Character of Renaissance Architecture

by Charles Herbert Moore

The sacristy (Fig. [79]) was built immediately after the church, in the form of an octagon about eight metres in diameter. It is covered with an octagonal dome lighted by a circular opening in each of its sides just above the springing level. The walls of the interior are divided into two stages, the lower one having segmental niches alternating with shallow rectangular recesses, one on each side of the polygon except that of the entrance, while the stage above has a gallery, like a triforium, in the thickness of the wall, with a pair of round-arched openings in each bay. The dome is enclosed within a drum of brick which is covered by a low-pitched timber roof.

The ornamental details of the interior are all of stucco, and consist of two superimposed false orders of pilasters set in the angles, and broken on plan so as to fit them, the entablature of each order having a ressaut over each pilaster, and the surfaces of the friezes and pilasters being profusely enriched with ornaments in relief. But these details are said to have been extensively worked over in later times, so that it is doubtful whether any correct idea of the original character of this interior can now be formed, except as to its larger features.

The monument is a diminutive adaptation, in simplified form, of a local mediæval type of building of which San Vitale of Ravenna appears to have been the original example, and San Lorenzo of Milan an offshoot. There are points of similarity between the sacristy of San Satiro and the church of the Consolazione of Todi (Fig. [36], p. 76) that go far to determine their common authorship. The superimposed pilasters broken into the angles of a polygon, the niches in the lower bays, and the ribs on the surfaces of the vault rising from the pilasters[105] are similar in both.

A curious domed structure of the early Renaissance in Milan is the east end of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The dome is hemispherical, and is raised on a drum resting on pendentives over a square area. The most noticeable part of the composition is the exterior, which completely masks the inside. The drum (Fig. [80]) is a polygon of sixteen sides, and is in two stages, the lower one of which is solid, and rises above the springing of the vault, while the upper stage, in the form of an open arcaded gallery, with an attic in retreat, reaches far above the haunch of the dome which is covered with a low-pitched roof of timber crowned with a lantern. The lower stage has an order of pilasters with a nondescript entablature, having an enormously high frieze ornamented with an engaged balustrade. A pair of square-headed windows with mullions, surmounted with pediments, opens through each face of the polygon, except the four which fall over the piers of the interior. Against each of these sides a turret rises, forming an abutment. A panelled podium crowns the entablature of this lower stage, and upon it the shafted arcade of the top story rests. The north and south sides of the square beneath have each a low apse, while on the east is a rectangular choir with an apse like the other two.

The architectural treatment of this exterior is not expressive of the inside. The square parts are divided into four stages answering to nothing within, and the lower three of these stages are carried around the apses. The wall surfaces are broken into rectangular panellings by mouldings and pilasters, every alternate pilaster in the third stage having a tapering ornamental member, like the window shafts of the Certosa of Pavia, worked in relief on its face; and the panels are adorned with disks and medallions. Like most of the early Renaissance architecture of Milan, this building is entirely of brick with ornaments of terra-cotta.

Fig. 80.—Santa Maria delle Grazie.

The design is attributed to Bramante,[106] and it has features that lend support to belief in this authorship. The encircling arcade at the top suggests the encircling colonnade of the same architect’s subsequent design for the dome of St. Peter’s. It may not be unlikely that this arcade, wrought while the author was under the influence of the local Lombard Romanesque, suggested the idea of the encircling colonnade after he had come under the severer classic influence in Rome. The alternation of pilasters in the top story of the apses, with the two intercolumns over each interval in the stage below, corresponds to the design of the interior of the sacristy of S. Satiro.

In the chapel of St. Peter Martyr of the church of Sant’Eustorgio, attributed to the Florentine architect Michelozzi, we have a circular celled vault on salient ribs, like Brunelleschi’s vault of the Pazzi. This vault is enclosed within a drum carried on pendentives, and is lighted by a circular opening in the drum under each alternate vault cell. The drum is polygonal on the outside, is carried up far above the haunch of the vault, and is covered with a low-pitch roof of timber crowned with a tall lantern. The lower walls of the interior of the square beneath this vault have an order of pilasters, and over the entablature of this order are arched windows, one on the north and the other on the south side, each of which has a mullion and jamb shafts of the Certosa tapering type, and pseudo-Gothic tracery. Most of the details of this interior are of stone, which give it a more monumental character than the buildings before noticed have. The outside is of brick, the square part being plain, with simple angle buttresses, and crowned with a cornice of classic profiling. Pinnacles made up of neo-classic details rise from the angles, and the drum is adorned with an order of pilasters, and with moulded circular panels alternating with circular openings. The building as a whole has the moderation of the works of the early Florentine Renaissance, and is in noticeable contrast to the more florid designs of this region already noticed.

A somewhat later example of ecclesiastical architecture of the Renaissance in Milan is the church of the Monastero Maggiore, dating from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and said to have been designed by Dolcebono, a pupil of Bramante. This is a rectangular structure without aisles, having round-arched pseudo-Gothic vaulting, and divided into two parts by a screen across the middle, and into two stories by superimposed orders of pilasters. In each bay of the ground story is a deep round-arched rectangular recess in the thickness of the wall, and over each of these an open gallery with two colonnettes and two small jamb pilasters carrying an entablature over each of the lateral spaces so formed, and an arch over the central one, an early instance of a form of compound opening that was much used in the architecture of the later Renaissance.[107]