The Rucellai is in form substantially like the Riccardi and other buildings of its class, but in place of the plain wall surfaces which are appropriate for a building that has no structural framework, we have an order of classic pilasters dividing the face of each story into bays answering to nothing in the real system of construction (Fig. [59]). We thus have here in domestic architecture an instance of that false use of the orders which in church architecture was first introduced in the chapel of the Pazzi. Alberti’s classic tendencies are here shown further in the introduction of a diminutive entablature passing through the smaller arches of the windows, and these arches are merely cut in relief on a solid tympanum (Fig. [59]). It is worthy of notice, too, that the rustication of the masonry of this façade does not mark the true joints. The blocks of stone are in many cases much larger than they appear, channels being cut upon them to simulate joints. The arch of one window, for instance, which by the rustication would appear to be made up of fourteen voussoirs, has in reality only three. The same lack of conformity of the simulated jointing with the true masonry joints is noticeable also in many parts of the façade of the Riccardi, and I know not how general this treatment may be in the architecture of the Renaissance.[89]
The initiative thus given by Alberti was not at once universally followed. The orders did not come into general use in the façades of domestic architecture until the period of the later Renaissance. The most important Florentine palaces of the latter part of the fifteenth century have, as we have seen in the Strozzi, no classic orders. The classic elements of these buildings are confined to details such as the profiling of cornices, and the introduction of dentils and other kindred ornaments, and to the capitals of court arcades.
Early in the sixteenth century a further innovation in the treatment of palace fronts was made in Florence by the Architect Baccio d’Agnolo, whose design for the campanile of Santo Spirito we have already noticed (p. [82]), in the Palazzo Bartolini. This consisted in framing the windows with small orders crowned by pediments (Fig. [60]). Milizia thus refers to this innovation: “This was the first palace with windows adorned with frontispieces and with columns at the doorway carrying architrave, frieze, and cornice. A novelty, like most others, at first disapproved and then idolized. The Florentines all ridiculed Baccio for this new style of architecture, not only with words, but with sonnets, and with jesting devices attached to the building, taunting him with having made a church of a palace.”[90] For the rest, though Baccio d’Agnolo has not adorned the walls of this building with orders, he has marked the stories with entablatures, and placed rusticated pilasters at the angles.
As time went on the spirit of display in domestic architecture increased. Buildings like the Riccardi owe their admirable character largely to their moderation. The well-known remark of Vasari[91] that Cosimo de’ Medici had rejected a scheme for that building which had been prepared by Brunelleschi on the ground that so sumptuous a dwelling for a private citizen might excite envy, indicates the more modest feeling and sense of fitness, which as yet held in check the spirit of ostentation. But the boast of Filippo Strozzi that he would make his great palace excel all others in magnificence betrays the ambition that governed the later builders of the great houses of the Renaissance.
Fig. 60.—Window of the Bartolini.
By the beginning of the sixteenth century the vigour of the Florentine Republic was spent, and its artistic ascendency was declining. Lorenzo de’ Medici had died, and the chief seat of artistic activity was, as we have already seen, transferred to Rome where the conditions were very different from what they had been in Florence during the earlier time. Ideals and aspirations were further changed, and the quest of material splendour was more than ever stimulated under the mundane ambitions of a luxurious and profligate society. Thus it was that in connection with the later neo-classic church architecture already considered there arose a corresponding movement in the erection of sumptuous palatial houses, though still for some time palatial architecture retained much of the earlier moderation in design. The great Roman houses of the early part of the sixteenth century have a dignity and grandeur that go far to redeem their incongruities. It was not, as we shall see in the next chapter, until men like Sansovino, Vignola, and Palladio appeared that the Roman influences bore their full fruit.
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[92] 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.
