Character of Renaissance Architecture

by Charles Herbert Moore

PALAZZO DEL CONSIGLIO

Verona

Of the later palace architecture of Venice it is unnecessary to give any extended analysis because it is less distinctly Venetian, and belongs more fully to the so-called Roman Renaissance style which is essentially uniform in character in all parts of the country. In these later palace fronts the main divisions of the typical Venetian scheme persist indeed, but they are so slightly emphasized, and so overladen with heavy orders, that they lose their proper effect. In Sansovino’s Palazzo Cornaro, for instance, already described (p. [124]), these main divisions of the front are hardly noticeable in a general view. The general effect is of evenly spaced pairs of columns in each of the upper stories. It is not until we examine the composition closely that we perceive the narrower proportions of the three middle openings. The same is true of the façade of the Palazzo Grimani by Sanmichele, though in this case the grouping is different, the columns being set in pairs in the lateral bays only. Even in the still later and heavy rococo design of the Palazzo Pesaro by the architect Longhena, which is based on the scheme of the Library of St. Mark, the unequal main divisions of the Venetian palace type are still preserved.

Among examples of north Italian Renaissance palace architecture outside of Venice the well-known Palazzo del Consiglio of Verona (Plate [VIII]) presents a mediæval broletto scheme dressed out in Renaissance details which it would be better without. The building has but one story over an open arcaded basement. The arcade is in two divisions of four arches each, the arches springing from short columns raised on square pedestals, and the pedestals connected by a balustrade. A central pier and a pier at each end enclose these divisions, and on the face of each pier is a shallow pilaster supporting a narrow entablature which extends across the whole front, with a corbelled capital over the central column of each division to support the entablature in the long intervals between the pilasters. The upper story is divided into four equal parts by pilasters set over the pilasters and corbels of the basement. These pilasters are on ressauts of a podium over corresponding ressauts in the entablature below, and the crowning entablature is likewise broken with ressauts. A twin-arched opening with central colonnette, flanked by pilasters and crowned with an entablature and curved pediment, occupies the middle of each division of this story, and the walls are incrusted with elaborate marble inlay. The general form and proportions of this monument are exceedingly fine, but in respect to these qualities it belongs to the Middle Ages and not to the Renaissance. To the simple arcade and plain walled superstructure the neo-classic details are inappropriate and meaningless.

Fig. 94.—One bay of basement of the Ospedale Maggiore.

Another northern Renaissance building of the broletto type is the Palazzo Comunale of Brescia, in which we have a basement arcade of three arches on heavy piers, with an engaged Corinthian order adjusted in the Roman manner, and over this a single story in retreat divided into three wide bays by pilasters carrying a heavy entablature. A square-headed window in each bay is framed by an order of smaller pilasters the entablature of which reaches to the soffit of the crowning entablature. In those parts of the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan which were designed about the middle of the fifteenth century, by the Florentine architect, Antonio Filarete, the larger features are of mixed and debased mediæval character with no application of classic orders. The building is of brick with elaborate ornaments of terra-cotta, and has but two stories including the basement. The basement has a blind arcade of round arches on stumpy columns with Corinthianesque capitals, and a compound opening of two pointed arches under a larger pointed arch is set in each bay (Fig. [94]). The faces of the jambs and archivolts of these openings are heavily adorned with mouldings and foliate ornaments in terra-cotta relief, while the archivolts of the arcade above have more simple neo-classic profiling, and more refined and conventional foliate ornamentation. The window-sills are on coupled corbels of heavy and inelegant form, and the whole arcade is raised on a high base with ressauts under the columns. Medallions with busts in high relief are set in the tympanums of the windows and in the spandrels of the arcade, while a wide frieze somewhat like an entablature crowns this part of the composition. The upper story has a plain brick wall with windows like those of the basement enclosed within rectangular panels.

Fig. 95.