Character of Renaissance Architecture

by Charles Herbert Moore

As for De l’Orme’s façade for the Tuileries, as an architectural composition, little in the way of praise can, I think, be said. The basement arcade (Fig. [120], p. 202) is but an adaptation of the wearisome Roman scheme of pier and arch overlaid with an order in which the Roman form of column gives place to the peculiar one just described and called his own invention. This deformed column has an Ionic capital, and De l’Orme tells us that he employed the Ionic order here because it had been as yet little used, and “because it is feminine, having been invented after the proportions of women and goddesses,”[137] and is therefore suitable for the palace of a queen. In this façade the monotony of the long range of arches with their orders is partly relieved by a ressaut in the entablature over every fourth bay, and this ressaut only is supported by columns, pilasters of similar character being used in the intervening bays. The attic story reproduces with variations some of the architectural vagaries of Vignola and his followers. Tall, rectangular dormers alternate with oblong panels crowned with broken pediments, and flanked with coupled hermæ. In this composition the native French characteristics of design survive in hardly anything more than the broken outline of the attic, and the steep roof behind it.[138] That such architecture is shaped on mathematical proportions, and has an orderly and rhythmical distribution of parts, does not make it good architecture. Proportion and rhythm of this mechanical kind cannot, as I have before said, make a fine work of art.[139]

Fig. 124.—Doorway of De l’Orme.

What we know of other important works by De l’Orme, as the châteaux of Anet and Saint Maur, shows the same lack of a fine artistic sense. The lay-out of these vast pleasure-houses may be well adapted to the requirements of the courtly life of the time. De l’Orme understood the needs of this life, and was ingenious in providing for them, but such ingenuity constitutes but a small part of an architect’s equipment, and may exist without any artistic aptitude. It is only in so far as such ingenuity is accompanied by a genuine artistic sense that a fine work of art can be produced. De l’Orme undoubtedly worked with a steady regard for what he considered artistic design, but his works show, I think, that he was devoid of true artistic genius. If further illustration of this be desired, it may be abundantly found in the numerous architectural projects published in his book, of which the doorway (Fig. [124]) is a fair example.[140] Of this composition the author remarks as follows: “I give you here following another form of doorway being square and straight in its covering, and having pilasters at the sides, in which one sees only the plinths of their bases under the said pilasters, which are larger at the top than at the bottom; which is the contrary of the columns and pilasters made according to measure [_i.e._ according to neo-classic proportions?] which are narrower at the top than at the bottom. But such an invention is produced according to the suggestion and fancy that presents itself, like many others; which, provided the proportions are well observed, are always found to have a pleasing effect, which is an easy thing to do by those who have experience and skill in architecture. You see how in this design which I figure, in place of capitals mutules in the form of consoles carry the soffit of a tympanum or frontispiece, which is cut out, as is seen, and has its cornices above and ornaments on acroteria, as may be seen in the figure with all the other ornaments, and pieces cut out which make the covering of the doorway, and above a tablet with another tympanum and other ornaments. To describe all in detail would require too much time, but you can easily understand from the drawing, which is of a Doric doorway having three steps which are well shown, as in the other doorways, when they are raised above the ground.” These remarks, like the drawing itself, show clearly that design with De l’Orme was a matter of purely capricious fancy, regulated only by a mechanical system of proportions. If the rules of proportion be “well observed,” he thinks that such a crazy composition as this, with its foolishly deformed members, may have a “pleasing effect.”

Fig. 125.—Façade of Charleval, Du Cerceau.

It is not worth while to follow this phase of the French Renaissance art much further, but Du Cerceau gives one other design that is worthy of a moment’s attention for its freakish irrationality and, I will not hesitate to say, ugliness, the project for the château of Charleval, begun for Charles IX, but not far advanced in construction at the time of his death, and never completed. The exterior façade of the _basse-court_ is divided into a long series of bays (Fig. [125]) by colossal rusticated pilasters of two orders, embracing the two stories into which the elevation, above the basement, is divided. Each pilaster is crowned with a section of an architrave and frieze, in the form of a ressaut of two orders, which interpenetrates the bed mouldings of the continuous cornice. Since the architrave and frieze are not carried along the intervening walls, the pilasters have no real entablature to support even in appearance. Another unmeaning freak of design in this façade is the kind of variation of the details of the several bays which it exhibits. The rectangular windows are in one bay surmounted with round archivolts, in the next with curved pediments, in another with angular pediments above and curved ones below, in another with curved pediments above and round archivolts below, in still another with curved pediments above and a single one embracing both windows below; and so on with continued change with no purpose but that of mere change.[141] Viollet le Duc[142] commends the architect of this façade for seeking what he calls a grand disposition without abandoning the logical principles of his predecessors. But the great French master appears to me to err in his reasoning here, as frequently elsewhere in his discourse on the architecture of the Renaissance. The great order of Doric pilasters used in this façade fills, he says, exactly the function of buttresses, and he then proceeds to defend the whole scheme by saying that, “Taking the order as a buttress it is possible, without violence to reason, to cut it by a floor” (_i.e._ to divide the space between the pilasters into two stories). But there is no sense in taking the order as a buttressing system, for there is nothing in the structure to require buttressing; and if there were, the pilasters of an order, even though doubled, as in this case, would not form an effective buttress system. It is in nothing but the general arrangement of the main lines that such a composition can be said to bear any resemblance to an organic mediæval system in which buttresses have a function, and are shaped so as to express it.

Fig. 126.—Interior façade of Charleval, Du Cerceau.]

The interior façade of the same building (Fig. [126]) presents a different scheme. The great order here has fluted pilasters, and the division of the building into two stories is not expressed on the outside. Viollet le Duc remarks on this façade as follows: “The architect wished here not only to accent the great order more clearly, but also to hide entirely the floor of the upper story;[143] and in adopting this scheme, contrary to the logical principles of the architects of the Middle Ages, he has carried it out with remarkable skill. The line of the floor, naturally placed at the level _A_, is cut by arched niches, so that the eye does not suspect its existence, and is forced to embrace the whole front as if it were one stage.” And he adds: “C’était là l’œuvre d’un artiste consommé.”[144] Thus in one case the architect is lauded for employing the order like a buttress system to justify its embracing two stories, while in the other he is praised for giving a deceptive appearance of only one story; so that this part of the design may, as the writer says in another place, be in better scale with the order. But the distinguished author betrays embarrassment in dealing further with these architectural incongruities of Renaissance design, and after remarking that the architects of this time have resorted to various devices for overcoming the difficulties arising from the lack of harmony between design and construction (“entre la mode d’architecture et les convenances”), which, he says, have occasioned them much torment, he exclaims (p. 376): “Voilà cependant où conduit l’oubli des principes vrais.” It is indeed far into devious paths that the architect is led by departure from the true principles of design.