Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3

d, Tuscan, Romanesque, Gothic-Italian want of feeling for Gothic-Cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto-Secular Buildings of t

ive Work of the Revival-Bramante-Vitoni's Church of the Umiltà at Pistoja-Palazzo del Te-Villa Farnesina-Sansovino at Venice-Michael Angelo-The Building of S. Peter's-Palladio-The Palazzo della Ragione a

god, carved in stone or figured in mosaic, can be placed there. Council chambers must be prepared for the senate of a State before the national achievements can be painted on the walls. Thus Ita

inging the waters of the Ticino through a plain of thirty miles to Milan, was begun in 1179, and was finished in 1258. The torrents of S. Gothard and the Simplon, which, after filling the Lago Maggiore, seemed destined to run wasteful through a wilderness of pebbles to the sea, were thus turned to account; and to this great engineering work, as bold as it was simple, Milan owed the wealth that placed her princes on a level with the sovereigns of Europe. At the same period she built her walls, and closed their circuit with the sixteen gates that showed she loved magnificence combined with strength. Genoa, between 1276 and 1283, protected her harbours by a gigantic mole, and

r wonderful Duomo and the octagon bell-tower of S. Gottardo. The Certosas of Pavia and Chiaravalle, the palace of Pavia, and a host of minor monuments remain in Milan and its neighbourhood to prove how much a single family performed for the adornment of the cities they had subjugated. And what is true of Milan applies to Italy thr

ns adhered closely to Latin traditions; the Southerners were affected by Byzantine and Saracenic models. In many instances the geology of the neighbourhood determined the picturesque features of its architecture. The clay-fields of the valley of the Po produced the brickwork of Cremona, Pavia, Crema, Chiaravalle, and Vercelli. To their quarries of mandorlato the Veronese builders owed the peach-bloom colours of their columned aisles. Carrara provided the Pisans with mellow marble for their Baptistery and Cathedral; Monte Ferrato supplied Pistoja and Prato with green serpentine; while the pi

idering their massive churches with Saracenic arabesques and Byzantine mosaics, interspersing delicate Arabian tracery with rope-patterns and monsters of the deep, and linking Cuphic sentences with Scandinavian runes. Meanwhile, at Rome, tombs, baths, and theatres had been turned into fortresses. The Orsini held the Mole of Hadrian; the Savelli ensconced themselves in the Theatre of Marcellus, and the Colonnesi in the Mausoleum of Augustus; the Colosseum and the Arches of Constantine and Titus harboured the Frangipani; the Baths of Trajan housed the Capocci; while the Gaetani made a castle of C?cilia Metella's tomb. Under those vast resounding vaults swarmed a brood of medi?val bravi-like the wasps that hang their pear-shaped combs along the cloisters of Pavia. There the ghost of the dead empire still sat throned and sceptred. The rites of Christianity were carried on beneath Agrippa's dome, in Diocletian's baths, in the Basilicas. No other style but that of the imperial people struck root near the Eternal City. Among her three hundred churches, Rome

rly during the same centuries, while Gothic, coming from without, suspended their development. But chronology is of little help in the history of Italian architecture; its main features being, not uniformity of progression, but synchronous dive

ore some of the great Lombard churches, we are inclined to speculate, perhaps with better reason, what the result would have been if that style of architecture could have assumed the complete ascendency over the Italians which the Romanesque and Gothic of the North exerted over France and England?[12] The pyramidal fa?ade common in these buildings, the campanili that suspend a?rial lanterns upon plain square towers, the domes rising tier over tier from the intersection of nave and transept to end in minarets and pinnacles, the low long colonnades of marble pilasters, the open porches resting upon lions, the harmonious blending of baked clay

dle Ages the Italians were aiming at an architectural Renaissance. The influence of classical models is apparent both in the construction and the detail of these basilicas; while the deeply grounded preference of the Italian genius for round arches, for colonnades of pillars and pilasters, and for large rectangular spaces, with low roofs and shallow tribunes, finds full satisfaction in th

passed by a natural process of evolution from the Romanesque to the Pointed manner, and treated the latter with an originality that proves a certain natural assimilation. Yet the first Gothic church, that of S. Francis at Assisi, was designed by a German; the most splendid, that of Our Lady at Milan, is emphatically German.[13] During the comparatively brief period of Gothic ascendency the Italians never forgot their Latin and Lombard sympathies. The mood of mind in which they Gothicised was partial and transient. The evolution of this style was, therefore, neither so spontaneous and simple, nor yet so uninterrupted and complete, in Italy as in the North. While it produced

o complexity of architectonic effect; flat roofs become intolerable. The whole force employed in the construction has an upward tendency, and the spire is the completion of the edifice; for to the spire its countless soaring lines-lines not of stationary strength, but of ascendent growth-converge. All this the Italians were slow to comprehend. The campanile, for example, never became an integral part of their buildings. It stood alone, and was reserved for its original purpose of keeping the bells. The windows, for a reason very natural in Italy, where there is rather too much than too little sunlight, were curtailed; and instead of the multiplied bays and clustered columns of a northern Gothic aisle, the nave of so vast a church as S. Petronio at Bologna i

ble, baked clay or enamelled earthenware was never carried to such perfection in Gothic buildings of the purer type; nor had sculpture in the North an equal chance of detaching itself from the niche and tabernacle, w

d with grave or animated portraits of the Popes, sculptured shrines, altars, pulpits, reliquaries, fonts and holy-water vases, panels of inlaid wood and pictured pavements, bronze candelabra and wrought-iron screens, gilding and colour and precious work of agate and lapis lazuli-the masterpieces of men famous each in his own line-delight the eye in all directions. The whole church is a miracle of richness, a radiant and glowing triumph of inventive genius, the product of a hundred master-craftsmen toiling through successive centuries to do their best. All its countless details are so harmonised by the controlling taste, so brought together piece by piece in obedience to artistic instinct, that the total effect is ravishingly beautiful. Yet it is clear that no one paramount idea, determining and organising all these marvels, existed in the mind of the first architect. In true Gothic work the details that make up the charm of this cat

is noble. The feeling for space possessed by the architect has expressed itself in proportions large and solemn; the area enclosed, though somewhat cold and vacuous to northern taste, is at least impressive by its severe harmony. But the real attractions of the church are isolated details. Wherever the individual artist-mind has had occasion to emerge, there our gaze is riveted, our criticism challenged, our admiration won. The frescoes of Signorelli, the bas-reliefs of the Pisani, the statuary of Lo Scalza and Mosca, the tarsia of the choir stalls, the Alexandrine work and mosaics of the fa?ade, the bronzes placed upon its brackets, an

t of the monster windows to the main lines of the nave and aisles, could scarcely be imagined. Yet no other church, perhaps, in Europe leaves the same impression of the marvellous upon the fancy. The splendour of its pure white marble, blushing with the rose of evening or of dawn, radiant in noonday sunlight, and fabulously fairy-like beneath the moon an

nd with strict observance of its details, satisfied them. It was a main feature of the Renaissance that, when the Italians undertook the task of reuniting themselves by study with the past, they abandoned all other forms of architecture, and did their best to create one in harm

the genius loci has in each case controlled the architect. The sunny spaces of the one building, with its terra-cotta traceries of birds and grapes and Cupids, contrast with the stern brown mouldings and impenetrable solidity of the other. That the one was raised by the munificence of a sovereign in his capital, while the other was the dwelling of a burgher in a city proud of its antique sobriety, goes some way to explain the difference. In like manner the court-life of a dynastic principality produced the castle of Urbino, so diverse in its style and adaptation from the ostentatious mansions of the Genoese merchants. It is not fanciful to say that the civic life of a free and factious republic is represented by the heavy walls and narrow windows of Florentine dwelling-places. In their rings of iron, welded between rock and rock about the basement, as though

ere the very shadows seem asleep as they glide over the wide unpeopled floor, it is not easy to remember that this was once the theatre of eager intrigues, ere the busy stir of the old burgh was utterly extinguished. Few of these public palaces have the good fortune to be distinguished, like that of the Doge at Venice, by world-historical memories and by works of art as yet unrivalled. The spirit of the Venetian Republic still lives in that unique b

tate affairs took place within its walls, and its bell was the pulse that told how the heart of Florence throbbed. The architect of this huge mass of masonry was Arnolfo del Cambio, one of the greatest builders of the Middle Ages, a man who may be called the Michael Angelo of the thirteenth century[16]. In 1298 he was ordered to erect a dwelling-place for the Commonwealth, to the end that the people might be protected in their fortress from the violence of the nobles. The building of the palace and the levelling of the square around it were attended with circumstances that bring forcibly before our minds the stern conditions of republican life in medi?val Italy. A block of houses had to be bought from the family of Foraboschi; and their t

nce at our feet owes her physiognomy in a great measure to this man. The tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the bulk of the Duomo, and the long low oblong mass of Santa Croce are all his. His too are the walls that define the city of flowers from the gardens round abou

. At this point, however, our admiration receives a check. In the execution of the parts the builder dwarfed what had been conceived on so magnificent a scale; aiming at colossal simplicity, he failed to secure the multiplicity of subordinated members essential to the total effect of size. "Like all inexperienced architects, he seems to have thought that greatness of parts would add to the greatness of the whole, and in consequence used only four great arches in the whole length of his nave, giving the central aisle a width of fifty-five feet clear. The whole width is within ten feet of that of Cologne, and the height about the same; and yet, in appearance, the height is about half, and the breadth less than half, owing to the better proportion of the parts and to the superior appropriateness in the details on the part of the German cathedral."[22] The truth of these remarks will be felt by every one on whom the ponderous vacuity of the interior has weighed. Other notable defects there are too in this building, proceeding chiefly from the Italian misconception of Gothic style. The windows are few and narrow, so that little light even at noonday struggles through them; and broad barren spaces of grey walls oppress the eye. Externally the whole church is panelled with parti-coloured marbles, according to Florentine custom; but this panelling bears no relation to the structure: it is so much surface decoration possessing value chiefly for the colourist. Arnolfo died before the dome, as he designed it, could be placed upon the octagon, and nothing is known for certain about the form he meant it to assume. It seems, however, probable that he intended to adopt something similar to the dome of Chiaravalle, which ends, after a succession of narrowing octagons, in a slender conical pyramid.[23] Subordinate spires would then hav

d checked the free development of national architecture, which in the eleventh century began at Pisa by a conscious return to classic details. But the reign of Gothic was destined to be brief. Petrarch and Boccaccio, as I showed in my last volume, turned the whole intellectual en

hes, were of little immediate assistance in the labour of designing churches and palaces. All that the architects could do, after familiarising themselves with the remains of ancient Rome, and assimilating the spirit of Roman art, was to clothe their own inventions with classic details. The form and structure of their edifices were modern; the parts were copied from antique models. A want of organic unity and structural sincerity is always the result of those necessities under which a secondary and adapted style must labour; and thus the pseudo-Roman buildings even of the best Renaissance period display

of time. The third, again comprising about forty years, from 1540 to 1580, leads onward to the reign of mannerism and exaggeration, called by the Italians barocco. In itself the third period is distinguished by a scrupulous purism bordering upon pedantry, strict adherence to theoretical rules, and sacrifice of inventive qualities to establis

to the vehement emotion of the romantic ages. Whatever the Renaissance took from antique art, it was at first unable to assimilate either the moderation of the Greeks or the practical sobriety of the Romans. Christianity had deepened and intensified the sources of imaginative life; and just as reminiscences of classic style impaired Italian Gothic, so now a trace of Gothic is perceptible in the would-be classic work of the Revival. The result of these combined influences was a wonderful and many-featured hybrid, best represented in one monument by the fa?ade of the Certosa at Pavia. While characterising the

inct. S. Lorenzo is a columnar edifice with round arches and semicircular apses. Not a form or detail in the whole church is strictly speaking at variance with Roman precedent; and yet the general effect resembles nothing we possess of antique work. It is a masterpiece of intelligent Renaissance adaptation. The same is true of S. Spirito, built in 1470, after Brunelleschi's death, according to his plans. The extraordinary capacity of this great architect will, however, win more homage from ordinary observers when they contemplate the Pitti Palace and the cupola of the cathedral. Both of these are master-works of personal originality. What is Roman in the Pitti Palace, is the robust simplicity of massive strength; but it is

e been made of well-proportioned pilasters and nobly curved arcades.[32] The same principle is carried out in S. Andrea at Mantua. The frontispiece of this church is a gigantic arch of triumph; the interior is noticeable for its simple harmony of parts, adopted from the vaulted baths of Rome. The combination of these antique details in an imposing structure implied a high imaginative f

e medi?val Tuscan style, especially in the windows divided by slender pilasters. But the three orders introduced by way of surface decoration, the doorways, and the cornices, are t

hat "envy is a plant no man should water," denied himself the monumental house designed by Brunelleschi, and chose instead the modest plan of Michellozzo. Brunelleschi had meant to build the Casa Medici along one side of the Piazza di S. Lorenzo; but when Cosimo refused his project, he broke up the model he had made, to the great loss of students of this age of architecture. Michellozzo was then commissioned to raise the mighty, but comparatively humble, Riccardi Palace at the corner of the Via Larga, which continued to be the residence of the Medici through all their chequered history, until at last they took possession of the Palazzo Pitti.[33] The most beautiful of all Florentine dwelling-houses designed at this period is that which Benedetto da

e choir, are added to those of the bronze-founder, with his mighty doors and pendent lamps, his candelabra sustained by angels, torch-rests and rings, embossed basements for banners of state, and portraits of recumbent senators or prelates.[36] The wood carver contributes tarsia like that of Fra Giovanni da Verona.[37] The worker in wrought iron welds such screens as guard the chapel of the Sacra Cintola at Prato. The Robbias prepare their delicately-toned reliefs for the lunettes above the doorways. Modellers in clay produce the terra-cotta work of the Certosa, or the carola of a

enth century of ornamental adjuncts, and an uninteresting shell is left: what, for instance, would the fa?ades of the Certosa and the Cappella Colleoni be without their sculptured and inlaid marbles? The genius of the age found scope in subordinate details, and the most successful architect was the man who combined in himself a feeling for the capacities of the greatest number of associated art

form was more completely realised. The reckless employment of luxuriant decoration yielded to a chastened taste, without the sacrifice of beauty or magnificence. Style

cular apses and niches, and to the free use of minor cupolas-elements of design introduced neither by Brunelleschi nor by Alberti into the Renaissance style of Florence, but which were destined to determine the future of architecture for all Italy. Nature had gifted Bramante with calm judgment and refined taste; his sense of the right limitations of the pseudo-Roman style was exquisite, and his feeling for structural symmetry was just. If his manner strikes us as somewhat cold and abstract when compared with the more genial audacities of the earlier Renaissance, we must remember how salutary was the example of a rigorous and modest manner in an age wh

he influence of Bramante was propagated through Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Baldassare Peruzzi. Raphael's claim to consideration as an architect rests upon the Palazzi Vidoni and Pandolfini, the Cappella Chigi in S. Maria del Popolo, and the Villa Madama. The last-named building, executed by Giulio Romano after Raphael's design, is carried out in a style so forcible as to make us fancy that the pupil had a larger share in its creation than his teacher. These works, however, sink into insignificance before the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, the masterpiece of Giulio's genius. This most noble of Italian pleasure-houses remains to show what the imagination of a poet-artist could recover from the splendour of old Rome and adapt to the use of his own age. The vaults of the Therm

gentler and quieter in style, yet full of grace, breathing the large and liberal spirit of enjoyment that characterised the age of Leo. The frescoes of Galatea and Psyche, executed by Raphael and his pu

id style. Something of their own delight in sensuous magnificence they communicated even to the foreigners who dwelt among them. The court of the Ducal Palace, the Scuola di S. Rocco, the Palazzo Corner, and the Palazzo Vendramini-Calergi, illustrate the, strong yet fanciful bravura style that pleased the aristocracy of Venice. Nowhere else does the architecture of the Middle Ages melt by more imperceptible degrees into that of the Revival, retai

ansformation of the Baths of Diocletian into a church, the remodelling of the Capitoline buildings, and the continuation of the Palazzo Farnese-works that either exist only in drawings or have been confused by later alterations-it is enough here to mention the Sagrestia Nuova of S. Lorenzo and the cupola of S. Peter's. The sacristy may be looked on either as the masterpiece of a sculptor who required fit setting for his statues, or of an architect who designed statues to enhance the structure he had planned. Both arts are used with equal ease, nor has the genius of Michael Angelo dealt more masterfully with the human frame than with the forms of Roman architecture in this chapel. He seems to have paid no heed to classic precedent, and to have taken no pains to adapt the parts to the structural purpose of the building. It was enough for him to create a wholly novel framework for the modern miracle of sculptur

connection between the building of S. Peter's and the Reformation I have touched already.[45] This mighty temple is the shrine of Catholicity, no longer cosmopolitan by right of spiritual empire, but secularised and limited to Latin races. At the same time it represents the spirit of a period when the Popes still led the world as intellectual chiefs. As the decree for its erection was the last act of the Papacy before the schism of the North had driven it into blind conflict with advancing culture, so S. Peter's remains the monument to after ages of a moment when the Roman Church, unterrified as yet by German rebels, dared to share the mundane impulse of the classical revival. She had forgotten the catacombs and ruthlessly destroyed the Basilica of Constantine. By rebuild

hurch were ruthlessly destroyed.[49] After Bramante's death Giuliano di S. Gallo, Fra Giocondo, and Raphael successively superintended the construction, each for a short period. Raphael, under Leo X., was appointed sole architect, and went so far as to alter the design of Bramante by substituting the Latin for the Greek cross. Upon his death, Baldassare Peruzzi continued the work, and supplied a series of new designs, restoring the ground-plan of the church to its original shape. He was succeeded in the reign of Paul III. by Antonio di S. Gallo, who once more reverted to the Latin cross, and proposed a novel form of cupola with flanking towers for the fa?ade, of bizarre rather than beautiful proportions. After a short interregnum, during which Giulio Romano superintended the building and did nothing remarkable, Michael Angelo was called in 1535 to undertake the sole charge of the edifice. He declared that wherever subsequent architects had departed from Bramante's project, they had erred. "It is impossible to deny that Bramante was as great in architecture as any man has been since the days of the ancients. When he first laid the plan of S. Peter's, he made it not a mass of confusion, but clear and simple, well lighted, and so thoroughly detached that it in no way interfered with any portion of the palace."[50] Having thus pronounced himself in general for Bramante's scheme, Michael Angelo proceeded to develop it in accordance with his own canons of taste. He retained the Greek cross; but the dome, as he conceived it, and the details designed for each section of the building, differed essentially from what

f invention in the art of painting were dried up. Scholarship had pined away into pedantic purism. Correct taste was coming to be prized more highly than originality of genius in literature. Nor did architecture fail to manifest the operation of this change. The greatest builder of the period was Andrea Palladio of Vicenza, who combined a more complete analytical knowledge of antiquity with a firmer adherence to rule and precedent than even the most imitative of his forerunners. It is useless to seek for decorative fancy, wealth of detail, or sallies of inventive genius in the Palladian style. All is cold and calculated in the many palaces and churches of this master which adorn both Venice and Vicenza;

nt his life and developed his talents in Genoa; Andrea Formigine, the palace-builder, was a Bolognese; Bartolommeo Ammanati alone at Florence exercised the arts of sculpture and architecture in their old conjunction. Vignola, Palladio's elder by a few years, displays in his work even more of the scholastically frigid spirit of the late Renaissance, the narrowing of poetic impulse, and the dwindling of vitality, that sadden the second half of the sixteenth century in Italy. S

antique treatises on the art of construction led to the formation of exact rules for the treatment of the five classic orders, the proportions of the chief parts used in

buildings in the South, but more, I think, to the facility with which his principles could be assimilated. Depending but little for effect upon the arts of decoration, his style was easily imitated in countries where painting and sculpture were unknown, and where a genius like Jean Goujon, the Sansovino of the French, has never been developed. To have rivalled the fa?ade

modern mind, to impose upon it the limitations of a bygone civilisation. At first the enthusiasm for antiquity inspired architects and scholars alike with a desire to imitate per saltum, and many works of fervid sympathy and pure artistic intuition were produced. In course of time the laws both of language and construction were more accurately studied; invention was superseded by pedantry; after Poliziano and Alberti came Bembo and Palladio. In proportion as architects learn

architecture, so profoundly studied by the Italians, and so anxiously refined by their chief masters, will ever wholly cease to be employed. In all cases where a grand and massive edifice, no less suited to purposes of practical utility than imposing by its splendour, is required, this style of building will be found the best. Changes of taste and fash

TNO

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se that either the Lombards or the Normans had a style of their own, prior to their occupation of districts from the monuments of which they learned rudely to use the decayed Roman manner, would be incorrect. Yet it seems impossible to deny that both No

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bove (p. 31, note), for the style of building prevalen

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r be forgotten by her architects. They always worked with at least half of their attention turned to the past: nor had they the exhilarating sense of free,

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Marco Frisone da Campione, not a German, but a Milanese, was t

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Age of the De

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still many towers standing, an

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ano at Siena, and the maker of the tomb of Cardinal de Braye at Orvieto. This tomb is remarkable as the earliest instance

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llani, v

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ome, time after Arnolfo's death. They lost their ornament of towe

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Signor G.J. Cavallucci, entitled S. Maria del Fiore, Firenze, 188

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illani,

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ok of Architecture

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b

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a Architecture of North

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do quì struttura si grande, erta sopra i cieli, ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti i popoli toscani, fatta sanza alcuno aiuto di travamenti o di copia di

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nd coldly bare in its immensity. Yet the present church is but the nave of a temple designed with transepts and choir. The length was to have been 800 feet, the widt

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ival of Learn

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escribing Arnolfo's building of the Florentine Duomo, he proceeds: "In questo Architetto si vide qualche leggiero barlume di buona Architettura, come di Pittura in Cimabue suo contempora

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series of Roman arches; or the fa?ade of S. Andrea at Mantua, where the vast and

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t, Cicerone,

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stoire de la Peintu

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fe, see Vol. II., Revi

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over the church with a cupola, as may be seen from the design on a medal of Sigismondo Pandolfo M

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assed in 1659 to the Marchese Gabriel

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tizen was being undertaken; in particular, Filippo so contrived that the costly opus rusticum employed in the construction of the basement should appear to have been forced upon him. This is characteristic of Florence in the days of Cosimo. The foundation stone was

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he building of the ideal city, one of the most curious specimens of Renaissance fancy

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name Ghiberti, Antonio Filarete, Antonio Pollajuolo, Donatello and his pupil Bertoldo, Andrea Riccio, the master of the candelabrum in S. Antonio at Padua, Jacopo Sansovino, the master of the door of the sacristy in S. Mark's at Venice, Alessandro Leopardi, the master of the standard-pedest

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tarsia-work designed by Perugino, while the church of S. Pietro de' Cassinensi outside the city is a museum of masterpieces executed by Fra Damiano da Ber

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ration. The fa?ade of the Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia, designed and e

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Maria del Popolo at Rome, executed in mosaic by Raphael, deserves special mentio

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ration of inlaid marbles or opera di commesso. Compare the Medicean chapel i

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uomo at Volterra

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that Raphael's cartoons

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the early years of his architect's life in Lombardy, in the service of Lod

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Age of the De

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ichte der Stadt Rom, vol. viii. p. 127, and the quotation there

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l of Learning, pp. 161-166. For his architectural designs see

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s, vol. vi

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enius of Michael Angelo Buonarroti, compiled by Mr. Harford (Colnaghi, 1857). Plates 1 to 7 of that work are devoted to the plans of S. Peter's. Plate 4 is spe

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mbs, some precious as historical records, some valuable as works o

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i, published from the Archivio Buo

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ise on the Art of Building is a sufficient proof of their study of Vitruvius, and we know that Fabio Calv

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se and picturesque structure is but a

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for the same transference of power in literat

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n the Five Orders, have been translated into all the modern languages. Scamozzi projected, and par

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evival of Learn