A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Part 19

+INTERIOR TREATMENT.+ It was doubtless intended to cover these large unbroken wall-surfaces and the vast expanse of the vaults over naves of extraordinary breadth, with paintings and color decoration. This would have remedied their present nakedness and lack of interest, but it was only in a very few instances carried out. The double church of S. Francesco at a.s.sisi, decorated by Cimabue, Giotto, and other early Tuscan painters, the Arena Chapel at Padua, painted by Giotto, the +Spanish Chapel+ of S. M. Novella, Florence, and the east end of S. Croce, Florence, are ill.u.s.trations of the splendor of effect possible by this method of decoration. The bareness of effect in other, unpainted interiors was emphasized by the plainness of the vaults dest.i.tute of minor ribs. The transverse ribs were usually broad arches with flat soffits, and the vaulting was often sprung from so low a point as to leave no room for a triforium. Mere bull's-eyes often served for clearstory windows, as in S. Anastasia at Verona, S. Petronio at Bologna, and the Florentine Duomo. The cathedral of +S. Martino+ at Lucca (Fig. 149) is one of the most complete and elegant of Italian Gothic interiors, having a genuine triforium with traceried arches. Even here, however, there are round arches without mouldings, flat pilasters, broad transverse ribs recalling Roman arches, and insignificant bull's-eyes in the clearstory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 149.--ONE BAY, NAVE OF CATHEDRAL OF SAN MARTINO, LUCCA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 150.--INTERIOR OF SIENNA CATHEDRAL.]

The failure to produce adequate results of scale in the interiors of the larger Italian churches, has been already alluded to. It is strikingly exemplified in the Duomo at Florence, the nave of which is 72 feet wide, with four pier-arches each over 55 feet in span. The immense vault, in square bays, starts from the level of the tops of these arches. The interior (Fig. 148) is singularly naked and cold, giving no conception of its vast dimensions. The colossal dome is an early work of the Renaissance (see p. 276). It is not known how _Fr. Talenti_, who in 1357 enlarged and vaulted the nave and planned the east end, proposed to cover the great octagon. The east end is the most effective part of the design both internally and externally, owing to the relatively moderate scale of the 15 chapels which surround the apsidal arms of the cross. In S. Petronio at Bologna, begun 1390 by _Master Antonio_, the scale is better handled. The nave, 300 feet long, is divided into six bays, each embracing two side chapels. It is 46 feet wide and 132 feet high, proportions which approximate those of the French cathedrals, and produce an impression of size somewhat unusual in Italian churches.

+Orvieto+ has internally little that suggests Gothic architecture; like many Franciscan and Dominican churches it is really a timber-roofed basilica with a few pointed windows. The mixed Gothic and Romanesque interior of +Sienna Cathedral+ (Fig. 150), with its round arches and six-sided dome, unsymmetrically placed over the crossing, is one of the most impressive creations of Italian mediaeval art. Alternate courses of black and white marble add richness but not repose to the effect of this interior: the same is true of Orvieto, and of some other churches. The bas.e.m.e.nt baptistery of +S. Giovanni+, under the east end of Sienna Cathedral, is much more purely Gothic in detail.

In these, and indeed in most Italian interiors, the main interest centres less in the excellence of the composition than in the accessories of pavements, pulpits, choir-stalls, and sepulchral monuments. In these the decorative fancy and skill of the Italians found unrestrained exercise, and produced works of surpa.s.sing interest and merit.

+EXTERNAL DESIGN.+ The greatest possible disparity generally exists between the sides and west fronts of the Italian churches. With few exceptions the flanks present nothing like the variety of sky-line and of light and shade customary in northern and western lands. The side walls are high and flat, plain, or striped with black and white masonry (Sienna, Orvieto), or veneered with marble (Duomo at Florence) or decorated with surface-ornament of thin pilasters and arcades (Lucca).

The clearstory is low; the roof low--pitched and hardly visible from below. Color, rather than structural richness, is generally sought for: Milan Cathedral is almost the only exception, and goes to the other extreme, with its seemingly countless b.u.t.tresses, pinnacles and statues.

The facades, on the other hand, were treated as independent decorative compositions, and were in many cases remarkably beautiful works, though having little or no organic relation to the main structure. The most celebrated are those of +Sienna+ (cathedral begun 1243; facade 1284 by _Giovanni Pisano_; Fig. 151) and +Orvieto+ (begun 1290 by _Lorenzo Maitani_; facade 1310). Both of these are sumptuous polychromatic compositions in marble, designed on somewhat similar lines, with three high gables fronting the three aisles, with deeply recessed portals, pinnacled turrets flanking nave and aisles, and a central circular window. That of Orvieto is furthermore embellished with mosaic pictures, and is the more brilliant in color of the two. The mediaeval facades of the Florentine Gothic churches were never completed; but the elegance of the panelling and of the tracery with twisted shafts in the flanks of the cathedral, and the florid beauty of its side doorways (late 14th century) would doubtless if realized with equal success on the facades, have produced strikingly beautiful results. The modern facade of the Duomo, by the late _De Fabris_ (1887) is a correct if not highly imaginative version of the style so applied. The front of Milan cathedral (soon to be replaced by a new facade), shows a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance forms. +Ferrara Cathedral+, although internally transformed in the last century, retains its fine 13th-century three-gabled and arcaded screen front; one of the most Gothic in spirit of all Italian facades. The +Cathedral+ of +Genoa+ presents Gothic windows and deeply recessed portals in a facade built in black and white bands, like Sienna cathedral and many churches in Pistoia and Pisa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 151.--FAcADE OF SIENNA CATHEDRAL.]

Externally the most important feature was frequently a cupola or dome over the crossing. That of Sienna has already been mentioned; that of Milan is a sumptuous many-pinnacled structure terminating in a spire 300 feet high. The +Certosa+ at Pavia (Fig. 152) and the earlier Carthusian church of Chiaravalle have internal cupolas or domes covered externally by many-storied structures ending in a tower dominating the whole edifice. These two churches, like many others in Lombardy, the aemilia and Venetia, are built of brick, moulded terra-cotta being effectively used for the cornices, string-courses, jambs and ornaments of the exterior. The Certosa at Pavia is contemporary with the cathedral of Milan, to which it offers a surprising contrast, both in style and material. It is wholly built of brick and terra-cotta, and, save for its ribbed vaulting, possesses hardly a single Gothic feature or detail. Its arches, mouldings, and cloisters suggest both the Romanesque and the Renaissance styles by their semi-cla.s.sic character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 152.--EXTERIOR OF THE CERTOSA, PAVIA.]

+PLANS.+ The wide diversity of local styles in Italian architecture appears in the plans as strikingly as in the details In general one notes a love of s.p.a.ciousness which expresses itself in a sometimes disproportionate breadth, and in the wide s.p.a.cing of the piers. The polygonal chevet with its radial chapels is but rarely seen; +S. Lorenzo+ at Naples, Sta. Maria dei Servi and S. Francesco at Bologna are among the most important examples. More frequently the chapels form a range along the east side of the transepts, especially in the Franciscan churches, which otherwise retain many basilican features.

A comparison of the plans of S. Andrea at Vercelli, the Duomo at Florence, the cathedrals of Sienna and Milan, S. Petronio at Bologna and the Certosa at Pavia (Fig. 153), sufficiently ill.u.s.trates the variety of Italian Gothic plan-types.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 153.--PLAN OF CERTOSA AT PAVIA.]

+ORNAMENT.+ Applied decoration plays a large part in all Italian Gothic designs. Inlaid and mosaic patterns and panelled veneering in colored marble are essential features of the exterior decoration of most Italian churches. Florence offers a fine example of this treatment in the Duomo, and in its accompanying +Campanile+ or bell-tower, designed by _Giotto_ (1335), and completed by _Gaddi_ and _Talenti_. This beautiful tower is an epitome of Italian Gothic art. Its inlays, mosaics, and veneering are treated with consummate elegance, and combined with incrusted reliefs of great beauty. The tracery of this monument and of the side windows of the adjoining cathedral is lighter and more graceful than is common in Italy. Its beauty consists, however, less in movement of line than in richness and elegance of carved and inlaid ornament. In the +Or San Michele+--a combined chapel and granary in Florence dating from 1330--the tracery is far less light and open. In general, except in churches like the Cathedral of Milan, built under German influences, the tracery in secular monuments is more successful than in ecclesiastical structures. Venice developed the designing of tracery to greater perfection in her palaces than any other Italian city (see below).

+MINOR WORKS.+ Italian Gothic art found freer expression in semi-decorative works, like tombs, altars and votive chapels, than in more monumental structures. The fourteenth century was particularly rich in canopy tombs, mostly in churches, though some were erected in the open air, like the celebrated +Tombs of the Scaligers+ in Verona (1329-1380). Many of those in churches in and near Rome, and others in south Italy, are especially rich in inlay of _opus Alexandrinum_ upon their twisted columns and panelled sarcophagi. The family of the _Cosmati_ acquired great fame for work of this kind during the thirteenth century.

The little marble chapel of +Sta. Maria della Spina+, on the Arno, at Pisa, is an instance of the successful decorative use of Gothic forms in minor buildings.

+TOWERS.+ The Italians always preferred the square tower to the spire, and in most cases treated it as an independent campanile. Following Early Christian and Romanesque traditions, these square towers were usually built with plain sides unbroken by b.u.t.tresses, and terminated in a flat roof or a low and inconspicuous cone or pyramid. The Campanile at Florence already mentioned is by far the most beautiful of these designs (Fig. 154). The campaniles of Sienna, Lucca, and Pistoia are built in alternate white and black courses, like the adjoining cathedrals. Verona and Mantua have towers with octagonal lanterns. In general, these Gothic towers differ from the earlier Romanesque models only in the forms of their openings. Though dignified in their simplicity and size, and usually well proportioned, they lack the beauty and interest of the French, English, and German steeples and towers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 154.--UPPER PART OF CAMPANILE, FLORENCE.]

+SECULAR MONUMENTS.+ In their public halls, open _loggias_, and domestic architecture the Italians were able to develop the application of Gothic forms with greater freedom than in their church-building, because unfettered by traditional methods of design. The early and vigorous growth of munic.i.p.al and popular inst.i.tutions led, as in the Netherlands, to the building of two cla.s.ses of public halls--the town hall proper or _Podesta_, and the council hall, variously called _Palazzo Communale_, _Pubblico_, or _del Consiglio_. The town halls, as the seat of authority, usually have a severe and fortress-like character; the +Palazzo Vecchio+ at Florence is the most important example (1298, by Arnolfo di Cambio; Fig. 155). It is especially remarkable for its tower, which, rising 308 feet in the air, overhangs the street nearly 6 feet, its front wall resting on the face of the powerfully corbelled cornice of the palace. The court and most of the interior were remodelled in the sixteenth century. At Sienna is a somewhat similar structure in brick, the +Palazzo Pubblico+. At Pistoia the Podesta and the Communal Palace stand opposite each other; in both of these the courtyards still retain their original aspect. At Perugia, Bologna, and Viterbo are others of some importance; while in Lombardy, Bergamo, Como, Cremona, Piacenza and other towns possess smaller halls with open arcades below, of a more elegant and pleasing aspect. More successful still are the open loggias or tribunes erected for the gatherings of public bodies. The +Loggia dei Lanzi+ at Florence (1376, by _Benci di Cione_ and _Simone di Talenti_) is the largest and most famous of these open vaulted halls, of which several exist in Florence and Sienna. Gothic only in their minor details, they are Romanesque or semi-cla.s.sic in their broad round arches and strong horizontal lines and cornices (Fig. 156).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 155.--UPPER PART OF PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE.]

+PALACES AND HOUSES: VENICE.+ The northern cities, especially Pisa, Florence, Sienna, Bologna, and Venice, are rich in mediaeval public and private palaces and dwellings in brick or marble, in which pointed windows and open arcades are used with excellent effect. In Bologna and Sienna brick is used, in conjunction with details executed in moulded terra-cotta, in a highly artistic and effective way. Viterbo, nearer Rome, also possesses many interesting houses with street arcades and open stairways or stoops leading to the main entrance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 156.--LOGGIA DEI LANZI, FLORENCE.]

The security and prosperity of Venice in the Middle Ages, and the ever present influence of the sun-loving East, made the ma.s.sive and fortress-like architecture of the inland cities unnecessary. Abundant openings, large windows full of tracery of great lightness and elegance, projecting balconies and the freest use of marble veneering and inlay--a survival of Byzantine traditions of the 12th century (see p. 133)--give to the Venetian houses and palaces an air of gayety and elegance found nowhere else. While there are few Gothic churches of importance in Venice, the number of mediaeval houses and palaces is very large. Chief among these is the +Doge's Palace+ (Fig. 157), adjoining the church of St. Mark. The two-storied arcades of the west and south fronts date from 1354, and originally stood out from the main edifice, which was widened in the next century, when the present somewhat heavy walls, laid up in red, white and black marble in a species of quarry-pattern, were built over the arcades. These arcades are beautiful designs, combining ma.s.sive strength and grace in a manner quite foreign to Western Gothic ideas. Lighter and more ornate is the +Ca d'Oro+, on the Grand Ca.n.a.l; while the Foscari, Contarini-Fasan, Cavalli, and Pisani palaces, among many others, are admirable examples of the style. In most of these a traceried loggia occupies the central part, flanked by walls incrusted with marble and pierced by Gothic windows with carved mouldings, borders, and balconies. The Venetian Gothic owes its success largely to the absence of structural difficulties to interfere with the purely decorative development of Gothic details.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 157.--WEST FRONT VIEW OF DOGE'S PALACE, VENICE.]

+MONUMENTS.+ 13th Century: Cistercian abbeys Fossanova and Casamari, _cir._ 1208; S. Andrea, Vercelli, 1209; S. Francesco, a.s.sisi, 1228-53; Church at Asti, 1229; Sienna C., 1243-59 (cupola 1259-64; facade 1284); S. M. Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, 1250-80 (finished 1388); Sta. Chiara, a.s.sisi, 1250; Sta. Trinita, Florence, 1250; S. Antonio, Padua, begun 1256; SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 1260 (?)-1400; Sta. Anastasia, Verona, 1261; Naples C., 1272-1314 (facade 1299; portal 1407; much altered later); S. Lorenzo, Naples, 1275; Campo Santo, Pisa, 1278-83; Arezzo C., 1278; S. M. Novella, Florence, 1278; S. Eustorgio, Milan, 1278; S. M. sopra Minerva, Rome, 1280; Orvieto C., 1290 (facade 1310; roof 1330); Sta. Croce, Florence, 1294 (facade 1863); S. M. del Fiore, or C., Florence, 1294-1310 (enlarged 1357; E. end 1366; dome 1420-64; facade 1887); S. Francesco, Bologna.--14th century: Genoa C., early 14th century; S. Francesco, Sienna, 1310; San Domenico, Sienna, about same date; S. Giovanni in Fonte, Sienna, 1317; S. M. della Spina, Pisa, 1323; Campanile, Florence, 1335; Or San Michele, Florence, 1337; Milan C., 1386 (cupola 16th century; facade 16th-19th century; new facade building 1895); S. Petronio, Bologna, 1390; Certosa, Pavia, 1396 (choir, transepts, cupola, cloisters, 15th and 16th centuries); Como C., 1396 (choir and transepts 1513); Lucca C.

(S. Martino), Romanesque building remodelled late in 14th century; Verona C.; S. Fermo, Maggiore; S. Francesco, Pisa; S. Lorenzo, Vicenza.--15th century: Perugia C.; S. M. delle Grazie, Milan, 1470 (cupola and exterior E. part later).

SECULAR BUILDINGS: Pal. Pubblico, Cremona, 1245; Pal. Podesta (Bargello), Florence, 1255 (enlarged 1333-45); Pal. Pubblico, Sienna, 1289-1305 (many later alterations); Pal. Giureconsulti, Cremona, 1292; Broletto, Monza, 1293; Loggia dei Mercanti, Bologna, 1294; Pal. Vecchio, Florence, 1298; Broletto, Como; Pal.

Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, 1310-40 (great windows 1404; extended 1423-38; courtyard 15th and 16th centuries); Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, 1335; Loggia del Bigallo, 1337; Broletto, Bergamo, 14th century; Loggia dei n.o.bili, Sienna, 1407; Pal.

Pubblico, Udine, 1457; Loggia dei Mercanti, Ancona; Pal. del Governo, Bologna; Pal. Pepoli, Bologna; Palaces Conte Bardi, Davanzati, Capponi, all at Florence; at Sienna, Pal. Tolomei, 1205; Pal. Saracini, Pal. Buonsignori; at Venice, Pal.

Contarini-Fasan, Cavalli, Foscari, Pisani, and many others; others in Padua and Vicenza.

CHAPTER XX.

EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Anderson, _Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy_. Burckhardt, _The Civilization of the Renaissance_; _Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien_; _Der Cicerone_. Cellesi, _Sei Fabbriche di Firenze_. Cicognara, _Le Fabbriche piu cospicue di Venezia_. Durm, _Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien_ (in _Hdbuch. d. Arch._). Fergusson, _History of Modern Architecture_.

Geymuller, _La Renaissance en Toscane_. Montigny et Famin, _Architecture Toscane_. Moore, _Character of Renaissance Architecture_. Muntz, _La Renaissance en Italie et en France a l'epoque de Charles VIII._ Pal.u.s.tre, _L'Architecture de la Renaissance_. Pater, _Studies in the Renaissance_. Symonds, _The Renaissance of the Fine Arts in Italy_. Tosi and Becchio, _Altars, Tabernacles, and Tombs_.

+THE CLa.s.sIC REVIVAL.+ The abandonment of Gothic architecture in Italy and the subst.i.tution in its place of forms derived from cla.s.sic models were occasioned by no sudden or merely local revolution. The Renaissance was the result of a profound and universal intellectual movement, whose roots may be traced far back into the Middle Ages, and which manifested itself first in Italy simply because there the conditions were most propitious. It spread through Europe just as rapidly as similar conditions appearing in other countries prepared the way for it.

The essence of this far-reaching movement was the protest of the individual reason against the trammels of external and arbitrary authority--a protest which found its earliest organized expression in the Humanists. In its a.s.sertion of the intellectual and moral rights of the individual, the Renaissance laid the foundations of modern civilization. The same spirit, in rejecting the authority and teachings of the Church in matters of purely secular knowledge, led to the questionings of the precursors of modern science and the discoveries of the early navigators. But in nothing did the reaction against mediaeval scholasticism and asceticism display itself more strikingly than in the joyful enthusiasm which marked the pursuit of cla.s.sic studies. The long-neglected treasures of cla.s.sic literature were reopened, almost rediscovered, in the fourteenth century by the immortal trio--Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The joy of living, the hitherto forbidden delight in beauty and pleasure for their own sakes, the exultant awakening to the sense of personal freedom, which came with the bursting of mediaeval fetters, found in cla.s.sic art and literature their most sympathetic expression. It was in Italy, where feudalism had never fully established itself, and where the munic.i.p.alities and guilds had developed, as nowhere else, the sense of civic and personal freedom, that these symptoms first manifested themselves. In Italy, and above all in the Tuscan cities, they appeared throughout the fourteenth century in the growing enthusiasm for all that recalled the antique culture, and in the rapid advance of luxury and refinement in both public and private life.

+THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ARTS.+ Cla.s.sic Roman architecture had never lost its influence on the Italian taste. Gothic art, already declining in the West, had never been in Italy more than a borrowed garb, clothing architectural conceptions cla.s.sic rather than Gothic in spirit. The antique monuments which abounded on every hand were ever present models for the artist, and to the Florentines of the early fifteenth century the civilization which had created them represented the highest ideal of human culture. They longed to revive in their own time the glories of ancient Rome, and appropriated with uncritical and undiscriminating enthusiasm the good and the bad, the early and the late forms of Roman art, Navely unconscious of the disparity between their own architectural conceptions and those they fancied they imitated, they were, unknown to themselves, creating a new style, in which the details of Roman art were fitted in novel combinations to new requirements. In proportion as the Church lost its hold on the culture of the age, this new architecture entered increasingly into the service of private luxury and public display. It created, it is true, striking types of church design, and made of the dome one of the most imposing of external features; but its most characteristic products were palaces, villas, council halls, and monuments to the great and the powerful. The personal element in design a.s.serted itself as never before in the growth of schools and the development of styles. Thenceforward the history of Italian architecture becomes the history of the achievements of individual artists.

+EARLY BEGINNINGS.+ Already in the 13th century the pulpits of Niccolo Pisano at Sienna and Pisa had revealed that master's direct recourse to antique monuments for inspiration and suggestion. In the frescoes of Giotto and his followers, and in the architectural details of many nominally Gothic buildings, cla.s.sic forms had appeared with increasing frequency during the fourteenth century. This was especially true in Florence, which was then the artistic capital of Italy. Never, perhaps, since the days of Pericles, had there been another community so permeated with the love of beauty in art, and so endowed with the capacity to realize it. Nowhere else in Europe at that time was there such strenuous life, such intense feeling, or such free course for individual genius as in Florence. Her artists, with unexampled versatility, addressed themselves with equal success to goldsmiths'

work, sculpture, architecture and engineering--often to painting and poetry as well; and they were quick to catch in their art the spirit of the cla.s.sic revival. The new movement achieved its first architectural triumph in the dome of the cathedral of Florence (1420-64); and it was Florentine--or at least Tuscan--artists who planted in other centres the seeds of the new art that were to spring up in the local and provincial schools of Sienna, Milan, Pavia, Bologna, and Venice, of Brescia, Lucca, Perugia, and Rimini, and many other North Italian cities. The movement a.s.serted itself late in Rome and Naples, as an importation from Northern Italy, but it bore abundant fruit in these cities in its later stages.

+PERIODS.+ The cla.s.sic styles which grew up out of the Renaissance may be divided for convenience into four periods.

THE EARLY RENAISSANCE or FORMATIVE PERIOD, 1420-90; characterized by the grace and freedom of the decorative detail, suggested by Roman prototypes and applied to compositions of great variety and originality.

THE HIGH RENAISSANCE or FORMALLY CLa.s.sIC PERIOD, 1490-1550. During this period cla.s.sic details were copied with increasing fidelity, the orders especially appearing in almost all compositions; decoration meanwhile losing somewhat in grace and freedom.

THE EARLY BAROQUE (or BAROCO), 1550-1600; a period of cla.s.sic formality characterized by the use of colossal orders, engaged columns and rather scanty decoration.

THE DECLINE or LATER BAROQUE, marked by poverty of invention in the composition and a predominance of vulgar sham and display in the decoration. Broken pediments, huge scrolls, florid stucco-work and a general disregard of architectural propriety were universal.

During the eighteenth century there was a reaction from these extravagances, which showed itself in a return to the servile copying of cla.s.sic models, sometimes not without a certain dignity of composition and restraint in the decoration.