
side chapels are vaulted, with small domes on pendentives, except
those in the angles of the crossing, which do not require pendentives
because their supports are shaped to the circular form as shown in the
plan, Figure 48. These supports are made heavier than the others in
order to strengthen the crossing piers, which, in consequence of this
reënforcement, do not need to advance so far into the space under the
great dome as they otherwise would. In Santa Maria degli Angeli the
aisles prevent this treatment, and the crossing piers extend far into
the nave and narrow the spans of the crossing arches.

The scheme of the interior of the Gesù is a close reproduction of
that of St. Peter’s, though the great pilasters are of the composite,
instead of the Corinthian, order, and other minor differences are
noticeable. It is worthy of remark that the entablature has no
ressauts except at the crossing, and the vaulting is raised upon an
attic, so that no part of it is hidden from view by the cornice of the
entablature, as it is in St. Peter’s. It is also noticeable that, while
capricious in the use of elements derived from the antique, Vignola
in his church architecture eliminates mediæval forms more completely
than most architects of his time. Where in St. Peter’s, for instance,
the apses have celled vaults on converging ribs, he employs the plain
half-dome of Roman antiquity.

  [Illustration: _Questa facciata no fu messa in opera per la
  morte del architecto_

  FIG. 49.--Façade of the Gesù, Vignola.]

  [Illustration: _Facciata del Giesu come al presente si troua
  fatta da Iacomo della Portta._

  FIG. 50.--Façade of the Gesù, Della Porta.]

Vignola’s design for the façade (Fig. 49) presents the familiar
features of his style as already embodied in the earlier façade of St.
Andrea, but with additional infractions of propriety, as well as of
classic form in its more elaborate details. This façade corresponds in
outline with the form of the building, except for the podium of the
upper story (which contradicts the roof lines of the side chapels),
and the abutting walls of curved outline over the side compartments.
The chief aberrations of detail are the broken pediments of the
doors and windows, and the barbaric scrollwork and hermæ, the use of
which this architect did much to establish. How far the barbarism of
breaking the pediment was an independent freak of the Renaissance I
do not know. Instances of somewhat similar treatment occur in the
Roman architecture of Syria, as in Baalbek (Fig. 51), where the middle
part of the pediment is in retreat of the rest, so that the ends form
ressauts. Of the complete removal of a part of the cornice I know no
instance in the Roman architecture of antiquity. To this, however, the
architects of the later Renaissance were, in their desire for novelty
of design, led. But the cornice of a pediment is, like the roof of an
entire building, suggestive of shelter for the parts below. The actual
necessity for such shelter may be slight, but any justification which
the raking cornice has must be for expression, if nothing more, of a
sheltering roof to what it surmounts (unless we are to assume that
architectural design is a matter of purely fanciful composition of
lines with no structural meaning or expression). To cut a piece out of
the middle of it is an architectural solecism.

  [Illustration: FIG. 51.--Pediment of Baalbek.]

The actual façade by Della Porta (Fig. 50) follows the main lines of
Vignola’s design, but the details are much altered. The podium of the
upper story is raised in height, reversed consoles are substituted for
the plain curved abutments of Vignola, and the raking cornices of the
small pediments are made whole. But other aberrations take the place
of those which are eliminated, as that of placing one pediment within
another over the central portal, and the ugly shapes and framings of
the tablets and niches that break the wall surfaces. Della Porta had
acquired these habits of design from his master, Vignola, and how far
Vignola himself could go in such monstrosities is shown in some of the
figures of his book already spoken of. Figure 52 from this book affords
an instance.

  [Illustration: FIG. 52.--Tablet from Vignola.]

If Vignola did much to make authoritative the later ideas of the
sixteenth century as to the principles of ancient art and their
application to modern uses, Palladio did even more. By the example
of his numerous architectural works, as well as by his writings,
the influence on modern art of this famous neo-classicist has been
greater than that of any other architect of the Renaissance, so that
we have, in the principal countries of Europe, a style of architecture
which is known as Palladian. Palladio was the first architect of the
Renaissance who was not at any time either a painter or a sculptor.
He begins his well-known book[85] as follows: “Guided by natural
inclination, I began in my earliest years to devote myself to the study
of architecture, and having been always of the opinion that the ancient
Romans were in building, as in many other things, far in advance of all
those who came after them, I took for my master and guide Vitruvius,
who is the only ancient writer on this art, and I set myself to the
investigation of the remains of the ancient edifices which, injured
by time and the violence of barbarians, are still extant. And finding
them much more worthy of attention than I at first thought, I began
with great diligence to measure most minutely every part of them. I
became so ardent an investigator, not having known with what judgment
and fine proportion they had been wrought, that not once only, but many
times, I visited different parts of Italy and elsewhere, in order to
understand and delineate them completely. And seeing how far the common
manner of building differs from what I have observed in the ancient
edifices, and read in Vitruvius, and in Leon Batista Alberti, and in
other excellent writers since Vitruvius, and from that new manner which
I have practised with much satisfaction, and which has been praised by
those who profited by my work, it has seemed to me right, since man is
not born for himself alone, but also to be useful to others, to publish
the drawings of these edifices, which at the cost of much time and
peril I have gathered; and to state briefly that which has seemed to me
most worthy of consideration in them, together with those rules which I
have observed, to the end that those who shall read my book may profit
by such good as may be in it, and supply that which may be wanting (for
much, perhaps, may be) so that, little by little, we may correct the
strange abuses, the barbarous inventions, avoid the superfluous cost,
and (what is more important) the various and continued deterioration
which we see in so many buildings.”

The implicit confidence of the neo-classicists in the art of Roman
antiquity as the embodiment of all true principles of architectural
design, and their unquestioning belief that mediæval art was wholly
false in principle and barbaric in character, have seldom been more
naïvely expressed.

  [Illustration: FIG. 53.--Orders of San Giorgio.]

Of church architecture by Palladio we have two important buildings,
San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore, both in Venice. The first of
these stands on the island of San Giorgio, opposite the Piazzetta, and
is a characteristic Palladian design, though some parts of the west
front may have been added after the architect’s death. This church is
cruciform, and has barrel vaulting with interpenetrations for light,
and a dome on pendentives over the crossing. The piers are heavy, with
a single engaged column of the composite order, raised on a high
pedestal, against each one, except at the crossing, where the columns
are coupled with pilasters, while the wide archivolts rest on pairs
of smaller pilasters of the Corinthian order, without pedestals (Fig.
53). Both columns and pilasters have strong entasis, and the frieze of
the entablature is rounded in profile. In raising the great order on
pedestals Palladio conformed more closely to ancient Roman practice
than Michael Angelo and Vignola had done; but the pedestals have a
clumsy effect thus ranged along the nave, and their sharp angles are
in the way of moving crowds of people. It is noticeable, too, that
Palladio has introduced complete orders under the archivolts, giving an
entablature to each pair of small pilasters. The entablature had before
been omitted in this situation. The whole scheme shows in a marked
degree how inappropriate is the use of classic orders in a church
interior. The application of such orders to a building with aisles and
a high nave obliges the designer to make awkward combinations, and
to violate true classic usage in manifold ways, as we have already
abundantly seen. He must associate large and small orders, and give
them relationships and adjustments that belong to mediæval, rather
than to classic, composition. The façade of this building (Fig. 54)
has the merit of conforming in outline to the shape of the nave and
aisles. It is the outline of the primitive Christian Roman basilica
without any disguises in the way of reversed consoles over the aisle
compartments, or divisions contradicting those of the interior. Instead
of the superimposed orders of Vignola’s west fronts, Palladio has
here, in the nave compartment, one great order of engaged columns, on
high pedestals, rising through the entablature of a small order of
pilasters, which is carried across the whole front, reaching to the
height of the aisles. The total scheme gives a suggestion of mediæval
organic composition, but has no real organic character pertaining to
the building.

  [Illustration: FIG. 54.--Façade of San Giorgio.]

In the façade of San Francesco della Vigna, also in Venice, and by
the same architect, the design of San Giorgio is repeated, with some
notable changes in detail. In this case the small order, as well as the
larger one, consists of columns, except that on each angle a pilaster
takes the place of a column, and both orders rise from the same level,
the smaller one resting on a continuous podium, and the larger one
on pedestals which are ressauts of the podium. The entablature of
the small order is here not continuous, but is broken by the nave
compartment, though a fragment of it is inserted in the central bay of
this compartment over the small columns that flank the portal.

  [Illustration: FIG. 55.--The Redentore, Venice.]

The scheme of the Redentore differs from that of San Giorgio. It has
no transept and no aisles, but in the place of aisles a series of side
chapels. A square area in front of the sanctuary is covered with a
dome on pendentives, while the nave has a barrel vault, and the side
chapels have barrel vaults with their axes perpendicular to the axis
of the nave. From the dividing walls of these chapels solid abutments
in pairs are carried up through the lean-to roofs over the chapels to
meet the thrusts of the nave vaulting, as shown in the general view of
the exterior (Fig. 55). The plan of the east end is peculiar. A round
apse opens out of the north and south sides of the square covered by
the dome, and a colonnade on a curved plan forming the sanctuary bounds
this square area on the east side. Beyond this is an oblong enclosure
the eastern wall of which is on a curved plan, and the sanctuary is
flanked by small towers. The interior has a great order of Corinthian
columns, one against each pier, resting directly on the pavement, and
the small pilasters under the archivolts carry entablatures which
extend to the outer wall and from them the barrel vaults of the chapels
spring. The entablature of the great order is not set in the wall and
broken by ressauts to cover the columns, as in San Giorgio; but is
carried by the columns, and thus overhangs the wall with a supporting
corbel in the middle of each intercolumniation which forms a keystone
to the arch beneath. The façade of the Redentore is a variation of
that of San Giorgio with the pedestals omitted from the great order,
as in the interior, and it has an attic behind the pediment like that
of Vignola’s small church of St. Andrea at Rome. Such is the nature
of Palladian church architecture. We shall see more of Palladio’s art
when we come to the consideration of the later civil and domestic
architecture of the Renaissance.

It is unnecessary to multiply examples of the church architecture of
the Roman Renaissance, _i.e._ that architecture which derived
its character primarily from the influences that were active in Rome
from the beginning of the sixteenth century. For while the churches
of this style differ considerably one from another in details, they
agree essentially in architectural treatment growing out of a closer
contact with ancient monuments, though with no strict conformity to
them. Descriptions of minor differences in the forms of such buildings,
and in the composition of their ornamental details, are tedious, and
enough of them have now been given. We may, therefore, in the next
chapter, pass on to the consideration of the palace architecture of the
Renaissance.

                              CHAPTER VI

           PALACE ARCHITECTURE OF THE FLORENTINE RENAISSANCE

While it was in church edifices that the neo-classic ideas in
architecture were first embodied, it was in vast palatial houses that
they were most extensively carried out. Early in the fifteenth century
luxurious living began to prevail among the upper classes of society,
and sumptuous private dwellings on an unprecedented scale were now
erected in Florence. Magnificent palaces had, indeed, been built in the
later Middle Ages which were among the chief ornaments of the mediæval
towns; but those were civic monuments expressive of the communal spirit
and artistic culture of their time. Such buildings as the Palazzo
Vecchio in Florence, the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, the Ducal Palace
of Venice, and many others were the material manifestation of a state
of municipal pride, and popular love of beauty and propriety in public
monuments. Upon these buildings the best craftsmanship was lavished,
while the dwellings of the most wealthy citizens were modest in scale,
though often beautiful in design.

  Plate IV

  PALAZZO RICCARDI

  Florence]

A fine example of an unostentatious, though dignified, house of a
Florentine Patrician of the thirteenth century still extant is the
Palazzo Mozzi. Its broad walled front of two stories over a high
basement, with narrow string courses of simple profile and moderate
projection, its well-faced and finely jointed masonry, and its plain
window openings of the characteristic mediæval Florentine form in
which the extrados is pointed while the intrados is round (Fig.
56), is a model of architectural simplicity, while it expresses the
superior social station of its inmates. A few smaller houses of similar
character as to quietness and simplicity of design, many of them suited
to the needs of humbler citizens, have been preserved in some of the
Italian towns. A few interesting examples of these may be found in
Perugia. They have plain stone fronts, with simple string courses
marking off the stories, and windows in some cases wholly round arched,
in others having the extrados pointed with an ogee curve (Fig. 57).

  [Illustration: FIG. 56.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 57.]

But early in the fifteenth century vast structures for private use
began to arise which rivalled in scale, and in costly splendour, the
great civic monuments of the former time. The first of these larger
palaces in Florence is the one now known as the Riccardi, designed
by the architect Michelozzi for Cosimo de’ Medici in 1430. It is a
princely edifice, and though comparatively plain in general aspect, it
is in many ways superior in architectural character to all of those
which followed it. Like other buildings of its class it is in plan a
survival of the ancient Roman house, having the form of a rectangle
enclosing an open court. In elevation (Plate IV) it has two stories
over a high basement, and is grandly simple in design, and fine in its
proportions. In buildings of this class there is no peculiar internal
system which requires attention before the outside can be understood.
The apartments have generally flat wooden ceilings, and where vaulting
occurs, as usually in the basement and sometimes in the upper stories,
it is of a kind that calls for no buttresses against the wall, the
thrusts being met by the thickness of the walls, and by the weight of
the upper stories. The façades of the Riccardi have no engaged orders,
but the great cornice has classic profiling, and its bed mouldings have
dentils and other classic details, while modillions of semi-classic
form support the corona. The window openings are of thoroughly mediæval
character in their larger features, and are each composed of a round
arch embracing two smaller arches with a central shaft and jamb
shafts, but the shafts have the tapering form with entasis, and the
_congé_, of classic design. The capitals are of nondescript form,
with a channelled bell, an ovolo with egg and dart ornament, reversed
Corinthianesque leafage depending from its angles, and a Corinthian
abacus in each. The openings are uniform in each story, and their
archivolts are treated in the mediæval Italian manner, the extrados
being struck from a higher centre than the intrados. The graduated
heights of the stories, and the varied treatment of the wall surfaces
by rough-faced rustication in the basement, smooth-faced rustication in
the principal story, and smooth close-jointed masonry in the top story,
add much to the beauty of this finest of early Renaissance palaces. It
is worthy of notice that here, as in the Italian domestic architecture
of the Renaissance generally, the roof is not visible in a near view of
the building, and no dormers or chimney-stacks appear. The conditions
of climate did not call for a high-pitched roof, nor for any of those
features that are naturally developed in the architecture of more
northern countries. The general outline of the edifice is thus severely
simple, and its agreeable effect is due to its fine proportions and
arrangement of parts. It is noticeable, too, that the reveals are
shallow on the outside, in marked contrast to the deep reveals of
the later Renaissance architecture. This is not only conducive to
quietness of effect, but it has the advantage of giving to the interior
the maximum of light--since the farther out the glass is placed the
less will be the shadow thrown upon it, while the internal reveal,
especially when it is splayed, reflects light into the interior.

The interior court of the Renaissance palace has a vaulted arcade on
each of its four sides beneath the overhanging upper stories. These
arcades are, in the Riccardi (Fig. 58), supported on columns of classic
form with capitals of a composite type, but of no great beauty. The
arches spring directly from these capitals, and have classic profiles,
while two string courses, with an interval forming a semblance of a
frieze, give the effect of an entablature passing over the crowns of
the arches.

The spacious apartments of these early Florentine palaces are generally
fine in their proportions and simple in their architectural treatment.
They are, however, rarely well lighted. The ceilings are at a great
height above the comparatively low windows, and the windows are
disposed for external effect, rather than for convenience within. Thus
while these apartments are stately, they are rarely adapted to cheerful
indoor life, and in a northern climate they would be intolerably
gloomy. When used, as they now often are, as galleries for the
display of works of art, they do not serve well, very small portions
of their vast wall spaces being well lighted, and the disposition of
the openings often such as to produce embarrassing cross lights and
reflections.

  [Illustration: FIG. 58.--Court of the Riccardi.]

Vasari tells us that “after Brunelleschi, Michelozzi was held to be
the most consistent architect of his time, and the one who with best
judgment planned either palaces, monasteries or houses.” And concerning
the Riccardi he adds, “All the more praise is due him since this was
the first Palace in Florence built in the modern manner, and which has
a disposition of apartments both useful and beautiful.”[86] He does not
explain in what the superior planning of the Riccardi consists, and it
is doubtful whether these remarks were based on any definite idea. But
however this may be, the building is indeed a stately and magnificent
one, of quiet aspect, and for the most part free from meaningless
features.

Hardly any other one of the Florentine palaces of the Renaissance
equals the Riccardi in beauty and dignity. That part of the Pitti which
was begun by Brunelleschi in 1435, though equally free from meaningless
features, is almost too bald to be called an architectural design. Each
story of its long façade is as monotonous as the Claudian aqueduct
which it closely resembles.

The front of the small palace called the Strozzino is in the style of
the Riccardi, and is attributed to the same architect. It has but one
story above the high basement, and the treatment is even more mediæval
in character, the window arches having the pointed form.

The Palazzo Strozzi, begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Majano, follows
the same general scheme as the Riccardi, but is less admirable in its
proportions. Vasari tells us that Majano carried the exterior almost
to completion, but that the court and the great cornice were the work
of Simione Pollaiuolo, called Il Cronaca. This cornice, he says, was
copied from an ancient model in Rome which the architect had drawn and
measured with great exactness, but he had here enlarged the scale to
suit the proportions of the building.[87] I think it may be said that
he enlarged it too much, and that, in common with the cornices of most
of these Renaissance palaces, it is too heavy. The Strozzi, more than
any other of the palatial houses of its time, has the fortress-like
character which indicates the turbulent condition of Florence in the
fifteenth century. The vast basement of ponderous masonry, with no
window openings near the ground, gives a gloomy and forbidding aspect
to the front, and marks a survival of the savage habits of feudal life
in this epoch of advanced Italian civilization and culture.

The Palazzo Pazzi, now known as the Quaratesi, is attributed to
Brunelleschi, and has the marks of his style in the details of the
windows. It has the same general scheme of design as the foregoing
houses, and its stories are proportioned with the same pleasing
gradation in their heights that we have noticed in the Riccardi;
but the wall surfaces are different, being uniformly overlaid with
stucco. A series of small circular openings, with mouldings over the
windows of the topmost full story, resembling those of the drum of the
Pazzi chapel, seem to give further evidence of Brunelleschi’s hand.
Still another building in this style, though of even plainer external
character, having small undivided openings, is the Palazzo Gondi,
designed by Guiliano da San Gallo toward the close of the fifteenth
century. The arcades of the court of the Gondi have Corinthian columns
of great elegance, and the arches have ornamental keystones.

Another type of Florentine palace of the early Renaissance is
exemplified in the Palazzo Guardagni, attributed to Simone Pallaiuolo.
It has an open loggia at the top, and the portals and windows have
the round arched form with the extrados pointed. This is a thoroughly
reasonable and appropriate Italian style of domestic building, and
if it had been consistently adhered to, without any admixture of the
classic elements that were soon introduced, the domestic architecture
of Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries might have merited
our unqualified admiration. On the simple and appropriate scheme of
the Palazzo Guardagni there was opportunity for such variations of
disposition, proportion, and details as utility and taste might call
for, without any resort to neo-classic elements.

The foregoing buildings, though larger and more elegant than the
private houses of the Middle Ages, are still in their main features
largely mediæval in character. But before the later buildings of this
class were erected, another phase of design in palatial architecture
arose in which the spirit of the Renaissance is more manifest in the
application of the classic orders to the walls of the façades. This
application, as is well known, occurs first in the Palazzo Rucellai,
designed by the architect Alberti and built just after the middle of
the fifteenth century. We have already (pp. 35–42) seen something of
Alberti’s use of classic orders in church architecture, and we have
now to consider further the influences which were guiding the public
taste as they are reflected in the works of the man who on the whole
did most at this early epoch to establish the new architectural ideas.
Alberti was a scholar and a man of high social station. Like most men
of culture in Florence he had a taste for the fine arts, but, as Vasari
tells us, he “applied himself not only to discover the principles and
the proportions of antiquity, but also, being naturally so inclined,
much more to writing than to practice.”[88] The moving purpose with
him was thus primarily archæological and literary, rather than artistic.

  [Illustration: FIG. 59.--Façade of the Rucellai.]

The Rucellai is in form substantially like the Riccardi and other
buildings of its class, but in place of the plain wall surfaces which
are appropriate for a building that has no structural framework, we
have an order of classic pilasters dividing the face of each story into
bays answering to nothing in the real system of construction (Fig. 59).
We thus have here in domestic architecture an instance of that false
use of the orders which in church architecture was first introduced in
the chapel of the Pazzi. Alberti’s classic tendencies are here shown
further in the introduction of a diminutive entablature passing through
the smaller arches of the windows, and these arches are merely cut in
relief on a solid tympanum (Fig. 59). It is worthy of notice, too, that
the rustication of the masonry of this façade does not mark the true
joints. The blocks of stone are in many cases much larger than they
appear, channels being cut upon them to simulate joints. The arch of
one window, for instance, which by the rustication would appear to be
made up of fourteen voussoirs, has in reality only three. The same lack
of conformity of the simulated jointing with the true masonry joints
is noticeable also in many parts of the façade of the Riccardi, and I
know not how general this treatment may be in the architecture of the
Renaissance.[89]

The initiative thus given by Alberti was not at once universally
followed. The orders did not come into general use in the façades of
domestic architecture until the period of the later Renaissance. The
most important Florentine palaces of the latter part of the fifteenth
century have, as we have seen in the Strozzi, no classic orders. The
classic elements of these buildings are confined to details such as
the profiling of cornices, and the introduction of dentils and other
kindred ornaments, and to the capitals of court arcades.

Early in the sixteenth century a further innovation in the treatment of
palace fronts was made in Florence by the Architect Baccio d’Agnolo,
whose design for the campanile of Santo Spirito we have already noticed
(p. 82), in the Palazzo Bartolini. This consisted in framing the
windows with small orders crowned by pediments (Fig. 60). Milizia thus
refers to this innovation: “This was the first palace with windows
adorned with frontispieces and with columns at the doorway carrying
architrave, frieze, and cornice. A novelty, like most others, at first
disapproved and then idolized. The Florentines all ridiculed Baccio for
this new style of architecture, not only with words, but with sonnets,
and with jesting devices attached to the building, taunting him with
having made a church of a palace.”[90] For the rest, though Baccio
d’Agnolo has not adorned the walls of this building with orders, he has
marked the stories with entablatures, and placed rusticated pilasters
at the angles.

As time went on the spirit of display in domestic architecture
increased. Buildings like the Riccardi owe their admirable character
largely to their moderation. The well-known remark of Vasari[91]
that Cosimo de’ Medici had rejected a scheme for that building which
had been prepared by Brunelleschi on the ground that so sumptuous a
dwelling for a private citizen might excite envy, indicates the more
modest feeling and sense of fitness, which as yet held in check the
spirit of ostentation. But the boast of Filippo Strozzi that he would
make his great palace excel all others in magnificence betrays the
ambition that governed the later builders of the great houses of the
Renaissance.

  [Illustration: FIG. 60.--Window of the Bartolini.]

By the beginning of the sixteenth century the vigour of the Florentine
Republic was spent, and its artistic ascendency was declining. Lorenzo
de’ Medici had died, and the chief seat of artistic activity was, as we
have already seen, transferred to Rome where the conditions were very
different from what they had been in Florence during the earlier time.
Ideals and aspirations were further changed, and the quest of material
splendour was more than ever stimulated under the mundane ambitions
of a luxurious and profligate society. Thus it was that in connection
with the later neo-classic church architecture already considered there
arose a corresponding movement in the erection of sumptuous palatial
houses, though still for some time palatial architecture retained much
of the earlier moderation in design. The great Roman houses of the
early part of the sixteenth century have a dignity and grandeur that go
far to redeem their incongruities. It was not, as we shall see in the
next chapter, until men like Sansovino, Vignola, and Palladio appeared
that the Roman influences bore their full fruit.

                              CHAPTER VII

             PALACE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMAN RENAISSANCE

Among the first of the great Roman palatial houses of the Renaissance
is the so-called Cancelleria, which together with the Palazzo Girand
Torlonia of similar design, has been attributed to Bramante. The
building is believed, however, to have been begun before Bramante had
settled in Rome, but it is not impossible that he may have had a hand
in its design and construction at a later time while he was at work on
the church of St. Peter. Some ground for belief in his authorship of
the façade is found in some of its leading features which resemble, on
the one hand, those which are characteristic of the early Renaissance
architecture of the north of Italy, where Bramante received his early
training, and on the other, the work of Alberti under whose influence
it is reasonable to suppose that he had come while in Mantua. The north
Italian features[92] are the windows of the principal story (Fig. 61),
which are undivided and flanked with pilasters carrying archivolts
surmounted with cornices on panelled spandrels, and the disks in the
wall over the windows, while the features bearing likeness to the work
of Alberti are the orders of pilasters applied to the walls, as in the
Rucellai of Florence. But Bramante, if this be his design, has gone
a step farther in conformity with the Roman antique in introducing
a podium beneath each order, as in the Flavian Amphitheatre. He
has also extended Alberti’s arrangement of the pilasters of the
clerestory of Santa Maria Novella, setting them in pairs across the
whole front instead of spacing them equally. He thus established a
mode of treatment that was afterwards extensively followed, with many
variations, in palatial façades. Among Renaissance innovations in the
use of the orders this is one of the most marked. In ancient Greek
usage the columns of an order were equally spaced, save in exceptional
cases where the central intercolumniation is considerably widened to
give a more ample passageway, as in the Propylæa at Athens. The Romans,
in their triumphal arches, increased the width of the central space,
but no other inequality of spacing is common in ancient art.

  [Illustration: FIG. 61.--Façade of the Cancelleria,
  Rome.]

The façade of the Cancelleria has a feature that is not common in
Italian architecture, that of a slight advance of the wall at each
end, so as to form projecting bays, as in the pavilions of the French
Renaissance châteaux. The salience of these bays is very slight,
however, and is hardly noticeable in a general front view. The scheme
of the upper façade resembles that of the Rucellai very strikingly,
save in the points just noticed; but the basement is different, having
no order, its rusticated wall being unbroken except by the portals, of
which there are two, and a series of small arched window openings. Only
one of these portals belongs to the original design. This one, shown
in the illustration, is of stately magnitude and fine proportions. Its
jambs and lintel are profiled with severely classic mouldings, and it
is crowned with a cornice on consoles with a frieze between it and the
lintel. It is an amplification of Alberti’s portals in the Rucellai,
and is of almost Greek purity of design, though it differs from a
Greek portal in the more pronounced character of its cornice, in the
introduction of the frieze, in the greater development of the consoles,
and in its vertical jambs, which in Greek design would incline inward.
A comparison with the portal of the Erechtheum will illustrate the
points of likeness and of difference. The other portal appears to be
an interpolation of a later time. An order of Doric columns framing
an arch is set against a double order of Doric pilasters, the whole
supporting a balcony, and forming a scheme characteristic of the later
Renaissance.

The court of the Cancelleria has an arcade of two vaulted stories.
These arcades support the overhanging upper story and attic, both of
which are embraced by a single order of pilasters not arranged in
pairs, as in the external façade, but evenly spaced.

  [Illustration: FIG. 62.--Portico of the Massimi, Rome.]

In Rome as in Florence many of the great palaces are without engaged
orders dividing the wall surfaces into bays. The Palazzo Massimi,
for instance, the next one of importance, designed by Baldassare
Peruzzi, and dating from the early part of the sixteenth century, has
an order on the basement story only, while the wall above is unbroken
even by string courses. In conformity with the line of the street on
which it stands, the façade of the Massimi is curved on plan. A wide
recessed portico (Fig. 62) gives a reason for the introduction of a
free-standing Doric order, and in continuation of this order, an order
of engaged Doric pilasters is ranged along the basement wall on either
side. Both columns and pilasters are here again placed in pairs, the
narrow intervals being narrower than in the Cancelleria, and in the
portico the interval on the axis, opposite the portal, is wider than
the other wide ones, while at each end a column is necessarily paired
with a pilaster. The plain wall of the upper stories is uniformly
rusticated and smooth-faced. The windows of the principal story are
framed with mouldings of quiet classic profiling, have simple cornices
on consoles, and are ranged on a podium with a ressaut under each
window. Above are two tiers of small oblong rectangular windows with
cartouche frames. The details of this façade have great refinement, and
show the influence of Alberti. The Roman Doric order of the portico has
much simple beauty. The entasis of the columns is more moderate than
is common in later Renaissance design, and the light falls on their
rounded surfaces, as they stand relieved against the dark void of the
porch, with admirable effect. The façade as a whole is monotonous, but
it has an expression of architectural reserve that is worthy of praise.

The façade of the Palazzo Farnese, by Antonio da San Gallo the younger,
the grandest of these Roman palaces, again has its wall surfaces
unencumbered with orders. The basement is comparatively low, and all
three stories are in effect of nearly equal height. The walls are of
brick with rusticated quoins of stone, and a rusticated stone portal
in relief, of the simple early Florentine type, occupies the centre
of the basement. The quoins suggest the influence of the rusticated
pilasters on the angles of the Bartolini palace in Florence, and San
Gallo has followed Baccio d’Agnolo, the architect of the Bartolini,
further by introducing small orders with pediments to frame the windows
of the upper stories. But for pilasters he has substituted engaged
colonnettes on high pedestals, and in the principal story has made
angular pediments alternate with curved ones. This mode of designing
doors and windows has since become so common that it generally passes
without question of its propriety. It is, however, justifiable only
on the principle, universally accepted by the architects of the
Renaissance, that structural members may be used for ornamental
purposes without any structural meaning or expression in harmony with
the character of the building to which they are applied. But this is
a principle which finds no support in any thoroughly noble system of
architecture--Greek, Byzantine, or Gothic. Structural members may be
used properly enough with a primarily ornamental purpose when they have
a character in keeping with the real structural system in which they
are used. The blind arcades, and shafted archivolts of the portals, of
Romanesque and Gothic architecture, are largely of this nature;[93]
but to surround the windows of a walled structure, like the Farnese,
with columns and entablatures applied to the surface of the wall, is an
architectural solecism. A further barbarism occurs in the windows of
the top story, which are said to have been designed by Michael Angelo,
and the fact that they are like the upper windows of the church of St.
Peter lends support to the attribution. These windows of the Farnese
are arched, and the crowns of the arches rise above the capitals of the
flanking colonnettes so that an entablature resting on these capitals
cannot pass over them. Complete entablatures are therefore omitted,
entablature blocks being set upon the capitals to support the raking
cornices of the pediments (Fig. 63). This makes a bad composition,
because the structural system simulated would in reality be an
insecure one in consequence of the absence of a tying member which the
entablature should form in such a scheme. The eye instinctively feels
that the pediment cornices are tending to thrust so as to overthrow the
supporting colonnettes. It is true that in the windows of the principal
façade (the figure is taken from a window on the side of the building)
the cornice of the entablature block is returned against the wall over
the arch; but this is so far in retreat, and so inconspicuous, that it
does not properly complete the pediment triangle. Precedents for many
of these Renaissance aberrations of design may be found in ancient
Roman art, and this particular one is foreshadowed at Baalbek, where
in the pediment already noticed (p. 95) the entablature, as well as
the raking cornice, is broken, the middle part being set back in the
plane of the wall, and the parts over the supporting pilasters forming
ressauts. But I know of no ancient instance in which the entablature
is completely removed between the ressauts, unless the one figured by
Serlio[94] (reproduced in Fig. 64) be ancient. He does not say that it
is, but he describes it among other things that he calls ancient, and
says that he found it between Foligno and Rome, and that it exhibits an
architectural license because the architrave is broken by the arch.

  [Illustration: FIG. 63.--Window of the Farnese.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 64.--Portal from Serlio.]

In the court of the Farnese we have a frank return to the ancient
Roman combination of arch and entablature, with a Doric order in the
basement, an Ionic order next above it, and an order of Corinthian
pilasters in the top story. Where engaged orders are thus used in the
inside of a rectangle it is usual to set a section of a pilaster in the
angle, as the architect has done here. But the treatment of the capital
in this angle becomes a matter of difficulty which cannot be overcome
in an entirely satisfactory manner. This is especially the case where
the Ionic order is used, as in the principal story of this court. It
is necessary here to have parts of two capitals, on the angle strip of
pilaster, in order that there may be a bolster on each side parallel
with those of the other capitals in the colonnade to which it belongs,
and a volute on each side facing in the same direction as the others
in the same series. Thus two volutes have to be mitred together with
awkward effect. A further awkwardness arising from this misuse of the
orders is that of bringing three supporting members together in the
angles, the end column of each adjoining colonnade, and the pilaster
set in the angle in which they meet.

An earlier instance of the Roman arch and entablature scheme applied to
a continuous arcade occurs in Rome in the cloister of Santa Maria della
Pace, the design of which is attributed to Bramante. The upper story of
this arcade is worthy of notice as having a rhythmical scheme, such as
is common in mediæval design, wrought into the neo-classic composition.
This story has no arches, but a simple entablature is carried on square
piers rising over the piers of the ground story, with a pilaster on
the face of each, and in each interval is a small round column rising
over the crown of the arch below. But this alternation of large and
small, and compound and simple, members has no meaning apart from that
of ornamental effect. In mediæval design, the larger members would
have the function of supporting heavier weights, and the rhythmical
arrangement would thus have a primarily structural meaning.

After the early part of the sixteenth century Italy, as before
remarked, produced few architects of a high order of genius. The later
architecture of the Renaissance is the work of men of little genuine
artistic inspiration, though many of them had great enthusiasm for what
they conceived to be the true principles of the art and unbounded zeal
in its practice. A few typical examples of the later forms of palatial
design by such men as Sansovino, Sanmichele, Vignola, Palladio, and
Scamozzi will be enough for us to consider. All of these men based
their practice theoretically, as we have seen, on the writings of
Vitruvius and on a rigorous study of the architectural remains of Roman
antiquity; and nearly all of them wrote treatises on their art which
have formed the basis of most modern practice.

  [Illustration: FIG. 65.--Part of façade of the Library
  of St. Mark.]

Jacopo Tatti, called Sansovino, went to Rome early in the sixteenth
century in company with Giuliano de San Gallo, and there formed a
friendship with Bramante[95] under whose influence he acquired that
exclusive predilection for classic forms which we find reflected in
his art. Coming to Florence, we are not told in what year, he designed
a false front of wood for the cathedral church of Santa Maria del
Fiore, which is said to have called forth the admiration of Pope Leo
X.[96] This incident is significant of the spirit of the time, and such
architectural shams were extensively produced by the architects of the
later Renaissance. The most important works of Sansovino are in Venice,
where he built the well-known Library of St. Mark, the so-called
Loggia of the Campanile, the Palazzo Cornaro, and several other large
buildings.

  [Illustration: FIG. 66.--Corner of the Parthenon.]

The façade of the Library of St. Mark has but two stories including
the basement, and these are adorned with a Doric and an Ionic order
respectively (Fig. 65); the first noticeable peculiarity of this design
is its very florid character. The reveals are deep, the orders are in
high relief, and the friezes and arch spandrels are loaded with showy
ornamental carvings. Milizia says[97] that in the Doric order of this
façade Sansovino attempted to solve a problem which had troubled all of
the Italian architects, namely, how to make exactly half of a metope
fall at the end of the frieze. The Greeks had placed a triglyph at the
angle, but in so doing they had been obliged to sacrifice uniformity,
since this angle triglyph fell over one side of the corner column,
instead of over its centre as the other triglyphs of the series did
(Fig. 66). This had made it necessary to lengthen the last metope,
and to narrow the last intercolumniation. The Romans had set the last
triglyph over the centre of the corner column, and had thus been
obliged to give less than half a metope to the corner (Fig. 67), though
they secured uniformity in all the rest of the parts. The frieze,
however, had now an appearance of incompleteness at each end, as of a
thing cut off arbitrarily through one of its members. The architects
of the Renaissance appear to have disliked this narrow section of a
metope at the end of the frieze, and to have sought a way to make it
exactly half. This, as Milizia tells us, Sansovino did in the Library
of St. Mark by lengthening the frieze enough to give the fragment of
metope the width that was desired. Turning to the design itself (Fig.
68), we find that this obliged him to set a square pier with a pilaster
on its face at the angle. Of this device Milizia remarks that it was a
folly.[98]

  [Illustration: FIG. 67.--Roman corner.]

In the general scheme of this façade (Fig. 65) Sansovino has followed
that of the ancient theatre of Marcellus, with a free introduction of
additional enrichments. In the order of the basement he has departed
from the severe plainness of the Roman model by adding mouldings and
keystones to the archivolts, reliefs to the spandrels, and disks to
the metopes of the frieze. But all this is done with a commendable
feeling for breadth of effect. To the order of the upper story he has
made more striking additions, the most noticeable of which is the
insertion of a small free-standing column on each side of the pier to
bear the archivolt, an innovation which was followed by Palladio and
many later architects. The least admirable features of the design are
the frieze of the upper order, which is widened beyond all tolerable
proportion, and an ornamental balustrade over the main cornice. The
frieze is ornamented with inelegant festoons in high relief, and
pierced with oblong windows opening into a low upper story which the
entablature encloses. The columns of the upper order, as well as the
free-standing colonnettes, are raised on panelled pedestals, and
balustraded balconies are formed in front of each window opening. This
sumptuous scheme embodies very fully the ideal to which the designers
of the Renaissance had been tending under the Roman influence of the
sixteenth century, and it has been extensively reproduced, with various
minor modifications, in the civic architecture of all parts of Europe.

  [Illustration: FIG. 68.--Angle of Library of St. Mark.]

As the façade of the Library of St. Mark is based upon that of the
ancient theatre of Marcellus, so the Loggetta of the Campanile is an
adaptation of the scheme of the Arch of Titus extended to include three
arches, and enriched with statues and reliefs to suit the florid fancy
of the time. But while the scheme is plainly derived from the Arch of
Titus, the proportions of the parts are very different, and much less
admirable. The order is made lower and the attic higher. The Arch of
Titus is the finest in proportions of all the Roman triumphal arches,
and the grandest in monumental simplicity. Sansovino’s changes and
ornamental additions spoil the composition, and do not fit the design
for the building to which it is attached. Such a design could not have
any proper relationship to such a building. To attach any sort of a
Roman triumphal arch scheme to the base of a mediæval tower is an
architectural absurdity.

  [Illustration: FIG. 69.--Palazzo Cornaro.]

In the scheme of the Palazzo Cornaro an Ionic order and a Corinthian
order frame in the round-headed windows of the upper stories. The
columns of these orders are set in pairs, each pair having a plinth
and pedestal in common. On the side walls of the building these orders
are returned to the extent of one bay, which brings four columns
together at the angles with clumsy effect. The frieze of the uppermost
entablature is widened, as in the Library of St. Mark, but its
surface is plain save for a series of oval openings which light a low
attic. The high rusticated basement, which includes a mezzanine, has
square-headed windows framed by a rusticated Doric order resting on a
projecting sill supported on plain consoles; and over each of these a
low rectangular window, flanked by elongated consoles on square blocks
set upon the entablature of the window below, lights the mezzanine.
A curved pediment over each of the lower windows, between the blocks
that support the flanking members of the windows above, gives further
awkwardness to the total scheme (Fig. 69). Barbaric compositions such
as this were now to become of frequent occurrence in the architecture
of the later Renaissance. While the designers were eliminating the
mediæval forms more completely than their predecessors had done, they
were at the same time departing more widely from classic models, and
introducing many monstrosities of composition, from the influence of
which modern art has greatly suffered.

  [Illustration: FIG. 70.--Two bays of the Porta del
  Palio.]

The works of Sanmichele show an equally exclusive employment of
classic features, with the same freedom in deforming them and using
them in novel and ungainly ways. In the Porta del Palio of Verona, a
characteristic example of his work, he has used a pseudo-Doric order
in which the columns are fluted after the Ionic manner with fillets
between the channels, and are raised on heavy square plinths. The
columns are disposed in pairs, dividing the façade into three wide
intervals and four narrow ones (Fig. 70), and each wide space has a
large rectangular recess spanned by a flat arch, with a sculptured
keystone in the form of a console, under the entablature of the
order. At the level of the soffit of this arch the wall is crowned
by a cornice passing behind the columns. The central bay has a large
rectangular portal without jamb mouldings, and in each lateral bay is
a small doorway framed with classic jamb mouldings and a pediment on
consoles. Over each of these openings is a secondary flat arch with
deep voussoirs reaching to the soffit of the upper one. Pilasters take
the place of columns on the angles of the façade, and the walls are
rusticated. In the façade of the opposite side the scheme is varied,
and is plainer. The columns of the order are disposed as before, but
instead of being fluted they are rusticated like the walls, and have no
bases, while a large round-arched opening, with impost mouldings and a
plain keystone, fills each wide interval.

Of Sanmichele’s palace fronts the best in Verona is, I think, that
of the Palazzo Canossa, where over a high rusticated basement he
has placed a shallow order of Corinthian pilasters in pairs, set
close together, on a podium with ressauts. This order embraces both
the principal floor and a low story above it, and has considerable
elegance. The effect of the whole front is broad and quiet, save for
the heavy balustrade with showy statues which crowns it. It will be
seen, as we pass in review these different compositions, that the range
of eccentricities of design embodied in them is as great as we find in
the works of the earlier Renaissance, though they show fewer mediæval
characteristics. The Palazzo Pompei alla Vittoria, also by Sanmichele,
for instance, has a Doric order over a plain rusticated basement, like
that of the Porta del Palio, but with the columns equally spaced,
except that the central intercolumniation is made wider than the others
in conformity with the width of the portal beneath it, and a pilaster
is coupled with a column on each angle. Plain round-arched windows
occupy the intervals between the columns, and a corbel in the form
of a sculptured head is set under the entablature of the order over
the crown of each arch. The plain windows of the basement have clumsy
rectangular sills on consoles.

  [Illustration: FIG. 71.--Palazzo Bevilacqua.]

A more elaborate design by the same architect is that of the front of
the Palazzo Bevilacqua (Fig. 71). Here an order of rusticated Doric
pilasters, supporting an entablature with channelled consoles in
the place of triglyphs, and a cornice surmounted with a balustrade
forming a balcony to the story above, divides the basement wall into
alternately wide and narrow bays. A round-arched window in each bay
has a heavy keystone in the form of a sculptured bust, which forms
at the same time a corbel to the entablature. The unequal spacing of
the pilasters leads to an awkward irregularity in the spacing of the
channelled consoles which do duty as triglyphs in the frieze. One of
them is set over the centre of each pilaster, and the spaces over the
wide intervals each give place to three of them, while over the narrow
intervals there is too much room for one and not enough for two. The
designer has chosen to have but one, and the effect of the resulting
wider spacing over the narrow bays is both unpleasant and unclassic.
The upper story has a still more barocco character. A Corinthian order
with columns of alternately straight and spiral channelling, spaced in
conformity with the pilasters of the basement and raised on pedestals,
frames in a series of round-arched windows which are alternately large
and small in correspondence with the magnitudes of the intervals.
The window of each wide bay nearly fills the space enclosed by the
order, and a keystone in the arch forms a corbel to the entablature,
while the spandrels are adorned with sculptures in high relief after
the manner of those of the Roman triumphal arches. Over the smaller
arch in each narrow bay the spandrels are in relief and are crowned
with a pediment surmounted by a horizontal cornice on a shallow
ressaut corresponding to that of the spandrels, while over all this
a plain oblong rectangular opening lights a low top story which is
not otherwise expressed in the composition. In these narrow bays the
corbels are introduced under the entablature as in the wider ones, and
carved festoons fill the spaces between them and the capitals on either
side. It is a capricious scheme, by which the designer has sought to
quicken the jaded sensibilities of people surfeited with architectural
aberrations. Of course the arrangement of these elements is based on a
certain rhythmical order which often appears to be thought a sufficient
justification of such meaningless compositions; but order and rhythm do
not alone constitute a fine work of art.

Of the secular architecture of Vignola the Palazzo Caprarola, in the
hill country between Rome and Viterbo, is the most important. This
building, says Milizia, “is without doubt the grandest and the most
beautiful work of this great artist.”[99] The building, which is
illustrated by elaborate drawings in Vignola’s own book, has in plan
the form of a regular pentagon enclosing a circular court. The form is,
of course, given from pure caprice, and imposes needless difficulties,
as if with the sole purpose of ingeniously solving them. The basement,
with a salient fortress-like bastion on each angle, is in two stages,
of which the lower one has a batter wall. Over this are the principal
story of the state apartments, and two other stories containing upward
of eighty sleeping chambers. Slightly projecting bays are formed on the
angles, as in the Cancelleria at Rome, and each façade is divided into
two stages by superimposed orders of pilasters on high pedestals. The
projecting bays have rusticated quoins instead of pilasters, and the
wall of the first story of each of these bays is rusticated. An open
loggia with five arches in the intervals of the order, and one enclosed
arch at each end, reaches across the main front of the principal story
between the salient bays, and the main portal is an arched opening,
with rusticated jambs in relief and an entablature, in the upper stage
of the basement. This portal is reached by a double ramp mounting
an outer terrace and the lower basement stage. Below this, giving
access to the lower basement, is a rusticated portico with an order
of rusticated pilasters and three open arches flanked by two narrow
enclosed bays with niches, and crowned with a balustrade.

The circular court has an open arcade of widely spaced arches in two
stages, of which the lower one has a plain rusticated wall, and the
upper one an Ionic order with columns in pairs, and a balustrade
with statues crowning the entablature. This sumptuous monument was a
source of inspiration to the later architects of the trans-alpine
Renaissance, and De l’Orme’s oval courts of the Tuileries, and the
circular courts of the palace of Whitehall by Inigo Jones, suggest its
influence.

  [Illustration: FIG. 72.--Part of the Portico of Vicenza,
  from Palladio’s book.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 73.]

But in domestic and civic architecture Palladio was more prolific
than Vignola, and his work has had a correspondingly wider influence.
Among the earlier civic buildings by him is the well-known portico
of the town hall of his native city, Vicenza. This portico of two
stories covers three sides of a building of oblong rectangular plan,
dating from the Middle Ages, and consisting of a great hall over a
low basement. Palladio’s scheme (Fig. 72) for this portico is plainly
derived from the town hall of Padua to which he refers in his book
as a most notable edifice.[100] But while basing his design on that
of Padua, he modifies it by features drawn from other sources. In
place of the simple arcades of the mediæval Paduan model, he has
substituted a complicated combination of arches with large and small
orders, in which the inspiration of Sansovino’s Library of St. Mark in
Venice is apparent. The free-standing column under the archivolt of
Sansovino’s upper story (Fig. 65, p. 120) is reproduced by Palladio
in both stories of the portico of Vicenza. But instead of a single
column, he has inserted a pair on each side of the arch, ranged in the
direction of the thickness of the wall, as shown in the plan (Fig.
73). The intervals between the columns of the great orders are very
wide, because they had to conform with the spacing of the openings in
the mediæval structure enclosed; but the arches within the intervals
are necessarily of narrower span, since their crowns could not rise
above the soffit of the entablature. Thus the free-standing columns
of the small order which support these arches are set farther away
from the pier than they are in Sansovino’s scheme. This free-standing
column supporting the archivolt is often spoken of as an innovation of
Sansovino and Palladio. It is worthy of notice, however, that instances
of it occur in the Græco-Roman architecture of Syria, as in S. Simeon
Stylites (Fig. 74); but the arch in these cases is not framed in with
the useless order. In the ground story arcade of Padua the spandrels
have circular perforations, and these are reproduced by Palladio in
both stories of his portico.

  [Illustration: FIG. 74.--Arch of St. Simeon Stylites.]

From a structural point of view Palladio’s scheme is an improvement on
that of Padua. For in Padua, as in Vicenza, both stories of the portico
are vaulted, and the slender columns which alone bear the vaulting
are too weak to withstand the thrusts of this vaulting, and thus both
transverse and longitudinal tie-rods are inserted to maintain the
stability of the fabric. But Palladio’s massive and heavily weighted
piers are strong enough to bear the thrusts without the aid of ties,
and it may be added that the great orders have more function here
than they usually have in Renaissance design, since their columns act
somewhat as buttresses. The shaft of an order has not, indeed, a proper
form for an abutment, and has no buttress expression. Its resistance
to thrust is slight, but it is better than nothing at all. Following
Sansovino, the architect has introduced a balustrade in each opening of
the arcade, and a continuous one as a crowning feature of the cornice.

Palladio himself thought well of this work, and he does not hesitate to
say in his book that it will bear comparison with the most beautiful
buildings of antiquity. He tells us, also, that it is constructed in
the best manner out of excellent cut stone.[101] The last remark is
significant, for genuine stone masonry was not always employed by
Palladio in buildings which had the appearance of stone construction.
The use of brick and rubble with a revetment of stucco had not been
uncommon with the builders of the early Renaissance, and such materials
were extensively employed even by Bramante and Michael Angelo. But
Palladio went further than his predecessors in the creation of
architectural shams.

  [Illustration: FIG. 75.--Loggia Bernarda.]

Palladio was an earnest devotee of his art as he understood it, but
he had what may be called a theatrical ideal of architecture. The
superficial appearance was what chiefly concerned him. He had great
versatility in scenic and structurally meaningless composition,
and his numerous palace fronts in Vicenza are remarkable for their
superficially varied character. The Palazzo Valmarana, with its
colossal pilasters on a high podium overlapping a lesser order
embracing the basement and mezzanine, while the great entablature is
broken into ressauts over the pilasters; the Palazzo Colleone-Porta,
with its basement wall rusticated over a plain dado and an Ionic order
on the face of the superstructure; the Palazzo Porta-Barbarano, with
its superimposed orders and elaborate ornamentation in stucco relief;
and the Loggia Bernarda, with its gigantic composite order and balcony
corbels in the form of Doric triglyphs (Fig. 75), are sufficient
illustrations of this. The skin of stucco with which many of these
buildings were originally covered has broken off in many places,
revealing the poor materials of which they are built.

  [Illustration: FIG. 76.--Window of Palazzo Branzo.]

Palladio’s compositions are, indeed, based on order and symmetry, but
order and symmetry of a mechanical kind. On these and other kindred
qualities grammarians in art are prone to lay great stress, but unless
accompanied by many others, which for the most part elude all human
powers of analysis and description, though they are instinctively
grasped by the true artist and appreciated by the discerning and
sympathetic beholder, they have little value. Palladio and his
associates were not true artists, they were grammatical formalists
without the inspiration of genius.[102] As for Scamozzi, little need be
said. Milizia tells us that he studied architecture with his father,
but that his real masters were the monuments of art themselves; and
that, stimulated by the fame of Sansovino and Palladio, he observed
their compositions closely, and conceived the ambition to surpass
them. His works, which do not differ materially from those of these
masters, present no features that are worthy of special remark, unless
a peculiar form of compound window, which occurs in the Palazzo Branzo
in Vicenza, be an exception. In this composition, often reproduced
in the later Renaissance architecture of all countries, two narrow
square-headed openings, each crowned with an entablature, flank a wider
one spanned by an arch (Fig. 76). This composition has been called
an invention of Scamozzi’s.[103] But there had been many previous
instances of its most noticeable feature, _i.e._ the entablature
broken by an arch, as in the porch of the Pazzi by Brunelleschi. I do
not know that windows had before been designed in this form in the
architecture of the Renaissance; but the same composition occurs in the
Roman architecture of Syria, as in the Basilica of Shakka (Fig. 77).

  [Illustration: FIG. 77.--Basilica of Shakka.]

  Plate V

  SAN BERNARDINO

  Perugia]

We have thus far confined our attention to the architecture of the
Renaissance as it was developed under the Florentine and Roman
influences, early and late. We must now notice some of the phases which
the art assumed under other local influences that were subordinately
active, chiefly in the north of Italy.

                             CHAPTER VIII

         CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN NORTH ITALY

While the architecture of the Italian Renaissance assumed the two
principal phases that are broadly classified as Florentine and Roman,
from the localities in which the conditions and influences that gave
rise to them chiefly prevailed, it is also true, as is well known, that
other influences became active in various parts of Italy, leading to
the production of phases of design that cannot be strictly classed as
either Florentine or Roman. No exact classification of these can be
made, but the most marked types having distinctly local characteristics
are those of Lombardy and Venice.

But before we examine the church architecture of the Lombard and
Venetian Renaissance, one small building of exceptional character in
central Italy is worthy of special notice, namely, the façade of the
church of San Bernardino of Perugia, dating from the second half of the
fifteenth century. This work is remarkable for delicate workmanship,
and affords a rare instance of the use of colour in the architecture
of the Renaissance. It is made up of red and white marble, with points
of dark green and turquoise blue, arranged with quiet harmony of
effect. But it is a combination of members put together with no regard
to structural consistency. The designer appears to have had not the
slightest idea that arches and columns, pilasters and entablatures,
have any meaning save as elements of abstract ornamental composition
to be played about according to his fancy. The front (Plate V) is an
upright rectangle, crowned with an entablature and a low pediment. A
broad pilaster is set on each angle, and the space between is filled
with a wide and deep recess having a splayed arch reaching to the
entablature on splayed jambs. A smaller entablature at the arch impost
crosses the entire front, breaking around the jambs and pilasters,
and dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The smaller details
consist of panellings and medallions in the splays of the jambs and
archivolts, of sculptured reliefs on the tympanum and on the panels,
and of shafted and gabled niches sheltering statues on the pilasters.
The panels of the splays are flanked with diminutive pilasters which
are superimposed with only a narrow fillet between those below and
those which rest upon them, and the ornamental framing of the niches is
made up of colonnettes carrying rectangular stilt-blocks on which small
pediments are set. The elaborate richness of this façade is unusual in
the Renaissance architecture of central Italy, except in the smaller
compositions of tombs and pulpits, which in treatment it resembles. But
profusion of ornament is a marked characteristic of the architecture
of the Renaissance in north Italy, to which we may now turn. In Milan
and Venice the neo-classic influences were, even more than in Florence
and Rome, confined to ornamental details, and in these details the
designers of the North had still less regard for classic correctness
and consistency than those of central Italy had shown; while the larger
structural forms of their buildings still remained essentially Lombard
and Venetian. Much of the architecture of the North was, it is true,
the work of architects from central Italy, but these architects were
so far influenced by local tastes and conditions as to produce designs
very different in character from those of Florence or of Rome.

A characteristic early example of this Northern Renaissance design in
its most florid form is the well-known façade of the church of the
Certosa of Pavia, dating from the close of the fifteenth century. The
effect of this front is in its larger parts much like that of a late
mediæval Italian one, but the details are pseudo-classic with strange
admixture of mediæval elements. The general scheme is a reproduction
of the pseudo-Gothic façade of the neighbouring cathedral of Milan,
having nearly the same general proportions, and being divided into
five bays by deep buttresses. The steep gable, however, which in Milan
embraces the whole front, is omitted, and in its stead a horizontal
cornice crowns the three central bays, and this, together with the
strongly marked horizontal lines below, greatly modifies the general
effect of the composition. In the smaller details there is no likeness
between the two façades, that of Pavia showing a survival of Lombard
Romanesque forms with the pseudo-classic elements ingrafted on them.
A prominent feature of the Lombard Romanesque architecture is the
diminutive open arcade. This feature is extensively employed in the
mediæval portions of the church to which this façade is the western
enclosure, and it is reproduced, with neo-classic modifications, at
the top of each of the two principal stages into which the façade is
divided. The arches are here carried on small piers, and are framed
with diminutive pilasters and entablatures. The portal has a pair of
free-standing Corinthian columns on each side, bearing a ressaut of an
entablature which spans the opening, and from these ressauts an arch is
sprung with spandrels in relief crowned with a classic cornice. In each
one of the other bays of the ground story a rectangular window, with
classic mouldings and a cornice of classic profile, is subdivided in
the mediæval manner with two small arches on a central column and jamb
shafts. These last have a tapering form, with a profusion of carved
ornament in high relief, and are like the shafts of candelabra (Fig.
78). The mediæval feature of a large circular opening over the central
portal is enclosed within a rectangle surmounted by an entablature and
a classic pediment, while this compound is flanked on either side by
a pair of arches opening beneath a larger arch. To all this mixture
of Romanesque and neo-classic features a pseudo-Gothic character is
superadded by statues set in niches of the buttresses, and spiky
pinnacles over the lateral bays. The details of this overelaborate
composition, the work of several successive architects, have no merit
in themselves, and the work as a whole is trivial and unmeaning.

  [Illustration: FIG. 78.--Certosa of Pavia.]

Among the monuments of the early Renaissance in Milan are several of
importance, and of these the church and sacristy of San Satiro are
of special interest because they are said to have been designed by
Bramante.[104]

The church bears, I think, unmistakable marks of Bramante’s
authorship, being a reflection on a reduced scale of St. Andrea of
Mantua by Alberti, which there is every reason to believe had been
studied and admired by Bramante during his travels in the north for
improvement in his art, and a foreshadowing of the great scheme which
he subsequently prepared for St. Peter’s in Rome. Like St. Andrea, it
has a barrel-vaulted nave and transept, with a dome on pendentives
over the crossing. The aisles have groined vaulting, and the piers are
square and are faced with pilasters. The dome is raised on a very low
drum moulded in stucco into the form of an entablature, and the vault
surfaces are elaborately coffered in stucco. The church has no eastern
arm, since a wall with a much-venerated painting of the Virgin is said
to have stood so near the site that space for such an arm could not
be had without demolishing it; and as this was not to be thought of,
Bramante made a semblance of an eastern arm in the form of a sunk panel
with splayed sides, on which he wrought in stucco relief the elaborate
perspective which is so noticeable a feature of the interior.

  [Illustration: FIG. 79.--Sacristy of San Satiro.]

The sacristy (Fig. 79) was built immediately after the church, in the
form of an octagon about eight metres in diameter. It is covered with
an octagonal dome lighted by a circular opening in each of its sides
just above the springing level. The walls of the interior are divided
into two stages, the lower one having segmental niches alternating
with shallow rectangular recesses, one on each side of the polygon
except that of the entrance, while the stage above has a gallery, like
a triforium, in the thickness of the wall, with a pair of round-arched
openings in each bay. The dome is enclosed within a drum of brick which
is covered by a low-pitched timber roof.

The ornamental details of the interior are all of stucco, and consist
of two superimposed false orders of pilasters set in the angles,
and broken on plan so as to fit them, the entablature of each order
having a ressaut over each pilaster, and the surfaces of the friezes
and pilasters being profusely enriched with ornaments in relief. But
these details are said to have been extensively worked over in later
times, so that it is doubtful whether any correct idea of the original
character of this interior can now be formed, except as to its larger
features.

The monument is a diminutive adaptation, in simplified form, of a local
mediæval type of building of which San Vitale of Ravenna appears to
have been the original example, and San Lorenzo of Milan an offshoot.
There are points of similarity between the sacristy of San Satiro and
the church of the Consolazione of Todi (Fig. 36, p. 76) that go far to
determine their common authorship. The superimposed pilasters broken
into the angles of a polygon, the niches in the lower bays, and the
ribs on the surfaces of the vault rising from the pilasters[105] are
similar in both.

A curious domed structure of the early Renaissance in Milan is the
east end of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The dome is
hemispherical, and is raised on a drum resting on pendentives over
a square area. The most noticeable part of the composition is the
exterior, which completely masks the inside. The drum (Fig. 80) is
a polygon of sixteen sides, and is in two stages, the lower one of
which is solid, and rises above the springing of the vault, while the
upper stage, in the form of an open arcaded gallery, with an attic in
retreat, reaches far above the haunch of the dome which is covered with
a low-pitched roof of timber crowned with a lantern. The lower stage
has an order of pilasters with a nondescript entablature, having an
enormously high frieze ornamented with an engaged balustrade. A pair of
square-headed windows with mullions, surmounted with pediments, opens
through each face of the polygon, except the four which fall over the
piers of the interior. Against each of these sides a turret rises,
forming an abutment. A panelled podium crowns the entablature of this
lower stage, and upon it the shafted arcade of the top story rests. The
north and south sides of the square beneath have each a low apse, while
on the east is a rectangular choir with an apse like the other two.

The architectural treatment of this exterior is not expressive of the
inside. The square parts are divided into four stages answering to
nothing within, and the lower three of these stages are carried around
the apses. The wall surfaces are broken into rectangular panellings by
mouldings and pilasters, every alternate pilaster in the third stage
having a tapering ornamental member, like the window shafts of the
Certosa of Pavia, worked in relief on its face; and the panels are
adorned with disks and medallions. Like most of the early Renaissance
architecture of Milan, this building is entirely of brick with
ornaments of terra-cotta.

  [Illustration: FIG. 80.--Santa Maria delle Grazie.]

The design is attributed to Bramante,[106] and it has features that
lend support to belief in this authorship. The encircling arcade at
the top suggests the encircling colonnade of the same architect’s
subsequent design for the dome of St. Peter’s. It may not be unlikely
that this arcade, wrought while the author was under the influence of
the local Lombard Romanesque, suggested the idea of the encircling
colonnade after he had come under the severer classic influence in
Rome. The alternation of pilasters in the top story of the apses, with
the two intercolumns over each interval in the stage below, corresponds
to the design of the interior of the sacristy of S. Satiro.

In the chapel of St. Peter Martyr of the church of Sant’Eustorgio,
attributed to the Florentine architect Michelozzi, we have a circular
celled vault on salient ribs, like Brunelleschi’s vault of the Pazzi.
This vault is enclosed within a drum carried on pendentives, and is
lighted by a circular opening in the drum under each alternate vault
cell. The drum is polygonal on the outside, is carried up far above the
haunch of the vault, and is covered with a low-pitch roof of timber
crowned with a tall lantern. The lower walls of the interior of the
square beneath this vault have an order of pilasters, and over the
entablature of this order are arched windows, one on the north and the
other on the south side, each of which has a mullion and jamb shafts
of the Certosa tapering type, and pseudo-Gothic tracery. Most of the
details of this interior are of stone, which give it a more monumental
character than the buildings before noticed have. The outside is of
brick, the square part being plain, with simple angle buttresses, and
crowned with a cornice of classic profiling. Pinnacles made up of
neo-classic details rise from the angles, and the drum is adorned with
an order of pilasters, and with moulded circular panels alternating
with circular openings. The building as a whole has the moderation of
the works of the early Florentine Renaissance, and is in noticeable
contrast to the more florid designs of this region already noticed.

A somewhat later example of ecclesiastical architecture of the
Renaissance in Milan is the church of the Monastero Maggiore, dating
from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and said to have been
designed by Dolcebono, a pupil of Bramante. This is a rectangular
structure without aisles, having round-arched pseudo-Gothic vaulting,
and divided into two parts by a screen across the middle, and into two
stories by superimposed orders of pilasters. In each bay of the ground
story is a deep round-arched rectangular recess in the thickness of
the wall, and over each of these an open gallery with two colonnettes
and two small jamb pilasters carrying an entablature over each of the
lateral spaces so formed, and an arch over the central one, an early
instance of a form of compound opening that was much used in the
architecture of the later Renaissance.[107]

  [Illustration: FIG. 81.--East end of Como.]

The cathedral of Como affords further illustration of the style of
early Renaissance design that is peculiar to north Italy. The building,
however, has parts which belong to different periods ranging from
1396 to the early part of the eighteenth century. The features most
worthy of attention are chiefly those of the exterior,--the east end
and the sides of the nave. It is said that Bramante worked here also,
and certainly as viewed from the east the composition bears a striking
likeness to the church of the Consolazione at Todi (pp. 74–77). It is,
however, in the larger features alone that the likeness holds. The
details of Como are not, as at Todi, of purely neo-classic character;
they are mediæval Lombard modified by neo-classic elements. Instead
of superimposed orders of pilasters we have here (Fig. 81) Lombard
Romanesque buttresses reaching from the ground to the cornice. The
cornice has the neo-classic profiling, and is broken into ressauts over
the buttresses, and at a lower level a subordinate band of mouldings is
carried along the wall and around the buttresses, the whole forming a
likeness to an entablature. The traditional Lombard features peculiar
to this region are further reproduced in the arcades of each bay just
beneath the pseudo-entablature; but instead of mediæval colonnettes
these small arches are supported by diminutive pilasters. The walls
are divided into three stages by string courses of classic profiling,
and a rectangular window with plain classic jambs and lintel opens in
each bay of the middle stage, while the basement wall is unbroken by
openings. Disks, one in each bay, adorn the frieze of the simulated
entablature, and a sculptured figure is worked on the corresponding
part of each buttress. The bases of the half domes over the apses are,
as at Todi, treated like attics, but the central dome, with its high
drum, is not by Bramante. It is of a later period, and has a more
advanced neo-classic character. The scheme of the Lombard buttresses
is extended along the walls of the nave, but the details of the window
openings, and of the portals here are very different from anything in
the apses, and are in a more florid style.

  [Illustration: FIG. 82.--Portal of Como.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 83.--Porch of San Zeno, Verona.]

  [Illustration: FIG. 84.--Portal of San Pietro in Cielo
  d’Oro, Pavia.]

The ornaments of these openings are composed in a manner which appears
to be peculiar to this region. The portal (Fig. 82) of the south side,
for instance, has the mediæval scheme of a shafted round arch of two
orders reproduced in neo-classic details, with an entablature for a
lintel passing through the imposts, and another entablature with a
pediment placed over the crown of the arch on spandrels in relief. To
associate the entablature with the arch in any way is unreasonable, but
to put one entablature under the arch and another one over it in this
manner is childish composition. Yet illogical and puerile as the scheme
is, I believe it is derived from a common form of Lombard Romanesque
porch which is entirely reasonable in design. A comparison of this
portal with the porch of San Zeno of Verona (Fig. 83) will illustrate
this. In San Zeno we have a sheltering porch and a portal, and each is
reasonable in itself, while they are equally reasonable in combination.
But if the porch were eliminated, with exception of its façade, and
this façade were drawn back into the plane of the wall, so as merely
to frame in the portal, the result would resemble, in composition of
lines, the portal of Como, and would be as illogical. The first, or
encompassing, order of the portal of Como is like the façade of such
a mediæval porch wrought in relief against the wall as an ornamental
framework. For the Lombard columns the Renaissance designer has
substituted pilasters, for the plain lintel an entablature, and for the
mediæval gable a classic pediment with an entablature.

A curious instance of a somewhat similar composition of lines in a
Lombard Romanesque portal without an overhanging porch occurs in the
façade of the San Pietro in Cielo d’Oro in Pavia (Fig. 84). Here the
arched opening is flanked by tall engaged shafts which carry a narrow
string course surmounted by a gable over the crown of the arch, while
another string course, on short colonnettes resting on the capitals
of the larger shafts, passes over the apex of the gable. But in this
case it is only the childish association of members without structural
meaning that offends the eye. There is no introduction of forms, like
the classic pilasters and entablatures of the portal of Como, that are
foreign to the architectural system.

  [Illustration: FIG. 85.--Window of nave of Como.]

This scheme, with various modifications, became a characteristic one in
the Lombard and Venetian Renaissance, and was extensively applied to
windows, as in the nave of the same cathedral of Como. The windows of
this nave are splayed, and are flanked with pilasters from the capitals
of which their archivolts spring, while in some of them diminutive
pilasters rise from the same capitals and carry an entablature and
pediment over the crown of the arch (Fig. 85).

A variety of forms occur in these openings of the cathedral of Como,
like so many experiments in fanciful composition without any basis
of reason. The window, for instance, of the bay adjoining that here
represented, seems to show that the designer felt dissatisfied with the
small pilaster set upon the larger one, and accordingly omitted it, a
moulding on the edge of the spandrel, profiled like the lower member
of the crowning entablature, taking its place. But again, as if he now
felt that the entablature required a more architectural support, he
has in another window reproduced the small pilaster, but instead of
a large single one below he has employed two narrow ones, thus giving
separate support to the arch and the entablature. The doorway on the
north side of the nave presents a further modification of the scheme.