CHAPTER III

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY--CONTINUED

The method that we have followed so far in this book has been to study architecture in relation to problems of construction and to the materials employed, and to think of a building as an organic growth determined by plan, site, and the purposes for which it is intended--as a structure in which all the parts are co-ordinated to the whole, each directly functioning in the completed scheme. This is the architect’s way of considering his problem. So we have followed it, in the desire to avoid the error into which architects tell us that most laymen fall of thinking only of the outside of a building--how it is decorated, whether the design seems to be handsome or the reverse.

When, however, we come to the study of Italian Renaissance architecture, some architects tell us that we must adopt another method of judgment. These are the architects who are out-and-out advocates of the Italian Renaissance style, considering its achievements to be “supreme.” They admit that the Italian architects were less concerned with problems of construction than with general beauty of design; hence they were actuated not so much by logic as by feeling; and feeling especially for detail. They displayed extraordinary genius for design, both in the choice and disposition of the decorative effects and in the skill and refinement of their execution. They were designers rather than constructors.

This being the case, they should be judged accordingly. To estimate their work by the test of constructive logic is arbitrary and unfair. They should be judged by what they started out to accomplish; by the character and quality of their designs.

In a word, as it may appear, these advocates would have us apply a pictorial test; such a one, for example, as may serve in the case of the great picture, “Marriage in Cana of Galilee,” by Paolo Veronese. We do not trouble to consider the appropriateness of the architectural setting, still less to explain the functions of its several parts; we accept it without qualification as contributing to a monumental design.

Very possibly this actually represents the main attitude of the Italian Renaissance artists toward architecture. They thought of it in its pictorial aspect and practised it primarily as an art of design. With them began the modern habit of conceiving a building primarily as a design on paper. It is an effect of what we have already mentioned--the separation of builder and designer that characterised the Italian Renaissance.

Accordingly, while the following comparisons are based upon the principles that we have been adopting throughout this book, the reader should bear in mind the exception that has been taken to this method of judgment.

=Palazzo Vecchio--Riccardi Palace.=--A good idea of the transition from the Gothic to the Early Renaissance in Florentine Architecture may be gained from a comparison of the =Palazzo Vecchio= and the =Riccardi Palace=. The former was built by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1298, as the Municipal Palace of the Podesta and Signoria. The Riccardi was erected in 1430 by Michelozzo for Cosimo I de’ Medici. While the Republic still survived as a name, he had usurped the actual power and occupied the Palazzo Vecchio until the completion of his own mansion, which was thenceforth to be the centre not only of the Medicean domination but also of its courtly splendour and liberal patronage of literature and art.

Each edifice presents to the outside world a cubical mass, while the interior includes a cortile or open court. But the Vecchio is the severer in design, as befits Republican simplicity; it still has something of the character of a mediæval fortress, due largely to the heavy battlemented cornice that projects on massive corbels, with machicolations or openings in the floor of the gallery, from which defenders might drop missiles on an attacking force. A similar feature surmounted the original tower (for the present superstructure was added later)--a tower that was an additional source of defence as well as a lookout for the detection of fires or other local disturbances. It still served these purposes under the despotism of Cosimo; so that no tower was needed for his house. Meanwhile, he and his successors had ever to be on the watch against sudden alarms, so that it was admissible to preserve somewhat of the fortress character--massive masonry, with door and window openings, that might not be difficult to defend. On the other hand, it would be impolitic either to make the purpose of protection too apparent or to excite hostility by too lavish an appearance of grandeur on the exterior. Moderation must be the keynote of the design, and the facilities of luxurious living should be confined to the interior.

The result is a modification of the Palazzo Vecchio design by the introduction of classic details. A classic cornice replaces the machicolated; round arches supplant the pointed arches, the windows of the upper stories, in place of trefoils, have round-top lights, separated by a circular column. They are technically known as of the _arcade_ type, while the windows of the ground floor are changed to rectangular shapes and are of the _architrave_ type, that is to say set in moulded frames, which are supported on consoles and surmounted by classic pediments. Moreover in all these details, attention has been paid to refinements of modelling; there is a choicer feeling of proportion in the adjustment of the openings to the solid wall spaces while the divisions of the stories have been distinguished by projecting string courses and in such a way as to mark the importance of the second story or _piano nobile_. A superior refinement and logic of arrangement have regulated the whole design. The building, in fact, reflects the changed social conditions and the new mental and æsthetic attitude toward life produced by the study of classic literature and works of art.

=Ca d’Oro--Vendramini.=--Now if we shift our glance to Venice and compare the façades of the =Ca d’Oro= and =Vendramini Palaces=, we discover a great difference between them and the Florentine examples. The Ca d’Oro was erected by the Brothers Buon in the fifteenth century, a reminder of how late the Gothic style was continued in Venice. The Vendramini, Pietro Lombardo’s great achievement in domestic architecture, was completed in 1481. What a contrast both present to the Riccardi! It is an expression of different habits of life. There is in both Venetian buildings the suggestion of greater social security and a freer intercourse with the outside world and less obstructed enjoyment of out of doors. The ample windows of the Vendramini spread a welcome broadcast. And while the arcaded loggia which distinguished the Ca d’Oro have been replaced in the Vendramini by a balcony in the principal story and have disappeared above, the change means a brighter lighting of the interior.

It is to be noted that the design of the Ca d’Oro is incomplete. One has to imagine on the left a wing similar to that on the right. The massing of the openings in the centre of the façade, instead of their even distribution along the whole front, was peculiar to Venetian palaces. It is apparent, although in a less pronounced manner, in the spacing of the façade of the Vendramini. Another Venetian peculiarity is the limiting of the beauty of the design to the main façade. Even when a side abutted on another canal or a garden, the walls were finished in stucco instead of marble; embellishments were omitted and, worst of all, not even was the cornice continued. These limitations impair the integrity of the design and seriously diminish its dignity. The fact is even more apparent in the case of the Vendramini, for by this time the horizontal members of the façade had acquired a definite constructive meaning, and the failure to continue them around the sides betrays an indifference to the logic of design.

The façade of the Vendramini is no longer _astylar_ (columnless), as, with the exception of the window columns, is that of the Riccardi. The adaptation of classic details has proceeded so far that pilasters are introduced as decorative features in the ground story, and engaged columns in the upper ones; an excuse for their appearance being suggested by attaching their capitals to the string courses and cornice. This device was drawn from the example of the Roman buildings, in which the Greek relation of upright and horizontal members was diverted from an element of construction into an element purely of design. Further, while the windows of the Vendramini recall the character of the _arcade_ type, they have advanced to the _order_ type, the openings being framed by pilasters or columns. Thus, this design embodies more or less all the changes which the Early Renaissance brought about in secular buildings.

=Vendramini--Cancellaria.=--Comparing the =Vendramini=, however, with Bramante’s adaptation of classic details as illustrated, for example, in the =Palazzo della Cancellaria=, we can see how far removed it is in feeling from the productions of the fully developed Renaissance. By the latter time (1505) the nutriment derived from the antique had been digested and assimilated. The antique not only contributed to, but, in its revived form, was becoming a part of the spirit of the time. Architecture was becoming identified with a culture that was fast losing its fresh, Italian inspiration in an unqualified admiration and imitation of what was antique and pagan.

Compared with the Vendramini or even the severer Riccardi, the Cancellaria exhibits a precision of style that is rather close to formalism. The design is less a product of inspired invention than of scholarly adaptation. It may well strike one, especially at first sight, as cold, lifeless, even pedantic; and it is not until one has studied the design in some detail and become conscious of the refinement of feeling and finesse of taste, involved in the relation of the parts to the whole, that one is in a mood to recognise its claim to admiration.

The façade is constructed of blocks of travertine, taken from the Colosseum--for notwithstanding their reverence for antiquity the Italians of the Renaissance were prone to the vandalism of robbing Peter to pay Paul. An order of Corinthian pilasters with strongly marked cornices and string courses, embellishes the upper stories, in which also is introduced the novel arrangement of alternately narrow and wide spacings, the contrast being subtly balanced by the window openings. Noticeable is the variety attained by the alternating of square and round topped windows, and also their distribution to mark the relative importance of the several stories. In the windows of the _piano nobile_ the effect of the round-top lights is heightened by a rectangular frame, formed of pilasters, decorated with arabesques, while the upper part includes spandrels relieved by a single large rosette and surmounted by a delicately proportioned cornice.

=Cancellaria--Farnese.=--It is interesting to compare the official =Cancellaria= with the famous domestic example, the =Palazzo Farnese=. The latter dates from 1530 to 1546, when the façade designed by Sangallo, some say with Vignola’s co-operation, was completed by Michelangelo. His contribution was the cornice, which by its boldness of projection and richness of detail redeems the comparative monotony of evenly spaced windows and repeated framings. However, it is the court of this palace, said to be the most imposing in Italy, that presents its finest claim to distinction, and here the two lower stories, erected by Sangallo, are superior in freedom of design, as well as dignity, to the more cramped and crowded upper one that was added by Michelangelo.

=Capitol Palaces.=--The latter, a few years earlier, namely in 1540, had begun the erection of the =Capitol Palaces=, a design that flanks three sides of a square, the right and left of which are occupied respectively, by the =Palazzo dei Conservatori= and the =Capitoline Museum=, both completed in 1542, while the centre, finished in 1563, a year before Michelangelo’s death, holds the =Palazzo dei Senatori=.

In these façades appears the innovation of pilasters, carried through the two upper stories. This emphasis of the vertical lines contradicts the internal division of the structure into stories and is at the sacrifice of the horizontal lines of the façade. The latter are broken up into balconies, while the interior division is only hinted at by the windows. But Michelangelo with the audacity of genius rejected proprieties of detail and even logic of structure, as he was prone to do also in his sculpture--witness the recumbent figures on the Medici tombs--for the sake, as we should say to-day, of a grander and more impressive synthesis. In a word, he sacrificed the parts to the whole; and to secure the impressiveness of the whole, ties the pilasters together at the top with an entablature that comprises a boldly projecting cornice and is additionally emphasised by the crowning feature of a balustrade. Except that the cornice takes the place of pediments the principle of design is virtually that of a Roman temple, diverted from its purpose and brusquely made to accommodate itself to novel conditions. In the hands of Michelangelo the end may be said to justify the means, but this device of ignoring the interior necessities of construction in favour of an arbitrary exterior design became a precedent that contributed largely to the decadence of the Renaissance style. Yet, after all, it was only carrying to a destructively logical conclusion the use of the classic orders as elements not of constructive but of purely decorative design.

We have already noted in the case of Gothic architecture that its decadence was exhibited in a superabundance of decorative detail, and a similar course appears in the Renaissance. Much of the responsibility of the change is attributed to Sansovino. While Michelangelo magnified the decorative, the Venetian architect elaborated it. His façade of the =Library of San Marco= may be cited as an example.

=Capitol Palaces--Library of S. Mark.=--If we compare the Library with the =Capitol Palaces= we discover several important differences. In the Venetian building the divisions of the interior are indicated by the emphatic horizontal features; and the latter, as well as the deep openings of the arcade and of the windows, produce a depth of shadow effects, which in combination with the lighted surfaces results in great variety and richness. It is precisely these qualities, which are also elements in the design of Hellenic and Roman temples, that Michelangelo lost or discarded in his adaptation. Contrasted either with a temple or with Sansovino’s Library, the Capitol Palaces, grandiose although they are, seem tame and tight, lacking in structural vitality. Sansovino introduced vigour into his design by increasing the projection of his large and small columns and by using the latter in couples; also by giving a corresponding projection to all the decorative details and by introducing sculptured figures into the spandrels of the arches and the frieze.

The principle of his design, stated in ordinary terms, was: If such and such things are good, more of them will be better. It was a principle that might well commend itself to the Venetians’ love of pageantry and display. Sansovino had sufficient taste to know how far to carry the elaboration; but in the hands of succeeding architects his restraint was exchanged for license, variety degenerated into fussiness, and elaboration became extravagance.

=Pesaro Palace.=--These faults are discernible in the Pesaro Palace (1650-1680) by Longhena, a product of the Venetian Rococo spirit, and by no means an extreme example. For it preserves a certain dignity of mass notwithstanding that it is overcharged with ornament that gives it an effect of trickiness and restlessness. And the latter, it is to be noted, is partly due to the device, which for a long time had been prevalent, of carrying the horizontal moulding around the projecting capital of an engaged column or pilaster. Borrowed from Roman usage, it represents an element of decoration that tends to convert the contrasting quietness of the horizontal lines into a jiggety disturbance. This palace, however, can lay claim to the distinction that the superimposed orders are continued, with pilasters instead of columns, along the façade that abuts on the side canal.

ECCLESIASTICAL BUILDINGS

We have now to trace the progress of the Renaissance style as it affected Ecclesiastical architecture. It is maintained by enthusiastic advocates of Gothic architecture, such as Ralph Adams Cram in his inspired little book, “The Gothic Quest,” that whereas Gothic architecture was evolved by the Church and laity through the impulse of a common Faith, and was determined in all its essential particulars by the symbolism of the Christian religion and the requirements of Christian worship, the change effected by the Renaissance was a reversion to the architectural types of Paganism. Renaissance ecclesiastical architecture did not grow; it was formulated out of precedents that were the direct antithesis of Christianity and Christian worship; derived either from temples that were built after the belief even in the Pagan religion had languished or died out, or from types of secular architecture, such as baths, basilicas, and triumphal arches. Therefore it was false in principle and illogical and insincere in fact.

It is difficult not to agree with this criticism; the more so, that it is a matter of knowledge that the Renaissance style was developed by ecclesiastics and laity who, while they tolerated the traditional religion--“If we are not ourselves pious,” as Pope Julius II said, “why should we prevent the people from being so?”--were in their own tastes, convictions, and habits of life notoriously pagan. Accordingly, it is not the aspiration of the soul, the ascending confidence of faith, the yearning of the spirit beyond the confines of the flesh that are embodied in Renaissance church architecture; but, increasingly, the pride of intellect, the pride of life, and the satisfaction of the senses in ceremonial display.

=S. Spirito--S. Andrea.=--We will compare first Brunelleschi’s Church of =S. Spirito= in =Florence= (1476) with Alberti’s =S. Andrea= in =Mantua= (1512). Professor Fletcher points out the close analogy between the former and the Romanesque church of the Apostles, erected in Florence during the ninth century. It represents, in effect, a reversion to the features of the Tuscan Romanesque--vaulted aisles, a flat ceiling over the nave, surmounting a high clerestory and aisles. For the support, however, of the low dome over the crossing, Brunelleschi revived the Byzantine system of pendentives, which henceforth were used in all the Renaissance domes. Classic influence is chiefly apparent in the details of the columns, which present probably the first example of fragments of entablature placed upon the capitals to sustain the spring of the arches.

Alberti’s design, on the other hand, is unqualifiably an adaptation of Roman style, except in the case of the dome, which is supported by pendentives and raised on a drum. But the latter assumes the classical form of a peristyle of columns surmounted by an entablature. The roof of the nave is barrel vaulted and coffered in the Roman manner and springs directly from the entablature, which rests on piers that are decorated with engaged pilasters of the Corinthian order. The façade of the porch supplies the motive of the whole design, being an adaptation of the Roman triumphal arch in Mantua. Accordingly, it is composed of four Corinthian engaged columns, mounted on pedestals in the Roman manner, supporting an entablature and pediment. The three intervening spaces are occupied by doors, over each of the side ones being a window above a window, while the central door is flanked by two columns, which support a cornice and arch that frame a lunette. If the student will compare it with the main portal of some Gothic or Romanesque church, he will discover an instructive difference.

=Il Gesu--S. Giorgio Maggiore.=--Here is a further comparison of Renaissance church-façades:--the Jesuit Church in Rome, =Il Gesu= (1568) and =S. Giorgio Maggiore= in Venice (1560). The former is by Vignola; the latter was erected by Scamozzi, the pupil of Palladio. But Palladio designed the rest of the church and, since the façade was built during his lifetime, may have had more or less to do with its design. It is at any rate in the Palladian manner.

Both Palladio and Vignola were pronounced classicalists, and yet they contributed to the decadence of the Renaissance style. It is true that Palladio’s own style was characterised by a marked severity; note the present façade which presents a severely formal application of columns, entablatures, and pediments. But it involves a feature that readily lent itself to extravagant exploitation; namely, the emphasis upon colossal columns. Vignola’s design, on the other hand, is characterised by a multiplication and elaboration of features, which his sense of classic propriety has kept within ordered bounds but which a less refined taste might easily degrade into exuberant pretentiousness.

And indeed a certain pretentiousness marks both these façades. They make claim to being imposed by methods that are actually a pretence. For neither design has grown out of the necessities and circumstances of the building. Each represents the arbitrary importation of alien ingredients, pieced together to conform to the principles of a style that was evolved for other purposes and conditions. Each design is false in motive and specious in its application of principles; and, since lies breed lies, it must share responsibility for the flagrancy of specious and pretentious shams that in time ensued from it.

And, already, in both these designs the imitation of the antique results in cold and rigid formalism. Compare, for example, Vignola’s façade with one of the Tuscan Romanesque, for instance, Pisa cathedral. The architects of the latter borrowed from the Romans the use of applied arcades of arches and columns; but used the device frankly as a decorative sheathing, subordinated in scale to the constructive mass, and maintained the rich simplicity of effect by repetition of the same decorative motive.

Vignola, however, treated his sheathing as if it had actual constructive meaning; and, moreover, multiplied the motives. Big, coupled columns, mounted on pedestals, supported an entablature, the cornice of which becomes the support of another series of big, coupled columns, which make a great display of supporting a little pediment. Comparing this Renaissance example with the Pisan, one may be reminded of a circus incident. At first there enters a performer who with delightful agility and grace keeps a number of balls moving lightly in the air. He is followed by another, who, assuming the attitudes of an Atlas supporting the world, labours with a cannon ball, which, when it is finally tossed aside, proves to be no heavier than a football.

Scarcely less incongruous is the Palladian design, with its colossal framework of columns, entablature and pediment, and the paltry scale of its doorway and windows. And then the enormity of the broken pediment, the two parts of which form the front of the series of side-chapels that flank the interior of the nave. Of course there is a sort of callous logic represented. The pediment is the end of a sloping roof; therefore, if the roof be separated into two parts, why not separate the pediment? But what about the taste which, as we have seen, always tempered the logic of the Greeks? Could the Greek taste have tolerated the cleavage in half of a little temple design and the swaggering intrusion between them of a giant design and persuaded itself that the domination of the latter produced a harmony of relations?

S. PETER’S

The culminating achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the new Church of =S. Peter’s=, the erection of which, dating from 1506 to about 1626, covers the whole period of the rise and decline of the Classic movement in Rome.

The original plan, as laid out by Bramante, was a Greek cross, comprising, that is to say, four equal parts. On this he proposed to design a building that should combine the three great barrel-vaulted halls of the Basilica of Constantine with the dome of the Pantheon. In 1514, the year preceding Bramante’s death, Sangallo the Elder, Raphael, and Fra Gioconda da Verona were associated with the work; but the advanced age of the first and third and Raphael’s preoccupation with painting and his early death caused little to be accomplished.

Meanwhile a difference of opinion had arisen as to whether the plan should be a Greek or Latin cross. The construction was continued under the directorship of Sangallo the Younger and Peruzzi, until in 1546 Michelangelo was appealed to. He rescued the ground plan of Bramante, reinforced the piers which the latter had begun at the crossing, and made drawings and a wooden model of the dome as far up as the lantern and actually completed the erection of the drum.

He was succeeded by Vignola, who added the four cupolas around the dome. The dome itself was completed from Michelangelo’s model, and finished (1585-1590) with a lantern, by Giacomo della Porta and Fontana.

During 1605-1612, at the instance of Paul V, the nave was lengthened by Carlo Maderna to form a Latin instead of a Greek cross and the façade was erected.

Finally, between 1629 and 1667, Bernini constructed the brazen baldachino and lavished sculpture on the interior, while completing the exterior effect by the colonnades which enclose the Piazza.

Easily the largest church in the world, S. Peter’s compares with other large churches as follows, the figures representing square yards of area in round numbers: =S. Peter’s=, 18,000; =Seville=, 13,000; =Milan=, 10,000; =S. Paul’s=, =London=, 9000; =S. Sophia=, 8000; =Cologne=, 7000. The interior measurement of S. Peter’s is approximately 205 yards long; the nave being 150 feet high and 87 feet wide (the same dimensions as those of the great hall of the Constantine basilica). The dome from the pavement to the summit of the lantern is 403 feet, the cross adding another 30; while the diameter is 138 feet, about five feet less than the dome of the Pantheon.

The prolongation of the nave by three bays has destroyed the symmetry of mass, conceived by Bramante and Michelangelo, besides interfering with the exterior view of the dome, which is visible only from a distance. The east façade (for S. Peter’s reverses the usual orientation from west to east) is, for all its magnitude, unimpressive. Its extension beyond the actual edifice at each end still further accentuates the comparatively mean scale of the portal. But scale is very generally sacrificed both on the exterior and in the interior of S. Peter’s. This is attributed by experts to the change of design introduced by Michelangelo.

As arranged by Sangallo the Younger, the façades were to comprise the superimposed orders; for which Michelangelo substituted his scheme of the Capitol Palaces--a single colossal order, surmounted by an attic. He thus gained dignity at the expense of scale; for although the huge pilasters are eighty-seven feet high, they look much smaller, while the windows between them, each twenty feet in height, give an impression to the eye of about half that size. There is a similar apparent dwarfing of size in the piers and engaged columns of the nave, which actually measure to the top of the entablature one hundred feet. And this necessitated a corresponding increase of the dimensions of the sculptured figures in the spandrels, which are twenty feet high, thus further overpowering the sense of height.

The noblest feature of the interior is the magnificent barrel vault of the nave, while the surpassing grandeur of the whole edifice consists in Michelangelo’s dome.

Like Brunelleschi’s it has an inner and an outer shell, and is constructed on sixteen ribs, which, however, are all visible internally. The chief difference is the elevation of the dome and drum upon a second and loftier drum, composed of coupled Corinthian columns and intervening windows. This design was an adaptation of those which had been made by Bramante and Sangallo the Younger. The former had suggested a peristyle of columns; the latter, two drums; and Michelangelo virtually combined the two. But, in doing so he conceived new proportions between the vertical parts of the drum and the curve of the dome, that give his design not only a superior majesty but also a superior lightness and airiness.

S. Peter’s indeed, notwithstanding much extravagant, tasteless, and meretricious sumptuousness, due to Bernini and others, remains a stupendous monument to the genius of Michelangelo and Bramante and to the genius of the Italian Renaissance. It is the fit symbol of an age that gradually lost touch of the finer things of the spirit and grew to worship greatness, power, and pomp; that had all but discarded Christianity for Paganism.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the noblest trait of the Italian genius was its worship of beauty as well as power. The creativeness of the Italians was revealed in their extraordinary sensitiveness to all forms of beauty in the visible world; and in the world of intellectual conception, and in their marvellous aptitude for translating their impressions of beauty into forms of equivalent refinement. Accordingly, the student of to-day visits churches to enjoy the treasures of pictured altar-pieces, sculptured tombs, pulpits, wonders of metal-work in screens and sacred vessels, marvels of exquisite craftsmanship in objects too numerous to mention. The =Sistine Chapel= draws him because of Michelangelo’s frescoes, the =Stanze= apartments for Raphael’s, and the adjoining =Loggia= for his pictured Bible. Again, it is Raphael’s frescoes that lead him to the =Villa Farnesina=, while many another villa charms to-day by the beauty of its gardens and terraces, fountains, cascades, and fish-ponds, shaded alleys and grottos. In innumerable ways it is the accompaniments of Italian Renaissance architecture, as well as the architecture itself, that excite admiration and have their message for ourselves.