Fig. 107.—Leafage of San Gallo.
Fig. 108.—Relief of the Scala d’Oro.
Fig. 109.
The grotesque, which enters largely into these ornamental compositions, is uniformly weak and characterless. This has been already noticed (p. [170]) in the work of the Lombardi. It is equally marked in all other neo-classic representations of imaginary creatures. The southern genius appears never to have been capable of conceiving the grotesque in an imaginative way. That power appears to have belonged exclusively to the northern races. The monster of the Renaissance, like his Roman ancestor, has no organic life, no suggestion of reality, and therefore no impressiveness comparable to that of the grotesque creature of the Gothic carver. And not only is the grotesque of the Renaissance unimaginative and insipid, but its forced monstrosities not seldom have a repulsive vulgarity, as well as a structureless incoherence. Take, for instance, the silly creatures in the relief of the Scala d’Oro in the Ducal Palace of Venice by Sansovino (Fig. [108]). These nondescript monsters, without anatomy, and without point or meaning of any kind, are merely disgusting when we attend to anything more than the ornamental lines in the abstract, and even these lines are without any fine qualities. The masks ending in leafage (Fig. [109]), from a pilaster in the church of the Miracole in Venice, are fantastical, but neither witty nor effectively grotesque; and the _Putti_ treated in the same way, so frequently introduced, are equally pointless, and without particular merit as design.
CHAPTER XI
ARCHITECTURE OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE
On the north of the Alps the Renaissance had not the same meaning that it had in Italy, and in France, where its influence was first felt, the art naturally assumed a different character. The term “Renaissance” is not, in fact, properly applicable here, for the French people had not had a classic past, and the adoption of architectural forms derived from classic antiquity was not at all natural for them. Through the developments of a noble history they had acquired and perfected a peculiar genius which had found expression in forms of art that were radically different from those of ancient times; and in now departing from the principles of this art they did violence to their own native traditions and ideals.
It has been often affirmed that French architecture was but superficially changed by the Renaissance influence, and that its essential character survived beneath the Italian dress.[114] This is not wholly true. The Italian influence did effect a fundamental change in this architecture by giving it, as we shall presently see, a factitious, in place of a natural, character. This point has been overlooked by those writers who have maintained that the French artistic genius suffered no loss of integrity while yielding to the Renaissance movement.
But it must not be forgotten that the native art had lost its best character long before the Italian influence supervened. The finest Gothic impulse was spent before the close of the thirteenth century, and the feeble spirit and florid extravagance of the Flamboyant style which now prevailed betrayed a weakened condition of the national artistic mind which made it an easy prey to the foreign innovations.