Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
Returning now to the portal of Azay le Rideau (Fig. 112), we find
this scheme substantially reproduced, but with greatly altered
details. In place of the buttresses we have a remarkable combination
of columns, pilasters, and other neo-classic ornaments put together
so as to produce a pseudo-Flamboyant Gothic effect. The portals and
windows are flanked with pilasters and crowned with entablatures, and
the whole is bounded right and left by superimposed columns broken
by highly ornamented niches, and banded by the string courses and
entablatures. On the first floor over the portal the window pilasters
are made to appear as hidden behind tall ornamental niches, composed
of many neo-classic and nondescript elements, arranged in the manner
of the details on Flamboyant buttresses. Only small portions of the
base mouldings of the pilasters appear beneath this filigree overlay.
In the story next above, the central pilaster only is hidden in this
way, but here a part of the capital, instead of the base, comes into
view. The manner in which the pseudo-Gothic features are adjusted to
the neo-classic elements of the composition is curious in other ways.
The pilasters of the several superimposed orders are, of course, of
equal length in each story, and their entablatures make strongly marked
horizontal lines. But the nondescript ornaments laid over these orders
are carried up to unequal heights, all of them crossing the middle
entablature, and the finial of the central one reaching above the
architrave of the top entablature, while the lateral pilasters of this
upper order are wholly exposed to view, except that the finials of the
canopies over the niches below cover parts of their bases. The mixture
of neo-classic and pseudo-Gothic forms is carried out in the details
of these superimposed ornaments. Under the base of each niche are two
diminutive pilasters, set obliquely so as to present an arris in front,
like the angular members in Flamboyant buttresses, as in Châteaudun,
and between these is a small shaft supporting a corbel which forms
the base of the niche. The niche is flanked by slender pilasters set
obliquely in conformity with those below, but these pilasters are
almost entirely hidden from view by very salient nondescript ornaments
worked on the face of each. The mouldings of the grouped bases, which
are of different magnitudes, interpenetrate in Flamboyant fashion, and
the canopies over the niches are made up of miniature entablatures on
curved plans ornamented with filigree, and each of them is surmounted
by a group of minute niches with statuettes, and crowned by a finial.
The windows have the depressed arches of the Flamboyant style, with
panelled dadoes beneath, as in Châteaudun; but their profilings are
pseudo-classic, and they have keystones at their crowns. The total
scheme is more mediæval than classic, notwithstanding the free use of
neo-classic orders. To produce a continuity of upright lines, and thus
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