To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, again, we owe the town halls and public palaces that form so prominent a feature in the city architecture of Italy. The central vitality of once powerful States is symbolised in the broletti of the Lombard cities, dusty and abandoned now in spite of their clear-cut terra-cotta traceries. There is something strangely melancholy in their desolation. Wandering through the vast hall of the Ragione at Padua, where the very shadows seem asleep as they glide over the wide unpeopled floor, it is not easy to remember that this was once the theatre of eager intrigues, ere the busy stir of the old burgh was utterly extinguished. Few of these public palaces have the good fortune to be distinguished, like that of the Doge at Venice, by world-historical memories and by works of art as yet unrivalled. The spirit of the Venetian Republic still lives in that unique building. Architects may tell us that its Gothic arcades are melodramatic; sculptors may depreciate the decorative work of Sansovino; painters may assert that the genius of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese shines elsewhere with greater lustre. Yet the poet clings with ever-deepening admiration to the sea-born palace of the ancient mistress of the sea, and the historian feels that here, as at Athens, art has made the past towards which he looks eternal.
Two other great Italian houses of the Commonwealth, rearing their towers above the town for tocsin and for ward, owe immortality to their intrinsic beauty. These are the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Few buildings in Europe are more picturesquely fascinating than the palace of Siena, with its outlook over hill and dale to cloud-capped Monte Amiata. Yet, in spite of its unparalleled position on the curved and sloping piazza, where the contrade of Siena have run their palio for centuries, this palace lacks the vivid interest attaching to the home Arnolfo raised at Florence for the rulers of his native city. During their term of office the Priors never quitted the Palace of the Signory. All deliberations on state affairs took place within its walls, and its bell was the pulse that told how the heart of Florence throbbed. The architect of this huge mass of masonry was Arnolfo del Cambio, one of the greatest builders of the Middle Ages, a man who may be called the Michael Angelo of the thirteenth century[[16]]. In 1298 he was ordered to erect a dwelling-place for the Commonwealth, to the end that the people might be protected in their fortress from the violence of the nobles. The building of the palace and the levelling of the square around it were attended with circumstances that bring forcibly before our minds the stern conditions of republican life in mediæval Italy. A block of houses had to be bought from the family of Foraboschi; and their tower, called Torre della Vacca, was raised and turned into the belfry of the Priors. There was not room enough, however, to construct the palace itself with right angles, unless it were extended into the open space where once had stood the houses of the Uberti, "traitors to Florence and Ghibellines." In destroying these, the burghers had decreed that thenceforth for ever the feet of men should pass where the hearths of the proscribed nobles once had blazed. Arnolfo begged that he might trespass on this site; but the people refused permission. Where the traitors' nest had been, there the sacred foundations of the public house should not be laid. Consequently the Florentine Palazzo is, was, and will be cramped of its correct proportions[[17]].
No Italian architect has enjoyed the proud privilege of stamping his own individuality more strongly on his native city than Arnolfo; and for this reason it may be permitted to enlarge upon his labours here. When we take our stand upon the hill of Samminiato, the Florence at our feet owes her physiognomy in a great measure to this man. The tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the bulk of the Duomo, and the long low oblong mass of Santa Croce are all his. His too are the walls that define the city of flowers from the gardens round about her.[[18]] Even the master-works of his successors subordinate their beauty to his first conception. Giotto's campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola, and Orcagna's church of Orsammichele, in spite of their undoubted and authentic originality, are placed where he had planned.
In 1294 the Florentines determined to rebuild their mother-church upon a scale of unexampled grandeur. The commission given to their architect displays so strikingly the lordly spirit in which these burghers set about the work, that, though it has been often quoted, a portion of the document shall be recited here. "Since the highest mark of prudence in a people of noble origin is to proceed in the management of their affairs so that their magnanimity and wisdom may be evinced in their outward acts, we order Arnolfo, head-master of our commune, to make a design for the renovation of Santa Reparata in a style of magnificence which neither the industry nor the power of man can surpass, that it may harmonise with the opinion of many wise persons in this city and state, who think that this commune should not engage in any enterprise unless its intention be to make the result correspond with that noblest sort of heart which is composed of the united will of many citizens."[[19]] From Giovanni Villani we learn what taxes were levied by the Wool-Guild, and set apart in 1331 for the completion of the building. They were raised upon all goods bought or sold within the city in two separate rates, the net produce amounting in the first year to 2,000 lire.[[20]] The cathedral designed by Arnolfo was of vast dimensions: it covers 84,802 feet, while that of Cologne covers 81,461 feet; and, says Fergusson, "as far as mere conception of plan goes, there can be little doubt but that the Florentine cathedral far surpasses its German rival."[[21]] Nothing, indeed, can be imagined more noble than the scheme of this huge edifice. Studying its ground-plan, and noting how the nave unfolds into a mighty octagon, which in its turn displays three well-proportioned apses, we are induced to think that a sublimer thought has never been expressed in stone. At this point, however, our admiration receives a check. In the execution of the parts the builder dwarfed what had been conceived on so magnificent a scale; aiming at colossal simplicity, he failed to secure the multiplicity of subordinated members essential to the total effect of size. "Like all inexperienced architects, he seems to have thought that greatness of parts would add to the greatness of the whole, and in consequence used only four great arches in the whole length of his nave, giving the central aisle a width of fifty-five feet clear. The whole width is within ten feet of that of Cologne, and the height about the same; and yet, in appearance, the height is about half, and the breadth less than half, owing to the better proportion of the parts and to the superior appropriateness in the details on the part of the German cathedral."[[22]] The truth of these remarks will be felt by every one on whom the ponderous vacuity of the interior has weighed. Other notable defects there are too in this building, proceeding chiefly from the Italian misconception of Gothic style. The windows are few and narrow, so that little light even at noonday struggles through them; and broad barren spaces of grey walls oppress the eye. Externally the whole church is panelled with parti-coloured marbles, according to Florentine custom; but this panelling bears no relation to the structure: it is so much surface decoration possessing value chiefly for the colourist. Arnolfo died before the dome, as he designed it, could be placed upon the octagon, and nothing is known for certain about the form he meant it to assume. It seems, however, probable that he intended to adopt something similar to the dome of Chiaravalle, which ends, after a succession of narrowing octagons, in a slender conical pyramid.[[23]] Subordinate spires would then have been placed at each of the four angles where the nave and transepts intersect; and the whole external effect, for richness and variety, would have outrivalled that of any European building. It is well known that the erection of the dome was finally entrusted to Brunelleschi in 1420. Arnolfo's church now sustains in air an octagonal cupola of the simplest possible design, in height and size rivalling that of S. Peter's. It was thus that the genius of the Renaissance completed what the genius of the Middle Ages had begun. But in Italy there was no real break between the two periods. Though Arnolfo employed the Pointed style in his design, we find nothing genuinely Gothic in the church. It has no pinnacles, flying buttresses, side chapels, or subordinate supports. To use the phrase of Michelet, who has chosen the dramatic episode of Brunelleschi's intervention in the rearing of the dome for a parable of the Renaissance, "the colossal church stood up simply, naturally, as a strong man in the morning rises from his bed without the need of staff or crutch."[[24]] This indeed is the glory of Italian as compared with Northern architecture. The Italians valued the strength of simple perspicuity: all the best works of their builders are geometrical ideas of the purest kind translated into stone. It is, however, true that the gain of vast aërial space was hardly sufficient to compensate for the impression of emptiness they leave upon the senses. We feel this very strongly when we study the model prepared by Bramante's pupil, Cristoforo Rocchi, for the cathedral of Pavia; yet here we see the neo-Latin genius of the Italian artist working freely in an element exactly suited to his powers. When the same order of genius sought to express its conception through the language of the Gothic style, the result was invariably defective.[[25]]
The classical revival of the fifteenth century made itself immediately felt in architecture; and Brunelleschi's visit to Rome in 1403 may be fixed as the date of the Renaissance in this art. Gothic, as we have already seen, was an alien in Italy. Its importation from the North had checked the free development of national architecture, which in the eleventh century began at Pisa by a conscious return to classic details. But the reign of Gothic was destined to be brief. Petrarch and Boccaccio, as I showed in my last volume, turned the whole intellectual energy of the Florentines into the channels of Latin and Greek scholarship.[[26]] The ancient world absorbed all interests, and the Italians with one will shook themselves free of the medieval style they never rightly understood, and which they henceforth stigmatised as barbarous.[[27]]
The problem that occupied all the Renaissance architects was how to restore the manner of ancient Rome as far as possible, adapting it to the modern requirements of ecclesiastical, civic, and domestic buildings. Of Greek art they knew comparatively nothing: nor indeed could Greek architecture have offered for their purpose the same plastic elements as Roman—itself a derived style, admitting of easier adjustment to modern uses than the inflexibly pure art of Greece. At the same time they possessed but imperfect fragments of Roman work. The ruins of baths, theatres, tombs, temple-fronts, and triumphal arches, were of little immediate assistance in the labour of designing churches and palaces. All that the architects could do, after familiarising themselves with the remains of ancient Rome, and assimilating the spirit of Roman art, was to clothe their own inventions with classic details. The form and structure of their edifices were modern; the parts were copied from antique models. A want of organic unity and structural sincerity is always the result of those necessities under which a secondary and adapted style must labour; and thus the pseudo-Roman buildings even of the best Renaissance period display faults similar to those of the Italian Gothic. While they are remarkable for grandeur of effect in all that concerns the distribution of light and shade, the covering and enclosing of space, and the disposition of masses, they show at best but a superficial correspondence between the borrowed forms and the construction these are used to mask.[[28]] The edifices of this period abound in more or less successful shams, in surface decoration more or less pleasing to the eye; their real greatness, meanwhile, consists in the feeling for spatial proportions and for linear harmonies possessed by their architects.
Three periods in the development of Renaissance architecture may be roughly marked.[[29]] The first, extending from 1420 to 1500, is the age of experiment and of luxuriant inventiveness. The second embraces the first forty years of the sixteenth century. The most perfect buildings of the Italian Renaissance were produced within this short space of time. The third, again comprising about forty years, from 1540 to 1580, leads onward to the reign of mannerism and exaggeration, called by the Italians barocco. In itself the third period is distinguished by a scrupulous purism bordering upon pedantry, strict adherence to theoretical rules, and sacrifice of inventive qualities to established canons. To do more than briefly indicate the masterpieces of these three periods, would be impossible in a work that does not pretend to treat of architecture exhaustively: and yet to omit all notice of the builders of this age and of their styles, would be to neglect the most important art-phase of the time I have undertaken to illustrate.
In the first period we are bewildered by the luxuriance of creative powers and by the rioting of the fancy in all forms of beauty indiscriminately mingled. In general we detect a striving after effects not fully realised, and a tendency to indulge in superfluous ornament without regard for strictness of design. The imperfect comprehension of classical models and the exuberant vivacity of the imagination in the fifteenth century account for the florid work of this time. Something too is left of mediæval fancy; the details borrowed from the antique undergo fantastic transmutation at the hands of men accustomed to the vehement emotion of the romantic ages. Whatever the Renaissance took from antique art, it was at first unable to assimilate either the moderation of the Greeks or the practical sobriety of the Romans. Christianity had deepened and intensified the sources of imaginative life; and just as reminiscences of classic style impaired Italian Gothic, so now a trace of Gothic is perceptible in the would-be classic work of the Revival. The result of these combined influences was a wonderful and many-featured hybrid, best represented in one monument by the façade of the Certosa at Pavia. While characterising the work of the earlier Renaissance as fused of divers manners, we must not forget that it was truly living, full of purpose, and according to its own standard sincere. It was a new birth; no mere repetition of something dead and gone, but the product of vivid forces stirred to original creativeness by admiration for the past. It corresponded, moreover, with exquisite exactitude to the halting of the conscience between Christianity and Paganism, and to the blent beauty that the poets loved. On reeds dropped from the hands of dead Pan the artists of this period, each in his, own sphere, piped ditties of romance.
To these general remarks upon the style of the first period the Florentine architects offer an exception; and yet the first marked sign of a new era in the art of building was given at Florence. Purity of taste and firmness of judgment, combined with scientific accuracy, were always distinctive of Florentines. To such an extent did these qualities determine their treatment of the arts that acute critics have been found to tax them—and in my opinion justly—with hardness and frigidity.[[30]] Brunelleschi in 1425 designed the basilica of S. Lorenzo after an original but truly classic type, remarkable for its sobriety and correctness. What he had learned from the ruins of Rome he here applied in obedience to his own artistic instinct. S. Lorenzo is a columnar edifice with round arches and semicircular apses. Not a form or detail in the whole church is strictly speaking at variance with Roman precedent; and yet the general effect resembles nothing we possess of antique work. It is a masterpiece of intelligent Renaissance adaptation. The same is true of S. Spirito, built in 1470, after Brunelleschi's death, according to his plans. The extraordinary capacity of this great architect will, however, win more homage from ordinary observers when they contemplate the Pitti Palace and the cupola of the cathedral. Both of these are master-works of personal originality. What is Roman in the Pitti Palace, is the robust simplicity of massive strength; but it is certain that no patrician of the republic or the empire inhabited a house at all resembling this. The domestic habits of the Middle Ages, armed for self-defence, and on guard against invasion from without, still find expression in the solid bulk of this forbidding dwelling-place, although its majesty and largeness show that the reign of milder and more courtly manners has begun. To speak of the cupola of the Duomo in connection with a simple revival of Roman taste, would be equally inappropriate. It remains a tour de force of individual genius, cultivated by the experience of Gothic vault-building, and penetrated with the greatness of imperial Rome. Its spirit of dauntless audacity and severe concentration alone is antique.
Almost contemporary with Brunelleschi was Leo Battista Alberti, a Florentine, who, working upon somewhat different principles, sought more closely to reproduce the actual elements of Roman architecture.[[31]] In his remodelling of S. Francesco at Rimini the type he followed was that of the triumphal arch, and what was finished of that wonderful façade, remains to prove how much might have been made of well-proportioned pilasters and nobly curved arcades.[[32]] The same principle is carried out in S. Andrea at Mantua. The frontispiece of this church is a gigantic arch of triumph; the interior is noticeable for its simple harmony of parts, adopted from the vaulted baths of Rome. The combination of these antique details in an imposing structure implied a high imaginative faculty at a moment when the rules of classic architecture had not been as yet reduced to method. Yet the weakness of Alberti's principle is revealed when we consider that here the lofty central arch of the façade serves only for a decoration. Too high and spacious even for the chariots of a Roman triumph, it forms an inappropriate entrance to the modest vestibule of a Christian church.