CHAPTER I
RENAISSANCE CIVILISATION In the early years of the fourteenth century a new spirit became manifest in art. It showed itself, for example, in the sculpture that embellishes Amiens and Chartres, in the bronze doors of the Baptistry of Florence by Andrea Pisano, and in the painting and sculpture of Giotto. It is supremely manifested in the poetry of Dante. All of these works belong to the Gothic period. The soul in them is still composed of the faith and knowledge of the MediÆval mind and imagination; but the form in which the soul is enshrined has become less generalised, abstract, and symbolical; it has become more individualised, concrete, naturalistic. In a word, it has become more humanised. It represents a change of attitude toward life; a disposition to regard the world, no longer exclusively or chiefly in relation to a future existence, but as the scene of human endeavour, human aspirations, human emotions. It represents a renewed consciousness on the part of Man of his own Humanity. In a word, the thought of the world was gradually evolving from the scholastic attitude of the Middle Ages to the Humanistic spirit, which was the breath of life of the Renaissance. At first the movement groped. The thinker and the artist, while intent upon the study of life, were ignorant of exact methods of study. These were gradually learned through the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman classics. The Rebirth, in fact, which is metaphorically suggested in the term Renaissance, was the result of the spread of the humanistic spirit and the “Revival of Learning”; and, in recognition of this, Classic literature was called “LitterÆ Humaniores,” the students of the Classics were called Humanists, and Humanism is the term often applied to the whole movement. The movement was one that affected the whole fabric of civilisation, for it involved no less than the self-emancipation of the human intellect and will. The human will began to free itself from the shackles of dogmatism and the domination of absolute authority, whether exercised by the Church or by civil rulers. The human intellect gradually freed itself from the subtleties and sophistries of the “Schoolmen,” ceased to speculate on abstract questions, such as the language spoken by the angels, and how many angelic beings could be supported on the point of a pin, and began to apply itself to the exact study of what was actually within the reach of human experience or research. And for this exactness of study the Revival of Learning laid the foundation, because the students of the Classics learned to collate the various manuscripts, comparing them critically so as to discover the correct reading, and were also obliged to compile grammars and dictionaries—in fact, to construct from the ground up, a fabric of reliable knowledge and at the same time a system of education. It was a process that encouraged both exact and critical research. Meanwhile, before the Revival of Learning could make itself a force, there had been other influences which prepared the way for emancipation from the despotism of authority. The Middle Ages had been dominated by two authorities, the Church and the Holy Roman Empire. The former, as we have seen in a previous chapter, was the sole agency to introduce organisation into the chaos that succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire. It gradually subdued the barbarian conquerors not only to a semblance of religious fellowship but also to some degree of social order, and further fostered the latter by throwing the weight of its influence on the side of popular rights. On the other hand, the attempt of Charlemagne to revive the magnificence and the authority of a Roman Emperor had been directly to force upon the various racial divisions of Europe the yoke of a political despotism, under the sanction of the Church’s co-operation. The Holy Roman Empire was an arbitrary and artificial union of unmixable elements and did not survive the death of its founder. The central authority could not hold in check the ambition and power of local authorities. The Frankish group fell apart from the Germanic groups across the Rhine. The authority of succeeding emperors was confined to the east of the Rhine and had to meet the growing opposition of the Feudal system. The result was a continual clash of authorities, in which all parties intrigued for the assistance of the Church, so that the Papal authority also was drawn into the struggle for civil power, thereby weakening its prestige in religious and social directions. The outcome of the prolonged embroilment was the gradual consolidation of peoples into nationalities. France, England, and Germany emerged as separate unities, each drawn into a whole by racial similarities and local self-interest. The dream of a centralised and absolute authority, whether civil or religious, was slowly replaced by the practical policy of attempting to establish a balance of European powers. And, while this gradual disintegration of the absoluteness of authority was in process, other circumstances operated to undermine the old traditional order. We have spoken of one of them—the spread of Humanism. Meanwhile the use in warfare of gunpowder and guns hastened the overthrow of the Feudal system. The introduction of the mariner’s compass made possible the exploration of continents beyond the ocean. The substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy revolutionised men’s idea of the universe. Further, the growth in nationality was accompanied by the development of separate languages, and the diffusion of these, as well as of knowledge generally, was increased by the invention of paper and printing. Thus, from diverse directions light was breaking into the darkness of life, dispersing the superstitions and terrors that had shackled the human will, and illuminating positive pathways for the human intellect to travel. Thought ceased to be involved in allegory; the study of nature to be “perverted into grotesque and pious parables,” while sorcery and magic no longer seemed to be the means of compassing control over nature and obtaining insight into the mysteries surrounding human life. The other world, with its imagined heaven and hell, loosened its grip on the conscience, and the joys and possibilities of this world began to occupy men’s minds. The beauty of the visible world and the delights of sense ceased to be regarded as snares of the devil, and in their growing independence and belief in themselves men turned to mastering the resources of this world and to making it better for the purpose of life. No wonder, that as the consciousness of this new and fuller existence became confirmed, men spoke to one another of a Rebirth! How this movement, which was in ferment throughout Western Europe, operated specifically in different countries, is now to be traced. The leadership in it was taken by the Rinascimento, to use the Italian word, of Italy. ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Ever since Charlemagne’s conquest of Lombardy the Emperors had held a foot in Italy, contesting authority with the Pope. Meanwhile, the successors of Roger, the Norman conqueror of Sicily, held sway over the Kingdom of Naples, which occupied the southern part of the peninsula, and at different times was joined to or independent of the Kingdom of Sicily. Italy, in fact, had proved herself incapable of forming a united nation or of establishing a national state. Like Hellas of old, she was an agglomeration of communes and cities, capable of being inspired by a common sentiment of race, but unable to merge their independence and mutual jealousies and rivalries in a single political organisation. Even the individual communes and cities were split into factions: the Ghibellines, representing the aristocratic party, favouring the Emperor, and the Guelphs, who comprised the popular party and were assisted by the Popes. The result of these conditions was to quicken the growth of local feeling. Patriotism was replaced by intense civic pride, which centred in the city or commune and made it vie with others in self-development. And this self-centering resulted, firstly, in each nucleus of energy developing an independent type of community and, secondly, in bringing to the surface the personal force of individual citizens. The Duke who had been elevated to or usurped the headship of the community, was compelled to maintain his position by force of character and by acts that would redound to the pride and power of the community. He needed the assistance of other men of parts and employed their services, no matter from what class of the community they had sprung. There was room higher up for every citizen who could contribute something to the community’s power and dignity. As one result of these conditions there sprang into existence a class of professional soldiers, or condottieri, who sold their services and those of their trained bands to the highest bidder, and who, when occasion offered, lifted themselves, as in the case of Colleoni and Gattamelata, to high military commands. Moreover, the perpetual intriguing that the conditions of politics had developed between cities and rival authorities, encouraged the employment of a large body of secretaries and diplomatic go-betweens, men of education and superior sharpness of wit. In fact, any one who by his brains or his handiwork could furnish eminent service to the community was eagerly sought after and promoted. Such men were held in high esteem and regarded as an honour to the community. In an environment such as this it followed that the Italian Rinascimento was the product of men of powerful individuality and that the trend of it led to the exaltation of individualism. The first great personality associated with it is that of Petrarch. Son of a man who had shared Dante’s exile, he himself emulated the poet of Beatrice in canzoniere, composed to his ideal mistress, Laura. He too helped to refine and vivify, as Boccaccio did a little later, the Italian tongue; but he was filled with the pride of being a descendant of the Roman People, and looked back to Latin literature as the worthiest object of his study. In his zeal for collecting and collating manuscripts and through the richness of his imagination and critical judgment, joined to a tireless devotion, he became the pioneer in that Italian scholarship which restored to Western Europe the knowledge of the Classics and laid the foundation of modern thought. For hitherto, although an acquaintance with Latin had survived, it was chiefly in the monkish form, and the Latin authors were known only by fragments, often mutilated in the process of copying. The knowledge of the Greek tongue, while preserved in Byzantium, had all but entirely disappeared from Western Europe, and Petrarch, realising the need of recovering it, urged Boccaccio to begin the work. Accordingly the latter took lessons of an adventurer, named Leone Pilato, a native of Calabria who had resided in Thessaly, and succeeded also in having him appointed professor of Greek language and literature in the University of Florence. Boccaccio, like his friend Petrarch, was indefatigable in the search for manuscripts among the libraries and, as often, the lumber-rooms of the monasteries. And frequently he had to mourn their mutilation, as on one occasion when he found the precious sheets of vellum had been scraped clean of the classic text and inscribed with psalms for the use of the choirboys, while the decorated margins had been cut into bits and sold to women as amulets. During the fifteenth century the pursuit of scholarship continued, receiving a great advancement when Constantinople, in 1451, was conquered by the Turks. For many of the Greek scholars found refuge in Italy, where they were received with the highest enthusiasm in universities and the palaces of princes. Thus for a century the keenest spirits of what was then the most intellectually advanced people of Europe, devoted themselves to classical erudition. The world’s debt to them is incalculable, but the boon they conferred on others was not without detriment to themselves. Preoccupation with scholarship produced a certain affectation and pedantry of mind; led to an extravagant valuation of the antique over everything modern and undermined Christianity with Paganism. Nor was it the Stoic side of Paganism that was emulated. The pleasures of life were pursued as an ideal, and with no moral curb on conduct; freedom was confused with license and the desire of the senses ousted the restraint of law. The organisation alike of the Church and of society in time became honeycombed with corruption. In such an intellectual and moral atmosphere the ego in man was worshipped as divinity. Individualism, extolled to a fetish and unbridled by any considerations of good and bad, engendered faculties of glorious capabilities and also of monstrous depravity. Individualism, in fact, ran its hot and heady course at the expense of everything that had once counted for strength in communal and civic spirit. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the culmination of the Renaissance, a few giants survived, but the Italian people, while intellectually in the ascendant, had degenerated physically and morally and fell an easy prey to foreign aggression. The expedition which Charles VIII made to Naples in 1494 brought the French into Italy. They were soon followed by the Spaniards, until Italy became the cockpit of European rivalries. Political as well as moral degradation was reached when, by the League of Cambrai, 1508, Pope Julius II made alliance with Louis XII of France, the Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand “The Catholic” of Spain for the partition of the Venetian territories. Humiliation ensued sixteen years later, when German and Spanish mercenaries, led by the renegade Constable Bourbon, sacked Rome. Italy, after having led the van in the emancipation of human intellect and will, had prostituted both. Even the Counter-Reformation, instituted by the Church to reform her own abuses as well as to resist the tide of Protestantism, could not save Italy to the Italians. Three hundred and fifty years had to elapse before they could recover their nationality and once more set themselves upon the road of progress. GERMAN RENAISSANCE The influence of the Italian Renaissance was firstly and most directly absorbed by France. But the consideration of this may conveniently be postponed until after a review of its operation in Germany and Spain. For in both these countries the Renaissance influence bred antagonisms: in Germany the Reformation and in Spain the Counter-Reformation. The Renaissance which the Italians had initiated as a thing of Beauty, began to operate in Germany as a thing of Power; the emancipation of the human intellect and will was supplemented by the emancipation of the human conscience. The Italian indifference to the latter was more than a source of decadence to themselves; for it cleft into two channels what should have been united in a single stream of human endeavour; it forged barriers between what should be component elements in human ideals. It started that antagonism between Beauty and Morality, between Æsthetics and Ethics by which even to this day civilisation is being retarded in its richest and most beneficent possibilities of progress. Germany was quick to absorb Italian erudition. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin scholars, rivalling those of Italy, became numerous in German universities and in the free cities of NÜremburg, Augsburg, Basel, and Strassburg. But even students who attended the universities of Italy escaped the Pagan influence. They returned to a homeland which was not strewn with classic remains, and whose traditions were still deeply rooted in mediÆvalism and expressed in the Gothic spirit. It was the same with the artists. For example, the art of Schongauer, DÜrer, Holbein, and Cranach is untouched by that sense of beauty which their Italian contemporaries had evolved from classic influence. Moreover, the German mind was more penetrating, earnest, argumentative than the Italian, more occupied with substantial than with abstract problems. The German temperament also was more combative; incapable of the Italian cynical toleration and at once deeper and narrower in its character. Consequently the German erudition began to apply itself to concrete problems, such as theological criticism and the absolute authority claimed by the Church. The Bible was opened up to the Germans as a new book. As the Classics had served to emancipate the Italian intellect and will, so the Bible emancipated the German conscience. “The touch of the new spirit which in Italy had evolved literature, art, and culture, sufficed in Germany to recreate Christianity.” The sale of Indulgences by Leo X and Luther’s protest but served to set the spark to the explosion, which, long in preparation, split Teutonic and Latin Christianity, and involved Western Europe for two centuries in politico-religious strife. For gradually it had become recognised that the new “heresy” threatened the authority alike of monarchical government and the Papacy. Orthodoxy and absolutism were the two sides of the same shield. The Church had begun to realise that there was as much danger to its authority in the Pagan revival of the Italian Renaissance as in Protestantism. Both papal and imperial authority were threatened. Accordingly, Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V entered into a compact at Bologna in 1530, to maintain in its integrity the Catholic Faith. Thus began the Counter-Reformation, which reformed many of the abuses that had crept into the Church and renewed the fervour of the Catholic religion, but on the other hand, arrayed the forces of conservatism against the march of progress. SPANISH RENAISSANCE It was in Spain that the Counter-Reformation was most zealous. Although the influence of the Italian Renaissance had reached her, she had rejected its pagan aspects. On the one hand, her rulers jealously guarded their title of “Catholic Majesty.” On the other hand, the released energies of the country had been largely directed to the commercial conquests, opened up by the discovery of America, which encouraged that self-reliance and absorption in self that were characteristic of the Spanish temperament. Spaniards had upheld the Faith in their long contest with the Saracen intruders and still considered themselves the Champions of Christendom. Meanwhile, the intellectual activity inspired by the Renaissance gave them renewed belief in themselves and established them in their interest in the affairs of their own life. Typical alike of the Spanish race and of the effect upon it of the Renaissance is the “Don Quixote” of Cervantes, whom Symonds ranks with Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakespeare as the four supreme literary exponents of the Renaissance. For each of these caught the spirit of the Renaissance when it was at the first freshness of its vigour in their respective countries and, instead of using it to imitate the past, captured its imagination into the vernacular of his own language, making it a most flexible and vital medium for the expression of the spirit of his own time and country. In Cervantes’ case the racial humour punctured with ridicule the affectations into which the old order of Chivalry had degenerated. That the new attitude toward life which it indirectly advocated, failed to be realised by the Spaniards may be attributed to two causes. One is the Counter-Reformation which rallied the forces of reactionism and the other, the easily gotten wealth that poured into the country from the New World. The one, associated with Monarchical absolutism, destroyed political progress, while the other swamped initiative and the vigorous handling of life, resulting in both moral and economical decadence. Yet the inherent raciness of the Spanish people could not be entirely suppressed. It declared itself especially in the prolific, versatile, truly national drama of Lope de Vega and Calderon, which pictured the life of the people with a variety and richness that have been surpassed only by Shakespeare. Moreover, after an apprenticeship of the Spanish painters to the works of Raphael and other Italians, the seventeenth century produced the greatest of all naturalistic painters in the person of Velasquez. Nevertheless, despite certain brilliant exceptions, it was the tragedy of Spain that at the moment, when her Renaissance was approaching fulfilment, it was strangled. FRENCH RENAISSANCE Very different was the part played by France. Her native genius had to some extent anticipated the spirit of Humanism, so she embraced the learning and culture of the Renaissance eagerly but with discrimination. She utilised both, not in the way of imitation, but as enrichment to her own self-expression; and, finally, as Italy declined, assumed the leadership of European culture. Already in the twelfth century Abelard had initiated the spirit of free inquiry in theology; later, it was upon the love-songs of the trouveres or troubadours of Provence that Petrarch patterned his canzoniere, and from the fabliaux, popular in France, that Boccaccio derived the character and some of the themes of his Decameron. While in the north France maintained close relations with Flanders, she was drawn into commercial relations with Italy, directly, in the south, and by way of the German cities and Burgundy on the east. Her political relations began, as we have noted, with the expedition of Charles VII to Naples, and were continued by the efforts of Louis XII and Francis I to secure and hold possessions in Italy. Even the latter’s disastrous defeat at Pavia did not discourage him from subsequent warlike enterprises, but meanwhile his zeal for things Italian caused him to invite many Italian artists to Fontainebleau. Henri II’s queen was Catherine de Medici and her children, Charles IX and Henri III, were brought up as Italianated Frenchmen. Thus, during the sixteenth century the Court and nobility of France became largely Italianised in manners, although the survival of the Feudal system and the distinctly military character of the aristocracy rendered France very different from Italy in many vital particulars. For France was engaged in developing her nationality and these disintegrating and aggressive elements had to be subdued to the central authority—a process made more complex by the spread of the Reformation under the leadership of Calvin, so that the struggle was one of conscience as well as political power. But in the process France was awakened to a real sense of nationalism. The Gallic spirit became aware of itself and intent upon development and consolidation. Consequently, the presence of such artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Del Sarto, Primaticcio, and Benvenuto Cellini could not stifle the native art. They left their impress on the decorations of Fontainebleau and served as models of superior knowledge and refinement to French painters and sculptors, yet did no more than modify the French originality of inspiration. Painters like the Clouets and the unnamed painter of the “Diana” of the Louvre and the sculptors Goujon and Pilon, despite some debt to Italian influence, preserved unmistakably their Gallic spirit, as we shall also find did the architects of the French chÂteaux. It was the spirit that had created the miracles of Gothic architecture; a spirit highly adventurous, yet logical, which overflowed with enthusiasm for life, but was controlled by instinctive taste. It suffered a clipping of its freedom when France was finally consolidated as a State and Absolutism was enthroned in the person of Louis XIV. Under the officialdom that he established French art was compelled to sit at the feet of the Italians. Yet, even so, the native genius shines through acquired affectations in the work of Poussin and Claude, while the eighteenth century witnessed the reblossoming of the Gallic spirit in the dainty fancies of Rococo decoration. On the other hand, the sterner issues of the Renaissance, as they affected political liberty, culminated after long delay in the Revolution. That the Gallic genius has been and still remains a powerful factor in the progress of civilisation is due to its blend of the intellectual and the aesthetic faculties. It thinks clearly and feels subtly and adjusts thought and feeling into an admirable accord by its tact of taste. It approximates most closely to the quality of the old Greek genius. At its best, under the impulse of a high spiritual purpose, it has expressed itself in terms of Truth and Beauty that no modern nation has rivalled. Even when its motive has been trivial, its manner of expression has redeemed it from insignificance, the craftsmanship being in itself so true and beautiful. Moreover, the French spirit is so agile and responsive, that it has caught and reflected back the diverse thought and feeling of other countries, and, further, has so marked a strain of originality that it has preserved the faculty of creativeness. NETHERLANDISH RENAISSANCE The Netherlands, through their commercial intercourse with Italy, early came in touch with the Renaissance. But the self-reliance of the people was such that the earliest influence only improved their own way of expressing their racial consciousness. For example, the town halls in which the pride of their cities was enshrined, owed nothing to Italy except some later refinements of decoration. The painting of the Van Eycks was not only different from but technically superior to the contemporary art of Italy and furnished the latter with the practical processes of the oil medium. In time the mannerisms of Italian painting made themselves felt in the work of Van Orley and others, but the genuine reaction of the Flemish genius to the Italian Renaissance did not develop until the seventeenth century, when it produced a reinvigorated expression of itself in the genius of Rubens. Political and religious causes, due to the grip of the Spanish rule, had retarded the progress of the Flemish provinces, while, on the other hand, it was the break away from this absolutism that started the northern provinces of Holland on their Renaissance. The Holland Renaissance of the seventeenth century, which moved step by step with their struggle for political and religious liberty and their consolidation into a united nation, represented a most remarkable blend of Humanism and Revival of Learning. It was unique at its time and has preserved its significance, because both these engines of activity were devoted deliberately to national and individual betterment. The Dutch zest of life stimulated them not only to obtain their liberty, but also to improve in a multitude of practical ways the conditions of living. It caused them to organise industry and commerce, to cultivate their land intensively and to extend their explorations and trade over the seven seas. Nor were the intellectual resources overlooked. The university of Leyden became a great centre of human culture and its scholars and scientists set the course of thought and research in the direction of modern life. Holland’s prosperity, however, proved her undoing. After defying and withstanding the absolutism of Spain, she fell a victim to that of Louis XIV. And less by direct conquest than by the insidious sapping of French influences. She became inflated with the ambition of being a world-power, while her citizens emulated the fashions of French society. Losing at the same time political liberty and intellectual and artistic initiative and independence, she followed the human sheep-trail that led southward over the Alps and for more than a century became a clumsy imitator of the past art of Italy. ENGLISH RENAISSANCE England’s insular position tended to delay her reception of the New Spirit. When at length it reached her it came simultaneously in the form of Italian influence and of the Reformation. Yet both had been anticipated a century earlier; the Reformation in the teaching of Wycliffe, the Renaissance in the poetry of Chaucer. But the harvest of the new spirit had been deferred by the French wars, the Wars of the Roses, and the persecution of the Lollards, so that it was not until 1536, when the King, Lords, and Commons by the Act of Supremacy established the Reformed Faith as the State Religion, that England entered definitely, says Symonds, on a career of intellectual activity abreast with the foremost nations of the Continent. By this time the latter had accomplished the work of collating and printing the classic authors and had produced a varied mass of literature in the modern languages; all of which became food for the omnivorous appetite of the English. Assimilation, at first, was slow and retarded by imitation. Wyatt and Surrey, for example, grafted the graces of Italian poetry onto the native stock, introducing the forms of the sonnet and blank verse; Sidney experimented with the classic metres, while tragedies in the style of Seneca, rivalled the similarly pedantic imitations of Italian and French dramatists. Gradually, however, the vigour of English digestion accomplished a complete assimilation. England, through her sympathy with Holland, had found herself involved in the conflict of the Counter-Reformation. She broke the rival power of Spain by the destruction of the Armada, and through the buccaneering exploits of Raleigh, Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins opened up the beginnings of colonial expansion. She leaped at a bound into consciousness of nationality and in the glow of her enthusiasm discovered her own capacity of originality. Shakespeare is at once the crown and symbol of the English Renaissance. He drew the material of his plots from a variety of foreign sources, but creatively impressed upon his plays either a new and a universal significance or unmistakably the English spirit of his day. Meanwhile, Spenser, while deriving his allegory from the Middle Ages and decorative richness from the Italian Renaissance, added thereto a sweetness, purity, and splendour of imagination peculiarly English. And by the side of Spenser and Shakespeare, as representative of the creative imagination of the English Renaissance, must be set Bacon, the expositor of the modern scientific method. This flowering of the English Renaissance, in which intellectual brilliance walked hand in hand with beauty, was rudely interrupted, firstly, when the spirit of the Counter-Reformation was revived by James I and Charles I; secondly, by the resultant Puritan reaction, and the equally resultant license of the Restoration. A cleavage between morals and beauty was opened up that to this day has not been bridged. On the other hand, the spirit, let loose by the Renaissance and the Reformation, pushed forward persistently on the path of political liberty, and England’s mightiest contribution to the civilisation of the world has been the realisation, however imperfect, of the ideal of human freedom. Meanwhile, in the realm of the arts, it is in the province of Literature, rather than in those of the Fine Arts, that her Renaissance has reaped its most abundant harvest. CHAPTER II
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY The foregoing summary of Renaissance culture anticipates three marked characteristics of the architecture which responded to it. Renaissance architecture was developed from the study of classical antiquities and, to some extent, of classic literature. It was adapted to conditions of society which became increasingly elegant and luxurious. It was created, no longer by gilds of craftsmen, but by individual designers, whose names are recorded and identified with their respective works. We are also prepared to find that as the study of classic examples lost the freshness of its early inspiration, it led to a growing formalism in the use of the classic details; and that, as the temper of the time declined in taste and grew in grossness, the architectural style reflected the decadence in increasing pretentiousness and extravagance of forms. The Renaissance proper, in so far as the term New-birth is justified, occupies the fifteenth century, the period called by the Italians the Quattrocento. To the first half of the sixteenth century, the Cinquecento, belongs the more formally classic style, after which appeared the decline of the latter half of the century, known as the Baroque style, followed during the seventeenth century by the further degeneration into the Rococo. PAZZI CHAPEL By Brunelleschi: in S. Croce, Florence. P. 343
The decline of taste may have been hastened by the fact that Renaissance architecture involved no new principles of construction. It was essentially a product of adaptation, and with less consideration for structural problems than for external appearances. There was a change in the status of the architect: he ceased to be pre-eminently the master-builder; he became a designer, specifically interested in what one may perhaps call, the pictorial aspects of his building. He was occupied with the composition of his faÇade, as a painter is with the composition of his picture. He designed it on paper, as an organised arrangement of lines, masses, details, and patterning of light and shade. The days of working out the structural problems in the course of construction and of employing the co-operation of skilled craftsmen, to create the details of decoration had ceased with the passing of the mason-gilds. In their place were workmen, who followed implicitly the drawings of the designer. And the latter, as was characteristic of the time, had become an individualist, stamping his design with the impress of his own personality. It was revealed not only in the larger elements of the composition but also in the exquisiteness of detailed decorations. Nor was the actual creativeness, involved in this tireless pursuit of the refinements of beauty, confined to the externals of buildings; it was expended with prolific invention on the interior fittings. Thus, churches and palaces alike became museums, enshrining endless objects of beautiful craftsmanship in metal-work, marble, terra-cotta, ivory, and textiles, as well as the mural decorations of the painter. Museums, however, it is to be noted, which were not, as in our own day, huge storehouses of objects, separated from their original environment and use, but treasure houses of beautiful things that formed part of the habitual life of the people, palaces for those of high degree, churches and town halls for all classes of the community. We cannot enter into the spirit of the Renaissance unless we realise that to all classes of the Italians of the period beauty was a familiar and living element in their lives. Classic Influences.—The influence of the classic remains began to be apparent in the sculpture of Nicolas Pisano, who died in 1278. It continued in the work of his son and became more marked in that of the latter’s pupil, Andrea Pisano. There are distinct traces of it in Giotto’s painting, especially in the details of the buildings, which are evidently rude imitations of Roman antiquities. That they are rude is fortunate, a proof that imitation of the past was not Giotto’s chief concern. Indeed, the vital thing in Giotto, which made him the leader of a new school of painting, was his effort to bring the arts into closer touch with human nature. It was his pursuit of natural representation and expression which caused him to be a leader in an age that was rediscovering an enthusiasm for human nature; and in this respect he set the main course for the whole of the fifteenth century. The trend of Quattrocento painting and sculpture was to relearn the principles of correct drawing and perspective and to use the growing knowledge and skill for the expression of subjects that, while they were suggested both by the Christian religion and the classic mythology, were informed with the naÏve freshness and independence of the expanding Italian spirit. A corresponding freedom from subservience to antique forms and a truly creative adaptiveness characterised the architecture of the period. It was during the Quattrocento that what is most original in Renaissance architecture was achieved, and the old methods of construction and old details of decoration were successfully applied to the new problems imposed by changed conditions of living and habits of thought. It is by the actual creativeness with which the readjustment was accomplished, as well as by the discretion and refinement of taste, exhibited in the whole and every part of the design, that the architecture of this period is distinguished. The qualities which it exhibits are a direct reflection of the influence of the classic literary revival. The latter encouraged mental qualities of logic and orderliness and an appreciation for beauty that was characterised by precise taste and exacting refinement. And, just as Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto on their foundation of classic learning built the beginnings of a literature in the native tongue—the first natural expression of the Italian genius, liberated by the study of antiquity to new ideals of their own modern life—so it was with the artists. Having graduated from the school of the past, they applied what they had learned to meeting the needs and conditions of their own day. Perfection of Detail.—Again, just as Petrarch and Boccaccio and their followers in literature devoted themselves to perfection of expression, so the architects of the Renaissance were distinguished by the exquisiteness of the details they introduced into their designs. They were, in the first analysis, individualists, so that the great ones—and they were numerous—created individual styles. But, further, they brought the keenness of their Italian intellect and the consummate refinement of their taste to the disposition and actual execution of the details. It has been said—and one may believe the truth of it—that “the layman is not capable of appreciating the refinements and the clearness of their mouldings, and the vigour and strength their virile natures put into their silhouettes.” Individualism being the characteristic of the Italian architects of the Renaissance, we will enumerate the most important personalities. PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS OF THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL Brunelleschi.—Among the first of these deliberate students of antiquity was the architect Brunelleschi. He was born in Florence in 1379 and displayed early a talent for mechanical construction. Accordingly his father apprenticed him to the Gild of Goldsmiths. He quickly became a skilled workman and acquired a knowledge of sculpture, perspective, and geometry. During a visit of some five years to Rome, the chief repository of classic remains, he made a profound study of architectural construction, especially as illustrated in the dome of the Pantheon, the vaulted chambers of the baths, and the use of successive orders of columns in the exterior of the Colosseum. Returning to Florence, he entered into deliberation with the city council to erect the Dome of the Cathedral. It crowns, like his Milan cathedral dome, an octagonal plan. A design for it, which is pictured in a fresco in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, had already been prepared by Arnolfo di Cambio, the first architect of the cathedral and the designer of the Palazzo Vecchio. Brunelleschi deviated from it by raising the dome upon an octagonal drum, pierced with circular windows, thereby securing the impressiveness of additional height, while preserving the lightness of effect. He undertook to erect the dome without the great expense of timber centerings, and accomplished the feat, it is said, by placing voussoirs one above another with horizontal joints. The dome is composed of an inner and an outer shell of brickwork, reinforced by eight main and eight intermediate ribs. It is 138 feet wide, with a height from the spring of the drum to the eye of the dome of 135 feet. The lantern was added after Brunelleschi’s death, from the design he had prepared. This dome is not only a monument to the genius of its creator, but scarcely rivalled in beauty by any other work of the Renaissance. That of St. Peter’s may be a prouder and more imposing structure, but it is more sophisticated in its use of classic details lacking the grand simplicity of Brunelleschi’s—the natural nobility, if one may say so, of a thing that has grown to life. It may be less stately, but is more companionable; less imposing, but more intimately inspiring. The contrast between the two domes reveals in a remarkable way the difference between the dawn of the Renaissance and its high noon. Brunelleschi’s churches in Florence include S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, both of which are on a basilican plan, with elevations that involve modifications of Roman construction. The former is barrel vaulted in the Roman manner, but the nave ceiling of S. Spirito is of wood and flat. The dome of the latter is erected upon pendentives which henceforth were employed on all Renaissance domes. Brunelleschi’s choicest ecclesiastical design, however, is the Pazzi Chapel in S. Croce—a dome over a square compartment, entered through a colonnade. He introduced columned arcades into cloisters and palace courts and used them also as features of the arcade in the Loggia S. Paolo and the Ospedale degli Innocente or Foundling Hospital. The two lower stories of the main front of the Pitti Palace were designed by Brunelleschi, who also carved the fine crucifix in the Santa Maria Novella. He died in 1446 and was buried in the Cathedral of Florence. Michelozzo.—Michelozzo, born in Florence in 1391, was the son of a tailor and became a pupil of Donatello. He worked in marble, bronze, and silver, one of the examples of his sculpture being the young S. John over the door of the cathedral. As an architect he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici, for whom he built the Riccardi Palace, which was the earliest example of stately domestic architecture in Florence and proved a model for subsequent Tuscan palaces. During a temporary exile of his patron he accompanied him to Venice, where he designed the Library of San Giorgio. When in 1437 Cosimo bestowed the Monastery of San Marco on the Dominican monks of Fiesole, Michelozzo was employed to remodel it, erecting, among other features, the beautiful arcaded cloisters, which no doubt inspired the architectural details in Fra Angelico’s picture of “The Annunciation.” At his death, which appears to have occurred in 1472, he was buried in San Marco. Alberti.—Even in a higher degree than the two already mentioned, Alberti represented the versatility of the Renaissance, for besides being an architect he was also a painter, poet, philosopher, and musician. He was born in Venice in 1404 and at the age of twenty wrote a comedy in Latin verse, which in later years the publisher, Aldus Manutius II, printed under the impression that it was a genuine classic work. Alberti was appointed to a canonry in the Cathedral of Florence and there established a reputation for being the finest organist of his time. He wrote works on sculpture and painting but is most celebrated for his treatise on architecture, “De Re Ædificatoria,” which has been translated from the Latin into Italian, French, Spanish, and English. He was employed in Rome by Pope Nicholas V to restore the papal palace. At Rimini he was commissioned by Sigismondo Malatesta to remodel the Church of S. Francisco. Its design, of which only the lower part of the faÇade was erected, was based on the Roman arch in Rimini, and along the south side Alberti constructed vaults to receive the bodies of his patron’s friends. Both these elements of design were introduced into his church of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua. Here the place of the side aisles is taken by successive chapels, separated by massive piers, which sustain the barrel vault of the nave. The piers are faced by coupled Corinthian pilasters, mounted upon pedestals. The intersection of nave and transepts is crowned by a dome, which was replaced by the present one in the eighteenth century. The faÇade of this church also is based upon the character of a triumphal arch, and Sant’ Andrea became a type that was followed in many subsequent churches. In Florence Alberti designed the marble-encrusted faÇade of S. Maria Novella, in which he connected the side aisles to the nave by means of flaring consoles, a device that was unfortunately imitated in later churches. He died in Rome in 1472. Cronaca.—Cronaca is to be mentioned as the architect of the Strozzi and Guardagni Palaces. PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS OF THE ROMAN SCHOOL The Renaissance of the Fine Arts in Rome may be dated from the pontficate of Nicholas V (1447-1455), who vied with the Medici as a patron of scholars and artists. Alberti—we have noted—was employed by him, for as yet there was no Roman architect approaching the talent of the Florentine. And the dearth continued until the accession of Julius II in 1503, by which time Bramante had arrived in Rome and there began the golden period of Roman architecture, identified particularly with him and Raphael and Michelangelo. Bramante.—Bramante was born in Urbino about 1444 and as a young man studied painting as well as architecture, the latter presumably under Alberti. He travelled through Umbria and Lombardy, studying Roman antiquities and obtaining various commissions, and passed some years in Milan, where his work included the enlargement of the abbey church of S. Maria della Grazie, to which he added a choir, transepts, and dome, in a style that represents the transition between the Gothic and Classic. Then, settling in Rome, he was commissioned by Pope Alexander VI to erect the Cancellaria Palace, and shortly afterwards prepared designs for the Palazzo Giraud. In both of these the Classic tendency is developed. It is even more pronounced in the beautiful little church of S. Pietro in Montorio. Founded on the design of a small Roman circular temple, it consists of a circle the interior diameter of which is only fifteen feet, crowned by a dome and surrounded with a peristyle of columns of the Doric order. By the advice of Michelangelo Julius II entrusted Bramante with the design of the new S. Peter’s, which the Pope intended as a mausoleum for his own tomb. The work, which will be discussed later, was interrupted by Bramante’s death, which occurred in 1514. Raphael.—The continuation of S. Peter’s was officially assigned to Bramante’s nephew and pupil, Raphael (1483-1520), who, however, under the pressure of other engagements, did little to advance the work. Raphael’s architectural designs in Rome include the FaÇade of S. Lorenzo in Miranda, the Villa Madama with stucco decorations by his pupil Giulio Romano, and the Pandolfini Palace, which was erected ten years after his death. Giulio Romano.—Giulio Romano (1492-1546) was the architect of buildings in Mantua, his masterpiece being the Palazzo del Te’, at Mantua. Meanwhile, Bramante’s other pupils were Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), and Antonio da Sangallo (1485-1546). Peruzzi.—Peruzzi passed his early life in Siena, but while quite young moved to Rome and studied architecture and painting. His reputation was established when he built for the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, a villa on the banks of the Tiber, which is now known as the Farnesina, a design remarkable for its grace and the delicacy of its details. The interior is famous for the frescoes, representing the myths of Psyche and Galatea, executed by Raphael and his pupils, while Peruzzi himself decorated a loggia with frescoes of the story of Medusa. He was appointed architect of S. Peter’s, though his design for its completion was never carried out. During the sack of Rome in 1527 by the troops of the Constable Bourbon, Peruzzi fled to Siena, where he was elected city architect, and, as the city was preparing to resist attack, planned the fortifications which still in part exist. Returning to Rome, he designed several villas, of which the most important is the Massimi Palace. It is significant of the esteem in which Peruzzi was held by his contemporaries that at his death in 1536 he was buried by the side of Raphael in the Pantheon. Ant. da Sangallo.—Antonio da Sangallo the Younger was one of the five members of a Florentine family, distinguished variously in architecture, engineering, sculpture, and painting. Coming to Rome when very young he became a pupil of Bramante, whose style he closely followed. Among his most notable works are the church of S. Maria di Loreto, near Trajan’s Column, and the Farnese Palace. The latter, completed by Michelangelo by the addition of a grand cornice, is regarded by some experts as the finest example of a Roman palace. Vignola.—Distinguished among the upholders of the purity of the Classic style was Giacomo Barocchio or Barozzi, better known as Vignola, from the name of the place in which he was born, in 1507. After practising for some time in Bologna, Piacenza, Assisi, and Perugia, he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius III, and built the villa Pope Julius, which is now the Etruscan Museum. But the principal example of his style is the Palace of Caprarola, erected some thirty miles from Rome for the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. It has a pentagonal plan enclosing a circular court. Above the ground story the faÇades consist of two stories, which have rusticated quoins at the angles and are composed of an order of Ionic, superimposed upon Doric. Situated on a craggy projection, overlooking the little town of Caprarola and commanding wide vistas that reach to the Volscian Hills and the Apennines, with the dome of St. Peter’s in the middle distance, this palace is embellished with beautiful gardens, the whole representing one of the most magnificent palace-villas of the Renaissance. Vignola was one of the artists invited to Fontainebleau by Francis I. After the death of Michelangelo he was appointed architect of S. Peter’s and erected the cupolas. He also furnished the design of Il Gesu, the Jesuit church in Rome, which was one of many erected along the lines of S. Peter’s. His fame further rests on his writings, which include “The Five Orders of Architecture” and a work on perspective. He died in 1573. Michelangelo.—At this date Michelangelo had been dead nine years, but it is convenient to consider him as the last great architect of the Roman School, for he introduced new elements of design, which in the hands of smaller men contributed to the decadence of the Renaissance style. Architecture played a relatively small part in his titanic and tempestuous career, which through the political confusion of the times and changes of popes, oscillated between Florence and Rome. In the former city he designed, as additions to Brunelleschi’s Medici church of S. Lorenzo, the Laurentian Library and the New Sacristy or Mausoleum which contains the tombs of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino. In Rome, as early as 1505, Julius II had entrusted Michelangelo with the commission of erecting his tomb. The ambition of the patron and the imagination of the artist united in a project so colossal that S. Peter’s was to be rebuilt to serve as a mausoleum for it. Unfortunately for Michelangelo and perhaps for art, the death of Julius interfered with the project. His heirs desired a less expensive monument and succeeding popes were interested only in the rebuilding of S. Peter’s. After forty years all that had been accomplished of the tomb were the statues of Moses and the “Bound Captives.” “My youth has been lost,” cried the sore-afflicted artist, “bound hand and foot to this tomb.” Even in the lifetime of Julius the planning of S. Peter’s had been taken from Michelangelo and given to Bramante, and it was not until his seventy-second year that Michelangelo was called in to supervise the work. He adhered to Bramante’s plan and added the supreme feature of the dome, which was completed after his death. Meanwhile, he finished, as we have noted, the Farnese Palace and remodelled the Palaces of the Capitol, the latter being his most characteristic work in architecture. For in the novel design of these he introduced the so-called “one-order” treatment, abandoning the horizontal lines that mark the stories and carrying up through them a colossal order of pilasters. The effect lends grandeur and unity to the design, but at the expense of a violation of the principle of fitting the character of the exterior to the constructive character of the interior. It was a sacrifice of parts to the whole such as Michelangelo employed in sculpture and by his genius justified. When, however, his example was followed by others who had not his genius, it led to the degradation of style of the Baroque that alike in sculpture and architecture resulted in pretentiousness and extravagance. The gradual decline from the purity of the Classic style to the showy and meretricious magnificence of the so-called “Baroque” period, was encouraged by the wealthy order of the Jesuits. It was characterised by a growing lack of architectural propriety, an increasing use of heavy and ill-applied ornament, and a general tendency to profusion of details for the sake of display—seen in broken and distorted pediments, huge scrolls, sham marble, excessive gilding, and a general riot of sculpture, often hysterical in its excess of emotional expression. The chief promoters of this decadence were Carlo Maderna (1556-1629), and Borromini (1599-1667), although the latter was an architect, capable also of finer achievement, as is proved by his colonnade enclosing the Piazza of S. Peter’s. Palladio.—In some degree a contributor to this decadence, through the misuse of his example by others, was Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), a native of Vicenza, where his most characteristic work is to be seen. In youth he studied the writings of the Roman author, Vitruvius, and of Alberti, and familiarised himself with the classic style by study in Rome. His own work, “The Four Books of Architecture,” which contains measured drawings of antique buildings many of which have since disappeared, had a wide and great influence upon architectural development throughout Europe. In England, for example, it was translated and furnished with notes by Inigo Jones, whose own style was largely based on Palladio’s. The latter’s work is chiefly associated with Vicenza, where his most important example, considered also his best, is seen in the double-storied arcades, added to the MediÆval Basilica. In the lower story he introduced the Doric order; in the upper, the Ionic; and, in both instances, supported the arches on small columns, while large engaged columns, acting as buttresses, occupy the centre of the spaces between the arches. This treatment has been known since as the Palladian motive. These imposing and beautiful arcades were executed in fine stone, whereas through no fault, it is believed, of the architect, his palaces in Vicenza are mostly of brick, with stucco front that has suffered from decay. They include the Palazzo Capitania and the Palazzo Barbarano, and the Villa Rotonda which was freely imitated by the English amateur architect, Lord Burlington (1695-1753) in his villa at Chiswick on the Thames. Palladio’s design of the Villa Rotonda is a square building fronted on all four sides by a portico, surmounted by a pediment, the roofing of the square sloping up to a low dome which crowns the central rotunda. At the end of his life he designed the Teatro Olympico of Vicenza, which was completed after his death by Scamozzi. In this he followed the directions of Vitruvius, but introduced features of his own, among which is the interesting one of an architectural background to the stage, built in perspective. Palladio executed work also in Venice, the churches of Il Redentore and S. Giorgio Maggiore being from his design, though the faÇade of the latter was by Scamozzi. PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS OF THE VENETIAN RENAISSANCE. The Venetians had developed a beautiful type of Gothic, touched, through their relations with the East, by Byzantine influence. It was admirably suited to the social requirements and taste of a community of merchant princes and wealthy middle-class, comparatively removed by geographical position from the confusion of the times. For the wars of Venice, conducted on foreign soil, left her unscathed, and during the fifteenth century she reached the zenith of her commercial glory. But the decline set in, when her trade with the Levant was blocked by the Turkish occupation of Constantinople in 1453, and it was confirmed by the passing of her Eastern commerce to the Portuguese, following Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route to India (1497-1503). But during the sixteenth century, though menaced both by the Emperor Charles V and the French king, Francis I, and engaged in almost perpetual struggle with the Turks, Venice maintained a splendid isolation and reached the height of her artistic development. The gradual modification of the Gothic style was effected by the introduction of Classic features, especially at first of a decorative character. One of the earliest examples of this transition is the fine Portal of the Doge’s Palace, adjoining S. Marco, which was erected by Giovanni and Bartolommeo Buon, who share with the Lombardi the chief place in the early Venetian Renaissance. The Lombardi.—This celebrated family of architects became known in the person of a certain Martino who had two sons, Moro and Pietro (1435-1515), and two grandsons by the latter, Antonio and Tullio. To Martino belongs the faÇade of S. Zaccaria, the design of which was developed in Pietro’s treatment of the beautiful little church of S. Maria dei Miracoli. Its plan is an oblong, terminating in a square chancel which is elevated considerably above the nave and is crowned by a dome. The faÇade is decorated with two stories of engaged columns, dividing the surface into panels which are encrusted with coloured marbles, while the whole is surmounted by a semicircular pediment. The carved details are of exquisite refinement. This choiceness of decorative treatment reappears in the faÇade of the Scuolo de S. Marco, which was also by Pietro, who further proved himself to be the most accomplished member of the Lombardi by his faÇade of the Vendramini Palace. Sansovino.—The full development of the Renaissance style in Venice is chiefly associated with Jacopo Sansovino (1477-1570). A pupil of the Florentine sculptor, Andrea Sansovino, from whom he took his name, he was at first employed by Julius II to restore antique statues and also to make the bronze reproduction of the LaocoÖn group, which is now in the Uffizi. After working in Florence and again in Rome, from which city he fled when it was sacked by the Germans, Sansovino reached Venice in 1527 and was welcomed by Titian and Pietro Aretino. Here from time to time he still produced indifferent sculpture, but became distinguished as an architect, his most important works being the Library of S. Marco, the Zecca or Mint, the Cornaro Palace, and the Church of S. Giorgio del Greci—the last-named, erected by the Greek residents, being a remarkable evidence of the tolerant spirit of the Venetians in the matter of religion. In 1545 the roof of Sansovino’s library collapsed and he was fined, imprisoned, and deprived of his office of chief architect of S. Marco. He was, however, reinstated through the intercession of Titian, Aretino, and other powerful friends and in the course of his duties reinforced the domes with bands of iron. The free invention with which Sansovino used the Classic orders and the vigour and richness of his faÇades set the fashion for a sumptuousness of style that in his hands had an imposing magnificence, but in his followers degenerated into excess. Sammichele.—Since Michele Sammichele (1484-1559) designed the Gvimane Palace in Venice, considered his masterpiece, and was also employed by the Signoria to construct the fortifications of the Lido, he may be mentioned here, but his chief work is associated with Verona. Born near the latter city, in the village of San Michele, the son of an architect, he was sent as a youth to Rome to study Classic sculpture and architecture. Among his earliest works is the uncompleted Cathedral of Montefiascone. His fame as a military architect was established when he remodelled the fortifications of Verona, introducing the new system of corner bastions and giving grandeur to the gateways by the use of rusticated masonry—a feature which he used effectively in his palace designs. The finest of these in his native city are the Canossa, Bevilacqua, and Pompeii Palaces. He wrote a work on “The Five Orders of Architecture.” Scamozzi.—Scamozzi has already been mentioned as adding the faÇade to Palladio’s Church of S. Giorgio Maggiore. That his name disappears from Venetian architecture is due to the fact that he was one of the Italian artists who carried the Renaissance into Bohemia, and designed parts of the Hradschin palace in Prague. Longhena.—One exception to the excessive mannerism of the Baroque, which characterised the Venetian style of the seventeenth century, is found in the designs of Baldassare Longhena. These include the palaces Pesaro and Rezzonico and the church of S. Maria della Salute. The palaces are overcharged with ornament, especially with sculptured figures, yet as a whole they are dignified, with the imposing character due to bold, rich contrasts of light and shade that recall the example of Sansovino. S. Maria is built on the plan of a Greek cross, with a central dome, rising above an octagonal drum that is supported by curving buttresses. A secondary dome surmounts the chancel, while adjoining it is a campanile. Situated at the entrance to the Grand Canal, the whole mass, especially when viewed from a distance that reduces the disturbance of the statue-ornaments, presents a mingling of picturesqueness and stateliness that makes it one of the most beautiful features of the city. To the latter part of the sixteenth century belong a number of imposing palaces, erected in Genoa by the commercial princes, many of which were designed by Galeazzo Alessi (1502-1572). They include the Balbi, Brignole, Durazzo, Doria-Tursi, and Pallavacini. [Image unavailable.] RICCARDI PALACE, FLORENCE Built for Cosimo I de’ Medici, by Michelozzo. Early Renaissance. P. 358
CHAPTER III
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY—CONTINUED The method that we have followed so far in this book has been to study architecture in relation to problems of construction and to the materials employed, and to think of a building as an organic growth determined by plan, site, and the purposes for which it is intended—as a structure in which all the parts are co-ordinated to the whole, each directly functioning in the completed scheme. This is the architect’s way of considering his problem. So we have followed it, in the desire to avoid the error into which architects tell us that most laymen fall of thinking only of the outside of a building—how it is decorated, whether the design seems to be handsome or the reverse. When, however, we come to the study of Italian Renaissance architecture, some architects tell us that we must adopt another method of judgment. These are the architects who are out-and-out advocates of the Italian Renaissance style, considering its achievements to be “supreme.” They admit that the Italian architects were less concerned with problems of construction than with general beauty of design; hence they were actuated not so much by logic as by feeling; and feeling especially for detail. They displayed extraordinary genius for design, both in the choice and disposition of the decorative effects and in the skill and refinement of their execution. They were designers rather than constructors. This being the case, they should be judged accordingly. To estimate their work by the test of constructive logic is arbitrary and unfair. They should be judged by what they started out to accomplish; by the character and quality of their designs. In a word, as it may appear, these advocates would have us apply a pictorial test; such a one, for example, as may serve in the case of the great picture, “Marriage in Cana of Galilee,” by Paolo Veronese. We do not trouble to consider the appropriateness of the architectural setting, still less to explain the functions of its several parts; we accept it without qualification as contributing to a monumental design. Very possibly this actually represents the main attitude of the Italian Renaissance artists toward architecture. They thought of it in its pictorial aspect and practised it primarily as an art of design. With them began the modern habit of conceiving a building primarily as a design on paper. It is an effect of what we have already mentioned—the separation of builder and designer that characterised the Italian Renaissance. Accordingly, while the following comparisons are based upon the principles that we have been adopting throughout this book, the reader should bear in mind the exception that has been taken to this method of judgment. Palazzo Vecchio—Riccardi Palace.—A good idea of the transition from the Gothic to the Early Renaissance in Florentine Architecture may be gained from a comparison of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Riccardi Palace. The former was built by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1298, as the Municipal Palace of the Podesta and Signoria. The Riccardi was erected in 1430 by Michelozzo for Cosimo I de’ Medici. While the Republic still survived as a name, he had usurped the actual power and occupied the Palazzo Vecchio until the completion of his own mansion, which was thenceforth to be the centre not only of the Medicean domination but also of its courtly splendour and liberal patronage of literature and art. Each edifice presents to the outside world a cubical mass, while the interior includes a cortile or open court. But the Vecchio is the severer in design, as befits Republican simplicity; it still has something of the character of a mediÆval fortress, due largely to the heavy battlemented cornice that projects on massive corbels, with machicolations or openings in the floor of the gallery, from which defenders might drop missiles on an attacking force. A similar feature surmounted the original tower (for the present superstructure was added later)—a tower that was an additional source of defence as well as a lookout for the detection of fires or other local disturbances. It still served these purposes under the despotism of Cosimo; so that no tower was needed for his house. Meanwhile, he and his successors had ever to be on the watch against sudden alarms, so that it was admissible to preserve somewhat of the fortress character—massive masonry, with door and window openings, that might not be difficult to defend. On the other hand, it would be impolitic either to make the purpose of protection too apparent or to excite hostility by too lavish an appearance of grandeur on the exterior. Moderation must be the keynote of the design, and the facilities of luxurious living should be confined to the interior. The result is a modification of the Palazzo Vecchio design by the introduction of classic details. A classic cornice replaces the machicolated; round arches supplant the pointed arches, the windows of the upper stories, in place of trefoils, have round-top lights, separated by a circular column. They are technically known as of the arcade type, while the windows of the ground floor are changed to rectangular shapes and are of the architrave type, that is to say set in moulded frames, which are supported on consoles and surmounted by classic pediments. Moreover in all these details, attention has been paid to refinements of modelling; there is a choicer feeling of proportion in the adjustment of the openings to the solid wall spaces while the divisions of the stories have been distinguished by projecting string courses and in such a way as to mark the importance of the second story or piano nobile. A superior refinement and logic of arrangement have regulated the whole design. The building, in fact, reflects the changed social conditions and the new mental and Æsthetic attitude toward life produced by the study of classic literature and works of art. Ca d’Oro—Vendramini.—Now if we shift our glance to Venice and compare the faÇades of the Ca d’Oro and Vendramini Palaces, we discover a great difference between them and the Florentine examples. The Ca d’Oro was erected by the Brothers Buon in the fifteenth century, a reminder of how late the Gothic style was continued in Venice. The Vendramini, Pietro Lombardo’s great achievement in domestic architecture, was completed in 1481. What a contrast both present to the Riccardi! It is an expression of different habits of life. There is in both Venetian buildings the suggestion of greater social security and a freer intercourse with the outside world and less obstructed enjoyment of out of doors. The ample windows of the Vendramini spread a welcome broadcast. And while the arcaded loggia which distinguished the Ca d’Oro have been replaced in the Vendramini by a balcony in the principal story and have disappeared above, the change means a brighter lighting of the interior. It is to be noted that the design of the Ca d’Oro is incomplete. One has to imagine on the left a wing similar to that on the right. The massing of the openings in the centre of the faÇade, instead of their even distribution along the whole front, was peculiar to Venetian palaces. It is apparent, although in a less pronounced manner, in the spacing of the faÇade of the Vendramini. Another Venetian peculiarity is the limiting of the beauty of the design to the main faÇade. Even when a side abutted on another canal or a garden, the walls were finished in stucco instead of marble; embellishments were omitted and, worst of all, not even was the cornice continued. These limitations impair the integrity of the design and seriously diminish its dignity. The fact is even more apparent in the case of the Vendramini, for by this time the horizontal members of the faÇade had acquired a definite constructive meaning, and the failure to continue them around the sides betrays an indifference to the logic of design. The faÇade of the Vendramini is no longer astylar (columnless), as, with the exception of the window columns, is that of the Riccardi. The adaptation of classic details has proceeded so far that pilasters are introduced as decorative features in the ground story, and engaged columns in the upper ones; an excuse for their appearance being suggested by attaching their capitals to the string courses and cornice. This device was drawn from the example of the Roman buildings, in which the Greek relation of upright and horizontal members was diverted from an element of construction into an element purely of design. Further, while the windows of the Vendramini recall the character of the arcade type, they have advanced to the order type, the openings being framed by pilasters or columns. Thus, this design embodies more or less all the changes which the Early Renaissance brought about in secular buildings. Vendramini—Cancellaria.—Comparing the Vendramini, however, with Bramante’s adaptation of classic details as illustrated, for example, in the Palazzo della Cancellaria, we can see how far removed it is in feeling from the productions of the fully developed Renaissance. By the latter time (1505) the nutriment derived from the antique had been digested and assimilated. The antique not only contributed to, but, in its revived form, was becoming a part of the spirit of the time. Architecture was becoming identified with a culture that was fast losing its fresh, Italian inspiration in an unqualified admiration and imitation of what was antique and pagan. Compared with the Vendramini or even the severer Riccardi, the Cancellaria exhibits a precision of style that is rather close to formalism. The design is less a product of inspired invention than of scholarly adaptation. It may well strike one, especially at first sight, as cold, lifeless, even pedantic; and it is not until one has studied the design in some detail and become conscious of the refinement of feeling and finesse of taste, involved in the relation of the parts to the whole, that one is in a mood to recognise its claim to admiration. The faÇade is constructed of blocks of travertine, taken from the Colosseum—for notwithstanding their reverence for antiquity the Italians of the Renaissance were prone to the vandalism of robbing Peter to pay Paul. An order of Corinthian pilasters with strongly marked cornices and string courses, embellishes the upper stories, in which also is introduced the novel arrangement of alternately narrow and wide spacings, the contrast being subtly balanced by the window openings. Noticeable is the variety attained by the alternating of square and round topped windows, and also their distribution to mark the relative importance of the several stories. In the windows of the piano nobile the effect of the round-top lights is heightened by a rectangular frame, formed of pilasters, decorated with arabesques, while the upper part includes spandrels relieved by a single large rosette and surmounted by a delicately proportioned cornice. Cancellaria—Farnese.—It is interesting to compare the official Cancellaria with the famous domestic example, the Palazzo Farnese. The latter dates from 1530 to 1546, when the faÇade designed by Sangallo, some say with Vignola’s co-operation, was completed by Michelangelo. His contribution was the cornice, which by its boldness of projection and richness of detail redeems the comparative monotony of evenly spaced windows and repeated framings. However, it is the court of this palace, said to be the most imposing in Italy, that presents its finest claim to distinction, and here the two lower stories, erected by Sangallo, are superior in freedom of design, as well as dignity, to the more cramped and crowded upper one that was added by Michelangelo. Capitol Palaces.—The latter, a few years earlier, namely in 1540, had begun the erection of the Capitol Palaces, a design that flanks three sides of a square, the right and left of which are occupied respectively, by the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Capitoline Museum, both completed in 1542, while the centre, finished in 1563, a year before Michelangelo’s death, holds the Palazzo dei Senatori. In these faÇades appears the innovation of pilasters, carried through the two upper stories. This emphasis of the vertical lines contradicts the internal division of the structure into stories and is at the sacrifice of the horizontal lines of the faÇade. The latter are broken up into balconies, while the interior division is only hinted at by the windows. But Michelangelo with the audacity of genius rejected proprieties of detail and even logic of structure, as he was prone to do also in his sculpture—witness the recumbent figures on the Medici tombs—for the sake, as we should say to-day, of a grander and more impressive synthesis. In a word, he sacrificed the parts to the whole; and to secure the impressiveness of the whole, ties the pilasters together at the top with an entablature that comprises a boldly projecting cornice and is additionally emphasised by the crowning feature of a balustrade. Except that the cornice takes the place of pediments the principle of design is virtually that of a Roman temple, diverted from its purpose and brusquely made to accommodate itself to novel conditions. In the hands of Michelangelo the end may be said to justify the means, but this device of ignoring the interior necessities of construction in favour of an arbitrary exterior design became a precedent that contributed largely to the decadence of the Renaissance style. Yet, after all, it was only carrying to a destructively logical conclusion the use of the classic orders as elements not of constructive but of purely decorative design. We have already noted in the case of Gothic architecture that its decadence was exhibited in a superabundance of decorative detail, and a similar course appears in the Renaissance. Much of the responsibility of the change is attributed to Sansovino. While Michelangelo magnified the decorative, the Venetian architect elaborated it. His faÇade of the Library of San Marco may be cited as an example. Capitol Palaces—Library of S. Mark.—If we compare the Library with the Capitol Palaces we discover several important differences. In the Venetian building the divisions of the interior are indicated by the emphatic horizontal features; and the latter, as well as the deep openings of the arcade and of the windows, produce a depth of shadow effects, which in combination with the lighted surfaces results in great variety and richness. It is precisely these qualities, which are also elements in the design of Hellenic and Roman temples, that Michelangelo lost or discarded in his adaptation. Contrasted either with a temple or with Sansovino’s Library, the Capitol Palaces, grandiose although they are, seem tame and tight, lacking in structural vitality. Sansovino introduced vigour into his design by increasing the projection of his large and small columns and by using the latter in couples; also by giving a corresponding projection to all the decorative details and by introducing sculptured figures into the spandrels of the arches and the frieze. The principle of his design, stated in ordinary terms, was: If such and such things are good, more of them will be better. It was a principle that might well commend itself to the Venetians’ love of pageantry and display. Sansovino had sufficient taste to know how far to carry the elaboration; but in the hands of succeeding architects his restraint was exchanged for license, variety degenerated into fussiness, and elaboration became extravagance. Pesaro Palace.—These faults are discernible in the Pesaro Palace (1650-1680) by Longhena, a product of the Venetian Rococo spirit, and by no means an extreme example. For it preserves a certain dignity of mass notwithstanding that it is overcharged with ornament that gives it an effect of trickiness and restlessness. And the latter, it is to be noted, is partly due to the device, which for a long time had been prevalent, of carrying the horizontal moulding around the projecting capital of an engaged column or pilaster. Borrowed from Roman usage, it represents an element of decoration that tends to convert the contrasting quietness of the horizontal lines into a jiggety disturbance. This palace, however, can lay claim to the distinction that the superimposed orders are continued, with pilasters instead of columns, along the faÇade that abuts on the side canal. ECCLESIASTICAL BUILDINGS We have now to trace the progress of the Renaissance style as it affected Ecclesiastical architecture. It is maintained by enthusiastic advocates of Gothic architecture, such as Ralph Adams Cram in his inspired little book, “The Gothic Quest,” that whereas Gothic architecture was evolved by the Church and laity through the impulse of a common Faith, and was determined in all its essential particulars by the symbolism of the Christian religion and the requirements of Christian worship, the change effected by the Renaissance was a reversion to the architectural types of Paganism. Renaissance ecclesiastical architecture did not grow; it was formulated out of precedents that were the direct antithesis of Christianity and Christian worship; derived either from temples that were built after the belief even in the Pagan religion had languished or died out, or from types of secular architecture, such as baths, basilicas, and triumphal arches. Therefore it was false in principle and illogical and insincere in fact. It is difficult not to agree with this criticism; the more so, that it is a matter of knowledge that the Renaissance style was developed by ecclesiastics and laity who, while they tolerated the traditional religion—“If we are not ourselves pious,” as Pope Julius II said, “why should we prevent the people from being so?”—were in their own tastes, convictions, and habits of life notoriously pagan. Accordingly, it is not the aspiration of the soul, the ascending confidence of faith, the yearning of the spirit beyond the confines of the flesh that are embodied in Renaissance church architecture; but, increasingly, the pride of intellect, the pride of life, and the satisfaction of the senses in ceremonial display. S. Spirito—S. Andrea.—We will compare first Brunelleschi’s Church of S. Spirito in Florence (1476) with Alberti’s S. Andrea in Mantua (1512). Professor Fletcher points out the close analogy between the former and the Romanesque church of the Apostles, erected in Florence during the ninth century. It represents, in effect, a reversion to the features of the Tuscan Romanesque—vaulted aisles, a flat ceiling over the nave, surmounting a high clerestory and aisles. For the support, however, of the low dome over the crossing, Brunelleschi revived the Byzantine system of pendentives, which henceforth were used in all the Renaissance domes. Classic influence is chiefly apparent in the details of the columns, which present probably the first example of fragments of entablature placed upon the capitals to sustain the spring of the arches. Alberti’s design, on the other hand, is unqualifiably an adaptation of Roman style, except in the case of the dome, which is supported by pendentives and raised on a drum. But the latter assumes the classical form of a peristyle of columns surmounted by an entablature. The roof of the nave is barrel vaulted and coffered in the Roman manner and springs directly from the entablature, which rests on piers that are decorated with engaged pilasters of the Corinthian order. The faÇade of the porch supplies the motive of the whole design, being an adaptation of the Roman triumphal arch in Mantua. Accordingly, it is composed of four Corinthian engaged columns, mounted on pedestals in the Roman manner, supporting an entablature and pediment. The three intervening spaces are occupied by doors, over each of the side ones being a window above a window, while the central door is flanked by two columns, which support a cornice and arch that frame a lunette. If the student will compare it with the main portal of some Gothic or Romanesque church, he will discover an instructive difference. Il Gesu—S. Giorgio Maggiore.—Here is a further comparison of Renaissance church-faÇades:—the Jesuit Church in Rome, Il Gesu (1568) and S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice (1560). The former is by Vignola; the latter was erected by Scamozzi, the pupil of Palladio. But Palladio designed the rest of the church and, since the faÇade was built during his lifetime, may have had more or less to do with its design. It is at any rate in the Palladian manner. Both Palladio and Vignola were pronounced classicalists, and yet they contributed to the decadence of the Renaissance style. It is true that Palladio’s own style was characterised by a marked severity; note the present faÇade which presents a severely formal application of columns, entablatures, and pediments. But it involves a feature that readily lent itself to extravagant exploitation; namely, the emphasis upon colossal columns. Vignola’s design, on the other hand, is characterised by a multiplication and elaboration of features, which his sense of classic propriety has kept within ordered bounds but which a less refined taste might easily degrade into exuberant pretentiousness. And indeed a certain pretentiousness marks both these faÇades. They make claim to being imposed by methods that are actually a pretence. For neither design has grown out of the necessities and circumstances of the building. Each represents the arbitrary importation of alien ingredients, pieced together to conform to the principles of a style that was evolved for other purposes and conditions. Each design is false in motive and specious in its application of principles; and, since lies breed lies, it must share responsibility for the flagrancy of specious and pretentious shams that in time ensued from it. And, already, in both these designs the imitation of the antique results in cold and rigid formalism. Compare, for example, Vignola’s faÇade with one of the Tuscan Romanesque, for instance, Pisa cathedral. The architects of the latter borrowed from the Romans the use of applied arcades of arches and columns; but used the device frankly as a decorative sheathing, subordinated in scale to the constructive mass, and maintained the rich simplicity of effect by repetition of the same decorative motive. Vignola, however, treated his sheathing as if it had actual constructive meaning; and, moreover, multiplied the motives. Big, coupled columns, mounted on pedestals, supported an entablature, the cornice of which becomes the support of another series of big, coupled columns, which make a great display of supporting a little pediment. Comparing this Renaissance example with the Pisan, one may be reminded of a circus incident. At first there enters a performer who with delightful agility and grace keeps a number of balls moving lightly in the air. He is followed by another, who, assuming the attitudes of an Atlas supporting the world, labours with a cannon ball, which, when it is finally tossed aside, proves to be no heavier than a football. Scarcely less incongruous is the Palladian design, with its colossal framework of columns, entablature and pediment, and the paltry scale of its doorway and windows. And then the enormity of the broken pediment, the two parts of which form the front of the series of side-chapels that flank the interior of the nave. Of course there is a sort of callous logic represented. The pediment is the end of a sloping roof; therefore, if the roof be separated into two parts, why not separate the pediment? But what about the taste which, as we have seen, always tempered the logic of the Greeks? Could the Greek taste have tolerated the cleavage in half of a little temple design and the swaggering intrusion between them of a giant design and persuaded itself that the domination of the latter produced a harmony of relations? S. PETER’S The culminating achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the new Church of S. Peter’s, the erection of which, dating from 1506 to about 1626, covers the whole period of the rise and decline of the Classic movement in Rome. The original plan, as laid out by Bramante, was a Greek cross, comprising, that is to say, four equal parts. On this he proposed to design a building that should combine the three great barrel-vaulted halls of the Basilica of Constantine with the dome of the Pantheon. In 1514, the year preceding Bramante’s death, Sangallo the Elder, Raphael, and Fra Gioconda da Verona were associated with the work; but the advanced age of the first and third and Raphael’s preoccupation with painting and his early death caused little to be accomplished. Meanwhile a difference of opinion had arisen as to whether the plan should be a Greek or Latin cross. The construction was continued under the directorship of Sangallo the Younger and Peruzzi, until in 1546 Michelangelo was appealed to. He rescued the ground plan of Bramante, reinforced the piers which the latter had begun at the crossing, and made drawings and a wooden model of the dome as far up as the lantern and actually completed the erection of the drum. He was succeeded by Vignola, who added the four cupolas around the dome. The dome itself was completed from Michelangelo’s model, and finished (1585-1590) with a lantern, by Giacomo della Porta and Fontana. During 1605-1612, at the instance of Paul V, the nave was lengthened by Carlo Maderna to form a Latin instead of a Greek cross and the faÇade was erected. Finally, between 1629 and 1667, Bernini constructed the brazen baldachino and lavished sculpture on the interior, while completing the exterior effect by the colonnades which enclose the Piazza. Easily the largest church in the world, S. Peter’s compares with other large churches as follows, the figures representing square yards of area in round numbers: S. Peter’s, 18,000; Seville, 13,000; Milan, 10,000; S. Paul’s, London, 9000; S. Sophia, 8000; Cologne, 7000. The interior measurement of S. Peter’s is approximately 205 yards long; the nave being 150 feet high and 87 feet wide (the same dimensions as those of the great hall of the Constantine basilica). The dome from the pavement to the summit of the lantern is 403 feet, the cross adding another 30; while the diameter is 138 feet, about five feet less than the dome of the Pantheon. The prolongation of the nave by three bays has destroyed the symmetry of mass, conceived by Bramante and Michelangelo, besides interfering with the exterior view of the dome, which is visible only from a distance. The east faÇade (for S. Peter’s reverses the usual orientation from west to east) is, for all its magnitude, unimpressive. Its extension beyond the actual edifice at each end still further accentuates the comparatively mean scale of the portal. But scale is very generally sacrificed both on the exterior and in the interior of S. Peter’s. This is attributed by experts to the change of design introduced by Michelangelo. As arranged by Sangallo the Younger, the faÇades were to comprise the superimposed orders; for which Michelangelo substituted his scheme of the Capitol Palaces—a single colossal order, surmounted by an attic. He thus gained dignity at the expense of scale; for although the huge pilasters are eighty-seven feet high, they look much smaller, while the windows between them, each twenty feet in height, give an impression to the eye of about half that size. There is a similar apparent dwarfing of size in the piers and engaged columns of the nave, which actually measure to the top of the entablature one hundred feet. And this necessitated a corresponding increase of the dimensions of the sculptured figures in the spandrels, which are twenty feet high, thus further overpowering the sense of height. The noblest feature of the interior is the magnificent barrel vault of the nave, while the surpassing grandeur of the whole edifice consists in Michelangelo’s dome. Like Brunelleschi’s it has an inner and an outer shell, and is constructed on sixteen ribs, which, however, are all visible internally. The chief difference is the elevation of the dome and drum upon a second and loftier drum, composed of coupled Corinthian columns and intervening windows. This design was an adaptation of those which had been made by Bramante and Sangallo the Younger. The former had suggested a peristyle of columns; the latter, two drums; and Michelangelo virtually combined the two. But, in doing so he conceived new proportions between the vertical parts of the drum and the curve of the dome, that give his design not only a superior majesty but also a superior lightness and airiness. S. Peter’s indeed, notwithstanding much extravagant, tasteless, and meretricious sumptuousness, due to Bernini and others, remains a stupendous monument to the genius of Michelangelo and Bramante and to the genius of the Italian Renaissance. It is the fit symbol of an age that gradually lost touch of the finer things of the spirit and grew to worship greatness, power, and pomp; that had all but discarded Christianity for Paganism. Meanwhile the noblest trait of the Italian genius was its worship of beauty as well as power. The creativeness of the Italians was revealed in their extraordinary sensitiveness to all forms of beauty in the visible world; and in the world of intellectual conception, and in their marvellous aptitude for translating their impressions of beauty into forms of equivalent refinement. Accordingly, the student of to-day visits churches to enjoy the treasures of pictured altar-pieces, sculptured tombs, pulpits, wonders of metal-work in screens and sacred vessels, marvels of exquisite craftsmanship in objects too numerous to mention. The Sistine Chapel draws him because of Michelangelo’s frescoes, the Stanze apartments for Raphael’s, and the adjoining Loggia for his pictured Bible. Again, it is Raphael’s frescoes that lead him to the Villa Farnesina, while many another villa charms to-day by the beauty of its gardens and terraces, fountains, cascades, and fish-ponds, shaded alleys and grottos. In innumerable ways it is the accompaniments of Italian Renaissance architecture, as well as the architecture itself, that excite admiration and have their message for ourselves. CHÂTEAU DE BLOIS Gothic Part Built by Louis XII. P. 379 [Image unavailable.] MAISON FRANÇOIS I. PARIS Built in 1527. Note Unusual Size of Windows; also Richness of Intervening Pilasters. P. 380 [Image unavailable.] PLAN SHOWING GROWTH OF LOUVRE From the Original Part Erected by Pierre Lescot—the Left Lower Corner of the Dark Quadrangle on Right of Plan. P. 382, ET SEQ. [Image unavailable.] PAVILLON DE L’HORLOGE, LOUVRE Wing to the Right, the Original Part by Pierre Lescot. The Pavillon and Left Wing by Lemercier (Louis XIII). PP. 384, 385 CHAPTER IV
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 1. Early Renaissance. Reigns of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I (1483-1547). 2. Advanced Renaissance. Henri II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henri III (1547-1589). 3. Classic Period. Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV (1589-1715). 4. Rococo. The Regency and Louis XI (1715-1774). By the middle of the fifteenth century commercial relations with Italy and the number of Italian ecclesiastics holding benefices in France, had caused a steady influx of Italian influence, which became intensified by the military interferences of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I in the politics of Italy. The practical issue of these otherwise disastrous expeditions was the invasion of Italian culture into France. Italian Culture.—It produced a new era of intellectual activity and fostered a new refinement of taste and social conditions. Its earliest results are typified in the career of Francis I. No French king before his time had received so liberal an education. Under the enlightened care of his mother, Louise of Savoy, he was early trained in Latin, Italian, and Spanish, sharing the studies with his gifted sister, Margaret, afterward Queen of Navarre, a patroness of literature and herself the author of the “Heptameron,” a collection of stories, supposed to extend over seven days in the telling and modelled on the style of Boccaccio’s “Decameron.” Francis also played the rÔle of patron, surrounding himself with men of letters and artists; but while he encouraged the visits of Italian artists he was no less eager to encourage native talent. His patronage of Clement Marot, the first great poet of the French Renaissance, is a case in point and, corresponding with this amour propre regarding native talent notwithstanding his love for things Italian, was his employment of French architects, the services of foreign artists being used chiefly in the way of sculptural and painted decorations. By the middle of the fifteenth century the great era of church building had been exhausted. The needs of the population for places of worship were fully satisfied; the profession of architect passed from the clerics to laymen, who, so far as ecclesiastical work was concerned, were busy embellishing existing churches with altar-furnishings, screens, pulpits, fonts, tombs, and so forth, in which the novel skill of the Italian craftsman was freely used. School of Tours.—Thus, in consequence of Italian influence, a new school of French sculpture grew up, which centered in Tours, a city at this period specially favoured by the kings of France. The genius of this “School of Tours” was Michel Colombe, whose art represented a blend of Italian refinement and Gothic vigour; and it was precisely this mingled quality that characterised the architecture of the Early French Renaissance. It, too, was centered in Tours, and blossomed forth throughout the Province of Touraine. For it was a distinction of the French Court life of the period that it avoided cramped conditions of city environment and spread itself luxuriantly in the pleasures of country life. Accordingly, the architectural memorials of the Early French Renaissance are mainly the royal and noble chÂteaux that stud Touraine, especially along the banks of the rivers Loire and Cher. ChÂteaux.—The conditions being so local and essentially an expression of the French idea of living, the model of the Italian palace—a product primarily of the needs and conditions of city life—could not be directly applied, while the logic of the French genius, working at that time freely, eschewed the attempt to make a compromise with imitation. So the chÂteaux of the Early French Renaissance retain the structural character of the Gothic Feudal castle but modify it in the way of Italian refinements, passing from military offensive and defensive purpose to that of elegant and luxurious living. Hence a distinction of these French chÂteaux is their picturesqueness and the degree to which they participate in the natural picture. Instead of the unity of effect presented by an Italian palace, completely enclosing its cortile, they retained the Gothic characteristic of variety in unity; their extensive and differing faÇades being grouped around a spacious courtyard, and composed so as to furnish a variety of effects from different view-points of the landscape. One side of the court was occupied by a windowless screen wall along which, upon the inside, ran a colonnade, while the centre was pierced by a large covered gateway that afforded a porte-cochÈre. The sides of the courtyard were flanked by buildings, devoted to the servants’ quarters and the various offices connected with the home-life and the outdoor pastimes, while on the fourth side, facing the entrance, extended the main edifice, designed for the occupation of the family and the entertainment of guests. The chief architectural distinction of this main part was reserved for its outer faÇade, where it abutted on a terrace, which communicated with the alleys, parterres, and fish-ponds of the formally laid out gardens and commanded views of the surrounding park. In this adaptation of the plan of a Gothic fortress to the conveniences and pleasures of a country palace, some of the old architectural features were preserved but modified to decorative purposes. Thus the gateway was square and massive, recalling distantly the appearance of a donjon keep; the more so that round towers, built, however, with squared walls in the interior, projected from the angles. The angles also of the outer faÇades were embellished with similar towers, that preserved a picturesque contrast to the straight lines of the intervening masonry as well as presenting from their windows a variety of views of the surroundings. The actual machicolations that previously overhung the walls were now reduced to a decorative motive of little arches upon corbels, and the battlements gave way to balustrades. Further, the great hall was replaced by state apartments which, as in an Italian palace, occupied the second floor or bel Étage. Meanwhile, the crowning distinction of the Early Renaissance palaces was the high-pitched roofs, surmounted in the case of the turrets with lanterns or louvers, and everywhere enlivened with tall decorated chimneys and recurring dormer windows, in frames of richly carved tracery. It was, in fact, in the treatment of the roofs that the French architects chiefly preserved the Gothic tendency to verticality; and, correspondingly, it was in the gradual lowering of the roofs and the emphasis of the horizontal features of the faÇades that they exhibited their gradual conversion to Italian influences. To-day, these chÂteaux of Touraine, embosomed in the beauty of their natural surroundings, quietly mirrored in the river’s surface, still testify to the vigour and freshness of the Gallic genius in the dayspring of its acceptance of Italian refinements. A little effort of imagination, assisted, maybe, by pictures such as those of EugÈne Isabey, can reconstruct in fancy the splendour and vivacity of the scene, when the terraces vied with the parterres in their blossoming of colours, as courtly men and women in the bravery of imported Italian velvets and brocades, lounged in elegant ease or gathered in a group to listen to a poet’s latest chanson, while the activity of the courtyard, with its constant coming and going of russet and green-clad serving men, was stirred to a gayer aspect by the arrival or departure of a brilliant cavalcade of hunters with hawk and hound. ChÂteau de Gaillon.—One of the earliest of the castles that marked the transition from Gothic to Renaissance was the ChÂteau de Gaillon, which was built for a Tourainer, the Cardinal George of Amboise, not, however, in Touraine, but in the neighbourhood of Rouen. Only fragments of it remain which are now preserved in the École des Beaux Arts in Paris; but in its day it was a masterpiece of the Rouen School, which preceded that of Tours as a flourishing centre of art and letters. It much more nearly resembled in its lay-out the character of a fortified castle, having among other defensive details, a moat and drawbridge. ChÂteau de Blois.—Meanwhile, a surviving example of the transition and Early Renaissance, is the ChÂteau de Blois, the first of the Royal Palaces, begun by Charles XII and completed by Francis I. The earlier faÇade is still unmistakably Gothic; the arches of the colonnade are flat segments, characteristic of the latest period; the shafts of the columns are attached to piers that reinforce the upper walls and run into the cornice; the windows still have stone mullions and transoms, and the design and decorative detail of the dormer windows are purely Gothic. On the other hand, in the faÇade of Francis I, the ornament of the dormer windows, as well as the decorative details elsewhere, are of Italian design. The cornice has been given a more pronounced decorative treatment; it has a bolder projection and, while the old machicolations are represented they are converted into a purely decorative motive. Further, although the square mullion windows still appear, they are framed with pilasters and cornice and the intervening spaces of solid wall are treated as panels and enriched with arabesques. The finest feature of this wing is the staircase tower, which occupies the centre of the faÇade on the side facing the court. Polygonal in plan, it is constructed with four great piers, extending from the ground to the cornice, to which are fitted the rising balustrades. The whole is magnificently Gothic in its structural design as well as in the character of the canopied niches; but the actual ornament is Renaissance and was probably executed by Italian artists. In the pierced carving of the balustrades the decorative motive is the King’s monogram, “F,” intertwined with his emblem, the Salamander. ChÂteau de Chambord.—Another famous staircase appears in the ChÂteau de Chambord, a palace which in other respects also presents most interesting features. It was erected by Francis I (1526), probably as a hunting box, and the architect, Pierre C. Nepveu, has adhered more closely than had been usual to the plan of a feudal fortress. For in place of the gateway in the centre of the screen wall, a square structure with corner towers, which are round outside but square in the interior, projects into the courtyard, in the manner of a donjon-keep. Yet its purpose was not for defence but for ceremonial entertainment, since the interior contains four halls carried up to a great height and covered with coffered barrel vaults, while the centre of the plan is occupied by the staircase. The latter, constructed in a stone cage, consists of a double spiral stairway, respectively for ascent and descent. It communicates with small rooms in the angles of the square and in the turrets, and finally with the lantern, which commands a superb view of the surrounding country. This lantern, octagonal in plan, the crowning feature of the exterior design, rises above the surrounding roofs, dormer-windows, and chimneys in two tiers of arcades, noticeably Italian in their system of pilasters and entablatures. They are surmounted by a domed roof, which supports an elaborate cupola. While the sky line thus presents a richly picturesque confusion, the faÇades are comparatively severe and in the ordered repetition of their details reflect the Italian influence. This is especially perceptible in the orders of Corinthian pilasters, in the general emphasis of the horizontal features, and in the use of round arches in the arcades. Meanwhile, the uniformity of the faÇades are relieved by the projecting angle-turrets, and by the admirably disposed masses of solid masonry, which besides their decorative value serve the practical use of backings to the interior fireplaces. Other famous chÂteaux of Touraine are those of Bury, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, and Amboise. Then came the day when Francis moved his court to Paris, thus shifting the scene of architectural activity. A rural palace sprang into form at Fontainebleau, a royal chÂteau at St. Germain-en-Laye, and a start was made with the city palace of the Louvre. Palace of Fontainebleau.—The Palace of Fontainebleau was begun in 1528 by the architect Gilles le Breton. It followed the plan of a convent which it replaced, so that a remarkable irregularity distinguishes its arrangement. The design of the faÇades was probably influenced by Vignola and Serlio, who were among the artists invited from Italy by Francis I. They included also the painters Niccolo dell’ Abbati, Il Rosso, and Primaticcio, and the sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini, who were employed upon the decoration of the interior. Indeed, it is for the magnificence of the interior decoration, especially in the Galerie de FranÇois I, and in the Salle des FÊtes, added by Henri II, and the Galerie de Diane and Galerie des Cerfs of Henri IV, rather than for architectural distinction, that Fontainebleau is celebrated. Louvre.—The Louvre was commenced in 1546, the year preceding the death of Francis I. The design was entrusted to the French architect, Pierre Lescot, but is supposed to have been influenced by Serlio. It exhibits, in fact, a noticeably Italian character and marks the beginning of the advanced phase of the French Renaissance, associated with the reigns of Henri II, Charles IX, and Henri III (1547-1589), while subsequent additions, made during the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, record the progress of the matured Renaissance toward the period of pronounced Classicalism. Accordingly the history of the Louvre is an epitome of what this development involved. The Palace was originally designed to cover the comparatively small square plan which had been occupied by the Gothic, fortified palace of Philippe Augustus, and the parts, executed by Lescot, comprise the west and south faÇades. In the reign of Louis XIII the original square was doubled in size, so as to enclose the present court of the, so-called, “Old Louvre.” Meanwhile, under Charles IX, the adjacent palace of the Tuilleries was erected by the architect, Philibert de l’Orme, for Catherine de Medicis; and to connect it with the Louvre, a long gallery, subsequently completed by Henri IV, was built along the bank of the Seine. This was supplemented later by wings, forming three sides of the larger Court of the Place du Carrousel, which was finished by Napoleon I. Meanwhile, by Louis XIV a new front, bordering on the Seine, had been added to the Old Louvre, and finally, under Napoleon III, two wings were projected from the Old Louvre on the north and south of the Place du Carrousel, forming what is now known as the New Louvre. At present the only change from the plan thus gradually compiled, consists in the loss of the Tuilleries which was burnt by the Commune mob in 1871. Old Louvre—Blois.—Returning to the original faÇade by Pierre Lescot, one may compare it profitably with both the earlier and the later faÇades of Blois. The Louvre design, like the earlier Blois, consists of three parts, but has become more unified. The arcade is replaced by deeply set windows, under round arches; the bel Étage now presents a regular recurrence of windows at closer intervals, and the dormer windows have given way to a continuous attic with a consequent lowering of the pitch of the roof. Again, when compared with the later faÇade of Blois, one notes in that of the Louvre the disappearance of the mullion divisions in the windows, their narrower and higher shape, and the Italian detail of their pedimental tops. Particularly noticeable is the more simplified and organic effect produced by compressing the four stories of the older design into an appearance of three divisions, very carefully balanced. Under this appearance, however, lies an actual fourth story, introduced as a mezzanine floor between the first and second. It is betrayed by the bull’s-eye window or oeil de boeuf, a characteristically French shape of window, and by a range of semi-circular windows which at first sight may seem to be a part of the windows below them. This exterior blending of the mezzanine with the first story results in strengthening the character of the lower part, so that it affords a resolute foundation for the bel Étage, which in itself is effectively emphasised by the special treatment of the windows. And this unity of design is further increased by the bold projection of the entablatures and cornice. The suggestion of verticality has been abandoned in the frank acceptance of the horizontal motive. Lest, however, this should produce monotony, the Gallic preference for variety relieved the flatness of the faÇades by doubling the width of the window-bays at the ends and in the centre, and by giving them a slight projection. Around this the entablatures are broken, while double pilasters are employed and the summit terminates in segmental pediments, which break into and relieve the continuous line of the cornice. When further we note that in addition to the Corinthian and Composite pilasters and other carved details of purely Italian design, there are statues and much other enrichment, characterised by the free, vigorous feeling of French sculpture, the work it is said of Jean Goujon, we realise than even the advanced phase of French Renaissance, at least in its early stage, reflects still a temperament noticeably Gallic. When it was decided, in the reign of Louis XIII, to double the size of the court of the Louvre, Jacques Lemercier, who was entrusted with the work, erected as a central feature of the prolonged faÇade, the “Pavilion de l’Horloge.” This was supplemented on the side facing west by another pavilion called after the famous minister of Henri IV and Louis XIII, the Pavilion Sully. The former occupies a width twice that of the double, projecting bays, and, while it continues the sequence of windows in the bel Étage and attic, introduces in the former a large round-topped window. Further, the attic is surmounted by a clerestory of three windows, framed with twin-figured caryatids by Jacques Sarrazin. They support a pediment, above which rises a domical roof, divided by four well-defined ribs and terminating in a balustraded crown—a treatment of pavilions essentially French in character. It is akin to that type of roof construction, which was called after the architect, FranÇois Mansart or Mansard, who popularised its use. The principle is the replacement of the continuous slope by a “hip” or “curb”—namely, the meeting of an upper and a lower slope at an obtuse angel; a form of construction which reduces the outward thrust on the walls by directing much of the strain to the post that supports the angle. When used upon pavilions, it gives them something of the effect of towers. East FaÇade.—Under Louis XIV the Old Louvre was completed by the addition of the east faÇade. The work had been entrusted to Bernini, who was a visitor at the court, but his project was rejected in favour of one designed by the King’s physician, Dr. Perrault. This involved again doubling the size of the plan by the continuation of the north and south faÇades. In these the style of Lescot’s was fortunately preserved, though another story was added to accommodate the extra height of the east faÇade. The latter represents the full acceptance of the classical style, which reflects the taste of the time; and is such a design as an intelligent student of the writings of Vignola might compile. Its main feature is a colossal order of coupled Corinthian columns, forming a colonnade, behind which the walls of the edifice are set back. The uniformity of this front of six hundred feet is interrupted by projections at the ends and in the centre, the predominance of the latter being asserted by a pediment. The character of this faÇade is echoed on the south one, overlooking the Seine, by an order of colossal pilasters. Luxembourg Palace.—Before enumerating other examples of the Classicism of Louis XIV, we must revert to a notable example of the advanced Renaissance; namely, the Luxembourg Palace, which was erected in 1611 by Salomon de Brosse for Marie de MÉdicis, the wife of Henri IV. In conformity with her Florentine tastes the design was based upon that of the garden front of the Pitti Palace, which is distinguished by its orders of rusticated pilasters. But the French character prevails in the plan, which presents a central main building or corp de logis, flanked by wings that extend back and form the sides of a courtyard, which is separated from the street by a screen-wall with porte-cochÈre. Moreover, the garden front is distinguishably French in the picturesque variety obtained by the projecting portions that form terminal and central pavilions, crowned with characteristic roofs. It is a design of quietly elegant refinement. A corresponding choiceness of quality was prolonged into the classical rÉgime in the ChÂteau de Maisons, near St. Germain-en-Laye, by FranÇois Mansart and in the same architect’s domical church of Val de Grace, Paris, in which he was assisted by Lemercier. Meanwhile, Mansart’s nephew, Jules Hardouin Mansart, was associated with Levau in Louis XIV’s special pride, Versailles. Versailles.—This immense palace is representative at once of the monarchical spirit of the time and of the sterility of classicism. Colossally pretentious, for the total length of the garden faÇade is one thousand three hundred and twenty feet, the design in its monotonous repetition of orders, scarcely relieved by the tame projections, is also monumentally dull. It fronts upon formal gardens, laid out with terraces and fountains, that in their magnificence are a memorial to the genius of Le NÔtre. The decorations of the interior of the palace exhibit the unfortunate taste for prodigal display, represented in exuberant and oppressively heavy relief work, executed in gilded papier machÉ, and set off with prodigious canvases by Lebrun and his assistants. J. H. Mansart also designed the Place Vendome, around the four sides of which all the houses are treated with a uniform order of colossal pilasters, out of scale with the size of the square and pretentiously inappropriate. His, too, was the Veterans’ home, the HÔtel des Invalides. HÔtel des Invalides.—The latter is vast but truly barrack-like, with tedious repetition of the orders; but is celebrated for the stately grace of the dome. This surmounts the church that is in the form of a Greek cross, the angles being filled with chapels, so as to make the complete plan a square. The exterior design of the dome includes a high drum, pierced with windows, between which project eight coupled columns that form buttresses. These terminate in carved corbels, which reinforce a smaller drum, with round topped lights. From this springs the dome; the grace of its curve being echoed in the airy cupola whose roof diminishes in concave curves to a soaring point. The somewhat excessive height of the exterior needed on the inside very considerable reduction, in order to bring it into proportion with the rest of the interior. This the architect accomplished by erecting beneath the wooden shell of the outer dome two interior ones, a middle and a lower one, independently constructed. The lower, which rises immediately above the lower drum, has a large circular opening, through which is visible the decorations painted on the middle dome, which rests upon the upper drum and is lighted by its windows. The whole structure is supported upon four large piers, which, as in S. Paul’s, London, are pierced by arched openings, leading, in the case of the Invalides, into the four angle chapels. Another instance of a triple dome occurs in the Church of S. GeneviÈve, better known as the Pantheon, which we shall refer to later in connection with the Classic revival, although its construction, extending from 1755 to 1781, occupied a considerable part of the Rococo period. Rococo.—The Rococo is marked by a further decline into dry and pedantic formality in the use of the orders, which, however, in time produced a reaction toward a more intelligent, if uninspired, observance of the principles of classic design. It appears in the faÇade added to the Church of S. Sulpice in 1755 by the Italian, Servandoni. This comprises a Doric portico, supporting an Ionic arcade, above which, at the extremities, rise turrets in two tiers of orders. Other examples which mark the end of the reign of Louis XV will be referred to in the subsequent chapter on Classic Revival. Meanwhile the style that is recognised as Rococo is characteristically exhibited in the interior decorations. These reflect the change of spirit that came over court life with the death of Louis XIV and the succession of the Duke of Orleans as regent during the minority of Louis XV. The old King under the control of Madame de Maintenon and his confessor had become gloomily religious; the court spirit, punctilious as ever, was ponderously dull. With the Regency it rebounded into lightsomeness. Versailles was abandoned for the Luxembourg; the peruke and stiff fashions gave way to powdered hair and elegance of costume; rigid etiquette was replaced with gay wit and gallantry; all that was lightest in the Gallic temperament bubbled sparkling to the surface. To the call of this new spirit the decorators responded. The papier-machÉ ornament was discarded for stucco; profusion still abounded, but it was no longer heavy and oppressive; it wandered in light luxuriance over walls, doors, and ceilings; exhibiting a fertility of decorative invention in its combinations of curly-cues, scrolls, shells, foliage, flowers, and rockwork. The last named motive (rocca in Italian) is the doubtful origin attributed to the term Rococo. It was a style that characteristically avoided straight lines and, in general, the formality of arrangement which distinguishes classic ornament. Accordingly it fell under the ban of the Classical Revival and is always condemned by those whose preferences are classical. And, undoubtedly, its freedom often degenerated into license and its profusion became excess, especially in the hands of German or Spanish imitators. Yet, at its best, when considered as a setting to the costumes and manners of the period and as an expression of the social spirit, it represented something so vitally appropriate to the time and place of its creation that it commands the consideration of the student. Under an impulse infinitely inferior to that which inspired the decorators of the Gothic and Early Renaissance, it yet represents the same fecundity of Gallic creativeness. [Image unavailable.] CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG On Right Ruins of the Heinrichsbau Wing, Adjoining Remains of Old Gothic Portion: on Extreme Left the Friedrichsbau Wing (1601). P. 394 [Image unavailable.] LIEGE, COURT OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE Gothic Vaulting and Other Details Combined with Renaissance. Note Baluster-Shaped Columns; Capitals Covered with Grotesque Masks, Figures and Foliage. P. 406
[Image unavailable.] | ELEVATION AND PLAN Of the Uncompleted Palace in Classical Style, of Charles V in the Alhambra Grounds. P. 402 | COURT OF THE COLLEGE OF ALCALA DE HEÑARES By Alonzo de Covarrubias. P. 400 |
CHAPTER V
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS, AND SPAIN Notwithstanding the close commercial relations that cities such as Augsburg and NÜremburg maintained with Northern Italy, especially with Venice, the Renaissance influences did not make much impression on German architecture until about the middle of the sixteenth century. It had, however, appeared in the paintings and engravings of DÜrer and Burkmair and in the sculpture of Peter Vischer—as in his Tomb of S. Sebald in NÜremburg. But even in architecture there had been symptoms of the spread of Italian taste, Italian architects being employed on castle-building, as in the case already mentioned, of the Venetian, Scamozzi, in Prague. These, however, were only sporadic instances; for two reasons conspired to defer a general movement: the deep-rooted Gothic feeling and the political conditions. Architecture depends largely upon conditions of social stability, making for wealth and ease, and these had been disturbed by Charles V’s long struggle to crush the nobility that upheld the Protestant faith. It was, therefore, not until security had been established by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, that a widespread activity of architecture was resumed. It lasted until the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618. This covers the period of the Early and Later German Renaissance; the remainder of the seventeenth century being marked by a gradual decline into the extravagance of Rococo. Characteristics.—Moreover, the German architects, after borrowing the Gothic style, had so fitted it, especially in the way of decorative details, to their own taste, that when at length they borrowed from the Renaissance, they preserved, except in rare instances, much of the Gothic feeling. The new style was employed chiefly in castles, domestic buildings, city halls, gild and corporation houses. In these the German love of irregularity, profusion, fantasticalness, and general picturesqueness still prevailed. It was displayed in the continued partiality for towers and turrets (octagonal, not circular, as in France), often containing spiral staircases; high-pitched roofs and decorated gables, carried up in steps; dormer windows, prolonged through several stories up to the height of the roof and emulating the effect of gables; oriel windows, curved or polygonal, projecting from the face of the faÇade or from the angles upon corbel-supports. The German taste also showed itself in the character and distribution of the ornament. While this was apt to be spread freely over the faÇades and was used profusely in the decoration of the windows and doors, it was lavished especially on the gables and dormer gables, so that they are the distinctive feature of the design. To some extent the details of Italian ornament were introduced, but more generally the German carver followed his own taste for bold and deeply cut designs, showing a preference for rusticated masonry, including rusticated pilasters, and drawing on his fancy for grotesques, caryatids and the half-length figures, terminating in a pedestal, known as gaines. And the wood carver vied with the sculptor, especially in the interior decoration of ceilings and wall panelling, while the exteriors as well as the interiors afforded scope for the fancy of the painter. The ornamental tendency increased until the purpose seemed to be to cover every available space with decoration; while as the latter grew less and less organic, it became less original. The carver ceased to invent his designs and was satisfied to copy them with tedious repetitions from the pattern books which, compiled apparently in the Netherlands—one of them by Cornelius de Vriendt—circulated through Germany and, as we shall see, found their way to England. They comprised a heterogeneous assortment of motives, for title pages and frontispieces of books as well as for doorheads and other architectural details, and introduced a variety of designs in bands and straps, borrowed from the work of locksmiths and leather-workers. The degradation reached its climax in the Rococo ornament of the early eighteenth century, especially in the Zwinger Palace, Dresden, “the most terrible Rococo work ever conceived, if we except some of the Churrigueresque work in Spain.” In the neighbourhood of the Hartz Mountains, where forests abounded, timber was used with handsome effect in the design of the structure; beams, doors and window frames, corbels, and so forth being richly carved and often coloured. In the alluvial plain of the North, bounded roughly by a line drawn east and west through Berlin, the absence of stone and the abundance of clay encouraged the use of brick both for the structure and its decoration, and developed a skill in the handling of this material that could scarcely be surpassed. Elsewhere stone was plentiful and the main walls were constructed either of masonry or rubble covered with stucco. Castle of Heidelberg.—Among the highest achievements of the German Renaissance is reckoned the Castle of Heidelberg, which affords a comparison of the early and later styles. For to the old Gothic fortress was added, in 1556, the wing known as the Heinrichsbau, which was supplemented in 1601 by the wing called Friedrichsbau. The latter is in good repair and used as a museum, but the earlier is a roofless shell, devastated, as was the Gothic part, by a fire which originated in a stroke of lightning in 1764. Consequently, to-day we view the faÇade of the Heinrichsbau without the dormer gables which are so marked a feature of the later design. And the loss, no doubt, helps to emphasise the horizontal character of the older faÇade. The design, in fact, throughout suggests a struggle to apply Italian principles and adjust them to German Gothic characteristics. Thus, orders of pilasters are employed in all three stories, but these are rusticated and alternately broken in upon by niches embellished with gaines. The windows have double lights separated by sculptured mullions and, although they are surmounted by pediments and cornices, the constructive simplicity of these details is interfered with by ornamental accessories. The general conflict of effects becomes more perceptible when one compares this faÇade with that of the Friedrichsbau. Here the pilasters and entablatures are of bolder projection; the windows are well set back, their repetition is pleasantly varied by the traceried windows of the first story; the pediments are undisturbed by accessory carving. The walls present an agreeable balance between the horizontal and the perpendicular features; and then, above the cornice, the perpendicular asserts a final quiet predominance in the dormer gables. The whole faÇade, indeed, suggests that the architect had thoroughly mastered the principles of Italian design and could apply them freely; neither yielding to them unduly nor muddling them with the Gothic motive, but blending them flexibly in an ensemble that, while it has derived a certain orderliness from the Italian, preserves the essential spirit of German picturesqueness. City Halls.—Out of the variety of City Halls space permits only a comparison of two famous ones—those of Cologne and Bremen. Both are Gothic buildings modified by Renaissance additions. In the case of Cologne the two-storied porch was added in 1571. In style and detail, it is more purely Italian than usual. So much so, that it presents a somewhat incongruous addition. On the other hand, the Renaissance faÇade of the Bremen Hall, is more in harmony with the original Gothic edifice. It is true the arches of the arcades are pointed instead of round; but the spacing, proportions, and treatment of the upper masonry are very Italian in feeling. Again, while the windows are capped with pediments, they retain the mullions and, which is more significant, the height of the older, purely Gothic lights. Finally, the faÇade is crowned by a cornice, markedly Italian in the depth of its projection, above which appears the characteristically German roof and dormer gables. This faÇade, in fact, erected in 1611, presents another example of intelligent combination of the two styles. Domestic.—As an example of domestic architecture we may study the famous Pellershaus, of NÜremburg. The masonry of the wall is rusticated throughout. The treatment of the first story with its arched doorway and windows is as massively reposeful as that of a Florentine palace; while, except for the corbels alternating with the pilasters in the support of the entablature and the corbel-supported bay windows, the upper stories present a quite Italian orderliness. It is only in the huge dormer gable that the German feeling is allowed full play. The architect has utilised Italian principles of design; but he has emphasised the projection of the pilasters and of the entablatures that break around them; has exercised his German taste in the details of the pilasters; retained the German steps to the gable and embellished them with the characteristic ornament of obelisks, but has also filled in the angles with curving buttresses and, when he reached the summit, let himself go in the way of enrichments, using German gaines, the French bull’s-eye, and Italian pediment, on which, with a fine flourish of German independence, he props a statue! Note also the pilasters and curved pediments of the small dormer windows. Here, as in most examples of the German Renaissance, the decorative emphasis is lavished above the cornice in the treatment of the roof. And the Pellershaus combines the two principles of German roof treatment. For in some cases the roof ridge is parallel to the street and the several stories into which the interior is divided are marked by tiers of dormers, while elsewhere the roof runs at right angles to the street and the gable-end is the imposing feature. In this instance, however, while the ridge is parallel and two small dormers are introduced, the main dormer feature is magnified to the importance of an actual gable, and thus the picturesqueness of the two methods are united in one effective design. Fountains.—Among the smaller memorials of the Renaissance are the fountains which abound in German cities: some of the finest examples being those of TÜbingen, Hildesheim, Mainz, Rothenburg, Ulm, and NÜremburg. SPANISH RENAISSANCE The election in 1492, of the Spaniard, Roderigo Borgia, to the Papacy under the title of Alexander VI, drew Spain into close relations with Rome, while the absorption of the Kingdom of Naples into the Spanish monarchy by Charles V in 1522 involved the country more and more in the political intrigues of Italy. At the same time the immense wealth that was flowing into Spain from her possessions in the New World gave an impetus to her trade with Italy and fostered the enrichment of such families as the Mendoza, Fonseca, Miranda, Ribera, and Velasco, who rivalled the merchant princes of Genoa and Milan. Thus a new era of splendour and of lavish expenditure was promoted in which the influence of Italian art began to penetrate Spain. The date of this Spanish Renaissance may be reckoned from the beginning of the sixteenth century. In Spanish painting the example of the Flemish School was abandoned for that of the Italian; especially for the Milanese School of Leonardo da Vinci and the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. The sculptors absorbed the Italian influence either through the example of Italian craftsmen invited to Spain or by direct study in Italy, while architecture became affected by the example first of Bramante and later of Michelangelo. But the reaction to Italian influence of these three arts was different. Painting needed reinforcement; it went to school with the Italians to master principles of drawing, foreshortening, perspective, and composition, as well as the art of fuller and more refined expression. It had to serve an apprenticeship of imitation before it could develope its own individually native strength in the seventeenth century. But it was otherwise with architecture. The fundamentals of the art were thoroughly understood by the Spaniards through Gothic tradition and, when they came under the spell of the Italian, it was in the way only of modifying the design, especially the character of the decorative elements, in which they were assisted by their sculptors. In place of the flamboyant decoration of the late Gothic there grew up a new style of more refined ornament. And it was also a new style, both in its character and in the use made of it; a style created by Spanish architects and sculptors and confined to Spanish art, and known as estilo plateresco or silversmith’s style. Plateresque Style.—The Spaniards had inherited from the Moors a consummate skill in metal-craftsmanship; and now the inflow of silver from the New World gave a stimulus to the craft of the silversmith. It reached extraordinary development in the making of church plate, particularly in the custodias or tabernacles, designed to hold the “Host,” which reached the magnitude of lofty structures, simulating towers and decorated with a wealth of intricate ornament of the most exuberant and yet delicate fancy. Foremost among these artists in silver was the family of Arphe, consisting of Enrique de Arphe, his son Antonio, and grandson Juan. Their work, which extended throughout the sixteenth century, began by being Gothic in character, but gradually reflected the Italian influence. It was so remarkable in its exuberant creativeness and so widely spread throughout the country—in Toledo, Cordova, Santiago, Seville, Valladolid—that its enormous effect upon architectural decoration is quite comprehensible. The plateresque style is a combination of several elements: the freedom of the Gothic, the delicate profusion of Moorish ornament, and the ordered refinement of Raphael’s arabesques, mingled into a new and living medium of decorative expression by the vitality and fecundity of the Spanish fancy. And a corresponding originality was displayed in the manner of using it. It was massed chiefly around the doors and windows. Its earliest appearance is in the decorated portals, added to the Gothic cathedrals or to the newly erected secular buildings, of which a famous example is the doorway of the west faÇade of the University of Salamanca, in the province of Castile. The earliest architect to apply this sculptural embellishment to the faÇades of buildings is said to have been Enrique de Egas, a native of Brussels, trained in the Gothic style, who was supervising architect of the Cathedral of Toledo. Among the gems which he contributed to the Early Spanish Renaissance are the College of Santa Cruz in Valladolid, built for Bishop Mendoza, and the Hospital of the same name, erected by Cardinal Pedro Mendoza in Toledo, which served as a model for the University of Salamanca. All three of these edifices are celebrated for the magnificent decoration of their principal portal: the one in Salamanca being specially notable for the device adopted to offset the effect of foreshortening in the ornament remote from the eye. For the depth of the cutting is graduated from flat relief in the lowest panels up to a bold enrichment of light and shade at the top. Another feature of these buildings, particularly fine in the two earlier ones, is the interior court or patio. Patio.—The importance of the patio is a distinctive characteristic of Spanish architecture, deriving, not from the cortile of the Italian palace, but from the atrium of the Roman villa, preserved in the courts of Moorish buildings. The patio is surrounded on all four sides by colonnades of two stories into which all the rooms open, while approach to the second floor is given by a handsome staircase. A characteristic feature is the use of bracket columns, a well-known example being in the patio of the House of Miranda in Burgos. Sometimes, in the second story, an arcade is substituted for columns and entablature, as in the Casa de Zaporta, also known as the Infantado Palace, in Guadalajara. Frequently the columns and surfaces of the patio are richly decorated with plateresque ornament, for the patio was the centre of the life and ceremony of the family. And this habit of domestic seclusion, inherited apparently from Moorish times, reacted on the exterior of the buildings; and, while the patio was luxuriantly decorated, a singular barrenness characterised the faÇades. Thus the chief feature of the latter was the entrance doorway; the windows were few, small in size, and raised high above the level of the street, while occasionally a portico was added under the roof, where the inmates could take the air and view the outside life without themselves being seen. A famous example of this is seen in the college erected for Cardinal Ximenes in Alcala de Henares by the Castilian architect, Alonzo de Covarrubias, son-in-law of Enrique de Egas. He also designed the Archbishop’s Palace in the same city and the celebrated Chapel of the New Kings in the Toledo Cathedral. Cathedrals.—Another northern centre of the Early Spanish Renaissance was Burgos. Here the master of the plateresque style was Diego de Siloe, sculptor and architect, who built the celebrated Golden Staircase in the Cathedral, to connect the higher levels of the old, thirteenth century Puerta de la Coroneria, with the floor of the north transept by a flight of 39 steps, which has a gilded balustrade, richly embellished and bearing the arms of Bishop Fonseca. In 1520 Siloe was summoned to Granada to superintend the building of the Cathedral which had been designed in the Gothic style by Enrique de Egas. This, the earliest and most remarkable of the Renaissance cathedrals of Spain, represents an application of the Classic orders to the piers which support the vaulting. But its most distinctive feature is that the sanctuary or capilla mayor, instead of terminating in an apse, is fully circular in plan and crowned by a lofty dome, under which, in a flood of light, stands the high altar. Two other important examples of Renaissance Cathedrals are those of Jaen and Valladolid, while amongst the Gothic edifices that were embellished with magnificent Renaissance portals may be mentioned the Cathedrals of Malaga and Salamanca and the Church of Santo Domingo in the latter city and of Santa Engracia in Saragossa. Also of the Early Renaissance period are the octagonal lantern of Burgos Cathedral, designed by Vigarni, called de BorgoÑa, because he was born in Burgundy, famous as a sculptor even more than as an architect; and the towers of the Cathedral del Pilar and of La Seo in Saragossa. The last named, octagonal in plan and consisting of four stories, diminishing in size and crowned with a lantern, bears some resemblance to the English steeples of Wren. Casa Lonja.—The most splendid Municipal building of Spain is the Casa Lonja, or Exchange for merchants, in Seville, which was built in 1583-1598 by Diego de Riano from a design, not closely adhered to, by Juan de Herrera. The most highly decorated faÇade, which is on the side removed from the Square, shows a more than usual following of the Italian style in its system of pilasters and entablatures and the repetition and treatment of the windows. Yet the style is used with a decorative freedom, characteristically Spanish. Thus the pilasters of the second story are of the baluster type, emulating, that is to say, the forms which can be obtained in wood by turning on a lathe; the ornament is lavishly expended over the whole front in a rich encrustation, and, as in the case of Salamanca, already alluded to, increases in boldness of relief toward the top. Moreover, the vivacity is enhanced by the intricate mitreing of the courses of the entablatures, broken round the projection of the pilasters. The handsome patio is double-storied, respectively in the Doric and Corinthian orders. The sumptuous marble staircase was added in the eighteenth century, during the reign of Charles III. Classical Style.—Even while the plateresque style was flourishing a more direct invasion of Italian influence was in progress. Palace of Charles V.—The earliest example of this is in the Palace which Charles V began to build on the hill of the Alhambra. The work was entrusted to Pedro Machucha, who, like Berruguete, his assistant in the design, had studied in Rome. The plan is a square, enclosing a circular court, and the style is Palladian. Each faÇade, measuring 207 feet in length and 53 in height, is composed of rusticated masonry and pilasters in the first story and, in the second, of an order of Ionic pilasters, supporting a Doric cornice. In both stories occurs a mezzanine floor lighted by circular windows. The circular court, nearly one hundred feet in diameter, is surrounded by a lower and an upper open colonnade, respectively of the Doric and the Ionic order. A tribute exacted from the Moriscoes or survivors of the Moors, who were permitted to remain after the expulsion of the majority, defrayed the cost; but their insurrection in 1568 interfered with the work, which dragged on during Philip II’s reign, until it was abandoned before completion. The roof was never built; nor the octagonal chapel, crowned with a dome which, at the northeast angle, was to dominate all the buildings of the Alhambra. The unfinished building further suffers from the competition of the Alhambra, which is the chief attraction to every visitor, so that insufficient justice has been done to the grandeur and dignity of the design. The EscoriÁl.—Philip II’s cessation of work upon his father’s palace may have been largely due to his preoccupation with the memorial to his own memory—the EscoriÁl. By the terms of his inheritance he was bound to erect a mausoleum for his father. He enlarged the scheme to be a burial place also for himself and succeeding Catholic Kings and added a church, a monastery, and palace. Situated thirty-one miles from Madrid and overlooking the intermediate landscape, this prodigious congeries of buildings occupies a rocky plateau that juts out from the precipitous side of the Guadarrama Sierra and is extended by immense foundations. Its plan, which tradition says was to reproduce the gridiron on which St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom, is a gigantic rectangle, 675 feet by 530, from which projects the handle, a small rectangle. One enters on the mountain side, the Patio of the Kings. Along the right extends the monastery, terminating in the cloistered Patio of the Evangelists; while along the left is the College, terminating in the Palace. But the chief feature is in front of us, the vestibule of the church. The latter is built over the mausoleum-crypt, in the form of a Greek cross, after the original plan of S. Peter’s, Rome. Its Capilla Mayor adjoins the small projecting annex, which contained the private apartments of the royal family: the King’s small, cell-like bedroom, commanding a view of the High Altar, so that, unseen, he could participate in the service of the Mass. The work was begun by Juan de Bautista and continued by Juan de Herrera. But Philip himself perpetually supervised the design, which reflects his character not only in the ambitiousness of its dimensions but also in the grim plainness of the faÇades. Constructed of grey granite, cut in large blocks, they are composed of five stories, the windows of which are square headed, without dressing of any kind, and ranged in rows, without any attempt at grouping, so that the faÇades present a bare and barrack-like appearance. Meanwhile an effect of grandeur is produced by the immense scale of the whole mass, while the sky-line is rendered imposing by the towers, crowned with lanterns, which flank the faÇade of the church, and by the noble dome and lantern, built entirely of stone, on which rises in sequence a pyramid, a hollow ball, and a cross. The interior of the church, designed in the Doric order with flattish vaulting, is again of majestic scale and of extreme simplicity, which, however, is contradicted by the extravagant paintings on the ceilings. A feature of the church is the removal of the coro from the floor to a gallery so that there is less interference than usual in a Spanish church with the impressiveness of space. The severely classical style of the EscoriÁl was a reaction from the luxuriousness of the plateresque and the extravagance of the so-called “Grotesque Style,” which Berruguete, a pupil of Michelangelo, introduced into his sculptural decorations. The absence of embellishment and reliance upon a strict use of the orders caused the classic style to be known as Griego-Romano, though, as a matter of fact, it was in nowise Greek. Churrigueresque Style.—By the seventeenth century Spain, denuded of her foreign possessions by Holland and England and impoverished with war and corrupt government, had reached a condition of national exhaustion. In consequence no new buildings of importance were created, and such additions as were made to existing ones were chiefly in the nature of sculptural embellishments, which reflected the prevailing taste for the baroque. This, toward the end of the century, passed into the glaringly ostentatious and vulgarly meretricious Churrigueresque style, called after its principal perpetrator, the sculptor Churriguera. FLEMISH AND HOLLAND RENAISSANCE TYPES At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Netherlands, especially the southern provinces now comprised in Belgium, entered upon a period of enhanced commercial prosperity. Through their textile industries, their overland trade with Italy and the East, and their sea traffic with Cadiz and Lisbon, which tapped the trade routes to India and the New World, they had become the richest country in Europe. They were the favourite dominions of Charles V, who was born in Brussels, and, while he allowed his “dear Netherlander” municipal self-government, taxed them roundly for the privilege. It was inevitable that Netherlandish art should become affected by the Italian influence. It showed itself first in painting: Mabuse, Floris, Van Orley being among those who sought inspiration in Rome, where Raphael’s and Michelangelo’s fame was supreme. One can picture the sensation in Brussels, in 1515 and 1516, while the former’s cartoons for the Sistine Chapel were being executed in tapestry by Flemish weavers. Brussels shared the glory of the achievement and her artists and decorators may well have aspired to emulate the Italian manner. At any rate, it shortly began to appear in the decorative treatment of certain buildings: the superb chimney piece in the Council-Chamber of the Palais de Justice, in Bruges (1529); the faÇade of the gild-house of the Fishmongers in Malines, known as the Salm or Salmon House (1534), and the two courts of the Archbishop’s Palace, now the Palais de Justice, in LiÈge (1533). These courts, attributed to FranÇois Borset, are surrounded by vaulted arcades, in which occur baluster columns, and capitals carved with grotesque masks and fantastic figurines and foliage—features that suggest a Spanish influence. Then, about 1565, was built the City Hall of Antwerp, which represents the most imposing example of the Renaissance in Belgium. It corresponds to the importance which the city had now attained as the chief commercial emporium of the Netherlands. For the supremacy of Bruges was past: her harbours had been allowed to fill up with silt and in 1505 the Fuggers, merchant princes of Augsburg, removed their affairs to Antwerp, whither the “factories” of the Hanseatic League soon followed. By the middle of the century a thousand foreign commercial firms were represented there; her great fairs attracted merchants from all parts of the world; the Scheldt was filled with shipping and over a hundred vessels are said to have passed in and out of her harbour daily. She surpassed in wealth and prosperity even Venice and Genoa. The design is by the sculptor and architect, Cornelius de Vriendt, also known as Cornelius Floris. The principal faÇade, over three hundred feet long, consists of four stories; the first being of rusticated masonry, forming an open arcade; the second and third embellished with pilasters and entablatures, framing a regular repetition of mullioned windows, while the fourth comprises, as occasionally in Spain, an arcaded loggia, the shadowed effects of which correspond to those of an Italian cornice. The roof has a slight curb inward and is studded with two tiers of small dormers. The monotony of the faÇade is somewhat relieved by the projection in the centre. But, though this involves a change in the shape of the windows, there is a new kind of repetition, while above the third story the place of a dormer-gable is taken by an erection that has no structural significance and is merely a piling up of ornamental details to produce a colossal embellishment. It is instructive to compare this pavilion with the Pavillon de l’Horloge of the Louvre, which represents a logical as well as flexible and original application of the Palladian style. Compared with it De Vriendt’s design exhibits a formality which suggests that it had been copied from some work in the Orders of Architecture, while the top part proclaims him a sculptor of florid taste, rather than an architect. The best examples, however, of Flemish Renaissance are to be found in the gild houses and domestic buildings. Magnificent examples of the former are the Houses of the Brewers, Tanners, Archers, and Cordeliers or rope-makers, in Antwerp, and in Brussels those of the Archers, Butchers, Carpenters, and Skippers; the gable-end of the last-named representing the stern of a vessel with four protruding cannons. MusÉe Plantin.—The most interesting example of domestic architecture is the MusÉe Plantin-Moretus, originally the home, office, and printing house of the great publisher, Charles Plantin, who obtained from Philip II a monopoly in the printing of breviaries and missals for the Netherlands and Spain. After his death the business was continued in the family of his son-in-law, Moretus; and the building which had been erected in 1549, received various additions down to the middle of the seventeenth century. Meanwhile the interior presents a complete picture of the combined residence and place of business of the period, since there are still preserved the wainscots, Spanish wall-leather, panelled ceilings, chimney-pieces, stained glass, and other furnishings, as well as the fittings of the various departments of the shop, devoted to composing, printing, proof-reading, binding, and display of goods. Carillons.—An incidental feature of the Flemish Renaissance is the Carillon, or set of bells, tuned to the chromatic scale and connected with a manual keyboard, so that they can be played by hand. The most famous of these is in the Cathedral Tower of Malines (Mechlin). It comprises 45 bells, most of which were cast in the seventeenth century by the great bell-founder, Hemong, of Amsterdam. They surpass in volume and tone even the famous chimes of the Belfry of Bruges, which were set up in 1743. HOLLAND The earliest Renaissance City Hall in Holland is that of The Hague. Erected in 1564, it exhibits the picturesque features of stepped gables and octagonal turrets that became characteristic of later examples, such as the City Hall at Leyden (1597) and the Renaissance addition made to that of Haarlem between 1620 and 1630. While the decorative details of the faÇade are of stone, the walls are constructed of red brick. This material is the distinctive feature of Holland domestic architecture, and the combination of its red, blue, or buff tints, weathered by time, with the green of foliage, reflected in the sleepy waters of the canals, gives a colourful picturesqueness to the quaint street fronts that is peculiarly fascinating. Weighing Houses.—The best preserved buildings of the seventeenth century are to be found in the South at Dordrecht and Delft, and in the North in Leyden, Haarlem, Alkmaar, Hoorn, Enkhuisen, and, across the Zuyder Zee, in Leuwarden, Bolsward, Zwolle, and Kampen. Of particular interest are the Waaghuisen, or Weighing Houses for cheese, which are often of imposing size and richly decorated. During the latter part of the seventeenth and the following century Holland architecture emulated the styles of Louis XIV and XV, though without the refinement of the French models. Transition.—The direct effect of the Italian Renaissance did not reach English architecture until the seventeenth century, when Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style. The so-called “Anglo-Classical” style which then ensued had been preceded by a period of transition from the Gothic, which is usually divided into “Elizabethan” and “Jacobean.” These represent not so much styles as mannerisms. Just as, according to Shakespeare, the Englishman derived the fashion of his clothes from various foreign sources, so, at this time, he decked out what was left of the Gothic style with details borrowed from Italian, French, Netherland, and German models. The debased form of Gothic, known as Perpendicular, involving the use of the low, four-centered arch, emphasising vertical and horizontal lines, and covering surfaces with mechanically repeated geometrical patterns, lingered on into the sixteenth century. But conditions in England were changing. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), waged by the nobles on one another, had completed the break up of the Feudal System. Castles were destroyed and the powerful families exterminated or represented mainly by minors. Statesmanship passed into the hands of an intellectual middle class whose power was advanced by the growing prosperity of trade and commerce. [Image unavailable.] WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE By Robert Smithson. Elizabethan Example of Gothic Combined with Renaissance. Note the German Influence in the Strapwork Gables. P. 412
Italian Influence.—This was augmented, as the century advanced, by the foreign craftsmen who sought refuge in England from the religious persecutions in the Netherlands and the Huguenot war in France. They introduced not only superior skill of workmanship, but the French, Dutch, and Flemish modes. Meanwhile Henry VIII, in surrounding himself with a new kind of political advisers, had also welcomed foreign artists to his court. Among them were Holbein, a versatile designer in various mediums as well as a great portrait painter; Torrigiano, who executed Henry VII’s Tomb in Westminster Abbey (1512); Giovanni da Majano, who modelled the busts of the emperors in the terra-cotta medallions over the entrance-gates of Hampton Court; Benedetto da Rovezzano, designer of the Tomb of Cardinal Wolsey, which has perished, and a certain John of Padua, who is supposed to have been the architect of Longleat House in Wiltshire. Henry’s partiality for Italian artists may well have been inspired by the example of Francis I, whom he met in 1520 on the celebrated “Field of the Cloth of Gold.” At any rate there are many examples of sculpture, dating from the first half of the sixteenth century, represented in tombs, choir-screens, and organ-screens, which were purely Italian in their decorative design and of marked refinement. Terra-cotta enrichments, of similarly pure Italian craftsmanship, are to be seen in certain specimens of domestic architecture, such as Sutton Place, near Guildford, Surrey, and the entrance tower of Layer Marney, Essex, both of which were completed in 1525. The suppression of the monasteries, 1536-1540, resulted in a revival of architecture, for in many cases the buildings were bestowed upon laymen who converted them into mansions, while a large part of the Church funds was devoted by Henry VIII and Edward VI to the erection and endowment of Grammar Schools. ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN PERIODS Under Elizabeth England reached a hitherto unexampled prosperity and the period is one of country-house building, in which especial attention began to be paid to the allied art of landscape gardening. Among the most famous are: Burghley House and Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire; Knoll and Penshurst, in Kent; Charlecote, Warwickshire; Longleat House and Longford Castle, Wiltshire; Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, and Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. Some of the mansions built during the reign of James I, the so-called “Jacobean Period,” are Holland House, Kensington; Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire; Old Charlecote House, Kent; Audley End, Essex; Hatfield, Hertfordshire; Ham House, Surrey; Bramshill, Hampshire; Bickling Hall, Norfolk; and Aston Hall, Birmingham, which was completed in the following reign. The houses mentioned in both these lists are constructed of stone or brick; but timber construction was still employed, especially in Cheshire, Lancashire, and Shropshire. To these periods also belong the following Colleges. In Cambridge: The Gate of Honour, Caius; Emmanuel; the courts of Sidney Sussex and St. John’s; the quadrangle, Clare, and Nevill Court, Trinity. In Oxford, Jesus, Wadham, Pembroke, Merton Library, and the Gateway of the Schools, now the Bodleian Library. It is of little advantage to try to distinguish between the Elizabethan and the Jacobean period. Both represent a progression from the Gothic in the direction chiefly of superior conditions of comfortable living; but they retain many of the Gothic characteristics, while the modifications, more or less Renaissance, are in the manner of embellishments, and applied not according to any structural principles but as opportunities of imitation were available. Books of Design.—There were books on the use of Classic Orders. The first to reach England was the work of the Italian Serlio, who had become domiciled in France. In 1567, John Shute, a painter and architect, who had been sent to Italy by the Duke of Northumberland, brought out his “Chief Groundes of Architecture,” the first work of its kind published in England. In 1577 appeared the pattern book of Vredeman de Vries of Antwerp, representing Italian details, debased by Flemish and German ingenuity, which was responsible especially for the prevalence of strap-ornament, that is to say, geometric designs of flat bands, studded with knobs, as if they were metal or leather work, attached to the wall by rivets. The decorative inspiration, therefore, was purer at the beginning than in its subsequent development. For example, the decorative use of the orders is better in some of the earlier buildings than the later ones. In fact, what chiefly distinguishes the Jacobean from the Elizabethan is an increasing grossness of detail, apparent in the furniture and fittings, as well as in the embellishment of the exteriors. Architect’s Function.—These conditions were fostered by the circumstances under which the building was conducted. There were architects whose names survive, the earliest being John Thorpe, the designer of Kirby, Burghley, Longford Castle, and Holland House. But the custom of the time seems to have limited the architect’s function to the supplying of a plan and design; probably more in the nature of a sketch than of actual detailed drawings, after which the building was handed over to the sole control of a master-mason, who worked out his details from the pattern book. Naturally, such a divorce of construction and design was little likely to result in the consistent development of an architectural style. Plans.—The square plan was retained from Gothic times in the case of colleges and in some mansions. But usually, to secure more air and light the fourth side was dispensed with, the gate-house, which had been its central feature, becoming a separate building. And the tendency was to prolong one side and shorten the wings, so as to produce the E plan, or to lengthen the wings by projecting them on each side of the main faÇade, thus forming a letter H. Or the wings are replaced by outlying pavilions joined to the main building by corridors. Sometimes the plans are irregular, representing the additions made to an original Gothic house. Roofs.—Many Gothic features were preserved. Oriel and bay windows were frequent, and the windows retain their mullions and transoms, and increase in size, being often carried up through several stories. Square or octagonal towers abound, occasionally battlemented but generally finishing in a parapet or cresting, the roof being concealed or rising in a low cone or pyramid. Similarly, the main roofs vary; high, flat, and low ones even occurring in the same design. They are covered with lead or tiles, and surrounded by balustrades, formed of battlements, successive arches, or pierced ornament. Gables are edged with scroll-work, while dormer-gables, as in the Netherlands and Germany, are stepped or carried up with variously curved outlines. The chimneys, single or grouped in stacks, continue to be a prominent feature, their decoration, occasionally, as at Kirby and Hatfield, involving a use of orders. Use of Orders.—The orders when applied to the faÇade, are treated with little regard to purity of style and are often disfigured with strap ornament. When used in interior decoration, the pilasters frequently diminish in width toward the base, or swell out in bulbous curves; there being little or no limit to the extravagance of form that columns and pilasters alike assume in chimneypieces and furniture. Indeed, during the Jacobean period the grotesqueness of ornament notably increased, accompanied by a corresponding coarseness in the modelling. Moreover, this characteristic invaded the gardens, where trees and hedges were trimmed or “pleached” into the shape of birds, or beasts, or fantastic designs. However, although the mansions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods will not stand scrutiny on the score of architectural propriety, they have besides their picturesqueness a quality that is aptly characterised in Cowper’s phrase, “the stately homes of England.” They possess dignity and, above all, are homelike. They bear the stamp, not of the professional architect, but of the variegated family life that they have fostered for successive generations. Interiors.—And this is equally true of the interiors. Comfort is not sacrificed to stateliness. The chief apartments may attain grand proportions, but they do not give the impression of being reserved for merely ceremonial purposes; they are centres of domestic life. The Gothic feature of the Great Hall was preserved; and, in the early examples, while the family and the retainers still took their meals together, a dais occupied one end, the opposite end being separated from the buttery or larder, and the kitchen by a richly decorated wooden screen, above which was the minstrel gallery. The conspicuous feature of the hall was the fireplace, with a chimneypiece on which the most elaborate decoration was lavished, the rest of the walls being panelled in wood to a height of eight or ten feet, leaving a space above for trophies of the chase or family portraits. This type of hall is still retained in all the dining halls of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Adjoining the hall was a solar for the intimate life of the family. Gradually, as the taste for privacy increased, a separate room was used for dining and other living-rooms were added until the hall came to be more and more an entrance hall, and the main living apartments were disposed as in Italian and French custom, on the second floor. This caused the staircase to be treated as a prominent feature, which, as it were, prolonged the spaciousness of the hall. Occasionally of marble or stone, it was usually constructed of oak with massive newel-posts and balustrade, richly decorated. In the earlier examples, and even in some later ones, as Inigo Jones’s design of Chevening House, the apartments are arranged on the “thoroughfare” system, opening into one another en suite. But the inconvenience of this in the entertaining of guests led to the adoption of a corridor along one side. By degrees this was widened and developed into what is the most distinctive feature of these old English houses—the Long Gallery. Lit with tall windows, often with deep bays that form attractive alcoves, it served as a pleasant sitting-room and equally as a place for exercise in wet weather, while its inner wall provided space for pictures. In fact, this room seems to have been the origin of the term “picture gallery.” Special care was bestowed upon the ceilings. Occasionally the beams were exposed, but the usual practice by this time was to sheathe them with lath and plaster, the surface of which was decorated with stucco relief in geometrical designs. At times the flat of the ceiling was connected with the walls by a concave member, called a cove. Often, when the wainscot was not carried up to the level of this, the upper part or dado also was decorated with stucco relief. It is characteristic of the use of the pattern books that the motives of decoration employed in the exterior and interior embellishment are used also in the furniture of the period, which on the whole is distinguished by its massiveness, exuberance of ornament, and the mechanical method of the workmanship. For much of the ornament is either cut out of the flat wood with a jig-saw or carved upon forms that have been turned upon a lathe. ANGLO-ITALIAN PERIOD With the accession of Charles I commenced an era of more refined and cultivated taste. The King, as a young man, escorted by the pleasure-loving Duke of Buckingham, had visited the Court of Spain in search of a wife, and had seen the wonderful array of Titians and Rubens’s in the Royal Gallery. Later he had married Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henri IV, who, under the inspiration of his wife, Marie de’ Medici, was introducing the classical style into French architecture. Inigo Jones.—Charles himself had planned to erect a palace at Whitehall that should surpass the Louvre in grandeur and found in Inigo Jones (1573-1652) an architect fully qualified for the ambitious enterprise. He had made a prolonged study of the Renaissance style in Italy, spending much of the time in Vicenza, where he had become an ardent admirer of Palladio’s work. Whitehall Palace.—His plan of Whitehall Palace provided for an immense rectangle, 1152 by 720 feet, surrounded by faÇades, three stories high. The interior court was to be divided into three parts by two wings of two stories, which were to be united to the main side-faÇades by transverse wings, so that the plan would have embraced a large court and six smaller courts, one being circular in plan. However, a scheme of such magnificence was entirely beyond the King’s means and the only part erected was a small portion of one of the interior wings—the Banqueting House, which now abuts on the street that retains the name, Whitehall. The faÇade that it presents to the latter is in the Paladian style and of extreme purity. Constructed throughout of fine, rusticated masonry, it consists, above the basement, of two stories, decorated, respectively, with the Ionic and the Corinthian orders, while a well-proportioned cornice, surmounted by a balustrade, defines the sky-line. An admirable feature, apparently originated by Inigo Jones, for it is not found in Italy, is the slight prominence given to the central three window bays by substituting columns for pilasters and breaking the entablature and cornice round them. The interior contains a handsome vaulted hall, divided into three aisles. Another design by Jones, which recalls Palladio’s Vicenza gates is the Water Gate, now in the Embankment Gardens, which formerly was the water entrance from the river to old York House, which has been destroyed. He also built S. Paul, Covent Garden (1638), a severe but imposing design that suffers from its proximity to the market, the arcades of which are also his. His design for the river faÇade for Greenwich Hospital, in which the two lower stories are included in one colossal Corinthian order, was executed by his pupil, John Webb. Among the examples of Jones’s domestic buildings are Raynham Hall, Norfolk; Wilton House, Wiltshire; Chevening House, Kent; Stoke Park, Northamptonshire, and Coleshill, Berkshire. But the erection of country houses and indeed all architectural activity were seriously interrupted by the Civil War and the consequent unsettled conditions. Wren.—More fortunate in opportunity was Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), upon whom it devolved to repair some of the damage wrought by the Great Fire of London, in 1666. He was never in Italy and his foreign experience was limited to six months in Paris, where Bernini’s design for the Louvre, fortunately never executed, was being commenced. Consequently he did not possess the technical equipment of Inigo Jones and was not always successful in the decorative sheathing which he applied to the construction. It was on the constructive side that his genius lay and in this he was assisted by his previous career as a mathematician and professor of astronomy at Gresham College and the University of Oxford. Wren’s earliest architectural works, executed before he went to Paris, were the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge and the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. His scientific knowledge was demonstrated in the ceiling of the latter, which has a span of 68 feet. After the fire of London he planned to lay out the devastated part of the city on new and broader lines; but the reconstruction was defeated, as city replanning is liable to be in our own day, by the opposition of property owners. Meanwhile a plan he had previously made for the enlargement of S. Paul’s was now superseded by the necessity of erecting an entirely new building. S. Paul’s.—The plan of S. Paul’s is a cross with short arms; both the choir and nave, comprising three bays, flanked, like the transepts, with aisles. The choir terminates in a small apse; the transepts in semi-circular porticoes and the west end in a vestibule with lateral chapels. The internal piers are embellished with Corinthian pilasters, supporting an entablature and attic, the latter containing clerestory windows, which, however, though giving light to the interior, are not visible from outside. The ceilings, throughout, are composed of repetitions of flat, saucer-like domes. But the dominant feature of the interior is the octagon at the crossing, which comprises the width not only of the nave and choir but also of the aisles. It permits four great arches, opening into the nave, choir, and transepts, and four smaller and lower arches, connecting with the ambulatory, which is formed by the aisles. This arrangement is somewhat similar to the octagon of Ely Cathedral and may be compared with the plan of the dome of the Invalides. Surmounting the eight pendentives of St. Paul’s is a circular gallery, known as the “Whispering Gallery,” above which rises a circular peristyle. The latter’s entablature supports the interior dome, which mounts to a height of 281 feet from the floor. In recent years the barrenness of the interior has been considerably relieved by glass mosaic decorations, designed by Sir William Richmond. The FaÇades comprise two stories; the lower embellished with the Corinthian order, the upper with the Composite; the line of division being at the height of the aisles. Thus, on the north and south sides of the building, the upper part of the faÇade is only a screen, carried up for the purpose of composing with the mass of the dome. The flying buttresses of the latter are concealed behind it, while light penetrates through it to the clerestory windows. Admirable features of the lower story of the side faÇades are the semi-circular porticoes, of beautiful design, which project from the ends of the transepts. Excellently proportioned, if somewhat bald, is the west faÇade, which is a double storied portico of coupled columns, supporting a pediment. This is flanked by two towers, which rise above the sky-line in diminishing stories, terminating in bell-shaped cupolas. Not only are they fine compositions in themselves, but they are also designed in fine relation to the dominating feature of the dome. The Dome.—The latter, in mass and outline and in the relation achieved between its several parts, can lay claim to being the most majestic dome of the Renaissance. Among the elements that enter into its impressiveness is the emphasis given to the lowest course of masonry, which well suggests the union of the nave, choir, and transepts and forms a substantial stylobate to the peristyle. The latter, again, is exceptionally fine in proportion. In appearance, relatively higher than that of S. Peter’s and related with more freedom to the mass above, it is formed of coupled columns attached to radiating buttress walls; every fourth space between the columns being filled with solid masonry, which is relieved in the way of light and shadow by a decorated niche. The effect is at once strong, stately, and of airy lightness. Very fine also, in its peculiar accent of effectiveness is the proportion of the upper drum to the superincumbent mass of the dome, whose curve is lifted to a culminating springiness by the height and freedom and sensitive proportions of the lantern. No less remarkable is the scientific knowledge expended in the construction of this externally superb masterpiece. It is composed, like the domes of the Invalides and the PanthÉon in Paris, of three shells, although the arrangement is different. For the intermediate shell consists of a cone of brickwork, 18 inches thick. It springs from behind the upper drum, and on it bears the stone lantern, ball, and cross; the last being 365 feet above the ground level. It also helps to bear the weight of the timber supports of the outer shell, which is constructed entirely of wood, sheathed with lead. The inner dome, resting on the peristyle, is of brickwork, and of the same thickness as the cone. Wren’s Churches.—Between the years 1670 and 1711 were erected some fifty-three London churches, in which Wren displayed remarkable versatility in adapting Renaissance design, not only to the different conditions which the crowded site involved but also to the requirements of Protestant worship, which laid so much stress on preaching and needed chiefly an auditorium. A famous example is that of S. Stephen’s Walbrook, in which sixteen columns support a coffered ceiling, interrupted by a pendentive dome. This is the predominating feature, for its diameter is 43 feet in a total width of 60 feet. Wren’s churches, however, are better and more characteristically known by the variety of steeples, which may be considered an invention of his own. From a square tower, which is treated as the main feature of the front faÇade, they pass into circular or octagonal stories, diminishing in diameter, clothed with Renaissance details, and terminating in a slender spire. Their beauty consists in the variety and proportions given to the several parts, achieving an ensemble of peculiar elegance. Occasionally they suggest a certain mechanicalness of repetition; hence the example which is considered the best is that of S. Mary-le-Bow. For here the repetition of the orders is interrupted by a story composed of inverted consoles, the effect of which is to vary not only the character of the embellishment, but also, by introducing the contrast of a curve, the regularity of successive steps. Wren’s inexhaustible activity is represented also, among many other examples, by the Monument at London Bridge; The Fountain Court and Garden FaÇade of Hampton Court; Chelsea Hospital; Marlborough House, Pall Mall; and Temple Bar. The last, forming the entrance gate to the City of London proper, has been removed from its old site at the foot of Fleet Street, and set up in Theobald’s Park, Northamptonshire. He lies buried beneath the choir of his masterpiece, a tablet bidding you, “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.” Hawksmoor, Gibbs.—The most notable of Wren’s pupils were Nicholas Hawksmoor (1666-1763) and James Gibbs (1683-1754). The latter published a book of his own designs, which, as we shall see, exercised a considerable influence on the beginnings of architecture in the American Colonies. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY STYLES
ANGLO-CLASSICAL. QUEEN ANNE. GEORGIAN This period comprises the reigns of Anne (1702-14) and of the three Georges (1714-1820). In the case of large mansions it represents a continuation of the “Anglo-Palladian” style, with an increased importance given to the use of columns, especially in porticoes. Hence it is sometimes called the “Anglo-Classical,” or more specifically, the “Portico Style.” In less pretentious houses the tendency was to avoid columns and ornamental details and to rely upon the sterling character of plain brick work. The so-called Flemish bond was introduced, a method of binding a wall into solidity by laying the bricks in courses of alternate stretchers and headers—bricks, that is to say, laid, respectively lengthwise with and at right angles to the outer surface of the walls. It differed from the English bond, in which stretchers and headers were laid in alternate courses. A single projecting string course might mark the division of the stories, while several, projecting one over the other, would form a cornice under the eaves of the tiled roof. Or this arrangement might be replaced by a wooden cornice. Windows, owing to the tax upon them, were reduced in number and often increased in size, especially in the direction of height. Correspondingly, doors were heightened until they had an effect of narrowness. In all these particulars, as also in the introduction of pediment-shaped gables and wooden cornices under the eaves of the tiled roofs, there was a disposition to follow the seventeenth century type of Dutch and Flemish domestic architecture. This so-called “Queen Anne” style—though it is more a manner than a style—involved a certain primness of effect, quite in keeping with the somewhat pedantic attitude of the time, but is characterised by simple refinement and suggestion of comfortable domesticity. By the time of George III—1760 and onward—certain modifications were introduced into the Anglo-Classical style, which are sometimes characterised by the distinction, “Georgian.” Anglo-Classical.—The Anglo-Classical is frankly a style of ostentation and magnificent pretension. So far as one man could be responsible for what was in effect an expression of the temper of an age that was amassing great wealth in the Indian and Chinese trade, the man was Sir John Vanbrugh. But it is significant that he first became famous as a writer of witty and spicy comedies. Then he “turned his attention to” architecture and wrote to his friend Tonson, the publisher, for a “Palladio.” With the aid of this he qualified himself as an architectural designer and having already gained the favour of society by his talents as a wit was readily accepted as an architect, enjoying particularly the patronage of Queen Anne, who sent him abroad on a special mission. His first important mansion was Castle Howard (1714), followed a year later by Blenheim Palace. In both of these he achieved what may be described as a scenic impressiveness on a prodigious scale, but without much reference to architectural logic or to internal convenience. The two plans have a general similarity, consisting of a main block with an extensive garden front, connected at the rear by two corridors with the kitchen block and the stable block. These flank a great court, which at Blenheim is closed by a screen wall and gateway in the manner of a French chÂteau. The kitchen at Blenheim was some 400 feet distant from the dining room! Windows in both designs were disposed for exterior effect and not for proper lighting of the interior. In numberless particulars internal convenience was sacrificed to palatial planning and display. As Voltaire said, if the rooms had been as wide as the walls were thick the palace would have been passably convenient. Amongst the new features, introduced by Vanbrugh, was the converting of the ground story into a kind of mimic cellar, with inconveniently small staircases to the floor above, the main approach to which was on the outside of the building, by a grand flight of steps leading up to a superb portico. Notwithstanding the magnificence of scale, these designs have a chill formality that makes their dignity rather dull. Meanwhile they set a fashion exactly suited to the taste of the time, which in literature also was disposed to substitute dilettantism for culture, and, in its infatuation for what it called “style,” to attach more importance to form than to subject-matter. It was the age of the amateur. Lord Burlington, for example, a patron of art, designed a villa at Chiswick in a free translation of the Villa Capra, Vicenza by Palladio. Also, in conjunction with his protÉgÉ, Kent, he erected the Horse Guards and Devonshire House in London and Holkham Hall, Norfolk; the last-named presenting a central block connected by corridors with four outlying pavilions. One of the shibboleths of this time that passed for a principle was that to a style of this grandeur only one form of roof was appropriate—a dome. Interior proprieties were sacrificed to the securing of a dome, and where the exigencies of building necessitated a flat or pointed roof it was hidden behind an attic or balustrade. Pope’s Satire.—The fatuities, however, of this craze for the monumental did not escape contemporary satire. When Lord Burlington published the designs of Inigo Jones and Palladio’s drawings of the “Antiquities of Rome,” Pope referred to them in one of his epistles— “You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of use.
Yet shall, my Lord, your just, your noble rules,
Fill half the land with imitating fools;
Who random drawings from your sheets may take
And of one beauty many blunders make;
Load some vain church with old theatric state,
Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate:
....... “’tis very fine,
But where d’ye sleep or where d’ye dine?
I find by all you have been telling
That ’tis a house, but not a dwelling.”
Chambers.—It was a reaction from this mania for magnificence that encouraged, in the case of more modest houses, the so-called “Queen Anne” style, and later, in large and small alike, the “Georgian.” The change to the latter, moreover, was assisted by the influence of Sir William Chambers, who acquired a real knowledge of architecture through long study in Italy and in 1759 published his “Treatise on Civil Architecture.” His most important work is the river front of Somerset House. He, too, however, was responsible for a craze. In early life he had visited China, where he made sketches of architecture, furniture, and costumes, which formed the basis of his “Designs for Chinese Architecture, Etc.” published in 1757. It led to an infatuation for the socalled “Chinese Style” which survives directly in the Pagoda at Kew Gardens and indirectly in the Chinese motives that Chippendale (d. 1779) introduced with so much taste into his furniture designs. Adam.—Meanwhile, the Georgian revival was due even more to the genius of the Scotsman Robert Adam (1728-1792). Realising that the existing knowledge of Roman architecture had been derived from public buildings, he visited the only example known then of domestic architecture, the ruins of Diocletian’s Palace at Spalato in Dalmatia. Here in co-operation with the French architect, C. L. Clerisseau, and two experienced draughtsmen, he made the measurements and drawings out of which he projected a restoration of the building in a fine work entitled “The Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian” (1764). To him belongs the credit of inaugurating the modern idea, not yet sufficiently lived up to, of using the monumental style for a number of separate buildings, grouped in one design. His first achievement was on the banks of the Thames just east of Buckingham Street, where the steep descent necessitated a system of vaulted foundations that are said to be a remarkable example of engineering skill. On this Adam erected the dignified design, which, since his brother James co-operated with him, was called after the Greek word adelphoi, brothers, Adelphi Terrace. Other instances of his group designs are parts of Fitzroy Square, the older portion of Finsbury Circus and Portland Place. Among his country houses is Keddleston Hall, Derbyshire. Here he clung to the sprawling plan, in which the offices are widely parted from the main block; but, in the faÇades, employed large windows, finely grouped, and permitted the sloping roofs to be a strong feature of the design.
It was Adam’s idea that the architect should be responsible also for the interior decorations and furniture, thus making each room and its furnishings a unified design. Indeed, that everything outside as well as inside the house, summer-houses, terraces and so-forth, should unite in a single ensemble. In the style of furniture that has been associated with his name he showed a rare taste in blending classical motives with elements of his own fancy; exhibiting a particular skill in the graceful use of curvilinear forms, in which he had a partiality for ovals, and in modelling details that, while very delicate, were neither weak nor petty. As the result of his influence the Georgian interior presented an appropriately dainty setting to the costumes and manners of society, which had abandoned the stiff ostentation of the earlier Georgian period for the graceful elegance of the later mode. AMERICAN COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE Naturally it was from the Mother-Country that the American Colonies derived the models of their earliest architecture. The date at which increased population and prosperity encouraged buildings of a more permanent character, distinguished by their appearance as well as by their immediate utility, is placed at about 1725. From this time the rigour of life in New England, and particularly in Massachusetts, began to be considerably abated. The theocratic form of government, in which the clergy were the arbiters of moral and social conventions, had given way to the active participation of laymen in public affairs. The manners as well as the costumes of society became elegant and the pleasures of life were no longer frowned upon. The change which thus came over social life is reflected in the contrast presented by Copley’s portraits and those of his predecessor, Smibert. A corresponding advance in the amenities of life was represented also in New York and Philadelphia; while, as to the Southern States, which had been colonised by Royalists rather than by Puritans, the tradition of elegant life had always been maintained and the change at this period was only in the increased opportunity of realising it. English Influences, Modified.—The edifices which began to be erected comprise churches and meeting-houses, mansions, and a few public halls; the last being of historical rather than architectural interest. The places of worship represent an adaptation of the Wren-Gibbs type, while the domestic designs are based on Queen Anne and Georgian styles. In a few cases the prototype was fairly reproduced; notable examples being Christ Church, Philadelphia (1727-35); Old South Church, Boston, now used as a museum (1730-82), and S. Paul’s, New York (1766). The last named is one of the few instances of stone building at this period; the usual material being either brick imported from England or, far more usually, wood. This affected the use which was made of the drawings of Gibbs, Adam, and others, from which the Colonial church-builders derived their designs. Brick did not permit of carved enrichment. Mouldings were, in consequence, of extreme simplicity and such embellishments as columns, pediments, and cornices were constructed of wood. The character of the design was still further modified in the New England States, since wood was used also for the main structure. Colonial Style Developed.—Thus there was developed a skill of design in the use of wood alone and of wood in combination with brick that is distinguishable as a distinct style, to which the term “Colonial” has been applied. It is a style in no sense monumental, even when it includes spires, columns and porticoes. On the contrary, it is characterised by simplicity and reserve but is saved from insignificance by the quiet dignity of the whole and the refinement of the details. The wooden spires of the innumerable meeting-houses distributed over New England, many of which were designed by the almost forgotten worthies, Ascher Benjamin and Ithiel Town, present a type of their own, distinguished by extreme sensitiveness of outline and aspiring grace and airiness. These are veritable creations, growing logically out of the wood construction. And even in the porticoes, although their columns are structurally shams, being mere shells enclosing a post, the feeling of woodwork is so frankly retained, that in association with the wooden walls they seem quite reasonable. A corresponding unity of effect is achieved in the best examples of wooden domestic buildings, such as the Craigie House, Longfellow’s home in Cambridge; the Sherburn House, Portsmouth, and innumerable other examples throughout New England. They are characterised by the choice proportions and distribution of the windows, by the pilasters running up through two stories, to a well-designed cornice, broken in the centre by a pediment that serves as a porch. The roofs vary. Some are flat; some slope up from front and rear, with a gable at each end. In other cases, the continuous slope is broken by a gambrel into two slopes, forming an obtuse angle, as in the Mansard roof. While again, the roof may be hipped, sloping up, that is to say, from all four sides, the four planes meeting in hips or ridges. While similar styles of roofs and windows reappear in the Southern Colonial type of house the latter is distinguished by the addition of a verandah. It may take the form of a pedimented portico, composed of colossal columns, carried up to the cornice, or of a colonnade extending along the entire front and frequently consisting of two stories; the floor beams of the upper one being let into the columns—a device that violates structural propriety but may be overlooked in the comfortable dignity of the whole design. The latter in some cases covers an extended, symmetrical plan, as, for example, in Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, where the main block is connected by curving colonnades with the kitchen wing on one side and offices on the other, while the slave-quarters were in detached buildings, separated by formal gardens from the mansion. The comparative smallness of the latter emphasises the suggestion of the patriarchal character of the best of the old Southern life before the Civil War, while the quiet dignity of the exterior is repeated in the spirit of refined and gentle breeding that pervades the interior. Both in Southern and Northern Colonial houses the wainscots, door-and window-trims, the mantelpieces, cornices, and balustraded staircases exhibit a choiceness of design, derived from the models of Adam and Sheraton.
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