Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
But notwithstanding his ardent advocacy of the principles of ancient
Roman art, Vignola, in his own practice, not only altered the
proportions of the orders as Milizia says, but made many fanciful
changes in them. He introduced details which have no counterparts in
correct Roman design, and freely mixed those of different orders. An
instance of this occurs in an entablature figured in his book,[79]
which he calls his own invention. In this composition (Fig. 43) we have
a pseudo-Doric frieze between an architrave with multiplied faciæ, and
a cornice on modillions. In the place of triglyphs this frieze has
consoles with two channels, like those of a triglyph, on the curved
face of each. To such travesties of classic design did the striving
after novelty, which was curiously mingled with their ardour for the
antique, lead the men of the later Renaissance. For an advocate of
classic correctness such aberrations are the more surprising as they
are expressly condemned by Vitruvius, who warns his readers against
them as follows: “If dentiled cornices are used in the Doric order,
triglyphs applied above the voluted Ionic, thus transferring parts to
one order which properly belong to another, the eye will be offended,
because custom otherwise applies these peculiarities.”[80] The Roman
writer might, indeed, have given a better reason why the purity of the
orders ought to be maintained, namely, because to each of them the fine
artistic genius of the Greeks had given its appropriate details.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Half plan of Sant’Andrea.]
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