CHAPTER XX.

EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY.

Books Recommended: Anderson, Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance; Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien; Der Cicerone. Cellesi, Sei Fabbriche di Firenze. Cicognara, Le Fabbriche più cospicue di Venezia. Durm, Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien (in Hdbuch. d. Arch.). Fergusson, History of Modern Architecture. Geymüller, La Renaissance en Toscane. Montigny et Famin, Architecture Toscane. Moore, Character of Renaissance Architecture. Müntz, La Renaissance en Italie et en France à l’époque de Charles VIII. Palustre, L’Architecture de la Renaissance. Pater, Studies in the Renaissance. Symonds, The Renaissance of the Fine Arts in Italy. Tosi and Becchio, Altars, Tabernacles, and Tombs.

THE CLASSIC REVIVAL. The abandonment of Gothic architecture in Italy and the substitution in its place of forms derived from classic models were occasioned by no sudden or merely local revolution. The Renaissance was the result of a profound and universal intellectual movement, whose roots may be traced far back into the Middle Ages, and which manifested itself first in Italy simply because there the conditions were most propitious. It spread through Europe just as rapidly as similar conditions appearing in other countries prepared the way for it. The essence of this far-reaching movement was the protest of the individual reason against the trammels of external and arbitrary authority—a protest which found its earliest organized expression in the Humanists. In its assertion of the intellectual and moral rights of the individual, the Renaissance laid the foundations of modern civilization. The same spirit, in rejecting the authority and teachings of the Church in matters of purely secular knowledge, led to the questionings of the precursors of modern science and the discoveries of the early navigators. But in nothing did the reaction against mediæval scholasticism and asceticism display itself more strikingly than in the joyful enthusiasm which marked the pursuit of classic studies. The long-neglected treasures of classic literature were reopened, almost rediscovered, in the fourteenth century by the immortal trio—Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The joy of living, the hitherto forbidden delight in beauty and pleasure for their own sakes, the exultant awakening to the sense of personal freedom, which came with the bursting of mediæval fetters, found in classic art and literature their most sympathetic expression. It was in Italy, where feudalism had never fully established itself, and where the municipalities and guilds had developed, as nowhere else, the sense of civic and personal freedom, that these symptoms first manifested themselves. In Italy, and above all in the Tuscan cities, they appeared throughout the fourteenth century in the growing enthusiasm for all that recalled the antique culture, and in the rapid advance of luxury and refinement in both public and private life.

THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ARTS. Classic Roman architecture had never lost its influence on the Italian taste. Gothic art, already declining in the West, had never been in Italy more than a borrowed garb, clothing architectural conceptions classic rather than Gothic in spirit. The antique monuments which abounded on every hand were ever present models for the artist, and to the Florentines of the early fifteenth century the civilization which had created them represented the highest ideal of human culture. They longed to revive in their own time the glories of ancient Rome, and appropriated with uncritical and undiscriminating enthusiasm the good and the bad, the early and the late forms of Roman art, Naïvely unconscious of the disparity between their own architectural conceptions and those they fancied they imitated, they were, unknown to themselves, creating a new style, in which the details of Roman art were fitted in novel combinations to new requirements. In proportion as the Church lost its hold on the culture of the age, this new architecture entered increasingly into the service of private luxury and public display. It created, it is true, striking types of church design, and made of the dome one of the most imposing of external features; but its most characteristic products were palaces, villas, council halls, and monuments to the great and the powerful. The personal element in design asserted itself as never before in the growth of schools and the development of styles. Thenceforward the history of Italian architecture becomes the history of the achievements of individual artists.

EARLY BEGINNINGS. Already in the 13th century the pulpits of Niccolo Pisano at Sienna and Pisa had revealed that master’s direct recourse to antique monuments for inspiration and suggestion. In the frescoes of Giotto and his followers, and in the architectural details of many nominally Gothic buildings, classic forms had appeared with increasing frequency during the fourteenth century. This was especially true in Florence, which was then the artistic capital of Italy. Never, perhaps, since the days of Pericles, had there been another community so permeated with the love of beauty in art, and so endowed with the capacity to realize it. Nowhere else in Europe at that time was there such strenuous life, such intense feeling, or such free course for individual genius as in Florence. Her artists, with unexampled versatility, addressed themselves with equal success to goldsmiths’ work, sculpture, architecture and engineering—often to painting and poetry as well; and they were quick to catch in their art the spirit of the classic revival. The new movement achieved its first architectural triumph in the dome of the cathedral of Florence (1420–64); and it was Florentine—or at least Tuscan—artists who planted in other centres the seeds of the new art that were to spring up in the local and provincial schools of Sienna, Milan, Pavia, Bologna, and Venice, of Brescia, Lucca, Perugia, and Rimini, and many other North Italian cities. The movement asserted itself late in Rome and Naples, as an importation from Northern Italy, but it bore abundant fruit in these cities in its later stages.

PERIODS. The classic styles which grew up out of the Renaissance may be divided for convenience into four periods.

The Early Renaissance or Formative Period, 1420–90; characterized by the grace and freedom of the decorative detail, suggested by Roman prototypes and applied to compositions of great variety and originality.

The High Renaissance or Formally Classic Period, 1490–1550. During this period classic details were copied with increasing fidelity, the orders especially appearing in almost all compositions; decoration meanwhile losing somewhat in grace and freedom.

The Early Baroque (or Baroco), 1550–1600; a period of classic formality characterized by the use of colossal orders, engaged columns and rather scanty decoration.

The Decline or Later Baroque, marked by poverty of invention in the composition and a predominance of vulgar sham and display in the decoration. Broken pediments, huge scrolls, florid stucco-work and a general disregard of architectural propriety were universal.

During the eighteenth century there was a reaction from these extravagances, which showed itself in a return to the servile copying of classic models, sometimes not without a certain dignity of composition and restraint in the decoration.

By many writers the name Renaissance is confined to the first period. This is correct from the etymological point of view; but it is impossible to dissociate the first period historically from those which followed it, down to the final exhaustion of the artistic movement to which it gave birth, in the heavy extravagances of the Rococo.

Another division is made by the Italians, who give the name of the Quattrocento to the period which closed with the end of the fifteenth century, Cinquecento to the sixteenth century, and Seicento to the seventeenth century or Rococo. It has, however, become common to confine the use of the term Cinquecento to the first half of the sixteenth century.

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FIG. 158.—EARLY RENAISSANCE CAPITAL, PAL. ZORZI, VENICE.

CONSTRUCTION AND DETAIL. The architects of the Renaissance occupied themselves more with form than with construction, and rarely set themselves constructive problems of great difficulty. Although the new architecture began with the colossal dome of the cathedral of Florence, and culminated in the stupendous church of St. Peter at Rome, it was pre-eminently an architecture of palaces and villas, of façades and of decorative display. Constructive difficulties were reduced to their lowest terms, and the constructive framework was concealed, not emphasized, by the decorative apparel of the design. Among the masterpieces of the early Renaissance are many buildings of small dimensions, such as gates, chapels, tombs and fountains. In these the individual fancy had full sway, and produced surprising results by the beauty of enriched mouldings, of carved friezes with infant genii, wreaths of fruit, griffins, masks and scrolls; by pilasters covered with arabesques as delicate in modelling as if wrought in silver; by inlays of marble, panels of glazed terra-cotta, marvellously carved doors, fine stucco-work in relief, capitals and cornices of wonderful richness and variety. The Roman orders appeared only in free imitations, with panelled and carved pilasters for the most part instead of columns, and capitals of fanciful design, recalling remotely the Corinthian by their volutes and leaves (Fig. 158). Instead of the low-pitched classic pediments, there appears frequently an arched cornice enclosing a sculptured lunette. Doors and windows were enclosed in richly carved frames, sometimes arched and sometimes square. Façades were flat and unbroken, depending mainly for effect upon the distribution and adornment of the openings, and the design of doorways, courtyards and cornices. Internally vaults and flat ceilings of wood and plaster were about equally common, the barrel vault and dome occurring far more frequently than the groined vault. Many of the ceilings of this period are of remarkable richness and beauty.

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FIG. 159.—SECTION OF DOME OF DUOMO, FLORENCE.

THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FLORENCE: THE DUOMO. In the year 1417 a public competition was held for completing the cathedral of Florence by a dome over the immense octagon, 143 feet in diameter. Filippo Brunelleschi, sculptor and architect (1377–1446), who with Donatello had journeyed to Rome to study there the masterworks of ancient art, after demonstrating the inadequacy of all the solutions proposed by the competitors, was finally permitted to undertake the gigantic task according to his own plans. These provided for an octagonal dome in two shells, connected by eight major and sixteen minor ribs, and crowned by a lantern at the top (Fig. 159). This wholly original conception, by which for the first time (outside of Moslem art) the dome was made an external feature fitly terminating in the light forms and upward movement of a lantern, was carried out between the years 1420 and 1464. Though in no wise an imitation of Roman forms, it was classic in its spirit, in its vastness and its simplicity of line, and was made possible solely by Brunelleschi’s studies of Roman design and construction (Fig. 160).

OTHER CHURCHES. From Brunelleschi’s designs were also erected the Pazzi Chapel in Sta. Croce, a charming design of a Greek cross covered with a dome at the intersection, and preceded by a vestibule with a richly decorated vault; and the two great churches of S. Lorenzo (1425) and S. Spirito (1433–1476, Fig. 161). Both reproduced in a measure the plan of the Pisa Cathedral, having a three-aisled nave and transepts, with a low dome over the crossing. The side aisles were covered with domical vaults and the central aisles with flat wooden or plaster ceilings. All the details of columns, arches and mouldings were imitated from Roman models, and yet the result was something entirely new. Consciously or unconsciously, Brunelleschi was reviving Byzantine rather than Roman conceptions in the planning and structural design of these domical churches, but the garb in which he clothed them was Roman, at least in detail. The Old Sacristy of S. Lorenzo was another domical design of great beauty.

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FIG. 160.—EXTERIOR OF DOME OF DUOMO, FLORENCE.

From this time on the new style was in general use for church designs. L. B. Alberti (1404–73), who had in Rome mastered classic details more thoroughly than Brunelleschi, remodelled the church of S. Francesco at Rimini with Roman pilasters and arches, and with engaged orders in the façade, which, however, was never completed. His great work was the church of S. Andrea at Mantua, a Latin cross in plan, with a dome at the intersection (the present high dome dating however, only from the 18th century) and a façade to which the conception of a Roman triumphal arch was skilfully adapted. His façade of incrusted marbles for the church of S. M. Novella at Florence was a less successful work, though its flaring consoles over the side aisles established an unfortunate precedent frequently imitated in later churches.

A great activity in church-building marked the period between 1475 and 1490. The plans of the churches erected about this time throughout north Italy display an interesting variety of arrangements, in nearly all of which the dome is combined with the three-aisled cruciform plan, either as a central feature at the crossing or as a domical vault over each bay. Bologna and Ferrara possess a number of churches of this kind. Occasionally the basilican arrangement was followed, with columnar arcades separating the aisles. More often, however, the pier-arches were of the Roman type, with engaged columns or pilasters between them. The interiors, presumably intended to receive painted decorations, were in most cases somewhat bare of ornament, pleasing rather by happy proportions and effective vaulting or rich flat ceilings, panelled, painted and gilded, than by elaborate architectural detail. A similar scantiness of ornament is to be remarked in the exteriors, excepting the façades, which were sometimes highly ornate; the doorways, with columns, pediments, sculpture and carving, receiving especial attention. High external domes did not come into general use until the next period. In Milan, Pavia, and some other Lombard cities, the internal cupola over the crossing was, however, covered externally by a lofty structure in diminishing stages, like that of the Certosa at Pavia (Fig. 152), or that erected by Bramante for the church of S. M. delle Grazie at Milan. At Prato, in the church of the Madonna delle Carceri (1495–1516), by Giuliano da S. Gallo, the type of the Pazzi chapel reappears in a larger scale; the plan is cruciform, with equal or nearly equal arms covered by barrel vaults, at whose intersection rises a dome of moderate height on pendentives. This charming edifice, with its unfinished exterior of white marble, its simple and dignified lines, and internal embellishments in della-Robbia ware, is one of the masterpieces of the period.

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FIG. 161.—INTERIOR OF S. SPIRITO, FLORENCE.

In the designing of chapels and oratories the architects of the early Renaissance attained conspicuous success, these edifices presenting fewer structural limitations and being more purely decorative in character than the larger churches. Such façades as that of S. Bernardino at Perugia and of the Frati di S. Spirito at Bologna are among the most delightful products of the decorative fancy of the 15th century.

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FIG. 162.—COURTYARD OF RICCARDI PALACE, FLORENCE.

FLORENTINE PALACES. While the architects of this period failed to develop any new and thoroughly satisfactory ecclesiastical type, they attained conspicuous success in palace-architecture. The Riccardi palace in Florence (1430) marks the first step of the Renaissance in this direction. It was built for the great Cosimo di Medici by Michelozzi (1397–1473), a contemporary of Brunelleschi and Alberti, and a man of great talent. Its imposing rectangular façade, with widely spaced mullioned windows in two stories over a massive basement, is crowned with a classic cornice of unusual and perhaps excessive size. In spite of the bold and fortress-like character of the rusticated masonry of these façades, and the mediæval look they seem to present to modern eyes, they marked a revolution in style and established a type frequently imitated in later years. The courtyard, in contrast with this stern exterior, appears light and cheerful (Fig. 162). Its wall is carried on round arches borne by columns with Corinthianesque capitals, and the arcade is enriched with sculptured medallions. The Pitti Palace, by Brunelleschi (1435), embodies the same ideas on a more colossal scale, but lacks the grace of an adequate cornice. A lighter and more ornate style appeared in 1460 in the P. Rucellai, by Alberti, in which for the first time classical pilasters in superposed stages were applied to a street façade. To avoid the dilemma of either insufficiently crowning the edifice or making the cornice too heavy for the upper range of pilasters, Alberti made use of brackets, occupying the width of the upper frieze, and converting the whole upper entablature into a cornice. But this compromise was not quite successful, and it remained for later architects in Venice, Verona, and Rome to work out more satisfactory methods of applying the orders to many-storied palace façades. In the great P. Strozzi (Fig. 163), erected in 1490 by Benedetto da Majano and Cronaca, the architects reverted to the earlier type of the P. Riccardi, treating it with greater refinement and producing one of the noblest palaces of Italy.

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FIG. 163.—FAÇADE OF STROZZI PALACE, FLORENCE.

COURTYARDS; ARCADES. These palaces were all built around interior courts, whose walls rested on columnar arcades, as in the P. Riccardi (Fig. 162). The origin of these arcades may be found in the arcaded cloisters of mediæval monastic churches, which often suggest classic models, as in those of St. Paul-beyond-the-Walls and St. John Lateran at Rome. Brunelleschi not only introduced columnar arcades into a number of cloisters and palace courts, but also used them effectively as exterior features in the Loggia S. Paolo and the Foundling Hospital (Ospedale degli Innocenti) at Florence. The chief drawback in these light arcades was their inability to withstand the thrust of the vaulting over the space behind them, and the consequent recourse to iron tie-rods where vaulting was used. The Italians, however, seemed to care little about this disfigurement.

MINOR WORKS. The details of the new style were developed quite as rapidly in purely decorative works as in monumental buildings. Altars, mural monuments, tabernacles, pulpits and ciboria afforded scope for the genius of the most distinguished artists. Among those who were specially celebrated in works of this kind should be named Lucca della Robbia (1400–82) and his successors, Mino da Fiesole (1431–84) and Benedetto da Majano (1442–97). Possessed of a wonderful fertility of invention, they and their pupils multiplied their works in extraordinary number and variety, not only throughout north Italy, but also in Rome and Naples. Among the most famous examples of this branch of design may be mentioned a pulpit in Sta. Croce by B. da Majano; a terra-cotta fountain in the sacristy of S. M. Novella, by the della Robbias; the Marsupini tomb in Sta. Croce, by Desiderio da Settignano (all in Florence); the della Rovere tomb in S. M. del Popolo, Rome, by Mino da Fiesole, and in the Cathedral at Lucca the Noceto tomb and the Tempietto, by Matteo Civitali. It was in works of this character that the Renaissance oftenest made its first appearance in a new centre, as was the case in Sienna, Pisa, Lucca, Naples, etc.

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FIG. 164.—TOMB OF PIETRO DI NOCETO, LUCCA.

NORTH ITALY. Between 1450 and 1490 the Renaissance presented in Sienna, in a number of important palaces, a sharp contrast to the prevalent Gothic style of that city. The P. Piccolomini—a somewhat crude imitation of the P. Riccardi in Florence—dates from 1463; the P. del Governo was built 1469, and the Spannocchi Palace in 1470. In 1463 Ant. Federighi built there the Loggia del Papa. About the same time Bernardo di Lorenzo was building for Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini) an entirely new city, Pienza, with a cathedral, archbishop’s palace, town hall and Papal residence (the P. Piccolomini), which are interesting if not strikingly original works. Pisa possesses few early Renaissance structures, owing to the utter prostration of her fortunes in the 15th century, and the dominance of Pisan Gothic traditions. In Lucca, besides a wealth of minor monuments (largely the work of Matteo Civitali, 1435–1501) in various churches, a number of palaces date from this period, the most important being the P. Pretorio and P. Bernardini. To Milan the Renaissance was carried by the Florentine masters Michelozzi and Filarete, to whom are respectively due the Portinari Chapel in S. Eustorgio (1462) and the earlier part of the great Ospedale Maggiore (1457). In the latter, an edifice of brick with terra-cotta enrichments, the windows were Gothic in outline—an unusual mixture of styles, even in Italy. The munificence of the Sforzas, the hereditary tyrants of the province, embellished the semi-Gothic Certosa of Pavia with a new marble façade, begun 1476 or 1491, which in its fanciful and exuberant decoration, and the small scale of its parts, belongs properly to the early Renaissance. Exquisitely beautiful in detail, it resembles rather a magnified altar-piece than a work of architecture, properly speaking. Bologna and Ferrara developed somewhat late in the century a strong local school of architecture, remarkable especially for the beauty of its courtyards, its graceful street arcades, and its artistic treatment of brick and terra-cotta (P. Bevilacqua, P. Fava, at Bologna; P. Scrofa, P. Roverella, at Ferrara). About the same time palaces with interior arcades and details in the new style were erected in Verona, Vicenza, Mantua, and other cities.

VENICE. In this city of merchant princes and a wealthy bourgeoisie, the architecture of the Renaissance took on a new aspect of splendor and display. It was late in appearing, the Gothic style with its tinge of Byzantine decorative traditions having here developed into a style well suited to the needs of a rich and relatively tranquil community. These traditions the architects of the new style appropriated in a measure, as in the marble incrustations of the exquisite little church of S. M. dei Miracoli (1480–89), and the façade of the Scuola di S. Marco (1485–1533), both by Pietro Lombardo. Nowhere else, unless on the contemporary façade of the Certosa at Pavia, were marble inlays and delicate carving, combined with a framework of thin pilasters, finely profiled entablatures and arched pediments, so lavishly bestowed upon the street fronts of churches and palaces. The family of the Lombardi (Martino, his sons Moro and Pietro, and grandsons Antonio and Tullio), with Ant. Bregno and Bart. Buon, were the leaders in the architectural Renaissance of this period, and to them Venice owes her choicest masterpieces in the new style. Its first appearance is noted in the later portions of the church of S. Zaccaria (1456–1515), partly Gothic internally, with a façade whose semicircular pediment and small decorative arcades show a somewhat timid but interesting application of classic details. In this church, and still more so in S. Giobbe (1451–93) and the Miracoli above mentioned, the decorative element predominates throughout. It is hard to imagine details more graceful in design, more effective in the swing of their movement, or more delicate in execution than the mouldings, reliefs, wreaths, scrolls, and capitals one encounters in these buildings. Yet in structural interest, in scale and breadth of planning, these early Renaissance Venetian buildings hold a relatively inferior rank.

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FIG. 165.—VENDRAMINI PALACE, VENICE.

PALACES. The great Court of the Doge’s Palace, begun 1483 by Ant. Rizzio, belongs only in part to the first period. It shows, however, the lack of constructive principle and of largeness of composition just mentioned, but its decorative effect and picturesque variety elicit almost universal admiration. Like the neighboring façade of St. Mark’s, it violates nearly every principle of correct composition, and yet in a measure atones for this capital defect by its charm of detail. Far more satisfactory from the purely architectural point of view is the façade of the P. Vendramini (Vendramin-Calergi), by Pietro Lombardo (1481). The simple, stately lines of its composition, the dignity of its broad arched and mullioned windows, separated by engaged columns—the earliest example in Venice of this feature, and one of the earliest in Italy—its well-proportioned basement and upper stories, crowned by an adequate but somewhat heavy entablature, make this one of the finest palaces in Italy (Fig. 165) It established a type of large-windowed, vigorously modelled façades which later architects developed, but hardly surpassed. In the smaller contemporary, P. Dario, another type appears, better suited for small buildings, depending for effect mainly upon well-ordered openings and incrusted panelling of colored marble.

ROME. Internal disorders and the long exile of the popes had by the end of the fourteenth century reduced Rome to utter insignificance. Not until the second half of the fifteenth century did returning prosperity and wealth afford the Renaissance its opportunity in the Eternal City. Pope Nicholas V. had, indeed, begun the rebuilding of St. Peter’s from designs by B. Rossellini, in 1450, but the project lapsed shortly after with the death of the pope. The earliest Renaissance building in Rome was the P. di Venezia, begun in 1455, together with the adjoining porch of S. Marco. In this palace and the adjoining unfinished Palazzetto we find the influence of the old Roman monuments clearly manifested in the court arcades, built like those of the Colosseum, with superposed stages of massive piers and engaged columns carrying entablatures. The proportions are awkward, the details coarse; but the spirit of Roman classicism is here seen in the germ. The exterior of this palace is, however, still Gothic in spirit. The architects are unknown; Giuliano da Majano (1452–90), Giacomo di Pietrasanta, and Meo del Caprino (1430–1501) are known to have worked upon it, but it is not certain in what capacity.

The new style, reaching, and in time overcoming, the conservatism of the Church, overthrew the old basilican traditions. In S. Agostino (1479–83), by Pietrasanta, and S. M. del Popolo, by Pintelli (?), piers with pilasters or half-columns and massive arches separate the aisles, and the crossing is crowned with a dome. To the same period belong the Sistine chapel and parts of the Vatican palace, but the interest of these lies rather in their later decorations than in their somewhat scanty architectural merit.

The architectural renewal of Rome, thus begun, reached its culmination in the following period.

OTHER MONUMENTS. The complete enumeration of even the most important Early Renaissance monuments of Italy is impossible within our limits. Two or three only can here be singled out as suggesting types. Among town halls of this period the first place belongs to the P. del Consiglio at Verona, by Fra Giocondo (1435–1515). In this beautiful edifice the façade consists of a light and graceful arcade supporting a wall pierced with four windows, and covered with elaborate frescoed arabesques (recently restored). Its unfortunate division by pilasters into four bays, with a pier in the centre, is a blemish avoided in the contemporary P. del Consiglio at Padua. The Ducal Palace at Urbino, by Luciano da Laurano (1468), is noteworthy for its fine arcaded court, and was highly famed in its day. At Brescia S. M. dei Miracoli is a remarkable example of a cruciform domical church dating from the close of this period, and is especially celebrated for the exuberant decoration of its porch and its elaborate detail. Few campaniles were built in this period; the best of them are at Venice. Naples possesses several interesting Early Renaissance monuments, chief among which are the Porta Capuana (1484), by Giul. da Majano, the triumphal Arch of Alphonso of Arragon, by Pietro di Martino, and the P. Gravina, by Gab. d’Agnolo. Naples is also very rich in minor works of the early Renaissance, in which it ranks with Florence, Venice, and Rome.

CHAPTER XXI.

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY—Continued.

THE ADVANCED RENAISSANCE AND DECLINE.

Books Recommended: As before, Burckhardt, Cicognara, Fergusson, Palustre. Also, Gauthier, Les plus beaux edifices de Gênes. Geymüller, Les projets primitifs pour la basilique de St. Pierre de Rome. Gurlitt, Geschichte des Barockstiles in Italien. Letarouilly, Édifices de Rome Moderne; Le Vatican. Palladio, The Works of A. Palladio.

CHARACTER OF THE ADVANCED RENAISSANCE. It was inevitable that the study and imitation of Roman architecture should lead to an increasingly literal rendering of classic details and a closer copying of antique compositions. Toward the close of the fifteenth century the symptoms began to multiply of the approaching reign of formal classicism. Correctness in the reproduction of old Roman forms came in time to be esteemed as one of the chief of architectural virtues, and in the following period the orders became the principal resource of the architect. During the so-called Cinquecento, that is, from the close of the fifteenth century to nearly or quite 1550, architecture still retained much of the freedom and refinement of the Quattrocento. There was meanwhile a notable advance in dignity and amplitude of design, especially in the internal distribution of buildings. Externally the orders were freely used as subordinate features in the decoration of doors and windows, and in court arcades of the Roman type. The lantern-crowned dome upon a high drum was developed into one of the noblest of architectural forms. Great attention was bestowed upon all subordinate features; doors and windows were treated with frames and pediments of extreme elegance and refinement; all the cornices and mouldings were proportioned and profiled with the utmost care, and the balustrade was elaborated into a feature at once useful and highly ornate. Interior decoration was even more splendid than before, if somewhat less delicate and subtle; relief enrichments in stucco were used with admirable effect, and the greatest artists exercised their talents in the painting of vaults and ceilings, as in P. del Té at Mantua, by Giulio Romano (1492–1546), and the Sistine Chapel at Rome, by Michael Angelo. This period is distinguished by an exceptional number of great architects and buildings. It was ushered in by Bramante Lazzari, of Urbino (1444–1514), and closed during the career of Michael Angelo Buonarotti (1475–1564); two names worthy to rank with that of Brunelleschi. Inferior only to these in architectural genius were Raphael (1483–1520), Baldassare Peruzzi (1481–1536), Antonio da San Gallo the Younger (1485–1546), and G. Barozzi da Vignola (1507–1572), in Rome; Giacopo Tatti Sansovino (1479–1570), in Venice, and others almost equally illustrious. This period witnessed the erection of an extraordinary series of palaces, villas, and churches, the beginning and much of the construction of St. Peter’s at Rome, and a complete transformation in the aspect of that city.

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FIG. 166.—FAÇADE OF THE GIRAUD PALACE, ROME.

BRAMANTE’S WORKS. While precise time limits cannot be set to architectural styles, it is not irrational to date this period from the maturing of Bramante’s genius. While his earlier works in Milan belong to the Quattrocento (S. M. delle Grazie, the sacristy of San Satiro, the extension of the Great Hospital), his later designs show the classic tendency very clearly. The charming Tempietto in the court of S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome, a circular temple-like chapel (1502), is composed of purely classic elements. In the P. Giraud (Fig. 166) and the great Cancelleria Palace, pilasters appear in the external composition, and all the details of doors and windows betray the results of classic study, as well as the refined taste of their designer.24 The beautiful courtyard of the Cancelleria combines the Florentine system of arches on columns with the Roman system of superposed arcades independent of the court wall. In 1506 Bramante began the rebuilding of St. Peter’s for Julius II. (see p. 294) and the construction of a new and imposing papal palace adjoining it on the Vatican hill. Of this colossal group of edifices, commonly known as the Vatican, he executed the greater Belvedere court (afterward divided in two by the Library and the Braccio Nuovo), the lesser octagonal court of the Belvedere, and the court of San Damaso, with its arcades afterward frescoed by Raphael and his school. Besides these, the cloister of S. M. della Pace, and many other works in and out of Rome, reveal the impress of Bramante’s genius, alike in their admirable plans and in the harmony and beauty of their details.

FLORENTINE PALACES. The P. Riccardi long remained the accepted type of palace in Florence. As we have seen, it was imitated in the Strozzi palace, as late as 1489, with greater perfection of detail, but with no radical change of conception. In the P. Gondi, however, begun in the following year by Giuliano da San Gallo (1445–1516), a more pronounced classic spirit appears, especially in the court and the interior design. Early in the 16th century classic columns and pediments began to be used as decorations for doors and windows; the rustication was confined to basements and corner-quoins, and niches, loggias, and porches gave variety of light and shade to the façades (P. Bartolini, by Baccio d’Agnolo; P. Larderel, 1515, by Dosio; P. Guadagni, by Cronaca; P. Pandolfini, 1518, attributed to Raphael). In the P. Serristori, by Baccio d’Agnolo (1510), pilasters were applied to the composition of the façade, but this example was not often followed in Florence.

ROMAN PALACES. These followed a different type. They were usually of great size, and built around ample courts with arcades of classic model in two or three stories. The broad street façade in three stories with an attic or mezzanine was crowned with a rich cornice. The orders were sparingly used externally, and effect was sought principally in the careful proportioning of the stories, in the form and distribution of the square-headed and arched openings, and in the design of mouldings, string-courses, cornices, and other details. The piano nobile, or first story above the basement, was given up to suites of sumptuous reception-rooms and halls, with magnificent ceilings and frescoes by the great painters of the day, while antique statues and reliefs adorned the courts, vestibules, and niches of these princely dwellings. The Massimi palace, by Peruzzi, is an interesting example of this type. The Vatican, Cancelleria, and Giraud palaces have already been mentioned; other notable palaces are the Palma (1506) and Sacchetti (1540), by A. da San Gallo the Younger; the Farnesina, by Peruzzi, with celebrated fresco decorations designed by Raphael; and the Lante (1520) and Altemps (1530), by Peruzzi. But the noblest creation of this period was the

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FIG. 167.—PLAN OF FARNESE PALACE.
Larger View

FARNESE PALACE, by many esteemed the finest in Italy. It was begun in 1530 for Alex. Farnese (Paul III.) by A. da San Gallo the Younger, with Vignola’s collaboration. The simple but admirable plan is shown in Fig. 167, and the courtyard, the most imposing in Italy, in Fig. 168. The exterior is monotonous, but the noble cornice by Michael Angelo measurably redeems this defect. The fine vaulted columnar entrance vestibule, the court and the salons, make up an ensemble worthy of the great architects who designed it. The loggia toward the river was added by G. della Porta in 1580.

VILLAS. The Italian villa of this pleasure-loving period afforded full scope for the most playful fancies of the architect, decorator, and landscape gardener. It comprised usually a dwelling, a casino or amusement-house, and many minor edifices, summer-houses, arcades, etc., disposed in extensive grounds laid out with terraces, cascades, and shaded alleys. The style was graceful, sometimes trivial, but almost always pleasing, making free use of stucco enrichments, both internally and externally, with abundance of gilding and frescoing. The Villa Madama (1516), by Raphael, with stucco-decorations by Giulio Romano, though incomplete and now dilapidated, is a noted example of the style. More complete, the Villa of Pope Julius, by Vignola (1550), belongs by its purity of style to this period; its façade well exemplifies the simplicity, dignity, and fine proportions of this master’s work. In addition to these Roman villas may be mentioned the V. Medici (1540, by Annibale Lippi; now the French Academy of Rome); the Casino del Papa in the Vatican Gardens, by Pirro Ligorio (1560); the V. Lante, near Viterbo, and the V. d’Este, at Tivoli, as displaying among almost countless others the Italian skill in combining architecture and gardening.

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FIG. 168.—ANGLE OF COURT OF FARNESE PALACE, ROME.

CHURCHES AND CHAPELS. This period witnessed the building of a few churches of the first rank, but it was especially prolific in memorial, votive, and sepulchral chapels added to churches already existing, like the Chigi Chapel of S. M. del Popolo, by Raphael. The earlier churches of this period generally followed antecedent types, with the dome as the central feature dominating a cruciform plan, and simple, unostentatious and sometimes uninteresting exteriors. Among them may be mentioned: at Pistoia, S. M. del Letto and S. M. dell’ Umiltà, the latter a fine domical rotunda by Ventura Vitoni (1509), with an imposing vestibule; at Venice, S. Salvatore, by Tullio Lombardo (1530), an admirable edifice with alternating domical and barrel-vaulted bays; S. Georgio dei Grechi (1536), by Sansovino, and S. M. Formosa; at Todi, the Madonna della Consolazione (1510), by Cola da Caprarola, a charming design with a high dome and four apses; at Montefiascone, the Madonna delle Grazie, by Sammichele (1523), besides several churches at Bologna, Ferrara, Prato, Sienna, and Rome of almost or quite equal interest. In these churches one may trace the development of the dome as an external feature, while in S. Biagio, at Montepulciano, the effort was made by Ant. da San Gallo the Elder to combine with it the contrasting lines of two campaniles, of which, however, but one was completed.

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FIG. 169.—ORIGINAL PLAN OF ST. PETER’S, ROME.

ST. PETER’S. The culmination of Renaissance church architecture was reached in St. Peter’s, at Rome. The original project of Nicholas V. having lapsed with his death, it was the intention of Julius II. to erect on the same site a stupendous mausoleum over the monument he had ordered of Michael Angelo. The design of Bramante, who began its erection in 1506, comprised a Greek cross with apsidal arms, the four angles occupied by domical chapels and loggias within a square outline (Fig. 169). The too hasty execution of this noble design led to the collapse of two of the arches under the dome, and to long delays after Bramante’s death in 1514. Raphael, Giuliano da San Gallo, Peruzzi, and A. da San Gallo the Younger successively supervised the works under the popes from Leo X. to Paul III., and devised a vast number of plans for its completion. Most of these involved fundamental alterations of the original scheme, and were motived by the abandonment of the proposed monument of Julius II.; a church, and not a mausoleum, being in consequence required. In 1546 Michael Angelo was assigned by Paul III. to the works, and gave final form to the general design in a simplified version of Bramante’s plan with more massive supports, a square east front with a portico for the chief entrance, and the unrivalled Dome, which is its most striking feature. This dome, slightly altered and improved in curvature by della Porta after M. Angelo’s death in 1564, was completed by D. Fontana in 1604. It is the most majestic creation of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest architectural conceptions of all history. It measures 140 feet in internal diameter, and with its two shells rises from a lofty drum, buttressed by coupled Corinthian columns, to a height of 405 feet to the top of the lantern. The church, as left by Michael Angelo, was harmonious in its proportions, though the single order used internally and externally dwarfed by its colossal scale the vast dimensions of the edifice. Unfortunately in 1606 C. Maderna was employed by Paul V. to lengthen the nave by two bays, destroying the proportions of the whole, and hiding the dome from view on a near approach. The present tasteless façade was Maderna’s work. The splendid atrium or portico added (1629–67), by Bernini, as an approach, mitigates but does not cure the ugliness and pettiness of this front.

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FIG. 170.—PLAN OF ST. PETER’S, ROME, AS NOW STANDING.

The portion below the line A, B, and the side chapels C, D, were added by Maderna. The remainder represents Michael Angelo’s plan.

St. Peter’s as thus completed (Fig. 170) is the largest church in existence, and in many respects is architecturally worthy of its pre-eminence. The central aisle, nearly 600 feet long, with its stupendous panelled and gilded vault, 83 feet in span, the vast central area and the majestic dome, belong to a conception unsurpassed in majestic simplicity and effectiveness. The construction is almost excessively massive, but admirably disposed. On the other hand the nave is too long, and the details not only lack originality and interest, but are also too large and coarse in scale, dwarfing the whole edifice. The interior (Fig. 171) is wanting in the sobriety of color that befits so stately a design; it suggests rather a pagan temple than a Christian basilica. These faults reveal the decline of taste which had already set in before Michael Angelo took charge of the work, and which appears even in the works of that master.

THE PERIOD OF FORMAL CLASSICISM. With the middle of the 16th century the classic orders began to dominate all architectural design. While Vignola, who wrote a treatise upon the orders, employed them with unfailing refinement and judgment, his contemporaries showed less discernment and taste, making of them an end rather than a means. Too often mere classical correctness was substituted for the fundamental qualities of original invention and intrinsic beauty of composition. The innovation of colossal orders extending through several stories, while it gave to exterior designs a certain grandeur of scale, tended to coarseness and even vulgarity of detail. Sculpture and ornament began to lose their refinement; and while street-architecture gained in monumental scale, and public squares received a more stately adornment than ever before, the street-façades individually were too often bare and uninteresting in their correct formality. In the interiors of churches and large halls there appears a struggle between a cold and dignified simplicity and a growing tendency toward pretentious sham. But these pernicious tendencies did not fully mature till the latter part of the century, and the half-century after 1540 or 1550 was prolific of notable works in both ecclesiastical and secular architecture. The names of Michael Angelo and Vignola, whose careers began in the preceding period; of Palladio and della Porta (1541–1604) in Rome; of Sammichele and Sansovino in Verona and Venice, and of Galeazzo Alessi in Genoa, stand high in the ranks of architectural merit.

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FIG. 171.—INTERIOR OF ST. PETER’S, ROME.

CHURCHES. The type established by St. Peter’s was widely imitated throughout Italy. The churches in which a Greek or Latin cross is dominated by a high dome rising from a drum and terminating in a lantern, and is treated both internally and externally with Roman Corinthian pilasters and arches, are almost numberless. Among the best churches of this type is the Gesù at Rome, by Vignola (1568), with a highly ornate interior of excellent proportions and a less interesting exterior, the façade adorned with two stories of orders and great flanking volutes over the sides (see p. 277). Two churches at Venice, by Palladio—S. Giorgio Maggiore (1560; façade by Scamozzi, 1575) and the Redentore—offer a strong contrast to the Gesù, in their cold and almost bare but pure and correct design. An imitation of Bramante’s plan for St. Peter’s appears in S. M. di Carignano, at Genoa, by Galeazzo Alessi (1500–72), begun 1552, a fine structure, though inferior in scale and detail to its original. Besides these and other important churches there were many large domical chapels of great splendor added to earlier churches; of these the Chapel of Sixtus V. in S. M. Maggiore, at Rome, by D. Fontana (1543–1607), is an excellent example.

PALACES: ROME. The palaces on the Capitoline Hill, built at different dates (1540–1644) from designs by Michael Angelo, illustrate the palace architecture of this period, and the imposing effect of a single colossal order running through two stories. This treatment, though well adapted to produce monumental effects in large squares, was dangerous in its bareness and heaviness of scale, and was better suited for buildings of vast dimensions than for ordinary street-façades. In other Roman palaces of this time the traditions of the preceding period still prevailed, as in the Sapienza (University), by della Porta (1575), which has a dignified court and a façade of great refinement without columns or pilasters. The Papal palaces built by Domenico Fontana on the Lateran, Quirinal, and Vatican hills, between 1574 and 1590, externally copying the style of the Farnese, show a similar return to earlier models, but are less pure and refined in detail than the Sapienza. The great pentagonal Palace of Caprarola, near Rome, by Vignola, is perhaps the most successful and imposing production of the Roman classic school.

VERONA. Outside of Rome, palace-building took on various local and provincial phases of style, of which the most important were the closely related styles of Verona, Venice, and Vicenza. Michele Sammichele (1484–1549), who built in Verona the Bevilacqua, Canossa, Pompei, and Verzi palaces and the four chief city gates, and in Venice the P. Grimani, his masterpiece (1550), was a designer of great originality and power. He introduced into his military architecture, as in the gates of Verona, the use of rusticated orders, which he treated with skill and taste. The idea was copied by later architects and applied, with doubtful propriety, to palace-façades; though Ammanati’s garden-façade for the Pitti palace, in Florence (cir. 1560), is an impressive and successful design.

VENICE. Into the development of the maturing classic style Giacopo Tatti Sansovino (1477–1570) introduced in his Venetian buildings new elements of splendor. Coupled columns between arches themselves supported on columns, and a profusion of figure sculpture, gave to his palace-façades a hitherto unknown magnificence of effect, as in the Library of St. Mark (now the Royal Palace, Fig. 172), and the Cornaro palace (P. Corner de Cà Grande), both dating from about 1530–40. So strongly did he impress upon Venice these ornate and sumptuous variations on classic themes, that later architects adhered, in a very debased period, to the main features and spirit of his work.

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FIG. 172.—LIBRARY OF ST. MARK, VENICE.

VICENZA. Of Palladio’s churches in Venice we have already spoken; his palaces are mainly to be found in his native city, Vicenza. In these structures he displayed great fertility of invention and a profound familiarity with the classic orders, but the degenerate taste of the Baroque period already begins to show itself in his work. There is far less of architectural propriety and grace in these pretentious palaces, with their colossal orders and their affectation of grandeur, than in the designs of Vignola or Sammichele. Wood and plaster, used to mimic stone, indicate the approaching reign of sham in all design (P. Barbarano, 1570; Chieregati, 1560; Tiene, Valmarano, 1556; Villa Capra). His masterpiece is the two-storied arcade about the mediæval Basilica, in which the arches are supported on a minor order between engaged columns serving as buttresses. This treatment has in consequence ever since been known as the Palladian Motive.

GENOA. During the second half of the sixteenth century a remarkable series of palaces was erected in Genoa, especially notable for their great courts and imposing staircases. These last were given unusual prominence owing to differences of level in the courts, arising from the slope of their sites on the hillside. Many of these palaces were by Galeazzo Alessi (1502–72); others by architects of lesser note; but nearly all characterized by their effective planning, fine stairs and loggias, and strong and dignified, if sometimes uninteresting, detail (P. Balbi, Brignole, Cambiasi, Doria-Tursi [or Municipio], Durazzo [or Reale], Pallavicini, and University).

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FIG. 173.—INTERIOR OF SAN SEVERO, NAPLES.

THE BAROQUE STYLE. A reaction from the cold classicismo of the late sixteenth century showed itself in the following period, in the lawless and vulgar extravagances of the so-called Baroque style. The wealthy Jesuit order was a notorious contributor to the debasement of architectural taste. Most of the Jesuit churches and many others not belonging to the order, but following its pernicious example, are monuments of bad taste and pretentious sham. Broken and contorted pediments, huge scrolls, heavy mouldings, ill-applied sculpture in exaggerated attitudes, and a general disregard for architectural propriety characterized this period, especially in its church architecture, to whose style the name Jesuit is often applied. Sham marble and heavy and excessive gilding were universal (Fig. 173). C. Maderna (1556–1629), Lorenzo Bernini (1589–1680), and F. Borromini (1599–1667) were the worst offenders of the period, though Bernini was an artist of undoubted ability, as proved by his colonnades or atrium in front of St. Peter’s. There were, however, architects of purer taste whose works even in that debased age were worthy of admiration.

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FIG. 174.—CHURCH OF S. M. DELLA SALUTE, VENICE.

BAROQUE CHURCHES. The Baroque style prevailed in church architecture for almost two centuries. The majority of the churches present varieties of the cruciform plan crowned by a high dome which is usually the best part of the design. Everywhere else the vices of the period appear in these churches, especially in their façades and internal decoration. S. M. della Vittoria, by Maderna, and Sta. Agnese, by Borromini, both at Rome, are examples of the style. Naples is particularly full of Baroque churches (Fig. 173), a few of which, like the Gesù Nuovo (1584), are dignified and creditable designs. The domical church of S. M. della Salute, at Venice (1631), by Longhena, is also a majestic edifice in excellent style (Fig. 174), and here and there other churches offer exceptions to the prevalent baseness of architecture. Particularly objectionable was the wholesale disfigurement of existing monuments by ruthless remodelling, as in S. John Lateran, at Rome, the cathedrals of Ferrara and Ravenna, and many others.

PALACES. These were generally superior to the churches, and not infrequently impressive and dignified structures. The two best examples in Rome are the P. Borghese, by Martino Lunghi the Elder (1590), with a fine court arcade on coupled Doric and Ionic columns, and the P. Barberini, by Maderna and Borromini, with an elliptical staircase by Bernini, one of the few palaces in Italy with projecting lateral wings. In Venice, Longhena, in the Rezzonico and Pesaro palaces (1650–80), showed his freedom from the mannerisms of the age by reproducing successfully the ornate but dignified style of Sansovino (see p. 301). At Naples D. Fontana, whose works overlap the Baroque period, produced in the Royal Palace (1600) and the Royal Museum (1586–1615) designs of considerable dignity, in some respects superior to his papal residences in Rome. In suburban villas, like the Albani and Borghese villas near Rome, the ostentatious style of the Decline found free and congenial expression.

LATER MONUMENTS. In the few eighteenth-century buildings which are worthy of mention there is noticeable a reaction from the extravagances of the seventeenth century, shown in the dignified correctness of the exteriors and the somewhat frigid splendor of the interiors. The most notable work of this period is the Royal Palace at Caserta, by Van Vitelli (1752), an architect of considerable taste and inventiveness, considering his time. This great palace, 800 feet square, encloses four fine courts, and is especially remarkable for the simple if monotonous dignity of the well proportioned exterior and the effective planning of its three octagonal vestibules, its ornate chapel and noble staircase. Staircases, indeed, were among the most successful features of late Italian architecture, as in the Scala Regia of the Vatican, and in the Corsini, Braschi, and Barberini palaces at Rome, the Royal Palace at Naples, etc.

In church architecture the east front of S. John Lateran in Rome, by Galilei (1734), and the whole exterior of S. M. Maggiore, by Ferd. Fuga (1743), are noteworthy designs: the former an especially powerful conception, combining a colossal order with two smaller orders in superposed loggie, but marred by the excessive scale of the statues which crown it. The Fountain of Trevi, conceived in much the same spirit (1735, by Niccola Salvi), is a striking piece of decorative architecture. The Sacristy of St. Peter’s, by Marchionne (1775), also deserves mention as a monumental and not uninteresting work. In the early years of the present century the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, by Stern, the imposing church of S. Francesco di Paola at Naples, by Bianchi, designed in partial imitation of the Pantheon, and the great S. Carlo Theatre at Naples, show the same coldly classical spirit, not wholly without merit, but lacking in true originality and freedom of conception.

CAMPANILES. The campaniles of the Renaissance and Decline deserve at least passing reference, though they are neither numerous nor often of conspicuous interest. That of the Campidoglio (Capitol) at Rome, by Martino Lunghi, is a good example of the classical type. Venetia possesses a number of graceful and lofty bell-towers, generally of brick with marble bell-stages, of which the upper part of the Campanile of St. Mark and the tower of S. Giorgio Maggiore are the finest examples.

The Decline attained what the early Renaissance aimed at—the revival of Roman forms. But it was no longer a Renaissance; it was a decrepit and unimaginative art, held in the fetters of a servile imitation, copying the letter rather than the spirit of antique design. It was the mistaken and abject worship of precedent which started architecture upon its downward path and led to the atrocious products of the seventeenth century.