The scheme of the interior of the Gesù is a close reproduction of that of St. Peter’s, though the great pilasters are of the composite, instead of the Corinthian, order, and other minor differences are noticeable. It is worthy of remark that the entablature has no ressauts except at the crossing, and the vaulting is raised upon an attic, so that no part of it is hidden from view by the cornice of the entablature, as it is in St. Peter’s. It is also noticeable that, while capricious in the use of elements derived from the antique, Vignola in his church architecture eliminates mediæval forms more completely than most architects of his time. Where in St. Peter’s, for instance, the apses have celled vaults on converging ribs, he employs the plain half-dome of Roman antiquity.
_Questa facciata no fu messa in opera per la morte del architecto_
Fig. 49.—Façade of the Gesù, Vignola.
_Facciata del Giesu come al presente si troua fatta da Iacomo della Portta._
Fig. 50.—Façade of the Gesù, Della Porta.
Vignola’s design for the façade (Fig. [49]) presents the familiar features of his style as already embodied in the earlier façade of St. Andrea, but with additional infractions of propriety, as well as of classic form in its more elaborate details. This façade corresponds in outline with the form of the building, except for the podium of the upper story (which contradicts the roof lines of the side chapels), and the abutting walls of curved outline over the side compartments. The chief aberrations of detail are the broken pediments of the doors and windows, and the barbaric scrollwork and hermæ, the use of which this architect did much to establish. How far the barbarism of breaking the pediment was an independent freak of the Renaissance I do not know. Instances of somewhat similar treatment occur in the Roman architecture of Syria, as in Baalbek (Fig. [51]), where the middle part of the pediment is in retreat of the rest, so that the ends form ressauts. Of the complete removal of a part of the cornice I know no instance in the Roman architecture of antiquity. To this, however, the architects of the later Renaissance were, in their desire for novelty of design, led. But the cornice of a pediment is, like the roof of an entire building, suggestive of shelter for the parts below. The actual necessity for such shelter may be slight, but any justification which the raking cornice has must be for expression, if nothing more, of a sheltering roof to what it surmounts (unless we are to assume that architectural design is a matter of purely fanciful composition of lines with no structural meaning or expression). To cut a piece out of the middle of it is an architectural solecism.
Fig. 51.—Pediment of Baalbek.