Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
neighbouring tower of Prato and Giotto’s famous campanile are later and
richer modifications of the same type. In the tower of Santo Spirito
(Fig. 41) Baccio d’Agnolo has taken the Lombard scheme and clothed it
with a pseudo-classic dress. While his classic details have much of
that elegance which belongs to the best Italian work, they are out of
place in such a structure. The tall pilaster-strips of the mediæval
tower gave an expression as of an organic skeleton running through the
building. They had been developed out of the classic pilaster to meet
the needs of the mediæval type of structure, and in substituting the
superimposed classic orders for the appropriate continuous members, the
artist did violence to the true principles of design.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Tower of Santo Spirito.]
The lantern with which this tower is crowned is an adaptation of
Brunelleschi’s lantern on the dome of the cathedral, but made more
aspiring in form, so that the general outline is like that of a Gothic
spire. But the form of a Gothic spire is far removed from anything that
is proper to classic composition.
Returning to San Biagio, it may be said that the orders here have a
closer conformity with those of classic antiquity than occurs in the
earlier monuments already mentioned, except the Tempietto of San Pietro
in Montorio by Bramante.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Santissima Annunziatta, Arezzo.]
In the nave of the church of Santissima Annunziatta in Arezzo, the same
architect produced a different design. The nave (Fig. 42), of only
three bays, is covered with a barrel vault, and the aisles have small
domes on pendentives. The supporting piers are square with a shallow
Corinthian pilaster on the face of each and an entablature passing over
the crowns of the arches. The archivolts are deep, and each one is
moulded on the face and plain on the soffit. These are carried on plain
pilasters with simple impost mouldings. The wall above the entablature
is plain and unbroken, except by a round-arched window over each bay of
the ground story, and is crowned with a heavy cornice from which the
vaulting springs. We have here a structural system of imperial Roman
massiveness, necessitated by the use of the great barrel vault.
After the early part of the sixteenth century Italy produced few
architects of a high order of genius. Most of the more advanced
neo-classic art is the work of mediocre men who, while professing to be
ardent advocates of grammatical correctness according to the ancient
rules, were hardly less capricious in their misuse of classic elements
than their predecessors had been. To enter upon the examination of any
large number of buildings in this later Renaissance style would be
tedious and unnecessary; but in addition to what we have already seen
of it in the work of Michael Angelo in St. Peter’s, we may give some
attention to a few characteristic works of the two leading architects
of the later time: Vignola and Palladio.
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