It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day. On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipani towers, on the left bank those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.
Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from Tuscany and Umbria.
AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.
Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors, Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments as San Pietro in Montorio, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master, who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.
This was the period of the first renaissance, with its charms and imperfections, at once timid and capricious, imitating the models of antiquity in their details, but utterly mistaking the proportions which are the essential, while succeeding brilliantly in the accessories and ornaments borrowed from the ancients and used in profusion with some endeavor to adapt them to the ideas and needs of the period. The fundamental principle of architecture, which requires that the exterior should express or respond to the use for which the interior is destined, was unknown to Pintelli.
To break the monotony of the lines, the façade of any given building was, as it were, framed, decoration was freely used, and the object was to please the eye, no matter by what means. At that day, the architect was also the painter, and the majority of artists were both. The first renaissance obtained its apogee toward the year 1500. In the nature of things it had then outlived its day, and a change became indispensable at the risk of degradation.
Fortunately Bramante was ready to answer the call. He was from Umbria, and Raphael was his nephew. He had studied in the north of Italy, where, amid plains devoid of stone, the architect was forced to use brick. Hence the novelty of combination introduced by him in Rome, whose inexhaustible stone quarries were such ancient monuments as the Coliseum. It is from the absence of heavy building-stone and the contrast of the German taste of the Longobards with the Byzantine style of Ravenna that the Lombard style is begotten. It brought with it precisely what the renaissance most needed, namely, its exquisite sentiment of proportions, and it forms the transition between the two schools of the renaissance, the latter of which formed the golden era of architecture in Italy.
Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions—and among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries of the Vatican, the Giraud palace—were the pride of the age. They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of perspective, the culture of harmony of detail and ensemble, reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture. With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to understand that the greatest beauty of the architectural art might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented block-house. Even the mezzo-ceto, or middle class, began to contract a taste for something beyond the absolutely necessary, and sought to adorn even their modest habitations. A private dwelling-house built at this period and exclusively bramantesque may still be seen in Rome on the strada papale, opposite the Governo Vecchio. It yet bears the date of its construction (1500) and the name of its builder.
After the death of Bramante appeared Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, and Balthasar Peruzzi, who, prodigal of their treasures of genius, created a golden age.
Romano's Villa Madama became the type of the country-seat; Peruzzi's Farnesina, that of the modern palace. Raphael, more as painter than as architect, composed the designs of the palace Vidoni. It was the great epoch of the culture of simplicity in grandeur, of disdain for the small and the superfluous, of faithful and noble expression of the idea conceived.