Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
The details of this composition are in very low relief, and the
entablatures are broken into slight ressauts over the pilasters. The
wall surfaces are incrusted with marble slabs, with simple panellings
and small disks introduced sparingly, and the archivolts of the main
portal, and of the crowning pediments, are adorned with arabesques and
with small statues and finials.
The merit of this composition as a whole lies solely in the ordering
of the component details which the designer has employed in a purely
fanciful way without any proper architectural meaning; but the
refinement of execution, and the beauty of the marbles, with their
pearly colours subdued and harmonized by time, make the monument one of
the most notable in Venice.
[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Part of the Scuola di San
Rocco.]
Another characteristic example of early Renaissance design in Venice
is the Scuola di San Rocco (Fig. 92). The façade of this building is
again in two divisions each of two stories, the main division having
three bays and the other but two. These bays are marked by superimposed
pilasters which are carried across both divisions, and in the main
division a free-standing Corinthian column is set in front of each
pilaster. In each story the columns are raised on pedestals connected
by a podium, and each one is wreathed with a band of ornamental
foliage. The entablatures are in the plane of the wall, and are broken
into very salient ressauts which in the main cornice are unpleasantly
conspicuous against the sky. Both the columns and the ressauts are
meaningless, the columns having nothing but the ressauts to carry,
and the ressauts having no function but to cover the useless columns.
The lesser details of this façade are of mixed character. The main
portal has splayed jambs adorned with pilasters, and an archivolt of
corresponding section. This portal is framed by an order of smaller
Corinthian columns, on high polygonal pedestals, with a pediment over
the entablature. The side bays of the basement of the main division
have each a wide arched window subdivided by a central colonnette
and jamb shafts carrying two small arches, with a tympanum pierced
with a circle and triangles in mediæval fashion. The great arches of
these windows have spandrels in relief crowned with cornices in the
Lombard Renaissance manner. In the upper story each bay has a pair of
arched windows framed by a pseudo-Corinthian order of colonnettes on
ornamented round pedestals resting on corbels, the entablature of this
diminutive order being surmounted by a pediment. In the window of the
central bay the pier between the openings is wider than the piers of
the side windows, and has a pair of colonnettes on its face instead of
only one.
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