Fig. 60.—Doorway from Church at Batalha. (Begun 1385.)
Elaboration and simplicity were both so well known to the Gothic architect that it is difficult to say that either of these qualities belongs exclusively to his work. But he was rarely simple when he had the opportunity of being elaborate, and simplicity was perhaps rather forced upon him by the circumstances under which he worked, by rude materials, scanty funds, and lack of skilled workmen, than freely chosen. Many of the great works of the Gothic period are as elaborate as they could be made (Fig.60), and yet, when simplicity had to be the order of the day, no architecture has lent it such a grace as Gothic.
The last pair of qualities is similarity and contrast. What has been said about repetition has anticipated the remarks called for by these qualities, so far as to point out that even where the arrangement of the building dictated the repetition of similar features, a general resemblance, and not an exact similarity, was considered sufficient. In the composition of masses of building, contrast and not similarity was the ruling principle. Even in the interiors of great churches which, as a rule, are far more regular than the exteriors, the contrast between the comparative plainness of the nave and the richness of the choir was an essential element of design.
External design in Gothic buildings depends almost entirely upon contrast for its power of charming the eye, and it is this circumstance which has left the successive generations of men who toiled at our great Gothic cathedrals so free to follow the bent of their own taste in their additions, rather than that of their forerunners.
But setting aside the irregularities due to the caprice of various builders, and the constant changes which took placein detail through the Gothic period, it is to contrast that we must trace most of the surprising effects attained by the architecture of the Middle Ages. The rich tracery was made richer by contrast with plain walls, the loftiest towers appeared higher from their contrast with the long level lines of roofs and parapets.
It is, in truth, one of the principal marks of the decadence which began in the fifteenth century that the principle of contrast was, to a considerable extent, abandoned, at least in the details of the buildings if not in their great masses. Walls were at that time panelled in imitation of the tracery of the adjoining windows, and no longer acted as a foil to them by their solid plainness; long rows of pinnacles, all exactly alike, followed the line of the parapets, and a repetition of absolutely identical features became the rule for the first time in the history of Gothic art.
There can be no doubt that had this modification run its natural course unchecked and undisturbed by the change in taste which abruptly brought the Gothic period to a close, it must have resulted in the deterioration of the art.
Sculptured ornament from Rheims Cathedral
Renaissance ornament from a frieze
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.
GOTHIC architecture had begun, before the close of the fifteenth century, to show marks of decadence, and men’s minds and tastes were ripening for a change. The change, when it did take place, arose in Italy, and was a direct consequence of that burst of modern civilisation known as the revival of letters. All the characteristics of the middle ages were rapidly thrown off. The strain of old Roman blood in the modern Italians asserted itself, and almost at a bound, literature and the arts sprang back, like a bow unstrung, into the forms they had displayed fifteen hundred years before.
It became the rage to read the choice Greek and Latin authors, and to write Latin with a pedantic purity. Can we wonder that in painting, in sculpture, and in architecture, men reverted to the form, the style, and the decorations of the antique compositions, statues, and architectural remains? This was the more easy in Italy, asGothic art had never at any time taken so firm a hold upon Italians as it had upon nations north of the Alps.
Though, however, the details and forms employed were all Roman, or Græco-Roman, they were applied to buildings essentially modern, and used with much freedom and spirit. This revival of classic taste in art is commonly and appropriately called Renaissance. In Italy it took place so rapidly that there was hardly any transition period. Brunelleschi, the first great Renaissance architect, began his work as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and his buildings, in which classic details of great severity and purity are employed, struck, so to speak, a keynote which had been responded to all over Italy before the close of the fifteenth century.
To other countries the change spread later, and it found them less prepared to welcome it unreservedly. Accordingly, in France, in England, and in many parts of Germany, we find a transition period, during which buildings were designed in a mixed style. In England, the transition lasted almost through the sixteenth century.
As the century went on, a most picturesque and telling style, the earlier phases of which are known as Tudor and the later as Elizabethan, sprang up in England. It betrays in its mixture of Gothic and classic forms great incongruities and even monstrosities; but it allows unrestrained play for the fancies, and the best mansions and manors of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, Burleigh, Bramshill, and Audley End, are unsurpassed in their picturesqueness and romantic charm.
The old red-brick, heavily chimneyed, and gabled buildings, with their large windows divided by bold mullions and transoms, and their simple noble outlines, are familiar to us all, and so are their characteristic features. Thegreat hall with its oriel or its bay, the fine plastered ceiling, supported by heavy beams of timber; the wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, and ornamented newel post, and heavy-moulded handrail; the old wainscoted parlour, with its magnificent chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling; these are all essentially English features, and are full of vigour and life, as indeed the work of every period of transition must almost necessarily prove.
The transitional period in France produced exquisite works more refined and elegantly treated than ours, but not so vigorous. Its manner is known as the François Premier (Francis I.) style. No modern buildings are more profusely ornamented, and yet not spoilt.
In Germany, the Castle of Heidelberg may be named as a well-known specimen of the transition period, a period over which however we must not linger. Suffice it to say, that sooner or later the change was fully accomplished in every European country, and Renaissance architecture, modified as climate, materials, habits, or even caprice suggested, yet the same in its essential characteristics, obtained a firm footing: this it has succeeded in retaining, though not to the exclusion of other styles, for now nearly three centuries.
In Italy, Renaissance churches, great and small—from St. Peter’s downwards—and magnificent secular buildings, some, like the Vatican Palace or the Library of St. Mark at Venice, for public purposes, but most for the occupation of the great wealthy and princely families, abound in Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan, and indeed every great city.
In France, the transition period was succeeded by a time when vast undertakings,e.g.the Hôtel de Ville, the Louvre, the Tuileries, Versailles, were carried outin the revived style with the utmost magnificence, and were imitated in every part of the country in the structures greater or smaller which were then built.
In England, the works of Inigo Jones, and of Wren, are the most famous works of the developed style, and to the last-named architect we owe a cathedral second to none in Europe for its beauty of outline, and play of light and shade. To Germany, and the countries of the north-east Europe, and to Spain and Portugal on the south, the style also extended with no very great modification, either of its general forms or of its details.
The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and symmetrical, and the picturesqueness of the Gothic times was abandoned. The plans of churches were not widely different from those in use in Italy before the revival of classic art took place, but it will be remembered that these were by no means so irregular or picturesque at any time as the plans of French and English cathedral churches.
In secular architecture, the vast piles erected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Italian, French, and Spanish architects are to the last degree orderly in their disposition. They are adapted to a great variety of purposes, and they display a varying degree of skill. The palaces of Genoa are, on the one hand, among the cleverest examples of planning existing; on the other hand, many of the palaces in France are weak and poor to the last degree. As a rule the scale of the plan is more considerable than in Gothic work. A very large building is often not divided into more parts than a small one, or one of moderate size.In St. Peter’s, for example, there are only four bays between the west front and the dome, everything being on a most gigantic scale. As a contrast to this principle we may cite the nave of the Gothic cathedral at Milan, which is not so long at St. Peter’s, but has at least thrice as many bays, and looks much larger in consequence.
No style affords more room for skill in planning than the Renaissance, and in no style is the exercise of such skill more repaid by results.
In the treatment of external walls, the mediæval use of small materials, involving many joints for the exterior of walls has quite disappeared, and they are universally faced with stone or plaster, and are consequently uniformly smooth. Perhaps the principal feature to note is the very great use made of that elaborate sort of masonry in which the joints of the stones are very carefully channelled or otherwise marked, and which is known by the singularly inappropriate name of rustic work. The basements of most Italian and French palaces are rusticated, and in many cases (as the Pitti Palace, Florence) rustic work covers an entire façade.
The Gothic mouldings in receding planes disappear entirely, and the classic architrave takes their place. The orders are again revived and are used (as the Romans often used them) as purely decorative features added for the mere sake of ornament to a wall sufficient without them, and are freely piled one upon the other. Palladio (a very influential Italian architect) reproduced the use of lofty pilasters running through two or even more storeys of the building, and often combined one tall order and two short onesin his treatment of the same part of the building, a contrivance which in less clever hands than his has given rise to the greatest confusion.
The Renaissance architects also revived the late Roman manner of employing the column and entablature. They frequently carried on the top of a column a little square pier divided up as the architrave and frieze proper to the column would be divided, and they surmounted it with a cornice which was carried quite round this pier, and from this curious compound pedestal an arch will frequently spring. The classic portico, with pediments, was constantly employed by them; and small pediments over window heads were common. A peculiarity worth mention is the introduction in many Italian palaces of a great crowning cornice, proportioned not to the size of the columns and of the order upon which it rests (if an order be employed), but to the height of the whole building. Much fine effect is obtained by means of this feature; it is, however, better fitted for sunny Italy than for gloomy England, and it is not an unmixed success when repeated in our climate.
Towers are less frequently employed than by the Gothic architects, and indeed in Italy the sky-line was less thought of at this period than it was in the middle ages. In churches, towers sometimes occur, nowhere more picturesque than those designed by Sir Christopher Wren for many of his London parish churches. The frequent use of the dome takes the place of the tower both in churches and secular buildings.
Openings are both flat-headed and semicircular, occasionally elliptical, but hardly ever pointed. Renaissance buildings may be to some extent divided into those whichdepend for effect upon window openings, and those which depend chiefly upon architectural features such as cornices, pilasters, and orders. Among the buildings where fenestration (or the treatment of windows) is relied upon the palaces of Venice stand pre-eminent as compositions admirably designed for effect and very successful. In them the openings are massed near the centre of the façade, and strong piers are left near the angles, a simple expedient when once known, and one inherited from the Gothic palaces in that city, but giving remarkable individuality of character to this group of buildings.
In roofs, including vaults and domes, we meet with a divergence of practice between Italy and France. In Italy low-pitched roofs were the rule: the parapet alone often formed the sky-line, and the dome and pediment are usually the only telling features of the outline. France, on the other hand, revived a most picturesque feature of Gothic days, namely, the high-pitched roof, employing it in the shape commonly known as the Mansard[30]roof. Nothing adds more to the effectiveness of the great French Renaissance buildings than these lofty terminals.
The dome is, however, the glory of this style, as it had been of the Roman. It is the one feature by which revived and original classic architects retain a clear and defined advantage over Gothic architects, who, strange to say, all but abandoned the dome. The mouldings and other ornaments of the Renaissance are much the same as those of the Roman style, which the Italians revived; their sculptures and their mural decorations were all originally drawn from classic sources. These, however, attained very great excellence, and it is probable that such decorative paintings as Raphael and his scholars executed inRome, at Genoa, at Mantua, and elsewhere, far surpass anything which the old Roman decorative artists ever executed.
The earlier Renaissance buildings are remarkable for the great use which their architects made of carpentry, as the most modern structures are for the use of wrought and cast-iron construction. As regards carpentry, it is of course true that all the woodwork of the classic periods, and much of that done in the Gothic period, has perished, either through decay or fire; but making every allowance for this, we must still recognise a very great increase in the employment of timber as an integral part of large structures. Vaulted roofs for example are comparatively rare, and domes, even when the inner dome is of brickwork or masonry, have their outer envelope of carpentry. A disuse of brick and rough masonry, or rather a constant effort to conceal them from view, is a distinctive mark of Renaissance work. The Roman method of facing rough walls with fine stone was resorted to in the best buildings. In humbler buildings plaster is employed.
Renaissance architects made very free use of plaster. Inside and out this material is utilised, not merely to cover surfaces, but to form architectural features. Cornices, panels, and enrichments of all kinds modelled in plaster are constantly employed in the interior of rooms and buildings. On the exterior we constantly find imitations of similar architectural features proper to stone executed in plaster and simulating stone; a short-sighted practice which cannot be commended, and which has only cheapness and convenience in its favour. There can be no question of the fact that the features thus executednever equal those done in stone in their effectiveness, and are far more liable to decay.
Design in Renaissance buildings may be said to be directed towards producing a telling result by the effect of the buildings taken as a whole, rather than by the intricacy or the beauty of individual parts; and herein lies one of the great contrasts between Renaissance and Gothic architecture. A Renaissance building which fails to produce an impression as a whole is rarely felt to be successful. No better example of this can be given than the straggling, unsatisfactory Palace of Versailles, magnificent as it is in dimensions and rich in treatment. To the production of a homogeneous impression the arrangement of plan, the proportion of storeys, the contrasts of voids and solids, and above all the outline of the entire building, should be devoted.
The general arrangement of buildings is usually strictly symmetrical, one half corresponding to the other, and with some well-defined feature to mark the centre. Of course in very large buildings this does not occur, nor in the nature of things can it often take place in the sides of churches; but the individual features of such buildings, and all those parts of them which permit of symmetry in their arrangement, always display it.
Proportion plays an important part in the design of Renaissance buildings. The actual shape of openings, the proportion which they bear to voids, the proportion of storeys to one another; and, going into details, the proportions which the different features—e.g., cornice, and the columns supporting it—should bear to one another, have to be carefully studied. It is to the possession of a keen sense of what makes a pleasing proportion and one satisfactory to the eye, that the great architects of Italy owed the greater part of their success.
Renaissance architecture is so familiar in its general features, and these have been so constantly repeated, that we may not easily recognise the great need for skill and taste which exists if they are to be designed so as to produce the most refined effect possible. Many of the successful buildings of the style owe their excellence to the great delicacy and elegance of the mode in which the details have been studied, rather than to the vigour and boldness with which the masses have been shaped and disposed; and though grandeur is the noblest quality of which the style is capable, yet many more opportunities for displaying grace and refinement than for attaining grandeur offer themselves, and by nothing are the best works of the style so well marked out as by the success with which those opportunities have been grasped and turned to account.
The concealment both of construction and arrangement is largely practised in Renaissance buildings. Behind an exterior wall filled by windows of uniform size and equally spaced, rooms large and small, corridors, staircases, and other features have to be provided for. This is completely in contrast to the Gothic principle of displaying frankly on the outside the arrangement of what is within; but it must be remembered that art often works most happily and successfully when limited by apparently strict and difficult conditions, and these rules have not prevented the great architects of the Renaissance from accomplishing works where both the exterior and the interior are thoroughly successful, and are brought into such happy harmony that the difficulties have clearly been no bar to success. There is no canon of art violated by such a method, the simple fact being that Gothic buildings are designed under one set of conditions and Renaissance under another.
It is less easy to defend the use of pilasters and columnslarge enough to appear as though they were the main support of the building, for purely decorative purposes; yet here perhaps the fault lies rather in the extent to which the practice has been carried, and above all the scale upon which it is carried out, than in anything else. Small columns are constantly employed in Gothic buildings in positions where they serve the æsthetic purpose of conveying a sense of support, but where it is impossible for them to carry any weight. The Renaissance architects have done the same thing on a large scale, but it must not be forgotten that they only revived a Roman practice as part of the ancient style to which they reverted, and that they are not responsible for originating it.
It will be understood therefore that symmetry, strict uniformity, not mere similarity, in features intended to correspond, and constant repetition, are leading principles in Renaissance architecture. These qualities tend to breadth rather than picturesqueness of effect, and to similarity rather than contrast. Simplicity and elaboration are both compatible with Renaissance design; the former distinguishes the earlier and purer examples of the style, the latter those more recent and more grandiose.
It should be observed that in the transition styles, such as our own Elizabethan, or the French style of Francis the First, these principles of design are mixed up in a very miscellaneous way with those followed in the Gothic period. The result is often puzzling and inconsistent if we attempt to analyse it with exactness, but rarely fails to charm by its picturesque and irregular vividness.
FOOTNOTE:[30]Named after a French architect of the 17th century.
[30]Named after a French architect of the 17th century.
[30]Named after a French architect of the 17th century.
From a terra-cotta frieze at Lodi
RENAISSANCE architecture—the architecture of the classic revival—had its origin in Italy, and should be first studied in the land of its birth. There are more ways than one in which it may be attempted to classify Italian Renaissance buildings. The names of conspicuous architects are sometimes adopted for this purpose, for now, for the first time, we meet with a complete record of the names and performances of all architects of note: the men who raised the great works of Gothic art are, with a few exceptions, absolutely unknown to us. An approximate division into three stages can also be recognised. There is an early, a developed, and a late Renaissance, but this is very far indeed from being a completely marked series, and was more interfered with by local circumstances and by the character and genius of individual artists than in Gothic. For this reason a local division will be of most service. The best examples exist in the great cities, with a few exceptions, and it is almost more useful to group them—as the paintings of the Renaissance are also often grouped—by locality than in either of the other methods.
Renaissance architecture first sprang into existence in Florence. Here chiefly the works of the early Renaissance are met with, and the names of the great Florentine architects are Brunelleschi and Alberti.
Brunelleschi was a citizen of Florence, of very ardent temperament and great energy, and a true artist. He was born in 1377, was originally trained as a goldsmith and sculptor, but devoted himself to the study of architecture, and early set his heart upon being appointed to complete the dome of the then unfinished cathedral of Florence, of which some account has already been given.
Florence in the fifteenth century was full of artistic life, and the revival of learning and arts had then begun to take definite shape. The first years of the century found Brunelleschi studying antiquities at Rome, to fit himself for the work he desired to undertake. After his return to his native city, he ultimately succeeded in the object of his ambition; the cathedral was entrusted to him, and he erected the large pointed dome with which it is crowned. He also erected two large churches in Florence, which, as probably the first important buildings designed and built in the new style, possess great interest. Santo Spirito, one of these, shows a fully matured system of architectural treatment, and though it is quite true that it was a revived system, yet the application of it to a modern building, different in its purpose and in its design from anything the Romans had ever done, is little short of a work of genius.
Santo Spirito has a very simple and beautifully regular plan, and its interior has a singular charm and grace: overthe crossing is raised a low dome. The columns of the arcade are Corinthian columns, and the refinement of their detail and proportions strikes the eye at once on entering the building. The influence of Brunelleschi, who died in 1440, was perpetuated by the works and writings of Alberti (born 1398) an architect of literary cultivation who wrote a systematic treatise which became extremely popular, and helped to form the taste and guide the practice of his contemporaries. He lived till near the close of the fifteenth century, and erected some buildings of great merit. To Alberti we owe the design of the Ruccellai Palace in Florence, a building begun in 1460, and which had been preceded by somewhat bolder and simpler designs. This is a three storey building, but has pilasters carried up the piers between the windows and a regular entablature and cornice[31]at each storey. The building is elegant and graceful, and though the employment of the orders[32]as its decoration gives it a distinctive character, it bears a strong general resemblance to the group of which the Strozzi Palace (Fig.61) may be taken as the type.
The earliest Florentine palaces are the Riccardi, which dates from 1430, and the Pitti of almost the same date; Brunelleschi is said to have been consulted in the design of both, but Michelozzo was the architect. The distinguishing characteristic of the early palaces in this city is solidity, which rises from the fact that they were also fortresses.The Pitti, well known for its picture gallery, is a building of vast extent, built throughout in very boldly rusticated masonry, the joints and projections of the stones being greatly exaggerated. The Riccardi, a square block of building, bears a considerable resemblance to the Strozzi, but is plainer. It is a most dignified building in its effect.
The Strozzi Palace (Fig.61) was the next great palatial pile erected. It was designed by Cronaca, and begun in 1498. Like the Riccardi, it is of three storeys, with a bold projecting cornice. The whole wall is covered with rusticated masonry; the windows of the lower floor are small and square; those of the two upper floors are larger and semicircular headed, and with a shaft acting as a mullion, and carrying arches which occupy the window head with something like tracery. The entrance is by a semicircular headed archway. There is a great height of unpierced wall in the lowest storey and above the heads of the two upper ranges of windows; and to this and the bold overhanging cornice, this building, and those like it, owe much of their dignity and impressiveness. An elevation, such as our illustration, may convey a fair idea of the good proportion and ensemble of the front, but it is difficult without actually seeing the buildings to appreciate the effect produced by such palaces as these, seen foreshortened in the narrow streets, and with the shadows from their bold cornices and well-defined openings intensified by the effect of the Italian sun.
Fig. 61.—Strozzi Palace at Florence. (Begun 1489.)
Many excellent palatial buildings belong to the end of the fifteenth century. One among them is attributed to Bramante (who died 1513), a Florentine, whom we shall meet with in Rome and elsewhere. The Guadagni Palace has an upper storey entirely open, forming a sheltered loggia, but it is mentioned here chiefly on account of thedecorations incised on its walls by the method known as Sgraffito. Part of the plain wall is covered in this way with decorative designs, which appear as though drawn with a bold line on their surface. An example of this decoration will be found in our illustration (Fig.62), representing a portion of the Loggia del Consiglio at Verona.
The series of great Florentine palaces closes with a charming example, the Pandolfini, designed by the great Raphael, and commenced in 1520—in other words, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
This palace is only one of many instances to be found in Italy of the skill in more walks of art than one, of some of the greatest artists. Raphael, though best known as a painter, executed works of sculpture of great merit, and designed some other buildings besides the one now under notice. The Pandolfini Palace (Fig.63) is small, the main building having only four windows in the front and two storeys in height, with a low one-storey side building. Its general design has been very successfully copied in the Travellers’ Club House, Pall Mall. On comparing this with any of the previously named designs, it will be seen that the semicircular headed windows have disappeared, the rusticated masonry is only now retained at the angles, and to emphasise the side entrance; and a small order with a little pediment (i.e.gable) is employed to mark each opening, door or window. In short this building belongs not only to another century, but to that advanced school of art to which we have given the name of developed Italian Renaissance.
Fig. 62.—Part of the Loggia del Consiglio at Verona. (16th Century.)Showing the incised decoration known asSgraffito.
In Florence some of the work of Michelangelo is to be met with. His own house is here; so is the famous Medici chapel, a work in which we find him displaying power atonce as a sculptor and an architect. This interior is very fine and very studied both in its proportions and its details. The church of the Annunziata, remarkable for a fine dome, carried on a drum resting directly on the ground, is the foremost Renaissance church in Florence.
The contrast between early and matured Renaissance can indeed be better recognised in Florence than in almost any other city. The early work, that of Bramante, Brunelleschi, and the architects who drew their inspirations from these masters, was delicate and refined. The detail was always elegant, the ornament always unobtrusive, and often most graceful. Features comparatively small in scale were employed, and were set off by the use of plain wall-surface, which was unhesitatingly displayed. The classic orders were used in a restricted, unobtrusive way, and with pilasters in preference to columns; and though probably the architects themselves would have repudiated the idea that the Gothic art, which they had cast behind them, influenced their practice of revived classic in the remotest degree, it is nevertheless true that many of these peculiarities, and still more the general quality of the designs, were to a large extent those to which the practice of Gothic architecture had led them.
A change which was partly due to a natural desire for progress, was helped on by the great attention paid by students of architecture to the remains of ancient Roman buildings; but it was the influence excited by the powerful genius of Michelangelo, and by the gigantic scale and vigorous treatment of his masterpiece, St. Peter’s, which was the proximate occasion of a revolution in taste and practice, to which, the labours, both literary and artistic, of Vignola, and the designs of Palladio, gave form and consistency. In the fully-developed, or, as it is sometimescalled, pure Renaissance of Italy, great use is made of the classic orders and pediment, and indeed of all the features which the Romans had employed. Plain wall space almost disappears under the various architectural features introduced, and all ornaments, details, and mouldings become bolder and richer, but often less refined and correct in design.
Fig. 63.—The Pandolfini Palace, Florence. Designed by Raphael. (Begun 1520.)
Rome, the capital of the country, contains, as was fit, the central building of the fully-developed Renaissance, St. Peter’s. Bramante, the Florentine, was the architect to whom the task of designing a cathedral to surpass anything existing in Europe was committed by Pope Julius II. at the opening of the sixteenth century. Some such project had been entertained, and even begun, fifty years earlier, but the enterprise was now started afresh, a new design was made, and the first stone was laid by the Pope in 1506. Bramante died in some six or seven years, and five or six architects in succession, one of whom was Raphael, proceeded with the work, without advancing it rapidly, for nearly half a century, during which time the design was modified again and again. In 1546 the great Michelangelo was appointed architect, and the last eighteen years of his life were spent in carrying on this great work. He completed the magnificent dome in all its essential parts, and left the church a Greek cross (i.e.one which has all its four arms equal) on plan, with the dome at the crossing. The boast is attributed to him that he would take the dome of the Pantheon and hang it in the air; and this he has virtually accomplished in the dome of St. Peter’s—a work of the greatest beauty of design and boldness of construction.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Maderno was employed to lengthen the nave. This transformed the plan of the cathedral into a Latin cross. The existing portico was built at the same time; and in 1661 Bernini added the vast forecourt, lined by colonnades, which now forms the approach.
This cathedral, of which the history has been briefly sketched, is the largest in the world. As we now see it, it consists of a vast vestibule; a nave of four bays with side aisles; a vast square central space over which hangs the great dome; transepts and a choir, each of one bay and an apse. Outside the great central space, an aisle, not quite like the ordinary aisle of a church, exists, and there are two side chapels. It can be well understood that if the largest church in Christendom is divided into so few parts, these must be themselves of colossal dimensions, and the truth is that the piers are masses of masonry which can be called nothing else than vast, while the spaces spanned by the arches and vaults are prodigious. There is little sense of mystery about the interior of the building (Fig.64), the eye soon grasps it as a whole, and hours must be spent in it before an idea of its gigantic size is at all taken in. The beauty of the colouring adds wonderfully to the effect of St. Peter’s upon the spectator, for the walls are rich with mosaics and coloured marbles; and the interior, the dome especially, with the drum upon which it rests, are decorated in colour throughout, with fine effect and in excellent taste. The interior is amply lighted, and, though very rich, not over decorated; its design is simple and noble in the extreme, and all its parts are wonderful in their harmony. The connection between the dome and the rest of the building is admirable, and there is a sense of vast space when the spectator stands under thatsoaring vault which belongs to no other building in the world.
The exterior is disappointing as long as the building is seen in front, for the façade is so lofty and advances so far forward as to cut off the view of the lower part of the dome. To have an idea of the building as Michelangelo designed it, it is necessary to go round to the back; and then, with the height of the drum fully seen and the contour of the dome, with all its massy lines of living force, carrying the eye with them right up to the elegant lantern that crowns the summit, some conception of the hugeness and the symmetry of this mountain of art seems to dawn on the mind. But even here it is with the utmost difficulty that one can apply any scale to the mass, so that the idea which the mind forms of its bulk is continually fluctuating.
The history of this building extends over all the period of developed Renaissance in Rome, and its list of architects includes all the best known names. By the side of it every other church, even St. John Lateran, appears insignificant; so that the secular buildings in Rome, which are numerous, and some of them excellent, are more worth attention than the churches, though not a few of the three hundred churches and basilicas of the metropolis of Italy are good examples of Renaissance.
Fig. 64.—St. Peter’s at Rome. Interior. (1506-1661.)
The altars, tombs, and other architectural or semi-architectural works which occur in many of the churches of Rome, are, however, finer works of art as a rule than the buildings which they adorn. Such gems are not confined to Rome, but are to be found throughout Italy: many of them belong to the best period of art. Marble is generally the material, and the light as a rule falls on these works in one direction only. Under thesecircumstances the most subtle moulding gives a play of light and shade, and the most delicate carving produces a richness of effect which cannot be attained in exterior architecture, executed for the most part in stone, exposed to the weather, and seen by diffused and reflected light. Nothing of this sort is finer than the monuments by Sansovino, erected in Sta. Maria del Popolo at Rome, one of which we illustrate on a small scale (Fig.65). The magnificent altar-piece in Sta. Coronale at Vicenza, in which is framed Bellini’s picture of the baptism of Christ, is another example, on an unusually large scale—fine in style, and covered with beautiful ornament.
No secular building exists in Rome so early or so simple as the severe Florentine palaces; but Bramante, who belongs to the early period, erected there the fine Cancelleria palace; and the Palazzo Giraud (Fig.66). These buildings resemble one another very closely; each bears the impress of refined taste, but delicacy has been carried almost to timidity. The pilasters and cornices which are employed have the very slightest projection, but the large mass of the wall as compared with the openings, secures an appearance of solidity, and hence of dignity. The interior of the Cancelleria contains an arcaded quadrangle (cortile) of great beauty. Smaller palaces belonging to the same period and of the same refined, but somewhat weak, character exist in Rome.
Fig. 65.—Monument, by Sansovino, in Sta. Maria del Popolo, Rome. (15th Century.)
Fig. 66.—Palazzo Giraud (now Torlonia), Rome. By Bramante. (1506.)
The Vatican Palace is so vast that, like St. Peter’s, it took more than one generation to complete. To Bramante’s time belongs the great Belvedere, since much altered, but in its original state an admirable work. This palace also can show some remarkable additions by Bernini, a much later architect, with much that is not admirable or remarkable by other hands. The finest Roman palace is theFarnese, begun by San Gallo in 1530, continued by Michelangelo, and completed by Giacomo della Porta, each architect having altered the design. This building, notwithstanding its chequered history, is a dignified, impressive mass. It has only three storeys and a scarcely marked basement, and is nearly square, with a large quadrangle in its heart. It is very lofty, and has a great height of unpierced wall over each storey of windows, and is crowned by a bold and highly-enriched cornice—an unusual thing for Rome. In this, and in many palaces built about the same time, the windows are ornamented in the same manner as those of the Pandolfini Palace at Florence; the use of pilasters instead of columns is general; the openings are usually square-headed, circular heads being usually confined to arcades and loggie; theangles are marked by rustication, and the only cornice is the one that crowns the whole. This general character will apply to most of the works of Baldassare Peruzzi, Vignola, Sangallo, and Raphael, who were, with Michelangelo, the foremost architects in Rome in the sixteenth century. But “the works executed by Michelangelo are in a bolder and more pictorial style, as are also many productions grafted on the earlier Italian manner by a numerous class of succeeding architects. In these is to be remarked a greater use of columns, engaged and isolated; stronger but less studied details; and a greater use of colonnades, in which however the combination with the semicircular arch is still unusual, the antique in this respect being followed to a great disadvantage. Still there is a nobility, a palatial look about these large mansions which is very admirable, and is to be remarked in all the palaces, even up to the time of Borromini,circa1640, by whom all the principles and parts of Roman architecture were literally turned topsy-turvey. Michelangelo’s peculiar style was more thoroughly carried out on ecclesiastical buildings, and as practised by his successors, exhibits much that is fine, in large masses, boldly projecting cornices, three-quarter columns, and noble domes; but it is otherwise debased by great misconceptions as to the reasonable application of architecture.”—M. D. W.
In the seventeenth century a decline set in. The late Renaissance has neither the severity of the early, nor the dignified richness of the mature time, but is extravagant; though at Rome examples of its extreme phase are not common. Maderno, who erected the west front of St. Peter’s, and Bernini, who added the outer forecourt and also built the curiously designed state staircase (thescala regia) in the Vatican, are the foremost architects. Tothese must be added Borromini. The great Barberini Palace belongs to this century; but perhaps its most characteristic works are the fountains, some of them with elaborate architectural backgrounds, which ornament many of the open places in Rome. Few of the buildings of the eighteenth century in Rome, or indeed in Italy generally, claim attention as architectural works of a high order of merit.
Before leaving central Italy for the north, it is necessary to mention the masterpiece of Vignola—the great Farnese Palace at Caprarola; and to add that in every city of importance examples more or less admirable of the art of the time were erected.
The next great group of Renaissance buildings is to be found at Venice, where the style was adopted with some reluctance, and not till far on in the sixteenth century. At first we meet with some admixture of Gothic elements; as, for example, in the rebuilding of the internal quadrangle of the Ducal Palace. Pointed arches are partly employed in this work, which was completed about the middle of the sixteenth century. In the earlier palaces—which, it will be remembered, are comparatively narrow buildings standing side by side on the banks of the canals—the storeys are well marked; the windows are round headed with smaller arches within the main ones; the orders when introduced are kept subordinate; the windows are grouped together in the central portion of the front, as was the case with those of the Gothic palaces, and very little use is made of rusticated masonry. The Vendramini, Cornaro,and Trevisano Palaces conform to this type. To the same period belong one or two fine churches, the most famous being San Zacaria, a building with a very delicately panelled front, and a semicircular pediment in lieu of a gable; here, too, semicircular-headed openings are made use of. In many of these churches and other buildings, a beautiful ornament, which may be regarded as typical of early Venetian Renaissance, is to be found. It is the shell ornament, so called from its resemblance to a flat semicircular shell, ribbed from the centre to the circumference (Fig.67).