the chief modifier of the revived style of Roman architecture. The
celebrity however which attaches to his name, though just in regard to
its extent, is not always correctly appreciated: inasmuch as a bigoted
admiration for his precepts and designs, on the ground of their
intrinsic excellence, has too frequently supplanted that more sober
estimate, which results from a consideration of the circumstances under
which those precepts and examples were given to the world. Neither have
succeeding ages been sufficiently discriminating in respect to the
predecessors and contemporaries of Palladio, several of whom either
effected or assisted in effecting much, of which the credit has been
given by the world at large too exclusively to him.
Our less informed readers should therefore be apprised that, for more
than a century before the time of Palladio, the ancient Roman style of
architecture had been in progress of revival. Brunelleschi, who died in
1444, was the first to exhibit, in the upper part of Florence cathedral,
some departure from the Italian Gothic, and an approach towards the more
classic models of old Rome. Alberti, his pupil, published a system of
the Five Orders, and Bramante, Raphael, and San Gallo, successively
advanced the restored style in the famous Basilica of St. Peter, then
erecting. Sansovino, in several costly edifices at Venice, and San
Micheli, in many at Verona, anticipated the best efforts of Palladio,
and Vignola also distinguished himself as a practical architect and
author. Serlio was the first to measure and describe the ancient
examples of Rome; and in 1537, published the first part of his ‘Complete
Treatise on Architecture.’
[Illustration:
_Engraved by R. Woodman._
PALLADIO.
_From a Picture by L. Biglieschi in the Collection of the Capitol at
Rome._
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]
Much therefore had been already done to facilitate the operations of a
succeeding candidate for architectural distinction. Materials had been
amassed, and it only remained for a comprehensive genius to analyse them
more closely, to modify them in detail, and to enlarge, by the exercise
of a chastened fancy, the range of their combinations. At this juncture
the subject of our memoir commenced his professional career.
Andrea Palladio was born at Vicenza, November 30, 1518. His parents are
said to have been “in the middle rank of life;” in belief of which,
Temanza discredits the traditionary account that he worked as a common
mason at the Villa di Cricoli, and that the name ‘Palladio’ was bestowed
upon him, as a kind of ennoblement, by his patron Trissino, who is said
to have been his first architectural instructor. It is at least certain
that, if Trissino taught him not, he assisted in stimulating his
professional ardour. Vitruvius and Alberti appear to have been his early
studies, and allusions are made to his proficiency in geometry and
polite literature at the age of twenty-three. The knowledge which he
derived from books, far from satisfying, prompted him to seek a deeper
insight into the details and the principles of his art; and, during
several visits to Rome, he employed himself in delineating from
admeasurement the ancient remains of that city.
Among the earliest testimonies to his growing fame, was the commission
he received to make certain costly additions to the Basilica, or Hall of
Justice, in his native town. The building, before alteration, seems to
have been a dilapidated example of the Italian Gothic style. It was the
opinion of Giulio Romano, who was also consulted on the subject, that
whatever new work might be necessary to afford strength or supply
convenience, the character of the old building should be strictly
preserved; and the appropriate and unprejudiced idea of that architect
merits quite as much praise as the realized design of his more fortunate
competitor. But the romantic rage for the restored architecture of Pagan
antiquity was too prevalent for the common sense of Giulio to find
support; and the Græco-Roman arcades of Palladio were carried round the
Gothic basilica, just as, under the same infatuation, the Corinthian
portico of Inigo Jones was subsequently attached to the old Cathedral of
St. Paul’s in London.
Considering the particular arrangements and present mixed style of this
noted Basilica to have been peremptorily insisted on by the public, we
can then concede to Palladio the merit of an honourable conquest over
difficulties. The adjoined wood-cut represents in simple outline one of
the seven bays or compartments, which form the longitudinal elevation of
the main building. The relative situations of the perpendiculars _a_ to
_b_, as well as their height, were unalterable. The heights _a_ to _c_,
and _c_ to _d_, were also fixed. If, therefore, simple arches had been
adopted, affording the required superficies of aperture, their limited
height must have borne a very disproportioned ratio to their extended
breadth. If columns had been employed alone, the great width of the
interspaces would have been offensively opposed to the laws which govern
that department of architectural design. The application, therefore, of
the smaller columns is here most admirable. By this measure, a central
arch of good proportions is obtained, and a sufficient supply of light
is secured to the interior by the lateral openings under the imposts,
and by the circular apertures above them.
[Illustration]
In 1546 the building of St. Peter’s church was in active progress, when
its third architect, San Gallo, died. Trissino, who was in Rome at the
time, exerted himself to establish Palladio as San Gallo’s successor. It
is well known however that Michael Angelo was appointed to that
important post, and that he remains recorded on the scroll of fame as
the most celebrated of the architects of St. Peter’s.
In 1547 Palladio appears to have finally established himself as the
leading architect of Northern Italy; nor was he less fortunate in
opportunities for professional display, than competent to avail himself
of them. Vicenza is literally a museum of Palladian design. Besides the
Basilica, already noticed, and the Olympic Theatre, which was designed
after ancient models, he constructed the great majority of the private
palaces, the proprietors of which were content to impoverish their
fortunes, that they might vie with each other in giving scope to the
talents of their architect. The churches del Redentore and S. Giorgio,
with other edifices public and private, evince the estimation in which
Palladio was held at Venice; and most of the other cities in the north
of Italy also contain examples of his genius. The country around
exhibits a variety of his designs, among which is the Villa di Capri,
called the Rotunda, which has been imitated by the Earl of Burlington,
at Chiswick, and by other architects in several parts of England. It
stands upon a hill, and commands a beautiful view on every side. This
was the architect’s reason for adopting the four fronts and four
porticoes.
Oppressed (says Scamozzi) by the multiplicity and fatigue of his
studies, and distressed by the loss of his sons (Leonida and Orazio), he
sank under the influence of an epidemic, which terminated his life
August 19, 1580, at the age of sixty-two. The Olympic Theatre had only
been commenced on the 23rd of May preceding his death, and its
completion was intrusted to his surviving son Silla, who, with Leonida,
had studied architecture. The Olympic Academicians attended their
deceased brother to the grave, and gave public testimony of their
feelings by the recital of funeral odes, and by the observance of all
the “pomp and circumstance” consistent with the sepulture of so eminent
a man. He was interred in the church of the Dominicans at Vicenza.
Palladio was no less remarkable for modesty than for professional
eminence. The affability of his conduct won for him the perfect love of
all workmen engaged in his buildings. He was small in stature, but of
admirable presence; and united, to the most respectful bearing, a jocose
and lively manner.
Palladio’s Treatise on Architecture, in four books, published at Venice
in 1570, has been several times reprinted. A magnificent edition in
three volumes, folio, appeared in London in 1715; and another has been
since issued from the Venetian press. He also composed a work on the
Roman Antiquities generally, and left many manuscripts on the subject of
military as well as civil architecture. He illustrated the Commentaries
of Cæsar, by annexing to Badelli’s translation of that work, a preface
on the military system of the Romans, and by supplying numerous copper
plates, designed for the most part by his sons Leonida and Orazio. He
also studied Polybius, and dedicated a (yet imprinted) work on the
subject to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. His manuscripts, having been left
to the senator Contarini, were subsequently dispersed, and the Earl of
Burlington became possessed of many of them. The latter nobleman in 1732
published the fruits of Palladio’s researches concerning the Roman
baths; and, some time after, appeared a truly beautiful work, intitled
‘Le Fabbriche ei Disegni di Andrea Palladio, raccolti ed illustrati da
Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi.’ The latter is by far the most interesting
book connected with the name of Palladio. It enables us, at once,
critically to examine his numerous designs, and to estimate them by a
standard far superior to that which is merely founded on Vitruvian
precept and Roman example. Our present acquaintance with all that
Palladio had the means of knowing, and with very much more of which he
was entirely ignorant, gives us a power and a right of censorship which
the bigot alone will oppose and deny. Since the day of this celebrated
architect, the Roman remains have been measured with more minute
accuracy, and examined with a more philosophical regard to the
principles which regulated the arrangement of their component parts. The
volume of Greek art, compared with which that of Rome was but a debasing
translation, has since that time been opened to the world; and, however
we may continue to admire the industry by which Palladio obtained his
then extended knowledge, the fancy and pictorial beauty which pervade
many of his designs, and the worth of the architect himself as a man of
genius, taste, and letters, it is yet our duty to direct the
architectural student to look much farther than Vicenza for examples of
pure design, and for principles of essential value.
The authorities for the life of Palladio, in addition to those already
referred to, are the works of Vasari, Tiraboschi, and Milizia.
[Illustration: [Villa di Capri.]]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
ELIZABETH.
_From a Picture in His Majesty’s collection at St. James’s Palace._
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]
[Illustration]
ELIZABETH.
Elizabeth, queen of England, daughter of Henry VIII. by his second wife,
Anne Boleyn, was born September 7, 1533. Her religious principles were
early fixed on the side of the Reformation by Dr. Parker, her mother’s
chaplain, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, to whose care Anne
Boleyn, not long before her violent death, recommended this her only
child, with the charge that she should not want his wise and pious
counsel. She passed her early days happily, in the seclusion of private
life, uninitiated in the dissipation of the court, and unmolested by its
intrigues; but a few months after the accession of her sister Mary, she
was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in Wyat’s insurrection, of
which it was the object to oppose the marriage of Mary with the Archduke
Philip, and to raise the princess Elizabeth to the throne. Her life was
placed in imminent danger, by her removal from her abode at Ashridge in
Buckinghamshire to London during a severe illness, in compliance with an
order to bring her, “quick or dead.” She was committed to the Tower, and
exposed to a capital charge of high treason. Two councils were held,
before which she defended herself with entire presence of mind, and
great boldness. Several councillors voted for her death, but it was
ultimately decided that she could be convicted only of misprision of
treason, which was no longer a capital offence. She owed her life,
therefore, to the saving power of the law; not, as has often been
stated, to the intercession of Philip: who did, however, stand forward
afterwards in her behalf so as to obtain a mitigation of the severity of
her imprisonment, which was continued after her acquittal on the capital
charge. It may seem inconsistent in a bigot to the Catholic religion to
interfere in behalf of a person on whom the hopes of the Protestants
were known to depend: but Philip’s hatred against France was greater
than his or even his wife’s zeal in the cause of popery; and the
political motives of his conduct are obvious. In the event of Mary dying
without issue, the Queen of Scotland, who was actually betrothed, and
soon after married to the Dauphin, stood next in succession to
Elizabeth. Supposing the intermediate link in the chain to be broken,
the crown of England, united to that of France, would give a fatal
preponderance to the already formidable rival of the Spanish monarchy.
Philip, therefore, had a direct interest both in preserving the life and
conciliating the good will of the princess: he foresaw that the demise
of his queen must take place before long, and he had formed the scheme
of espousing her sister and successor, for which a dispensation would
readily have been obtained from the pope.
The reign of Elizabeth began November 17, 1558, when she was twenty-five
years of age. Her person was graceful, her stature majestic, and her
mien noble. Her features were not regular; but her eyes were lively and
sparkling, and her complexion fair. Her spirit was high; and her strong
natural capacity had been improved by the most enlarged education
attainable in those days. She wrote letters in Italian before she was
fourteen; and at the age of seventeen she had acquired the Latin, Greek,
and French languages. In addition to these studies she had ventured on
the high and various departments of philosophy, rhetoric, history,
divinity, poetry, and music. As soon as she was fixed on the throne, her
interest and her principles engaged her in plans for the restoration of
the Protestant religion. For although Pope Pius IV. promised, on her
submission to the papal supremacy, “to establish and confirm her royal
dignity by his authority,” yet she must have felt, that with the avowal
of popery would be coupled the virtual admission that her father’s
divorce from Catherine of Arragon was null and void; and, consequently,
that Anne Boleyn was not a wife but a concubine, and her own pretensions
to the crown downright usurpation. It was only by rejecting the Pope as
her judge that she could maintain her mother’s fair fame and her own
legitimate descent. Many writers, Bayle among others, have attempted to
prove that she was at heart little more of a Protestant than her father;
and her determination to retain episcopacy was sufficient to raise that
suspicion in the minds of the adherents to the presbyterian system of
church government.
While she was princess she received a private proposal of marriage from
Sweden; but she declared, “she could not change her condition.” On her
becoming queen, her brother-in-law, Philip II. of Spain, addressed her;
but this match also she declined. In the first parliament of her reign,
the house of commons represented it as necessary to the welfare of the
nation “to move her grace to marriage.” She answered, that by the
ceremony of her inauguration she was married to her people, and her
subjects were to her instead of children; that they would not want a
successor when she died; adding, “And in the end, this shall be for me
sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare, that a queen having
reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.” Several great personages
proposed a matrimonial union with this illustrious princess; but she
maintained her celibacy to the last. The Duke of Anjou seems to have
been the most acceptable of her suitors. On his visit to England in
1581, not only was he received with much public parade, but she
vouchsafed him strong tokens of personal attachment, and even suffered
the marriage articles to be drawn up. But the strong remonstrances of
her ministers and favourites finally prevailed, and the intended
marriage was broken off.
The compilers of memoirs have racked their brains for some plausible
explanation of Elizabeth’s repugnance to matrimony. When overtures were
first made to her she was young, and had a good person, which she spared
no art in setting off to advantage: she was notoriously fond of
admiration, and was no less jealous of the personal beauty of Mary,
Queen of Scots, than of her competition as a rival sovereign, or as a
claimant of the crown of England. Neither prudery nor coldness could be
imputed to her. Her gaiety extorted a sarcastic exclamation from an
ambassador: “I have seen the head of the English church dancing!” She
chose her favourites, Leicester, Essex, Raleigh, and others, from among
the most comely, as well as the most valiant and accomplished of her
subjects. Melvil, who had been sent by Mary of Scotland to the court of
Elizabeth, relates in his Memoirs, that on creating Lord Robert Dudley
Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, at Westminster, with much
solemnity, the queen assisted at the ceremonial, and he knelt before her
with great gravity: “but,” he says, “she could not refrain from putting
her hand to his neck, smilingly tickling him, the French ambassador and
I standing by.” In relating his diplomatic transactions, he furnishes
other proofs of the queen’s partiality for the Earl of Leicester. He had
occasion to name before her “my Lord of Bedford and my Lord Robert
Dudley. She answered, it appeared I made but small account of my Lord
Robert, seeing I named the Earl of Bedford before him; but that ere long
she would make him a far greater Earl; and that I should see it done
before my return home. For she esteemed him as her brother and best
friend, whom she would have herself married, had she ever intended to
have taken a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity,
she wished the queen her sister might marry him.” It is no wonder that
her propensity to gallantry should have been stigmatized by popish
writers, or that they should even have ventured to assail her character
for chastity: even those of the reformed religion were somewhat
scandalized by the levities of their ecclesiastical governess. Her
foreign biographer, Gregorio Leti, in his ‘Histoire d’Elizabeth,’ says,
“I do not know whether she was so chaste as is reported; for, after all,
she was a queen, she was beautiful, young, full of wit, delighted in
magnificent dress, loved entertainments, balls, pleasures, and to have
the handsomest men in her kingdom for her favourites. This is all I can
say of her to the reader.”
The charge of personal depravity in so illustrious a sovereign deserves
a fuller examination than is admissible within our limits. But it is in
a great measure discredited by the circumstance that it originated with
those Romish and political enemies, who perseveringly strove to destroy
the queen, as the main prop of that fabric they were moving every engine
to overthrow. Dr. Sanders and Cardinal Allen, the popes, the Spanish
writers and their partisans, make statements, some of them manifestly
untrue, others unsupported by respectable testimony. Among her own
subjects, the popular scandal turned chiefly on Leicester, Hatton, and
Essex; but without a single criminating fact as to either. Bacon states
the case candidly, and probably puts it on its true ground: “She
suffered herself to be honoured, and caressed, and celebrated, and
extolled with the name of love, and wished it and continued it beyond
the suitability of her age. If you take these things more softly, they
may not even be without some admiration, because such things are
commonly found in our fabulous narratives, of a queen in the islands of
Bliss, with her hall and institutes, who receives the administration of
love, but prohibits its licentiousness. If you judge them more severely,
still they have this admirable circumstance, that the gratifications of
this sort did not much hurt her reputation, and not at all her majesty,
nor even relaxed her government, nor were any notable impediment to her
state affairs.” Some writers of secret history have assigned the danger
to which it was thought she would be exposed in bearing children as the
real reason for her perseverance in celibacy.
We do not propose to relate the events of the reign of Elizabeth,
inasmuch as our object does not extend beyond a sketch of her personal
character. It is perhaps the most brilliant period in English history;
it called into action some of the most able statesmen and greatest
warriors of whom this country could ever boast. Leti tells us that Pope
Sixtus V. was her ardent admirer, and placed her among the only three
persons who, in his estimation, deserved to reign: the other two members
of this curious triumvirate were Henry IV. of France and himself. He
once said to an Englishman, “Your queen is born fortunate: she governs
her kingdom with great happiness; she wants only to be married to me, to
give the world a second Alexander.” The same author, in his life of
Sixtus, records a secret correspondence of that pope with Elizabeth;
among other particulars of which he relates the following anecdote.
Anthony Babington, a gentleman of Derbyshire, with other English
papists, had engaged in a conspiracy against the queen. Their project
was, after having assassinated her, to deliver Mary of Scotland from
prison, and to place her on the throne. Babington and three of his
accomplices armed themselves against the possible failure of their
enterprise, by applying to the pope for prospective absolution, to take
effect at the time of their last agonies. His Holiness complied with
their demand; but is said instantly to have despatched due warning to
the queen.