Character of Renaissance Architecture

by Charles Herbert Moore

A curious instance of a somewhat similar composition of lines in a Lombard Romanesque portal without an overhanging porch occurs in the façade of the San Pietro in Cielo d’Oro in Pavia (Fig. [84]). Here the arched opening is flanked by tall engaged shafts which carry a narrow string course surmounted by a gable over the crown of the arch, while another string course, on short colonnettes resting on the capitals of the larger shafts, passes over the apex of the gable. But in this case it is only the childish association of members without structural meaning that offends the eye. There is no introduction of forms, like the classic pilasters and entablatures of the portal of Como, that are foreign to the architectural system.

Fig. 85.—Window of nave of Como.

This scheme, with various modifications, became a characteristic one in the Lombard and Venetian Renaissance, and was extensively applied to windows, as in the nave of the same cathedral of Como. The windows of this nave are splayed, and are flanked with pilasters from the capitals of which their archivolts spring, while in some of them diminutive pilasters rise from the same capitals and carry an entablature and pediment over the crown of the arch (Fig. [85]).

A variety of forms occur in these openings of the cathedral of Como, like so many experiments in fanciful composition without any basis of reason. The window, for instance, of the bay adjoining that here represented, seems to show that the designer felt dissatisfied with the small pilaster set upon the larger one, and accordingly omitted it, a moulding on the edge of the spandrel, profiled like the lower member of the crowning entablature, taking its place. But again, as if he now felt that the entablature required a more architectural support, he has in another window reproduced the small pilaster, but instead of a large single one below he has employed two narrow ones, thus giving separate support to the arch and the entablature. The doorway on the north side of the nave presents a further modification of the scheme. Here the jambs and the arch are splayed as before, and a tall column of the ornamental tapering form, already noticed in the windows of the Certosa of Pavia and in the chapel of St. Peter Martyr, is set on either side of the composition. This portal, like the one on the south side, has two entablatures with an arch between, and these columns reach to the upper entablature of which they carry ressauts. No great pediment crowns this doorway, but a tall niche, framed in with an order of diminutive pilasters and surmounted with a small pediment, rises over the centre of the upper entablature. This niche shelters a statue of the Virgin, and is flanked by a statue on either side. Many variants of this ornamental scheme for door and window occur in Lombardy and Venice, and it was reproduced in many other parts of Italy, occurring, as we have seen, even in Rome as in the palace of the Cancelleria and the Palazzo Torlonia.

In the fifteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, the architecture of each principal locality developed peculiarities of style in accordance with its peculiar tastes and conditions. Thus the Renaissance design of Venice has a general character of its own, though it drew some of its materials from Florentine and Lombard sources. Michelozzi had followed the exiled Cosimo de’ Medici to Venice, and Vasari tells us[108] that he made there many drawings and models for private dwellings and public buildings. On the other hand a family of architects and sculptors from Lombardy, known as the Lombardi (Pietro Lombardo and two sons, Santo and Tullio), had come to Venice in the fifteenth century and introduced features from the Lombard Renaissance.

Among the churches of the Venetian Renaissance San Zaccaria is one of the earliest, and its interior exhibits a singular mixture of those mediæval and pseudo-classic forms of which the Italian architects produced such an astonishing variety. To an apse with a half dome and pseudo-Gothic substructure is joined a nave of three square bays, the first of which is covered with a dome on pendentives, while each of the others has a plain groined vault. These vaults spring from an entablature which crowns the great arcade, and is returned on the ends of the building, with ressauts on corbels at the imposts. The aisles have oblong groined vaults on pointed transverse arches springing from corbels on the wall side, and tied with iron rods. The main proportions conform with those of the so-called Italian Gothic churches, the great arcades of the nave, and consequently the aisle vaulting, being relatively very high. The most singular feature of this interior is the column (Fig. [86]) of nondescript character, and a variant of the tapering Lombard Renaissance shaft of Pavia and Como. It consists of a shaft of pseudo-Corinthian form raised on a high octagonal pedestal, with a very wide and richly moulded base.

Fig. 86.

The church of San Salvatore, dating from the close of the fifteenth century, and attributed to the architect Tullio Lombardo, though begun by Spavento,[109] has a modified Byzantine structural scheme applied to a long nave with three domes on pendentives separated by short sections of barrel vaulting. The supports (Fig. [87]) of this vaulting are peculiar, and are like the piers of the nave of St. Andrea of Mantua modified by piercing them both transversely and longitudinally so as to leave four slender solid parts at the angles (two of which are engaged in the aisle wall), the void being covered with a diminutive dome on pendentives. The plan of the structure as a whole suggests this comparison with St. Andrea, but the character of the supports suggests their derivation from the piers of the church of St. Mark. These last are square masses of masonry pierced longitudinally and transversely so as to leave four heavy solids as in Figure 88, the void in this case being covered with a diminutive groined vault. In San Salvatore the solids are greatly reduced in volume, and are faced with neo-classic pilasters, above which the pier is solid, and is faced with an entablature surmounted by an attic from which the vaulting springs. The use of an attic in an interior, and especially as a support for vaulting, is one of those architectural aberrations with which the Renaissance has made us familiar. I know not when or where it first occurred, but there can be few earlier instances than this. It was not seldom introduced by the architects of the later Renaissance, and, as we shall see, by Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul’s cathedral. It is worthy of notice that the system of San Salvatore is that of the church of St. Mark modified by lightening the piers in the way that we have seen, and by the application of neo-classic details.