Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
The Palazzo Vendramini has full orders in all three stories, and the
distinctive Venetian character is materially altered by them. The
usual scheme of the Venetian palace front, in which a wide central
bay wholly occupied by openings is flanked by lateral bays each with
a solid wall on either side of an opening, is indeed retained, but
the effect of it is much obscured by the prominence given to the
orders, which are in high relief, and extend across the whole front.
The openings have the mediæval form of two shafted arches beneath an
embracing arch with a circle in the tympanum space. Three, instead
of two, of these compound openings are grouped within the unusually
wide central bay, and each one fills an intercolumniation of the
order. In each lateral bay the columns of the order are unequally
spaced in conformity with the narrow strips of solid wall, one on
either side of the opening, which they enclose, giving a wide central
intercolumniation and two narrow ones. The cornice of the basement
entablature is widened, and supported on corbels from the frieze, in
front of the windows of the principal story, and balustrades are set on
these projecting ledges so as to form balconies. To give emphasis to
the topmost entablature as the crowning feature of the façade, it is
made so high as to be out of all proportion to the order of which it is
a part.
[Illustration: FIG. 93.]
[Illustration:
Plate VIII
PALAZZO DEL CONSIGLIO
Verona]
Of the later palace architecture of Venice it is unnecessary to give
any extended analysis because it is less distinctly Venetian, and
belongs more fully to the so-called Roman Renaissance style which is
essentially uniform in character in all parts of the country. In these
later palace fronts the main divisions of the typical Venetian scheme
persist indeed, but they are so slightly emphasized, and so overladen
with heavy orders, that they lose their proper effect. In Sansovino’s
Palazzo Cornaro, for instance, already described (p. 124), these main
divisions of the front are hardly noticeable in a general view. The
general effect is of evenly spaced pairs of columns in each of the
upper stories. It is not until we examine the composition closely that
we perceive the narrower proportions of the three middle openings. The
same is true of the façade of the Palazzo Grimani by Sanmichele, though
in this case the grouping is different, the columns being set in pairs
in the lateral bays only. Even in the still later and heavy rococo
design of the Palazzo Pesaro by the architect Longhena, which is based
on the scheme of the Library of St. Mark, the unequal main divisions of
the Venetian palace type are still preserved.
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