“I know not[20] (says his friend) whether the taste for ornament, for which he subsequently became remarkable, was natural or acquired. But he was full of admiration for the Egyptians’ practice of completely covering their buildings with sculptured hieroglyphics or painting; and he exulted in the (then recent) discovery, that the Parthenon, the model of Greek purity, was itself overlaid with ornament. His opinion was that ornament should be so limited in size as to increase the apparent scale of the building, and that it should be so kept down by lowness of relief, or by marginal framing, as not to interfere with the main outlines. These rules observed, he seemed to think that enrichment could never be overdone—an opinion which he continued to hold to the end of his career.
“This principle of subordination of ornament was paramount with him. Perfection of design and workmanship were lost upon him, where ornament destroyed the essential outlines. To the Corinthian capital he had a positive dislike: even its finest specimens failed to satisfy him. For his idea was that in large capitals, however enriched by foliage, the apparent capability of supporting the entablature should still be preserved. The germ of this idea was probably found in the Egyptian capitals, many of which he very carefully studied and sketched. For years a new Corinthian-like order floated before his mind; but, as he had no opportunity of attempting it on a grand scale, his ideas were never carried out; for it was the rule with him, that without the spur of reality his genius slept.”
Italian architecture had hitherto attracted him but little in comparison with Greek; but he began to perceive how much more capable it was of adaptation to modern requirements, and to study it in that view. “By degrees its beauties grew upon him, although he long retained the opinion that it should be purified and refined, in fact treated à la Grecque. He delighted in every example of what he considered Greek feeling, and, as a notable one, in the grand fragment of entablature in the Colonna garden, the so-called ‘frontispiece of Nero.’ It was some years before the traces of this Greek influence disappeared from his designs.”
The building, which first inspired him with admiration for the Italian style, was the Farnese Palace. The principal front he greatly admired; he considered that the “imposing effect of its vast mass was greatly enhanced by the unbroken lines of the entablature and string-courses, the number and relative smallness of the windows, the complete subordination of all horizontal divisions to the crowning cornice, and the consequent full effect of the entire height.” The rear front seemed to him to be spoilt by the centre, which did not harmonize with the rest, and (by “a most unwarrantable wickedness”) broke the general entablature, and moreover outraged his feelings by the superposition of three orders (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian). The interior courtyard he liked less still; and, among other criticisms, he noticed here what seemed to him at all times offensive, the solidity of the upper story, resting on two arcaded courses below.
The Florentine palaces, especially the Strozzi, confirmed the general impression made by the Farnese, “and from this time a grand cornice, without an order, became his beau-ideal of a street front;” but he noticed that few façades had the feature, which he thought all but necessary, an important basement, to serve as a kind of pedestal and “balance” the great cornice. The Strozzi Palace, “vast and imposing” as it was, was, however, rather a study than an example; its enormous height and masses of solid wall between the tiers of windows were unfit for use in England; and the characteristic windows, with their central mullions, he thought inconvenient for use, and perhaps inadmissible in pure Italian architecture.
Two of Bramante’s palaces at Rome, the Cancelleria and the Palazzo dei Rei d’Inghilterra, at first pleased him much by their general character of solidity and breadth, and in the former case he noticed with delight the delicacy both of design and execution in the ornaments, and the perfect finish of every detail. There appeared, however, a want of boldness in the low relief of the great fronts, which seemed tame after the Farnese. “But his great objection was to the use of two orders, even when they were in low relief, and when the unity of the height was preserved by the importance of the upper cornice. The best examples of North Italy could not reconcile him to this ‘piling of house upon house.’ In later days the beauties of the Banqueting-house at Whitehall so prevailed with him, that he frequently used order upon order in his own designs: but hardly ever without breaking the entablatures. By the continuous vertical lines so produced the two stories were united, and his love of unity satisfied. But at Rome this expedient would have shocked him as barbarous.”
Before he left Italy he acquired a taste for greater luxuriance of ornament and greater boldness of outline, and looked on the style of Bramante as fit only for small works and for interiors. “The Villa Pandolfini at Florence proved to him how much could be done, even in a front of small extent, by means of a good frieze and cornice. He noticed as defects the stunted proportions of the windows and the continuation of the entablatures across the piers between them; but above all he disliked the great projection of the lower story. For this so distinctly broke up the elevation into two stories that the cornice and frieze, well-proportioned to the entire height, appeared overpowering. But notwithstanding these defects, when he was at work on the street-front of the Travellers’ Club, no building had so much influence in determining its general style as the Villa Pandolfini.”
The palatial fronts at Vicenza and Venice did not take the same hold upon him as those at Rome and Florence. “The Library of St. Mark at Venice, the greater Porto Palace by Palladio at Vicenza, and others of the same kind, had not only the cardinal vice of superimposed orders, but were offensive by the multiplicity and prominence of their details.... To engaged columns—’colonnades walled up’—he had a great dislike; and when, as at the Board of Trade, he had to employ them, he always relieved them from the wall by grounds or margins. Even then they never thoroughly satisfied him. The disposition of the windows (grouped in the centre) in some of the smaller Gothic and other palaces at Venice was noted by him with approval, and was not forgotten when he was designing the garden-front of the Travellers’ Club. Of palace fronts, in which an order was employed, he was most struck with those of the public prisons at Venice and Palladio’s Thiene Palace at Vicenza.”
The Ducal Palace, magnificent as he felt it to be, did not satisfy him. Of the beauty of the arcaded stories he was fully sensible, nor did he object to arcaded exteriors in general. “But no consideration could reconcile him to arcades or colonnades supporting, as here, a heavy mass of building. Whatever might be the character of the superstructure, he required that the lower part of the building should be comparatively solid and plain; the reverse appeared unnatural. In the finest portico he was not satisfied unless the basement (or the steps) was equal in mass to the pediment above. Even in the river-front of his new Palace at Westminster he rejected the idea (once entertained) of introducing a cloister; and was so jealous of the solidity and plainness of his basement, that he grudged every window and would hardly enrich a gateway.”
In the study of details of arrangement he was somewhat discouraged by considerations of the great differences between Italy and England as to climate and life. “The open cortile, surrounded with arches or colonnades, was a feature which delighted him, and which he often longed to introduce. There was one in his first design for the Reform Club. But in England he felt that a central hall had the advantage both in convenience and in effect. He suggested in after years the covering in of the area of the Royal Exchange and of the still more spacious area of the British Museum. His delight in a great central hall became a passion.”