Character of Renaissance Architecture

by Charles Herbert Moore

Fig. 97.—Renaissance Arabesque.

A great deal of this carving is in close imitation of Roman models, as a comparison of a fragment of Roman arabesque from the Museum of Florence (Fig. [96]) with a fragment of Renaissance arabesque from the Ducal Palace of Gubbio (Fig. [97]) will show. But in elegance, delicacy, and subtlety of line and surface, the best carving of the Renaissance is superior to that of ancient Rome. The linear basis of such design is highly artificial, consisting of formal scrolls and meanders, and the leafage and other forms introduced are treated artificially without being finely conventionalized. The conventions of this art are not the natural result of a true sense of ornamental abstraction, of architectural fitness, and of the nature of materials. They do not manifest a fine appreciation of the beauty of the object conventionalized. They are factitious conventions which often do violence at once to the forms of nature, and to the true principles of design. The ear of barley, and the flower stalks, in Plate [IX], a characteristic work of the Lombardi in the church of Santa Maria dei Miracole in Venice, illustrate this. The rigid parallel straight sides and the square end of the barley ear, and the flaccid sinuousness of the flower stalk, are expressive of no architectural or material conditions to which the artist had to conform. They express nothing but the designer’s insensitiveness to the character and beauty of the natural forms. Compare the ear of barley (Fig. [98]) from an ancient Greek coin in the British Museum.[111] Though severely conventionalized, this representation finely expresses the true character of the real object. Such details as the rectangular barley ear and nerveless flower stalk in Plate [IX] would seem to indicate an incapacity on the part of the designer to appreciate those elements of beauty in plant life which may be made effective in ornamental carving, were they not associated with other details that manifest a fuller sense of vital character. The foliation of the scrolls in the same relief (Plate [IX]) has a character which makes us wonder how a designer who could so finely render the nervous life of leafage could associate with this leafage the lifeless details just noticed, and the further monstrosities of the axial composition including the characterless grotesque animals out of which the scroll leafage issues. The symmetrical Arabesque scheme of the whole, and the nonsensical details of the central part, are from the Roman source,[112] while the leafage, though also cast in the Roman form, owes much of its best quality to the inspiration of Gothic art. The qualities that give their subtle charm to such conventionalized forms elude complete analysis and definition, but they are based on the proportions, curvature, and relations of lines and surfaces that belong to the organic forms of nature.

Fig. 98.—Greek coin, magnified.

Such subtle beauty of leafage is exceptional in the ornamental design of the Renaissance. The carver of the fifteenth century generally misses the vigour of line, the finer surface flexures, and the expression of organic structure shown in the supremely fine details of the reliefs by the Lombardi. The convolutions of Renaissance design are apt to be more formal and the leading lines less springy. In some cases the finer qualities of curvature are wholly wanting, as in the scrolls that border the bronze door-valves of St. Peter’s in Rome by the Florentine sculptor Filarete (Fig. [99]). In these scrolls the heavy and lifeless character of the poorest Roman models is reproduced. The finish of these carvings, in the better examples, is usually elaborate, and in such work as that of the Lombardi in Venice it is exquisite. But in many cases it is mere surface smoothing without expressive character, as in the leafage of Benedetto da Maiano in the pulpit of Santa Croce of Florence, where the expression of the beautiful leaf anatomy is almost wholly polished out.

Fig. 99.—Arabesque by Filarete, Rome.

It is a fundamental weakness of this style of ornamentation that it is so largely made up of artificial convolutions and formal symmetries. Reduced to its linear elements, it mainly consists either of an axial line with scrolls and weak curves set symmetrically on either side of it, or of a formal meander with alternating scrolls. The wearisome repetition of these two schemes of composition is a characteristic of the art of the Renaissance. Many changes are wrung on these primary motives, but no possible variation of them can relieve their dulness. That they are derived from an ancient source does not justify their use. They are not, however, drawn from the best ancient source. In Greek art elements of a kindred nature had been treated in a finer way, with exquisite moderation of curvature and vitality of line. But the ornamental designers of the Renaissance drew their inspiration from the Græco-Roman travesties of Greek ornamentation, such as the tiresome arabesques that were painted on the walls of Pompeian houses.