THE COLOURING OF EXTERIORS
The colouring of the exteriors of important buildings should be, if
possible, effected by the use of the constructive materials, such as
stone, marble, granite and coloured terra-cotta in conjunction with
panels and friezes, etc., of enamelled tiles or mosaic, and even in the
case of less pretentious buildings a good deal might be done by ordinary
painting. Stucco plastered exteriors, however, should not necessarily be
painted in a uniform stone colour. Stone and soft bricks get black in
cities, but hard bricks retain their colour much better. A highly
polished material, such as granite or marble, does not go well with
freestone, owing to the violent contrast between the polished and dull
surfaces; also, any highly polished surface reflects light in such a way
that to the sight the form is often altered. Granite polished with emery
brings out the natural colour without giving a glaze to it, and is
therefore better for an outdoor effect. Bronze sheathing on doors and
bronze window and door framing, when it is not too dark in tone, goes
well with a grey granite building, and when such a building has some
panels of mosaic, or of coloured marble, such as “opus Sectile,” the
colour scheme is very effective. These materials are now being used very
much in some important buildings in the continental cities.
In using coloured marbles, the best effects, as a rule, are obtained
when two kinds only are used together, or merely one colour with white,
such as black and white, red and white, green and white or purple and
white. The finest early Italian marble altars, pulpits, and monuments
generally conform to one of these simple colour arrangements. The
principal parts of these works are executed in white marble and have
only one coloured marble introduced for columns, pilasters, friezes, and
panels at the bases and pediments. It may be mentioned that the white
marble of these monuments is yellowish in tone, and the black somewhat
greenish, thus producing a soft and mellow effect. At Palermo and Naples
there is a great deal of marble work of the later Renaissance and modern
times which has inlaid floral arabesques in various coloured marbles,
such as black, brown, orange and red, all in combination, the greater
part of which is unsatisfactory as it lacks repose, owing to the
harshness of the contrasting colours.
A notable exception to the use of two, or at most three, kinds of marble
in combination is seen in the magnificent “opus Alexandrinum” floor
pavements, and in other marble work of the Byzantine buildings, where
three kinds have been used, namely, porphyry, serpentine and white, with
sometimes little portions of yellow, but the purple of the porphyry and
the green of the serpentine, with their variegated tints, are colours
which are in complete accordance with each other, and the effect of this
arrangement is always pleasant and harmonious.
There is every reason why public buildings should be erected in natural
or artificially coloured materials. Such coloured materials would not be
more expensive than the grey, drab, and white stone and marble which is
now used so much for exterior elevations. If we cannot have rich
colouring on the outsides of our public buildings, we might at least be
permitted to have schemes of colour that would present quiet and
restrained harmonies, so that, even in a modest degree, they would
contribute to our pleasure by counteracting some of the greyness and
gloom that overshadows and often conceals the architectural beauty of
many buildings in our large towns and cities.
Architects and sculptors, as a rule, are responsible for the appearance
of the exteriors of buildings, and they only in exceptional cases appear
to have a love for colour, but they should remember that colour appeals,
if not to everybody, to a considerably large section of the public,
which includes both cultured and uncultured people, who can appreciate
a coloured building, but are not much interested in seeing a colourless
exterior.
Some of the simplest and inexpensive examples of exterior structural
colouring may be obtained by the use of red brick, and common stone
dressings on the façade of a building, if to this could be added some
notes of grey-blue in terra-cotta, or tiles, in bands, borders, or in
panels. Mosaic in panels would be better still, but we leave that out on
the score of expense. Such an example as this colour arrangement may be
seen in many buildings in Florence, Milan, and in the northern towns of
Italy. We might mention one, that of the front of the Hospital of the
Innocents, in Florence, which is a yellow-red brick elevation with
severe columns and arches of a warm-coloured stone, and in the spandrels
between the arches are the grey-blue and white roundels of Delia Robbia
glazed earthenware, the whole effect being a pleasant and warm colour
arrangement, and besides being extremely simple, it is certainly very
effective, and an admirable example of structural colouring.
At Verona, Venice, and many other places in Italy there are fine
examples of this style of exterior colouring where the red bricks give
the dominant tone, whether terra-cotta or stone be used for the
dressings, or glazed earthenware heraldic panels, mosaic, or fresco are
added to give the balance of blue, or other sharper notes of pure
colour, that may be required to complete the harmony.
It is a matter well known that in Northern Germany, Belgium, Holland,
and in England red brick buildings with stone and terra-cotta dressings
and sculptured work were erected as manor houses, palaces, and every
kind of public building, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, most
of which were fine examples, not only of architecture, but of exterior
colouring.
The front of the Doge’s Palace at Venice is an example of suitable
application of colour to public buildings. The sculpture and mouldings
are in white marble, and the wall surface has a chequered pattern of
marble slabs of a pale rose colour and white Istrian stone.
Fresco paintings and mosaic have often been employed in Italy on the
exteriors of churches and palaces. There is a beautiful bit of heraldic
painting, alternating with cardinals’ hats placed in squares, on a wall
behind the Duomo of Verona. This, however, and nearly all exterior wall
paintings have suffered very much by the weather in course of time, and
such decoration has no chance of lasting compared with the colour of the
more permanent materials of stone, marble, tiles, or mosaic.
In Germany, much more than other countries, exterior colour-painting and
decoration has always found great favour. Even to-day the exteriors of
many buildings, especially hostelries and restaurants, are painted as
they were in the sixteenth century. A great revival of colour
decoration took place in Germany, as it did also in France, about the
middle of the last century. We shall consider this at more length when
making an historical survey of the subject in later chapters, and
endeavour to describe some of the methods and principles of colour
decoration adopted and carried out by the old decorators of England and
the continental nations. Before leaving, however, this portion of our
subject it may be useful and interesting to notice an important example
of Venetian exterior polychromy of the late medieval period.
The building in question is known as the Ca’ D’Oro, or “Golden House,”
so called on account of the great quantity of gilding that it formerly
had on its façade. This building must have been erected on the site of a
former medieval palace, for the rebuilding of it was begun in 1424,
contemporary with that of the Piazzeta façade of the Ducal Palace at
Venice. The architect or “stone-mason” was Giovanni Buon, who was
assisted by his son, Bartolomeo, the palace being erected for a nobleman
named Marino Contarini, at St. Sophia on the Grand Canal. The existing
documents, which consist of the original memoranda of Contarini, dated
1431-2, and preserved among the papers of the Procurators of St. Mark’s,
give in detail the orders for the gold and colours, and how they were to
be used in the decoration of the façade. From these and also from the
traces of the colour and gold which Signor G. Boni found on parts of
the building in 1885, we are enabled to form an estimate of the
polychromatic decorations of this medieval palace, which may serve as an
illustration of the external colour-decoration of the period.
From these evidences we find that the balls of Istrian stone which
decorated the embattlements were gilt, also the carved mouldings, the
abacus of each capital, lions, shields, dentels, rose-flowers, and other
salient points of the carvings. The backgrounds of capitals, soffits,
some shields and bands were painted ultramarine blue, “fine azure
ultramarine, in such a manner that it may last longer” (that is, twice
coated). The blue ground of the soffits was studded with small golden
stars. It is interesting to note how all the stonework was painted in
the early times, when it is mentioned that all the red stones of the
façade and the red dentels were to be painted with oil and varnish in
still deeper tones of red, “so that they will look red.” It appears that
this was done in order to give a look of uniformity to the red Verona
_Broccatello_ marble, which, being composed of the detritus of
ammonites, had a variegated, or patchy-like appearance when newly cut,
and therefore its effect, when new, did not find favour in the eyes of
the decorator, as perhaps he thought that in its virgin state its
appearance disturbed the broad colour effect he was aiming for. The
crowning cornice was painted with white lead and oil, and also in a like
manner the roses and vines on the façade. The backgrounds of the latter
carved decoration, and that of the fields of the cusps of the window
tracery and of the cornice foliage were painted black, in order to give
the effect of penetration.
The parts of the façade which were painted white were those of bluish or
yellowish Istrian stone, the natural colour of which the Venetians did
not like, so they generally obliterated it with a coating of white
paint. In the memoranda it is also stated that the stone battlements
were to be “painted and veined, to make them look like marble.”
The imitation of marbles and woods by painting the commoner stone, or
inferior wood in simulation of the more costly materials, though rightly
condemned as a common practice by purists has, however, been largely
practised by the decorators of primitive Greece, Pompeii, Rome, and of
the East, as well as of the Renaissance and later periods. The old
decorators had no scruples in regard to the painting of plaster or
common stone to make it look like marble; but generally in such examples
the imitation was more strictly confined to objects and surfaces where
the more costly materials would have been used if sufficient means had
been available to procure them.
The modern practice of imitating a costly wood by graining an inferior
one hardly ever obtained in the earlier periods; the old decorators
often enough painted all kinds of wood in any arbitrary way or colour,
but they did not grain them to simulate other woods. Although the
imitation of wood by graining is not practised so much to-day as it was
in the Victorian time, there is still a good deal of it done. Even worse
than this is the modern practice of erecting wooden columns and
entablatures as shop fronts, especially those of public-houses and
gin-palaces, in simulation of a stone construction, which may be an
excusable sham, but there is no reason why this stone construction in
wood should be painted to imitate costly marble, which only makes a
double sham. We can call to mind the instance of some large and heavy
doors in a Government building of this country, which are, of course,
made in panelled wood, but have been painted to imitate grey granite!
The reader can think that the limit of imitative painting is here
reached, if he can imagine the deception that is presented of two slabs
of heavy granite swinging on hinges.
In the case of the Ca’ D’Oro battlements, and of similar imitations of
marble in the painted decoration of late medieval buildings in Venice,
we can see the expression of a striving after the rich effects of colour
that were obtained in the earlier Byzantine architecture by the use of
the real marbles, which were employed to give the structural and
permanent colour to edifices built in that style. It ought to be
remembered that the Venetian Gothic architecture, more especially in
colouring--and we might safely say all Venetian art of later periods
with its rich and beautiful colour--was strongly influenced by the
splendour of Byzantine and Eastern colouring, as expressed in the
mosaics, enamels, and richly-coloured marbles that were used so much to
line the walls inside and outside of the Byzantine churches and palaces.
Although such coloured decoration as that of the façade of the Ca’ D’Oro
might be classed as a decadent and artificial system, in so far as it
was an imitation, or an attempt in applied colour at the survival of the
more permanent Byzantine coloured architecture, still the general effect
of the colour scheme, where full-toned blues, reds, black, white, and
gold were frankly employed, must have been extremely rich and
interesting, when seen in the radiant sunshine, and reflected in the
waters of the Grand Canal. We might add that the colouring of this
medieval palace, in common with that employed on all Venetian buildings
of that time, was also in a great measure a reflex of the powerful and
sensuous colouring of the East, which strongly influenced, if it was not
indeed the chief source of the distinctive colour harmony that was the
crown and glory of Venetian art.