[Illustration: FARNESE PALACE, ROME BY SANGALLO; THE CORNICE BY MICHELANGELO. P. 363] [Illustration: COURT OF THE FARNESE PALACE CONSIDERED THE MOST IMPOSING IN ITALY. P. 363] [Illustration: CAPITOL PALACES, ROME BY MICHELANGELO. P. 363] [Illustration: LIBRARY OF S. MARK, VENICE BY SANSOVINO. P. 365] [Illustration: S. ANDREA, MANTUA BY ALBERTI. P. 367] [Illustration: S. SPIRITO, FLORENCE BY BRUNELLESCHI. P. 367] [Illustration: S. PETER’S, ROME SHOWING FAÇADE, PIAZZA AND COLONNADES. P. 370, ET SEQ.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. PETER’S, ROME P. 370, ET SEQ.] CHAPTER III RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY--CONTINUED The method that we have followed so far in this book has been to study architecture in relation to problems of construction and to the materials employed, and to think of a building as an organic growth determined by plan, site, and the purposes for which it is intended--as a structure in which all the parts are co-ordinated to the whole, each directly functioning in the completed scheme. This is the architect’s way of considering his problem. So we have followed it, in the desire to avoid the error into which architects tell us that most laymen fall of thinking only of the outside of a building--how it is decorated, whether the design seems to be handsome or the reverse. When, however, we come to the study of Italian Renaissance architecture, some architects tell us that we must adopt another method of judgment. These are the architects who are out-and-out advocates of the Italian Renaissance style, considering its achievements to be “supreme.” They admit that the Italian architects were less concerned with problems of construction than with general beauty of design; hence they were actuated not so much by logic as by feeling; and feeling especially for detail. They displayed extraordinary genius for design, both in the choice and disposition of the decorative effects and in the skill and refinement of their execution. They were designers rather than constructors. This being the case, they should be judged accordingly. To estimate their work by the test of constructive logic is arbitrary and unfair. They should be judged by what they started out to accomplish; by the character and quality of their designs. In a word, as it may appear, these advocates would have us apply a pictorial test; such a one, for example, as may serve in the case of the great picture, “Marriage in Cana of Galilee,” by Paolo Veronese. We do not trouble to consider the appropriateness of the architectural setting, still less to explain the functions of its several parts; we accept it without qualification as contributing to a monumental design.