Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
The front of the small palace called the Strozzino is in the style of
the Riccardi, and is attributed to the same architect. It has but one
story above the high basement, and the treatment is even more mediæval
in character, the window arches having the pointed form.
The Palazzo Strozzi, begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Majano, follows
the same general scheme as the Riccardi, but is less admirable in its
proportions. Vasari tells us that Majano carried the exterior almost
to completion, but that the court and the great cornice were the work
of Simione Pollaiuolo, called Il Cronaca. This cornice, he says, was
copied from an ancient model in Rome which the architect had drawn and
measured with great exactness, but he had here enlarged the scale to
suit the proportions of the building.[87] I think it may be said that
he enlarged it too much, and that, in common with the cornices of most
of these Renaissance palaces, it is too heavy. The Strozzi, more than
any other of the palatial houses of its time, has the fortress-like
character which indicates the turbulent condition of Florence in the
fifteenth century. The vast basement of ponderous masonry, with no
window openings near the ground, gives a gloomy and forbidding aspect
to the front, and marks a survival of the savage habits of feudal life
in this epoch of advanced Italian civilization and culture.
The Palazzo Pazzi, now known as the Quaratesi, is attributed to
Brunelleschi, and has the marks of his style in the details of the
windows. It has the same general scheme of design as the foregoing
houses, and its stories are proportioned with the same pleasing
gradation in their heights that we have noticed in the Riccardi;
but the wall surfaces are different, being uniformly overlaid with
stucco. A series of small circular openings, with mouldings over the
windows of the topmost full story, resembling those of the drum of the
Pazzi chapel, seem to give further evidence of Brunelleschi’s hand.
Still another building in this style, though of even plainer external
character, having small undivided openings, is the Palazzo Gondi,
designed by Guiliano da San Gallo toward the close of the fifteenth
century. The arcades of the court of the Gondi have Corinthian columns
of great elegance, and the arches have ornamental keystones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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