Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
The Rucellai is in form substantially like the Riccardi and other
buildings of its class, but in place of the plain wall surfaces which
are appropriate for a building that has no structural framework, we
have an order of classic pilasters dividing the face of each story into
bays answering to nothing in the real system of construction (Fig. 59).
We thus have here in domestic architecture an instance of that false
use of the orders which in church architecture was first introduced in
the chapel of the Pazzi. Alberti’s classic tendencies are here shown
further in the introduction of a diminutive entablature passing through
the smaller arches of the windows, and these arches are merely cut in
relief on a solid tympanum (Fig. 59). It is worthy of notice, too, that
the rustication of the masonry of this façade does not mark the true
joints. The blocks of stone are in many cases much larger than they
appear, channels being cut upon them to simulate joints. The arch of
one window, for instance, which by the rustication would appear to be
made up of fourteen voussoirs, has in reality only three. The same lack
of conformity of the simulated jointing with the true masonry joints
is noticeable also in many parts of the façade of the Riccardi, and I
know not how general this treatment may be in the architecture of the
Renaissance.[89]
The initiative thus given by Alberti was not at once universally
followed. The orders did not come into general use in the façades of
domestic architecture until the period of the later Renaissance. The
most important Florentine palaces of the latter part of the fifteenth
century have, as we have seen in the Strozzi, no classic orders. The
classic elements of these buildings are confined to details such as
the profiling of cornices, and the introduction of dentils and other
kindred ornaments, and to the capitals of court arcades.
Early in the sixteenth century a further innovation in the treatment of
palace fronts was made in Florence by the Architect Baccio d’Agnolo,
whose design for the campanile of Santo Spirito we have already noticed
(p. 82), in the Palazzo Bartolini. This consisted in framing the
windows with small orders crowned by pediments (Fig. 60). Milizia thus
refers to this innovation: “This was the first palace with windows
adorned with frontispieces and with columns at the doorway carrying
architrave, frieze, and cornice. A novelty, like most others, at first
disapproved and then idolized. The Florentines all ridiculed Baccio for
this new style of architecture, not only with words, but with sonnets,
and with jesting devices attached to the building, taunting him with
having made a church of a palace.”[90] For the rest, though Baccio
d’Agnolo has not adorned the walls of this building with orders, he has
marked the stories with entablatures, and placed rusticated pilasters
at the angles.
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