Chapter 24

EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Anderson, _Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy_. Burckhardt, _The Civilization of the Renaissance_; _Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien_; _Der Cicerone_. Cellesi, _Sei Fabbriche di Firenze_. Cicognara, _Le Fabbriche più cospicue di Venezia_. Durm, _Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien_ (in _Hdbuch. d. Arch._). Fergusson, _History of Modern Architecture_. Geymüller, _La Renaissance en Toscane_. Montigny et Famin, _Architecture Toscane_. Moore, _Character of Renaissance Architecture_. Müntz, _La Renaissance en Italie et en France à l’époque de Charles VIII._ Palustre, _L’Architecture de la Renaissance_. Pater, _Studies in the Renaissance_. Symonds, _The Renaissance of the Fine Arts in Italy_. Tosi and Becchio, _Altars, Tabernacles, and Tombs_.

+THE CLASSIC REVIVAL.+ The abandonment of Gothic architecture in Italy and the substitution in its place of forms derived from classic models were occasioned by no sudden or merely local revolution. The Renaissance was the result of a profound and universal intellectual movement, whose roots may be traced far back into the Middle Ages, and which manifested itself first in Italy simply because there the conditions were most propitious. It spread through Europe just as rapidly as similar conditions appearing in other countries prepared the way for it. The essence of this far-reaching movement was the protest of the individual reason against the trammels of external and arbitrary authority--a protest which found its earliest organized expression in the Humanists. In its assertion of the intellectual and moral rights of the individual, the Renaissance laid the foundations of modern civilization. The same spirit, in rejecting the authority and teachings of the Church in matters of purely secular knowledge, led to the questionings of the precursors of modern science and the discoveries of the early navigators. But in nothing did the reaction against mediæval scholasticism and asceticism display itself more strikingly than in the joyful enthusiasm which marked the pursuit of classic studies. The long-neglected treasures of classic literature were reopened, almost rediscovered, in the fourteenth century by the immortal trio--Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The joy of living, the hitherto forbidden delight in beauty and pleasure for their own sakes, the exultant awakening to the sense of personal freedom, which came with the bursting of mediæval fetters, found in classic art and literature their most sympathetic expression. It was in Italy, where feudalism had never fully established itself, and where the municipalities and guilds had developed, as nowhere else, the sense of civic and personal freedom, that these symptoms first manifested themselves. In Italy, and above all in the Tuscan cities, they appeared throughout the fourteenth century in the growing enthusiasm for all that recalled the antique culture, and in the rapid advance of luxury and refinement in both public and private life.

+THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ARTS.+ Classic Roman architecture had never lost its influence on the Italian taste. Gothic art, already declining in the West, had never been in Italy more than a borrowed garb, clothing architectural conceptions classic rather than Gothic in spirit. The antique monuments which abounded on every hand were ever present models for the artist, and to the Florentines of the early fifteenth century the civilization which had created them represented the highest ideal of human culture. They longed to revive in their own time the glories of ancient Rome, and appropriated with uncritical and undiscriminating enthusiasm the good and the bad, the early and the late forms of Roman art, Naïvely unconscious of the disparity between their own architectural conceptions and those they fancied they imitated, they were, unknown to themselves, creating a new style, in which the details of Roman art were fitted in novel combinations to new requirements. In proportion as the Church lost its hold on the culture of the age, this new architecture entered increasingly into the service of private luxury and public display. It created, it is true, striking types of church design, and made of the dome one of the most imposing of external features; but its most characteristic products were palaces, villas, council halls, and monuments to the great and the powerful. The personal element in design asserted itself as never before in the growth of schools and the development of styles. Thenceforward the history of Italian architecture becomes the history of the achievements of individual artists.

+EARLY BEGINNINGS.+ Already in the 13th century the pulpits of Niccolo Pisano at Sienna and Pisa had revealed that master’s direct recourse to antique monuments for inspiration and suggestion. In the frescoes of Giotto and his followers, and in the architectural details of many nominally Gothic buildings, classic forms had appeared with increasing frequency during the fourteenth century. This was especially true in Florence, which was then the artistic capital of Italy. Never, perhaps, since the days of Pericles, had there been another community so permeated with the love of beauty in art, and so endowed with the capacity to realize it. Nowhere else in Europe at that time was there such strenuous life, such intense feeling, or such free course for individual genius as in Florence. Her artists, with unexampled versatility, addressed themselves with equal success to goldsmiths’ work, sculpture, architecture and engineering--often to painting and poetry as well; and they were quick to catch in their art the spirit of the classic revival. The new movement achieved its first architectural triumph in the dome of the cathedral of Florence (1420-64); and it was Florentine--or at least Tuscan--artists who planted in other centres the seeds of the new art that were to spring up in the local and provincial schools of Sienna, Milan, Pavia, Bologna, and Venice, of Brescia, Lucca, Perugia, and Rimini, and many other North Italian cities. The movement asserted itself late in Rome and Naples, as an importation from Northern Italy, but it bore abundant fruit in these cities in its later stages.

+PERIODS.+ The classic styles which grew up out of the Renaissance may be divided for convenience into four periods.

THE EARLY RENAISSANCE or FORMATIVE PERIOD, 1420-90; characterized by the grace and freedom of the decorative detail, suggested by Roman prototypes and applied to compositions of great variety and originality.

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE or FORMALLY CLASSIC PERIOD, 1490-1550. During this period classic details were copied with increasing fidelity, the orders especially appearing in almost all compositions; decoration meanwhile losing somewhat in grace and freedom.

THE EARLY BAROQUE (or BAROCO), 1550-1600; a period of classic formality characterized by the use of colossal orders, engaged columns and rather scanty decoration.

THE DECLINE or LATER BAROQUE, marked by poverty of invention in the composition and a predominance of vulgar sham and display in the decoration. Broken pediments, huge scrolls, florid stucco-work and a general disregard of architectural propriety were universal.

During the eighteenth century there was a reaction from these extravagances, which showed itself in a return to the servile copying of classic models, sometimes not without a certain dignity of composition and restraint in the decoration.

By many writers the name Renaissance is confined to the first period. This is correct from the etymological point of view; but it is impossible to dissociate the first period historically from those which followed it, down to the final exhaustion of the artistic movement to which it gave birth, in the heavy extravagances of the Rococo.

Another division is made by the Italians, who give the name of the _Quattrocento_ to the period which closed with the end of the fifteenth century, _Cinquecento_ to the sixteenth century, and _Seicento_ to the seventeenth century or Rococo. It has, however, become common to confine the use of the term Cinquecento to the first half of the sixteenth century.

+CONSTRUCTION AND DETAIL.+ The architects of the Renaissance occupied themselves more with form than with construction, and rarely set themselves constructive problems of great difficulty. Although the new architecture began with the colossal dome of the cathedral of Florence, and culminated in the stupendous church of St. Peter at Rome, it was pre-eminently an architecture of palaces and villas, of façades and of decorative display. Constructive difficulties were reduced to their lowest terms, and the constructive framework was concealed, not emphasized, by the decorative apparel of the design. Among the masterpieces of the early Renaissance are many buildings of small dimensions, such as gates, chapels, tombs and fountains. In these the individual fancy had full sway, and produced surprising results by the beauty of enriched mouldings, of carved friezes with infant genii, wreaths of fruit, griffins, masks and scrolls; by pilasters covered with arabesques as delicate in modelling as if wrought in silver; by inlays of marble, panels of glazed terra-cotta, marvellously carved doors, fine stucco-work in relief, capitals and cornices of wonderful richness and variety. The Roman orders appeared only in free imitations, with panelled and carved pilasters for the most part instead of columns, and capitals of fanciful design, recalling remotely the Corinthian by their volutes and leaves (Fig. 158). Instead of the low-pitched classic pediments, there appears frequently an arched cornice enclosing a sculptured lunette. Doors and windows were enclosed in richly carved frames, sometimes arched and sometimes square. Façades were flat and unbroken, depending mainly for effect upon the distribution and adornment of the openings, and the design of doorways, courtyards and cornices. Internally vaults and flat ceilings of wood and plaster were about equally common, the barrel vault and dome occurring far more frequently than the groined vault. Many of the ceilings of this period are of remarkable richness and beauty.

+THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FLORENCE: THE DUOMO.+ In the year 1417 a public competition was held for completing the cathedral of Florence by a dome over the immense octagon, 143 feet in diameter. _Filippo Brunelleschi_, sculptor and architect (1377-1446), who with Donatello had journeyed to Rome to study there the masterworks of ancient art, after demonstrating the inadequacy of all the solutions proposed by the competitors, was finally permitted to undertake the gigantic task according to his own plans. These provided for an octagonal dome in two shells, connected by eight major and sixteen minor ribs, and crowned by a lantern at the top (Fig. 159). This wholly original conception, by which for the first time (outside of Moslem art) the dome was made an external feature fitly terminating in the light forms and upward movement of a lantern, was carried out between the years 1420 and 1464. Though in no wise an imitation of Roman forms, it was classic in its spirit, in its vastness and its simplicity of line, and was made possible solely by Brunelleschi’s studies of Roman design and construction (Fig. 160).

+OTHER CHURCHES.+ From Brunelleschi’s designs were also erected the +Pazzi Chapel+ in Sta. Croce, a charming design of a Greek cross covered with a dome at the intersection, and preceded by a vestibule with a richly decorated vault; and the two great churches of +S. Lorenzo+ (1425) and +S. Spirito+ (1433-1476, Fig. 161). Both reproduced in a measure the plan of the Pisa Cathedral, having a three-aisled nave and transepts, with a low dome over the crossing. The side aisles were covered with domical vaults and the central aisles with flat wooden or plaster ceilings. All the details of columns, arches and mouldings were imitated from Roman models, and yet the result was something entirely new. Consciously or unconsciously, Brunelleschi was reviving Byzantine rather than Roman conceptions in the planning and structural design of these domical churches, but the garb in which he clothed them was Roman, at least in detail. The +Old Sacristy+ of S. Lorenzo was another domical design of great beauty.

From this time on the new style was in general use for church designs. _L. B. Alberti_ (1404-73), who had in Rome mastered classic details more thoroughly than Brunelleschi, remodelled the church of +S. Francesco+ at +Rimini+ with Roman pilasters and arches, and with engaged orders in the façade, which, however, was never completed. His great work was the church of +S. Andrea+ at +Mantua+, a Latin cross in plan, with a dome at the intersection (the present high dome dating however, only from the 18th century) and a façade to which the conception of a Roman triumphal arch was skilfully adapted. His façade of incrusted marbles for the church of S. M. Novella at Florence was a less successful work, though its flaring consoles over the side aisles established an unfortunate precedent frequently imitated in later churches.

A great activity in church-building marked the period between 1475 and 1490. The plans of the churches erected about this time throughout north Italy display an interesting variety of arrangements, in nearly all of which the dome is combined with the three-aisled cruciform plan, either as a central feature at the crossing or as a domical vault over each bay. Bologna and Ferrara possess a number of churches of this kind. Occasionally the basilican arrangement was followed, with columnar arcades separating the aisles. More often, however, the pier-arches were of the Roman type, with engaged columns or pilasters between them. The interiors, presumably intended to receive painted decorations, were in most cases somewhat bare of ornament, pleasing rather by happy proportions and effective vaulting or rich flat ceilings, panelled, painted and gilded, than by elaborate architectural detail. A similar scantiness of ornament is to be remarked in the exteriors, excepting the façades, which were sometimes highly ornate; the doorways, with columns, pediments, sculpture and carving, receiving especial attention. High external domes did not come into general use until the next period. In Milan, Pavia, and some other Lombard cities, the internal cupola over the crossing was, however, covered externally by a lofty structure in diminishing stages, like that of the Certosa at Pavia (Fig. 152), or that erected by Bramante for the church of S. M. delle Grazie at Milan. At Prato, in the church of the +Madonna delle Carceri+ (1495-1516), by _Giuliano da S. Gallo_, the type of the Pazzi chapel reappears in a larger scale; the plan is cruciform, with equal or nearly equal arms covered by barrel vaults, at whose intersection rises a dome of moderate height on pendentives. This charming edifice, with its unfinished exterior of white marble, its simple and dignified lines, and internal embellishments in della-Robbia ware, is one of the masterpieces of the period.

In the designing of chapels and oratories the architects of the early Renaissance attained conspicuous success, these edifices presenting fewer structural limitations and being more purely decorative in character than the larger churches. Such façades as that of +S. Bernardino+ at Perugia and of the +Frati di S. Spirito+ at Bologna are among the most delightful products of the decorative fancy of the 15th century.

+FLORENTINE PALACES.+ While the architects of this period failed to develop any new and thoroughly satisfactory ecclesiastical type, they attained conspicuous success in palace-architecture. The +Riccardi+ palace in Florence (1430) marks the first step of the Renaissance in this direction. It was built for the great Cosimo di Medici by _Michelozzi_ (1397-1473), a contemporary of Brunelleschi and Alberti, and a man of great talent. Its imposing rectangular façade, with widely spaced mullioned windows in two stories over a massive basement, is crowned with a classic cornice of unusual and perhaps excessive size. In spite of the bold and fortress-like character of the rusticated masonry of these façades, and the mediæval look they seem to present to modern eyes, they marked a revolution in style and established a type frequently imitated in later years. The courtyard, in contrast with this stern exterior, appears light and cheerful (Fig. 162). Its wall is carried on round arches borne by columns with Corinthianesque capitals, and the arcade is enriched with sculptured medallions. +The Pitti Palace+, by Brunelleschi (1435), embodies the same ideas on a more colossal scale, but lacks the grace of an adequate cornice. A lighter and more ornate style appeared in 1460 in the +P. Rucellai+, by Alberti, in which for the first time classical pilasters in superposed stages were applied to a street façade. To avoid the dilemma of either insufficiently crowning the edifice or making the cornice too heavy for the upper range of pilasters, Alberti made use of brackets, occupying the width of the upper frieze, and converting the whole upper entablature into a cornice. But this compromise was not quite successful, and it remained for later architects in Venice, Verona, and Rome to work out more satisfactory methods of applying the orders to many-storied palace façades. In the great +P. Strozzi+ (Fig. 163), erected in 1490 by _Benedetto da Majano_ and _Cronaca_, the architects reverted to the earlier type of the P. Riccardi, treating it with greater refinement and producing one of the noblest palaces of Italy.

+COURTYARDS; ARCADES.+ These palaces were all built around interior courts, whose walls rested on columnar arcades, as in the P. Riccardi (Fig. 162). The origin of these arcades may be found in the arcaded cloisters of mediæval monastic churches, which often suggest classic models, as in those of St. Paul-beyond-the-Walls and St. John Lateran at Rome. Brunelleschi not only introduced columnar arcades into a number of cloisters and palace courts, but also used them effectively as exterior features in the +Loggia S. Paolo+ and the Foundling Hospital (+Ospedale degli Innocenti+) at Florence. The chief drawback in these light arcades was their inability to withstand the thrust of the vaulting over the space behind them, and the consequent recourse to iron tie-rods where vaulting was used. The Italians, however, seemed to care little about this disfigurement.

+MINOR WORKS.+ The details of the new style were developed quite as rapidly in purely decorative works as in monumental buildings. Altars, mural monuments, tabernacles, pulpits and _ciboria_ afforded scope for the genius of the most distinguished artists. Among those who were specially celebrated in works of this kind should be named _Lucca della Robbia_ (1400-82) and his successors, _Mino da Fiesole_ (1431-84) and _Benedetto da Majano_ (1442-97). Possessed of a wonderful fertility of invention, they and their pupils multiplied their works in extraordinary number and variety, not only throughout north Italy, but also in Rome and Naples. Among the most famous examples of this branch of design may be mentioned a pulpit in Sta. Croce by B. da Majano; a terra-cotta fountain in the sacristy of S. M. Novella, by the della Robbias; the Marsupini tomb in Sta. Croce, by _Desiderio da Settignano_ (all in Florence); the della Rovere tomb in S. M. del Popolo, Rome, by Mino da Fiesole, and in the Cathedral at Lucca the Noceto tomb and the Tempietto, by _Matteo Civitali_. It was in works of this character that the Renaissance oftenest made its first appearance in a new centre, as was the case in Sienna, Pisa, Lucca, Naples, etc.

+NORTH ITALY.+ Between 1450 and 1490 the Renaissance presented in Sienna, in a number of important palaces, a sharp contrast to the prevalent Gothic style of that city. The +P. Piccolomini+--a somewhat crude imitation of the P. Riccardi in Florence--dates from 1463; the +P. del Governo+ was built 1469, and the +Spannocchi Palace+ in 1470. In 1463 _Ant. Federighi_ built there the +Loggia del Papa+. About the same time _Bernardo di Lorenzo_ was building for Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini) an entirely new city, +Pienza+, with a cathedral, archbishop’s palace, town hall and Papal residence (the +P. Piccolomini+), which are interesting if not strikingly original works. Pisa possesses few early Renaissance structures, owing to the utter prostration of her fortunes in the 15th century, and the dominance of Pisan Gothic traditions. In Lucca, besides a wealth of minor monuments (largely the work of Matteo Civitali, 1435-1501) in various churches, a number of palaces date from this period, the most important being the +P. Pretorio+ and P. Bernardini. To Milan the Renaissance was carried by the Florentine masters _Michelozzi_ and _Filarete_, to whom are respectively due the +Portinari Chapel+ in S. Eustorgio (1462) and the earlier part of the great +Ospedale Maggiore+ (1457). In the latter, an edifice of brick with terra-cotta enrichments, the windows were Gothic in outline--an unusual mixture of styles, even in Italy. The munificence of the Sforzas, the hereditary tyrants of the province, embellished the semi-Gothic +Certosa+ of Pavia with a new marble façade, begun 1476 or 1491, which in its fanciful and exuberant decoration, and the small scale of its parts, belongs properly to the early Renaissance. Exquisitely beautiful in detail, it resembles rather a magnified altar-piece than a work of architecture, properly speaking. Bologna and Ferrara developed somewhat late in the century a strong local school of architecture, remarkable especially for the beauty of its courtyards, its graceful street arcades, and its artistic treatment of brick and terra-cotta (+P. Bevilacqua+, +P. Fava+, at Bologna; +P. Scrofa+, +P. Roverella+, at Ferrara). About the same time palaces with interior arcades and details in the new style were erected in Verona, Vicenza, Mantua, and other cities.

+VENICE.+ In this city of merchant princes and a wealthy _bourgeoisie_, the architecture of the Renaissance took on a new aspect of splendor and display. It was late in appearing, the Gothic style with its tinge of Byzantine decorative traditions having here developed into a style well suited to the needs of a rich and relatively tranquil community. These traditions the architects of the new style appropriated in a measure, as in the marble incrustations of the exquisite little church of +S. M. dei Miracoli+ (1480-89), and the façade of the +Scuola di S. Marco+ (1485-1533), both by _Pietro Lombardo_. Nowhere else, unless on the contemporary façade of the Certosa at Pavia, were marble inlays and delicate carving, combined with a framework of thin pilasters, finely profiled entablatures and arched pediments, so lavishly bestowed upon the street fronts of churches and palaces. The family of the _Lombardi_ (Martino, his sons Moro and Pietro, and grandsons Antonio and Tullio), with _Ant. Bregno_ and _Bart. Buon_, were the leaders in the architectural Renaissance of this period, and to them Venice owes her choicest masterpieces in the new style. Its first appearance is noted in the later portions of the church of +S. Zaccaria+ (1456-1515), partly Gothic internally, with a façade whose semicircular pediment and small decorative arcades show a somewhat timid but interesting application of classic details. In this church, and still more so in S. Giobbe (1451-93) and the Miracoli above mentioned, the decorative element predominates throughout. It is hard to imagine details more graceful in design, more effective in the swing of their movement, or more delicate in execution than the mouldings, reliefs, wreaths, scrolls, and capitals one encounters in these buildings. Yet in structural interest, in scale and breadth of planning, these early Renaissance Venetian buildings hold a relatively inferior rank.

+PALACES.+ The great +Court+ of the +Doge’s Palace+, begun 1483 by _Ant. Rizzio_, belongs only in part to the first period. It shows, however, the lack of constructive principle and of largeness of composition just mentioned, but its decorative effect and picturesque variety elicit almost universal admiration. Like the neighboring façade of St. Mark’s, it violates nearly every principle of correct composition, and yet in a measure atones for this capital defect by its charm of detail. Far more satisfactory from the purely architectural point of view is the façade of the +P. Vendramini+ (Vendramin-Calergi), by Pietro Lombardo (1481). The simple, stately lines of its composition, the dignity of its broad arched and mullioned windows, separated by engaged columns--the earliest example in Venice of this feature, and one of the earliest in Italy--its well-proportioned basement and upper stories, crowned by an adequate but somewhat heavy entablature, make this one of the finest palaces in Italy (Fig. 165) It established a type of large-windowed, vigorously modelled façades which later architects developed, but hardly surpassed. In the smaller contemporary, P. Dario, another type appears, better suited for small buildings, depending for effect mainly upon well-ordered openings and incrusted panelling of colored marble.

+ROME.+ Internal disorders and the long exile of the popes had by the end of the fourteenth century reduced Rome to utter insignificance. Not until the second half of the fifteenth century did returning prosperity and wealth afford the Renaissance its opportunity in the Eternal City. Pope Nicholas V. had, indeed, begun the rebuilding of St. Peter’s from designs by B. Rossellini, in 1450, but the project lapsed shortly after with the death of the pope. The earliest Renaissance building in Rome was the +P. di Venezia+, begun in 1455, together with the adjoining porch of S. Marco. In this palace and the adjoining unfinished Palazzetto we find the influence of the old Roman monuments clearly manifested in the court arcades, built like those of the Colosseum, with superposed stages of massive piers and engaged columns carrying entablatures. The proportions are awkward, the details coarse; but the spirit of Roman classicism is here seen in the germ. The exterior of this palace is, however, still Gothic in spirit. The architects are unknown; _Giuliano da Majano_ (1452-90), _Giacomo di Pietrasanta_, and _Meo del Caprino_ (1430-1501) are known to have worked upon it, but it is not certain in what capacity.

The new style, reaching, and in time overcoming, the conservatism of the Church, overthrew the old basilican traditions. In +S. Agostino+ (1479-83), by _Pietrasanta_, and +S. M. del Popolo+, by Pintelli (?), piers with pilasters or half-columns and massive arches separate the aisles, and the crossing is crowned with a dome. To the same period belong the Sistine chapel and parts of the Vatican palace, but the interest of these lies rather in their later decorations than in their somewhat scanty architectural merit.

The architectural renewal of Rome, thus begun, reached its culmination in the following period.

+OTHER MONUMENTS.+ The complete enumeration of even the most important Early Renaissance monuments of Italy is impossible within our limits. Two or three only can here be singled out as suggesting types. Among town halls of this period the first place belongs to the +P. del Consiglio+ at Verona, by _Fra Giocondo_ (1435-1515). In this beautiful edifice the façade consists of a light and graceful arcade supporting a wall pierced with four windows, and covered with elaborate frescoed arabesques (recently restored). Its unfortunate division by pilasters into four bays, with a pier in the centre, is a blemish avoided in the contemporary +P. del Consiglio+ at Padua. The +Ducal Palace+ at Urbino, by _Luciano da Laurano_ (1468), is noteworthy for its fine arcaded court, and was highly famed in its day. At Brescia +S. M. dei Miracoli+ is a remarkable example of a cruciform domical church dating from the close of this period, and is especially celebrated for the exuberant decoration of its porch and its elaborate detail. Few campaniles were built in this period; the best of them are at Venice. Naples possesses several interesting Early Renaissance monuments, chief among which are the +Porta Capuana+ (1484), by _Giul. da Majano_, the triumphal +Arch of Alphonso+ of Arragon, by _Pietro di Martino_, and the +P. Gravina+, by _Gab. d’Agnolo_. Naples is also very rich in minor works of the early Renaissance, in which it ranks with Florence, Venice, and Rome.