CHAPTER VI

ITALIAN DECORATION AND ORNAMENT

From the twelfth to the end of the sixteenth century was a long period of artistic activity in Italy, when nearly every building, public and private, sacred and secular, was decorated in colour, with paintings and ornament on walls, ceilings and other surfaces, and further enriched with sculpture, and carving in wood, stone or metal. Italian decorative art has in the past so influenced and modified the native art of France, Germany and England, and its influence being still felt and expressed in much of our modern decoration, that an apology is hardly needed if we devote the present chapter to some consideration of the architectural colouring and ornament of the Italian Renaissance.

Apart from the great frescoes and mosaics of the Italian churches and palaces, where pictorial compositions, or decorative pictures, with or without architectural or landscape backgrounds, give the required colour finish to buildings, there exists the very important class of carved, painted, or inlaid ornamentation; though in a measure secondary in

the scale of art to the best examples of figure composition, it is in no way, when appropriately designed and applied, inferior as legitimate material for the proper decoration of a building.

The Italians made great use of both carved and painted ornament, which was usually well designed, and in their best work it was employed in a restrained sense as to quantity; the colour and distribution of it, whether in the flat, or in relief, enhanced the beauty of their architecture by assisting, but in no way disturbing, the architectural repose of the building.

The Italian artists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries used coloured ornament, both of the geometrical and floral varieties, largely in friezes, bands and borders, as a rich kind of framing to enclose, and also to separate, panels which contained their figure compositions, and these ornamental framings were extremely valuable as contrasting foils to the more pictorial compositions which they enclosed. In some cases the ornament itself occupied even as much, and sometimes more, space on the curved and flat surfaces, such as domes, spandrels, panels, and walls, as the figures themselves. A good example of this may be seen in the mosaics of the semi-dome of San Clemente at Rome and also on that of the Church of St. Maria Maggiore, both of which are examples of decoration which are in singular and good harmony with the architecture of the respective churches. We see in this ornament of the twelfth century on the semi-dome of San Clemente a specimen of that variety which was developed, with some modifications, by Cimabue, Torriti, Giotto, and other Italian artists in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The particular class of ornament we have now to examine was mainly founded on Roman work, but in addition it was mixed with some geometrical forms, which in the painted variety were copied from the inlaid marble decorations and mosaic patterns of earlier times, and in these geometrical patterns, as well as in some of the floriated scroll-work, derived from early Roman sources, there may be detected a strong influence of Persian or Eastern design. (Plate 16.) It may be said that in all flat ornament used in the decoration of buildings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy, either in painting, mosaic, or inlaid work, Byzantine, Saracenic, or Persian influences may be noticed. This is apparent in the geometrical interlacings, and also in the more natural floral and foliage forms of Western design, where we see strong reflections of certain types of the flat variety of ornament, which is common in the decoration of tiles, pottery, carpets, and other textiles of Asiatic countries.

The Romanesque variety of ornament may be seen in the bands, friezes and borders which frame the paintings attributed to Cimabue in the upper church of St. Francesco at Assisi, and

PLATE 15.--MOSAIC DECORATION: CHURCH OF ST. JOHN LATERAN, ROME.

(By Jacopo Torriti, 1287-1292.)]

PLATE 16.--ORNAMENT IN MOSAIC ON THE WINDOW REVEALS: CHURCH OF ST. JOHN LATERAN, ROME: 1287-1292.]

around most of the frescoes by Giotto in the same church.

The drawings on Plate 16, from the mosaics of the window reveals in the Church of St. John, Lateran, by Torriti, illustrate the type of ornament that was common in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth centuries. Plate 15 shows the position this ornament occupied in the window reveals, below the semi-dome, and how well it serves as a contrasting division between the figures of the Apostles on the wall spaces between the windows. Here the ornament plays a most effective decorative rôle in combination with the figure subjects of the tribune, and goes to prove that Torriti was fully sensible of the value of ornamental contrast in decorative mosaic, and that he was further aided in obtaining the desired unity of effect by his proper use of colour and simplicity of execution. This work testifies that Torriti was a master in the science of decoration, as he applied the true principles of his art with a correct and profound judgment, and is therefore worthy to be classed among the great forerunners of the Renaissance, and of modern art.

About the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy was in a highly prosperous condition, numerous churches, civic and private palaces, guild houses and merchants’ houses were erected, most of which were of magnificent proportions, and were richly decorated with sculptured marbles, frescoes, and other ornamentation. The civic palaces and merchants’ houses generally presented a solid and massive appearance, the style of architecture, especially in Florence and Central Italy, being a sort of mixture of Romanesque and Gothic styles, the latter being expressed in the window-heads, doorways, lower arcading, and in other details. The massive appearance of the façades were somewhat lightened by the battlements of the top storey and by the boldly projecting cornices and string-courses under them, and under the windows. These projecting features sometimes took the form of a gallery carried on brackets or corbels, between which the machicolations appeared. Types of these civic palaces with their elegant and lofty towers are seen in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, and the Palazzo Publico at Siena. Many castle-like guild houses of the fourteenth century are still in existence in Florence and in other cities of Italy, and representations of such may be seen pictured in the frescoes of Giotto at Assisi, and in paintings by other artists in Florence and Siena, where the interiors, with their furniture and decorations, as well as the exteriors are represented. The ceilings of the rooms in these houses were generally flat, or coffered between the beams, or the flat ceiling was often painted to represent coffered panelling. The walls were sometimes painted from the floor up to the dividing line of the deep frieze with imitations of textile hangings, decorated with geometrical patterns of a severe design, heraldic devices, or conventional

PLATE 17.--ITALIAN GOTHIC DECORATION IN THE CHURCH OF ST. ANASTASIA AT VERONA.]

PLATE 18.--DECORATION OF A PORTION OF ONE OF THE ROOMS IN THE MACCHIAVELLI PALACE, FLORENCE.

(From a model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.)]

flowers and foliage. These imitation hangings were represented as suspending from a horizontal rod, hanging perfectly straight, or in some cases from fixed points at regular intervals so as to give them a festoon-like appearance. This was a common method of decorating the lower wall space of house and palace interiors, as well as of churches and chapels. A good illustration of this method of decoration is seen in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where the lower walls under the frescoes of Pinturrichio, Botticelli, C. Rosselli, Perugino, and others are decorated with painted imitations of tapestry hangings. The friezes of the old houses under notice were very important features in the decoration, and were as a rule extremely beautiful in design and colour, the designs usually consisting of a row of fruit trees, such as the orange, lemon, pomegranate, apple, etc., alternating, and placed behind and above a net-work fence, which usually divided the lower wall decoration from the frieze proper, while between the trees, and at the bottom appeared groups of gay flowers, and singing birds at intervals helped to enliven the scene. The friezes often represented stately gardens or orchards, painted in the lively colours of nature, with the backgrounds behind the trees and flowers in black, and the spaces between a deep vermilion red. In some cases the garden frieze was continuous, and complete in itself, and other examples, as in the wall decoration from an old house formerly in the Mercato Vecchio, and now in the monastery of San Marco at Florence, the trees were placed under Gothic canopies, with little towers between, or in arcading supported by pillars, above which were triangular panels filled with heraldic devices. Some of the wall decorations of these old houses had other schemes of diaper-like ornamentation, consisting of lozenge-shaped and foiled figures interlacing at the angles, some spaces being occupied by figures of ladies on horseback, and others by various kinds of birds grouped in landscapes, while the alternating spaces were occupied by circles containing shields with heraldic devices, and around these foliated ornament. The general colour scheme of the walls, frieze, and ceiling was daring, yet delightful. It consisted of a warm harmony of strong reds, black, various greens, golden yellows and russets, modified here and there by the introduction of pearly greys, umber tones, and mellowed white. Rooms decorated in this fashion would be very sumptuous and rich, and would not require the aid of pictures to help out the colour scheme. (Plate 18.) A satisfactory finish to such apartments was admirably achieved by the furniture of the period, which consisted of beautiful Cassoni, in carved or inlaid woods, or decorated in gesso-work, painted and gilded, with representations of lively scenes of the tournament, of hunting and hawking parties, and other romantic subjects. The chairs, the seats against the walls, and the table were of carved walnut, chestnut or cypress wood. If we add to these such accessories as Majolica dishes of

lustred pottery, copper and brass vessels, Venetian glass and Oriental carpets, we may conceive some idea of the magnificent effect that a reception-room must have presented in one of these old Florentine houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

In the charming medley of forms and colour which the wall decorations of these houses presented we may clearly see the development of Giotto’s Italian Gothic ornament, still mixed with some of the older Romanesque forms that Torriti loved to use, and while Saracenic influences are not absent, the chief element of beauty in the mixture is the definite expression of natural form and colour, obtained by the trees, flowers, and birds which are introduced in such a dignified manner that they harmonise perfectly with the severer forms of the ornament to which they are allied.

It is to be regretted that this interesting class of ornament was not more fully developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alongside, if not instead of, the less virile but more classical type which was adopted and developed by Raffaelle and his pupils, Giovanni da Udine, Giulio Romano, and Perina del Vaga, when they came to decorate the Loggie of the Vatican, the interiors of the “Villa Madama,” Palazzo del Tè, the Ducal Palace at Mantua (Plates 19 and 20), and the Castello Sant’ Angelo at Rome.

In the early years of the sixteenth century excavations were being made at San Pietro in Vincoli and among the ruins of the Palace of Titus, in hopes, as Vasari states, of finding antique statues, when certain subterranean chambers were discovered that were decorated with small “grottesche,” so called because they were found in these grottos, or underground chambers; some of the latter were evidently the bathrooms of the palace. Other examples of this kind of decoration were found in the Coliseum, and in the Baths of Diocletian at Rome. Some of these ancient Roman grotesques were modelled in stucco in very low relief, and others were painted, having subjects of mythological figures, amorini, stories, and ornament. (Plate 21.) Raffaelle and his pupil Giovanni da Udine went to see these works, and were so astonished with their novelty, freshness and beauty that they resolved to imitate or adapt them for the decoration of the Loggie of the Vatican. Thus Raffaelle and Giovanni first conceived the idea of a _risorgimento_, a resurrection as well as a revival of these antique forms of decoration, and adopted the scheme and style of ornamentation for the piers, pilasters, arches and friezes of the Vatican Loggie. The painted portion of the pilasters have elaborate scroll-work, based on acanthus foliage, with designs consisting of fruit, flowers, trees, birds, quadrupeds, human figures, and enlarged copies of antique gems and bas-reliefs in panels surrounded by decorated mouldings, all in a rich scheme of polychromy on cream-coloured grounds. The vaulted ceilings of the Loggie are divided into compartments having stucco mouldings, some of which contain painted figure subjects, and others are executed in low-relief stucco work. The decorations of the lower parts are now, however, in a bad state, being mostly perished or rubbed off, but those of the ceilings and arches are in a fairly good condition.

In some of the apartments of the Popes, in the Castello Sant’ Angelo at Rome, there are many examples of this kind of decoration, executed by Da Udine, Giulio Romano and Perina del Vaga, among which may be mentioned the beautiful little bathroom, the walls and ceiling of which are entirely covered with arabesques and grotesques, in colour on a white ground, which Giovanni da Udine painted for Pope Leo.

The “Villa Madama,” near Rome, was built, or finished about 1521, from designs by Raffaelle, a year or so after his death, and the interior was decorated by Giovanni da Udine, chiefly in stucco, or _gesso duro_, in the same manner as the work in the Vatican Loggie. The decorated portion of this villa is chiefly confined to the great Loggia and its vestibule, and the two square recesses between them. The Loggia is divided into three bays, the centre one having a domed roof, while the other two have vaulted roofs, each roof being divided into four segments. The designs on the piers are executed in _gesso duro_, and consist of conventional renderings of the vine, maple, and other plants, admirable in conception and skilful in technique. This work, together with the relief decorations of the circular vaulting of the recesses, and soffits of the arches, is left uncoloured. Colour is used sparingly amongst the high reliefs which cover the greater part of the central dome. There are four panels in this dome with paintings of the figures of Neptune, Jupiter, Juno and Plato which are attributed to Giulio Romano. The groin ceiling-ribs of the right and left bays are painted with bands of arabesques and foliage designs, and the surfaces of the vaults are richly decorated with coloured ornaments. In the centre of each of these four vault divisions there is a large oval panel, one set of four having groups of sporting amorini, and the other four have mythological subjects. The three recesses have similar decorations. Much of the painting has suffered from damp, and wet from the roof, but in the better preserved remains of the painted work, and of the stucco decorations, there is sufficient evidence left to justify the great praise that Vasari has bestowed upon it, for on the whole it is more refined in design and execution than Giovanni’s early work in the Loggie of the Vatican. Similar kind of stucco decoration may be seen on the richly ornamented columns of the courtyard in the Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence, and similar painted arabesques on the vaulted ceilings and arch soffits of the same courtyard, though now much decayed and darkened by age and weather.

In the Ducal Palace at Mantua are three

PLATE 20.--ARABESQUE DECORATIONS IN THE DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA.

(By Giulio Romano: Sixteenth Century)]

celebrated “Camerini,” or apartments of Isabella d’Este, who became Marchioness of Mantua by her marriage in 1490 with the Marquis Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga. These rooms are in the part of the palace known as the “Paradiso,” and were beautifully decorated by the best known artists of the period to the orders of the Marchioness. The first of the three apartments was the music-room, the walls of which were lined with “intarsia” of different coloured woods representing views of towns. The ceiling was panelled and decorated with ornament and heraldic devices in low relief, and the frieze was formed of musical instruments carved in the wood. The second apartment was the painting-room, which from the point of decorative beauty was the most important of the three. Its chief interest consisted in the six pictures which Isabella had painted to her orders by Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa, Perugino, and Bellini. These famous pictures, with the exception of the one painted by the last-named artist, which cannot be traced, were taken from their places on the walls of the room, and sold by Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga in 1627 to Cardinal Richelieu, and were afterwards bought from the heirs of the Cardinal by the French Government, and are now in the Louvre at Paris. A model of one side of this beautiful “Camerino,” two-thirds of its actual size, with copies of the three allegorical pictures which once adorned its walls, together with the richly carved candelabra-like pillars that separated the pictures, a portion of the frieze and panelled ceiling in gold and blue, with the marble doorway by Cristoforo Romano is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and another copy is in the Dublin National Museum. The third apartment was reserved for receptions and was decorated with delicately carved devices, mottoes, and the heraldic arms of the family, executed in wood-carving and stucco finished in gold and having a blue background. The celebrated pictures that originally adorned the walls of the painting-room are elaborately finished and highly imaginative works, and are therefore to be regarded more as easel paintings than decorative compositions. This small room, which measures only seventeen feet by ten feet, must have appeared, in its original state, a veritable cabinet of the finest art and craftsmanship of the Renaissance period.

Mantua is very rich in the work of Giulio Romano (1492-1546) and of his pupils, Primaticcio and Niccolo dell’ Abbate; the two latter with Serlio, the architect, were chiefest among the many Italian artists and craftsmen who were summoned to Fontainebleau by the French King, François I, and were in a great measure responsible for the spread of the Italian influences which were so apparent in the art of the early French Renaissance.

Giulio Romano settled in Mantua in 1524, when he was employed by Federico II to alter and decorate some of the rooms in the Ducal Palace. He was also the architect and decorator of the Palazza del Tè, the country house of Federico, near Mantua. The paintings executed on the walls of these palaces by Giulio Romano and his pupils, Primaticcio, Francesco Penni, Rinaldo of Mantua, and Niccolo dell’ Abbate, consist chiefly of mythological subjects, and historical events from classic literature, battles of giants, gladiatorial combats, market-place, seaside and fishing scenes, with occasional subjects from the Old Testament, all of which were painted in the vigorous style and strong colouring so characteristic of Romano’s work. On the other hand, there were many cabinets and apartments in these palaces that were richly decorated with beautiful designs in stucco-work and fanciful arabesques, painted in colours and in monochrome, with great brilliancy and freedom, refined in conception, with lightness of touch in the execution, and not wanting in the frank gaiety of colour expression. This kind of relief and painted decoration occurs mostly on the vaulted and coved ceilings, on soffits of the arches, in spandrels, and on numerous borders, friezes and pilasters. (Plate 21.) The purely arabesque ornamentation usually occupied the large spaces on ceilings and elsewhere that surround the central oval, circular or rectangular panels which often contained figure-subjects of a mythological character, or sometimes heads, busts, or devices of various kinds, and usually consists of scroll-like foliage of vines and other plants, interspersed with sporting amorini, birds, and other creatures (Fig. 21), precisely a reflex of the grottesche decorations of the Roman Imperial times, except that such painted Italian arabesques of Raffaelle’s time, and later, would be more often, in the earlier Roman period, modelled in very low stucco-relief, for the ancients used their magnificent stucco composition to a far greater extent in decoration than the Renaissance artists, whether it was afterwards coloured or not.

It will be seen that all this kind of decoration, whether ancient or modern, painted or modelled, was entirely an applied decoration, and therefore non-constructional; that is to say, the ornamentation was applied to large surfaces of walls, ceilings, piers and pilasters, etc., after the building was completed. The decoration was added, and did not grow out of the structure, and was therefore unlike the Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Arabian, Medieval Gothic, and much of the Byzantine decoration, which grew out of the structure, as an inevitable growth, and which would be illogical and incongruous if applied to any other style of architecture than the particular style that had given birth to it.

The case is different in the applied decoration of the Roman and Pompeian houses, baths and grottos, and in the Renaissance adaptation of this kind of adornment, which does not appear to be strictly connected with the architecture. Similarly shaped spaces, for example, are found to be decorated in many different ways, some vaulted ceilings are covered with elaborate scroll-work, others are divided into panels of various shapes having stucco mouldings planted on the walls surrounding them, or dividing all forms of space divisions. Wall spaces are decorated in the Roman examples, but more especially in Pompeian decoration, without much regard to the wall as an architectural feature, for we find superimposed forms of thin columns, supporting fantastical and impossible entablatures, curtains, festoons, scroll-work, landscapes, figure subjects, animals, and all kinds of arbitrary spacings. It must be said, however, that if this applied decoration is unconnected with the building, it is very interesting and often charming in its spontaneity of colour and form, while the beauty and refined technique of the low-relief figure and animal forms go a long way to counterbalance the illogical nature of the general surface adornment.