Architecture: Gothic and Renaissance

by T. Roger Smith

VENICE, VICENZA, AND VERONA.

The next great group of Renaissance buildings is to be found at Venice, where the style was adopted with some reluctance, and not till far on in the sixteenth century. At first we meet with some admixture of Gothic elements; as, for example, in the rebuilding of the internal quadrangle of the Ducal Palace. Pointed arches are partly employed in this work, which was completed about the middle of the sixteenth century. In the earlier palaces—which, it will be remembered, are comparatively narrow buildings standing side by side on the banks of the canals—the storeys are well marked; the windows are round headed with smaller arches within the main ones; the orders when introduced are kept subordinate; the windows are grouped together in the central portion of the front, as was the case with those of the Gothic palaces, and very little use is made of rusticated masonry. The Vendramini, Cornaro, and Trevisano Palaces conform to this type. To the same period belong one or two fine churches, the most famous being San Zacaria, a building with a very delicately panelled front, and a semicircular pediment in lieu of a gable; here, too, semicircular-headed openings are made use of. In many of these churches and other buildings, a beautiful ornament, which may be regarded as typical of early Venetian Renaissance, is to be found. It is the shell ornament, so called from its resemblance to a flat semicircular shell, ribbed from the centre to the circumference (Fig. [67]).

Fig. 67.—Italian Shell Ornament.

As time went on the style was matured into one of great richness, not to say ostentation, with which the names of Sansovino, Sanmichele, Palladio, and Scamozzi are identified as the prominent architects of the latter part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this city of palaces Sansovino, also a very fine sculptor, built the celebrated Library of St. Mark, facing the Ducal Palace, which has been followed very closely in the design of the Carlton Club, Pall Mall. Here, as in the splendid Cornaro Palace, the architect relied chiefly upon the columns and entablatures of the orders, combined with grand arcades enriched by sculpture, so arranged as to occupy the spaces between the columns; almost the whole of the wall-space was so taken up, and the basement only was covered with rustication, often rough worked, as at the beautiful Palazzo Pompeii, Verona, and the Grimani Palace, Venice.

“Sanmichele’s works are characterised chiefly by their excellent proportions, their carefully studied detail, their strength, and their beauty (qualities so difficult to combine). We believe that the buildings of this great architect and engineer at Verona are pre-eminent in their peculiar style over those of any other artist of the sixteenth century. In a different, but no less meritorious, manner are the buildings designed by Sansovino; they are characterised by a more sculptural and ornamental character; order over order with large arched voids in the interspaces of the columns producing a pictorial effect which might have led his less gifted followers into a false style, but for the example of the celebrated Palladio.”—M. D. W.

To the latest time of the Renaissance in Venice belongs the picturesque domed church of St. Maria della Salute, conspicuous in many views of the Grand Canal, a building which is a work of real genius in spite of what is considered its false taste. It dates from 1632. The architect is Longhena.

Fig. 68.—The Church of the Redentore, Venice. (1576.)

An almost endless series of palaces and houses can be found in Venice, all of them rich, but few of great extent, for every foot of space had to be won from the sea by laborious engineering. There are some features which never fail to present themselves, and which are consequences of the conditions under which the structures were designed. All rise from the water, and require to admit of gondolas coming under the walls; hence there is always a principal central entrance with steps in front, but this entrance never has any sort of projecting portico or porch, and is never very much larger than the other openings in the front. As a straight frontage to the water had to be preserved, we hardly ever meet with such a thing as a break or projection of any sort; but the Venetian architects have found other means of giving interest to their elevations, and it is to the very restrictions imposed by circumstances that we owe the great originality displayed in their earlier buildings. The churches do not usually front directly on to the water; and though they are almost all good of their kind, they are far more commonplace than the palaces. The system of giving variety to the façade of the secular buildings by massing openings near the centre, has been already referred to. Both shadow and richness were also aimed at in the employment of projecting balconies; in fact the two usually go together, for the great central window or group of windows mostly has a large and rich balcony belonging to it.

Not far from Venice is Vicenza, and here Palladio, whose best buildings in Venice are churches, such, for example, as the Redentore (Fig. [68]), enjoyed an opportunity of erecting a whole group of palaces, the fronts of which are extremely remarkable as designs; though, being executed in brick and plastered, they are now falling to ruin. There is much variety in them, and while some of them rely upon his device of lofty pilasters to include two storeys of the building under one storey of architectural treatment, others are handled differently. In all a singularly fine feeling for proportion and for the appropriate omission as well as introduction of ornament is to be detected. The worst defect of these fronts is, however, that they appear more like masks than the exteriors of buildings, for there is little obvious connection between the features of the exterior and anything which we may suppose to exist inside the building. The finest architectural work left behind by Palladio in this city are, however, the great arcades with which he surrounded the Basilica, a vast building of the middle ages already alluded to. These arcades are two storeys high, and are rich, yet vigorous; they ornament the great structure, the roof of which may be seen rising behind, without overpowering it.