# Character of Renaissance Architecture/Chapter 7

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 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.
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.
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.
Fig. 62.—Portico of the Massimi, Rome.
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.
Fig. 63.—Window of the Farnese.
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
Fig. 64—Portal from Serlio.
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.
Fig. 55—Part of façade of the Library of St. Mark.
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. 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.
The façade of the Library of St. Mark has but two stories including the basement, and these are adorned with a Doric
Fig. 66.—Corner of the Parthenon.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 dis
Fig. 70.—Two bays of the Porta del Palio.
posed 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 fiat 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 alia 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.
Fig. 71. — Palazzo Bevilacqua.
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." 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 super-imposed 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.
Fig. 72.—Part of the Portico of Vicenza, from Palladio's book.
pairs, and a balustrade with statues crowning the entablature. This sumptuous monument was a source of inspiration to the ​later architects of the transalpine 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.
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. 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 Sanso-vino'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).
Fig. 73.
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. ​
Fig. 75.—Loggia Bernarda.
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.
Fig. 76.—Window of Palazzo Branzo.
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.
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. 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. 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).
Fig. 77.—Basilica of Shakka.
* ↑ Cf. p. 144.
* ↑ These ornamental features usually have, however, in Gothic art some real structural function.
* ↑ Op. cit., bk. 3, p. 53.
* ↑ Milizia, vol. i, p. 346.
* ↑ Milizia, vol. i, pp. 346-347.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 351.
* ↑ "Sansovino lo sciolse con allungar il fregio quanto bastasse per supplire al difetto di quella porzione di metopa: ed il problema, e 'l ripiego sono un' inezia."
* ↑ Memorie, etc., vol. 2, p. 34.
* ↑ I Quattro Libri dell’ Architettura, bk. 3, p. 41.
* ↑ "Non dubito che questa fabrica non possa esser comparata à gli edifici antichi e annoverata tra le maggiori, e le più belle fabriche che sianu state fatte da gli antichi in quà, si per la grandezza, e per gli ornamenti suoi, come anco per la materia, che è tutta di pietra viva durisima, e sono state tutte le pietre commesse e legate insieme con somma diligenza." Op. cit., bk. 3, p. 41.
* ↑ They were grammatical, not in the sense of using the classic orders with correctness,—this, as we have seen, they did not do,—but in the sense of arranging their architectural details, such as they were, on a basis of grammatical order.
* ↑ Sir William Chambers, in his Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture, London, 1791, p. 121, referring to this form of opening, says, "It is an invention of Scamozzi's."