Character of Renaissance Architecture

by Charles Herbert Moore

Fig. 70.—Two bays of the Porta del Palio.

The works of Sanmichele show an equally exclusive employment of classic features, with the same freedom in deforming them and using them in novel and ungainly ways. In the Porta del Palio of Verona, a characteristic example of his work, he has used a pseudo-Doric order in which the columns are fluted after the Ionic manner with fillets between the channels, and are raised on heavy square plinths. The columns are disposed in pairs, dividing the façade into three wide intervals and four narrow ones (Fig. [70]), and each wide space has a large rectangular recess spanned by a flat arch, with a sculptured keystone in the form of a console, under the entablature of the order. At the level of the soffit of this arch the wall is crowned by a cornice passing behind the columns. The central bay has a large rectangular portal without jamb mouldings, and in each lateral bay is a small doorway framed with classic jamb mouldings and a pediment on consoles. Over each of these openings is a secondary flat arch with deep voussoirs reaching to the soffit of the upper one. Pilasters take the place of columns on the angles of the façade, and the walls are rusticated. In the façade of the opposite side the scheme is varied, and is plainer. The columns of the order are disposed as before, but instead of being fluted they are rusticated like the walls, and have no bases, while a large round-arched opening, with impost mouldings and a plain keystone, fills each wide interval.

Of Sanmichele’s palace fronts the best in Verona is, I think, that of the Palazzo Canossa, where over a high rusticated basement he has placed a shallow order of Corinthian pilasters in pairs, set close together, on a podium with ressauts. This order embraces both the principal floor and a low story above it, and has considerable elegance. The effect of the whole front is broad and quiet, save for the heavy balustrade with showy statues which crowns it. It will be seen, as we pass in review these different compositions, that the range of eccentricities of design embodied in them is as great as we find in the works of the earlier Renaissance, though they show fewer mediæval characteristics. The Palazzo Pompei alla Vittoria, also by Sanmichele, for instance, has a Doric order over a plain rusticated basement, like that of the Porta del Palio, but with the columns equally spaced, except that the central intercolumniation is made wider than the others in conformity with the width of the portal beneath it, and a pilaster is coupled with a column on each angle. Plain round-arched windows occupy the intervals between the columns, and a corbel in the form of a sculptured head is set under the entablature of the order over the crown of each arch. The plain windows of the basement have clumsy rectangular sills on consoles.

Fig. 71.—Palazzo Bevilacqua.

A more elaborate design by the same architect is that of the front of the Palazzo Bevilacqua (Fig. [71]). Here an order of rusticated Doric pilasters, supporting an entablature with channelled consoles in the place of triglyphs, and a cornice surmounted with a balustrade forming a balcony to the story above, divides the basement wall into alternately wide and narrow bays. A round-arched window in each bay has a heavy keystone in the form of a sculptured bust, which forms at the same time a corbel to the entablature. The unequal spacing of the pilasters leads to an awkward irregularity in the spacing of the channelled consoles which do duty as triglyphs in the frieze. One of them is set over the centre of each pilaster, and the spaces over the wide intervals each give place to three of them, while over the narrow intervals there is too much room for one and not enough for two. The designer has chosen to have but one, and the effect of the resulting wider spacing over the narrow bays is both unpleasant and unclassic. The upper story has a still more barocco character. A Corinthian order with columns of alternately straight and spiral channelling, spaced in conformity with the pilasters of the basement and raised on pedestals, frames in a series of round-arched windows which are alternately large and small in correspondence with the magnitudes of the intervals. The window of each wide bay nearly fills the space enclosed by the order, and a keystone in the arch forms a corbel to the entablature, while the spandrels are adorned with sculptures in high relief after the manner of those of the Roman triumphal arches. Over the smaller arch in each narrow bay the spandrels are in relief and are crowned with a pediment surmounted by a horizontal cornice on a shallow ressaut corresponding to that of the spandrels, while over all this a plain oblong rectangular opening lights a low top story which is not otherwise expressed in the composition. In these narrow bays the corbels are introduced under the entablature as in the wider ones, and carved festoons fill the spaces between them and the capitals on either side. It is a capricious scheme, by which the designer has sought to quicken the jaded sensibilities of people surfeited with architectural aberrations. Of course the arrangement of these elements is based on a certain rhythmical order which often appears to be thought a sufficient justification of such meaningless compositions; but order and rhythm do not alone constitute a fine work of art.

Of the secular architecture of Vignola the Palazzo Caprarola, in the hill country between Rome and Viterbo, is the most important. This building, says Milizia, “is without doubt the grandest and the most beautiful work of this great artist.”[99] The building, which is illustrated by elaborate drawings in Vignola’s own book, has in plan the form of a regular pentagon enclosing a circular court. The form is, of course, given from pure caprice, and imposes needless difficulties, as if with the sole purpose of ingeniously solving them. The basement, with a salient fortress-like bastion on each angle, is in two stages, of which the lower one has a batter wall. Over this are the principal story of the state apartments, and two other stories containing upward of eighty sleeping chambers. Slightly projecting bays are formed on the angles, as in the Cancelleria at Rome, and each façade is divided into two stages by superimposed orders of pilasters on high pedestals. The projecting bays have rusticated quoins instead of pilasters, and the wall of the first story of each of these bays is rusticated. An open loggia with five arches in the intervals of the order, and one enclosed arch at each end, reaches across the main front of the principal story between the salient bays, and the main portal is an arched opening, with rusticated jambs in relief and an entablature, in the upper stage of the basement. This portal is reached by a double ramp mounting an outer terrace and the lower basement stage. Below this, giving access to the lower basement, is a rusticated portico with an order of rusticated pilasters and three open arches flanked by two narrow enclosed bays with niches, and crowned with a balustrade.

The circular court has an open arcade of widely spaced arches in two stages, of which the lower one has a plain rusticated wall, and the upper one an Ionic order with columns in pairs, and a balustrade with statues crowning the entablature. This sumptuous monument was a source of inspiration to the later architects of the trans-alpine Renaissance, and De l’Orme’s oval courts of the Tuileries, and the circular courts of the palace of Whitehall by Inigo Jones, suggest its influence.

Fig. 72.—Part of the Portico of Vicenza, from Palladio’s book.