Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7): The Fine ArtsSymonds, John Addington
History
Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7): The Fine Arts
Symonds, John Addington
Art, Italian
In the first half of the sixteenth century the dictatorship of art had
been already transferred from Florence and Rome to Lombardy.[53] The
painters who carried on the great traditions were Venetian. Among the
architects, Palladio was a native of Vicenza; Giacomo Barozzi, the author
of the "Treatise on the Orders," took the name by which he is known from
his birthplace, Vignola; Vincenzo Scamozzi was a fellow-townsman of
Palladio; Galeazzo Alessi, though born at Perugia, spent his life and
developed his talents in Genoa; Andrea Formigine, the palace-builder, was
a Bolognese; Bartolommeo Ammanati alone at Florence exercised the arts of
sculpture and architecture in their old conjunction. Vignola, Palladio's
elder by a few years, displays in his work even more of the scholastically
frigid spirit of the late Renaissance, the narrowing of poetic impulse,
and the dwindling of vitality, that sadden the second half of the
sixteenth century in Italy. Scamozzi, labouring at Venice on works that
Sansovino left unfinished, caught the genial spirit of the old Venetian
style. Alessi, in like manner, at Genoa, felt the influences of a rich and
splendour-loving aristocracy. His church of S. Maria di Carignano is one
of the most successful ecclesiastical buildings of the late Renaissance,
combining the principles of Bramante and Michael Angelo in close imitation
of S. Peter's, and adhering in detail to the canons of the new taste.
These canons were based upon a close study of Vitruvius. Palladio,
Vignola, and Scamozzi were no less ambitious as authors than as
architects;[54] their minute analysis of antique treatises on the art of
construction led to the formation of exact rules for the treatment of the
five classic orders, the proportions of the chief parts used in building,
and the correct method of designing theatres and palaces, church-fronts
and cupolas. Thus architecture in its third Renaissance period passed into
scholasticism.
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