FIG. 167.

—PLAN OF FARNESE PALACE.
[ Larger View]

FARNESE PALACE, by many esteemed the finest in Italy. It was begun in 1530 for Alex. Farnese (Paul III.) by A. da San Gallo the Younger, with Vignola’s collaboration. The simple but admirable plan is shown in Fig. 167, and the courtyard, the most imposing in Italy, in Fig. 168. The exterior is monotonous, but the noble cornice by Michael Angelo measurably redeems this defect. The fine vaulted columnar entrance vestibule, the court and the salons, make up an ensemble worthy of the great architects who designed it. The loggia toward the river was added by G. della Porta in 1580.

VILLAS. The Italian villa of this pleasure-loving period afforded full scope for the most playful fancies of the architect, decorator, and landscape gardener. It comprised usually a dwelling, a casino or amusement-house, and many minor edifices, summer-houses, arcades, etc., disposed in extensive grounds laid out with terraces, cascades, and shaded alleys. The style was graceful, sometimes trivial, but almost always pleasing, making free use of stucco enrichments, both internally and externally, with abundance of gilding and frescoing. The Villa Madama (1516), by Raphael, with stucco-decorations by Giulio Romano, though incomplete and now dilapidated, is a noted example of the style. More complete, the Villa of Pope Julius, by Vignola (1550), belongs by its purity of style to this period; its façade well exemplifies the simplicity, dignity, and fine proportions of this master’s work. In addition to these Roman villas may be mentioned the V. Medici (1540, by Annibale Lippi; now the French Academy of Rome); the Casino del Papa in the Vatican Gardens, by Pirro Ligorio (1560); the V. Lante, near Viterbo, and the V. d’Este, at Tivoli, as displaying among almost countless others the Italian skill in combining architecture and gardening.

FIG. 168.

—ANGLE OF COURT OF FARNESE PALACE, ROME.

CHURCHES AND CHAPELS. This period witnessed the building of a few churches of the first rank, but it was especially prolific in memorial, votive, and sepulchral chapels added to churches already existing, like the Chigi Chapel of S. M. del Popolo, by Raphael. The earlier churches of this period generally followed antecedent types, with the dome as the central feature dominating a cruciform plan, and simple, unostentatious and sometimes uninteresting exteriors. Among them may be mentioned: at Pistoia, S. M. del Letto and S. M. dell’ Umiltà, the latter a fine domical rotunda by Ventura Vitoni (1509), with an imposing vestibule; at Venice, S. Salvatore, by Tullio Lombardo (1530), an admirable edifice with alternating domical and barrel-vaulted bays; S. Georgio dei Grechi (1536), by Sansovino, and S. M. Formosa; at Todi, the Madonna della Consolazione (1510), by Cola da Caprarola, a charming design with a high dome and four apses; at Montefiascone, the Madonna delle Grazie, by Sammichele (1523), besides several churches at Bologna, Ferrara, Prato, Sienna, and Rome of almost or quite equal interest. In these churches one may trace the development of the dome as an external feature, while in S. Biagio, at Montepulciano, the effort was made by Ant. da San Gallo the Elder to combine with it the contrasting lines of two campaniles, of which, however, but one was completed.