ITALIAN DECORATION AND ORNAMENT
From the twelfth to the end of the sixteenth century was a long period
of artistic activity in Italy, when nearly every building, public and
private, sacred and secular, was decorated in colour, with paintings and
ornament on walls, ceilings and other surfaces, and further enriched
with sculpture, and carving in wood, stone or metal. Italian decorative
art has in the past so influenced and modified the native art of France,
Germany and England, and its influence being still felt and expressed in
much of our modern decoration, that an apology is hardly needed if we
devote the present chapter to some consideration of the architectural
colouring and ornament of the Italian Renaissance.
Apart from the great frescoes and mosaics of the Italian churches and
palaces, where pictorial compositions, or decorative pictures, with or
without architectural or landscape backgrounds, give the required colour
finish to buildings, there exists the very important class of carved,
painted, or inlaid ornamentation; though in a measure secondary in
[Illustration:
_To face p. 58._] [_Victoria and Albert Museum._
PLATE 14.--MODEL OF CHAPEL OF ST. CATHERINE, CHURCH OF ST. MAURIZO,
MILAN.]
the scale of art to the best examples of figure composition, it is in no
way, when appropriately designed and applied, inferior as legitimate
material for the proper decoration of a building.
The Italians made great use of both carved and painted ornament, which
was usually well designed, and in their best work it was employed in a
restrained sense as to quantity; the colour and distribution of it,
whether in the flat, or in relief, enhanced the beauty of their
architecture by assisting, but in no way disturbing, the architectural
repose of the building.
The Italian artists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries used
coloured ornament, both of the geometrical and floral varieties, largely
in friezes, bands and borders, as a rich kind of framing to enclose, and
also to separate, panels which contained their figure compositions, and
these ornamental framings were extremely valuable as contrasting foils
to the more pictorial compositions which they enclosed. In some cases
the ornament itself occupied even as much, and sometimes more, space on
the curved and flat surfaces, such as domes, spandrels, panels, and
walls, as the figures themselves. A good example of this may be seen in
the mosaics of the semi-dome of San Clemente at Rome and also on that of
the Church of St. Maria Maggiore, both of which are examples of
decoration which are in singular and good harmony with the architecture
of the respective churches. We see in this ornament of the twelfth
century on the semi-dome of San Clemente a specimen of that variety
which was developed, with some modifications, by Cimabue, Torriti,
Giotto, and other Italian artists in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
The particular class of ornament we have now to examine was mainly
founded on Roman work, but in addition it was mixed with some
geometrical forms, which in the painted variety were copied from the
inlaid marble decorations and mosaic patterns of earlier times, and in
these geometrical patterns, as well as in some of the floriated
scroll-work, derived from early Roman sources, there may be detected a
strong influence of Persian or Eastern design. (Plate 16.) It may be
said that in all flat ornament used in the decoration of buildings of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy, either in painting,
mosaic, or inlaid work, Byzantine, Saracenic, or Persian influences may
be noticed. This is apparent in the geometrical interlacings, and also
in the more natural floral and foliage forms of Western design, where we
see strong reflections of certain types of the flat variety of ornament,
which is common in the decoration of tiles, pottery, carpets, and other
textiles of Asiatic countries.
The Romanesque variety of ornament may be seen in the bands, friezes and
borders which frame the paintings attributed to Cimabue in the upper
church of St. Francesco at Assisi, and
[Illustration:
_To face p. 60._]
PLATE 15.--MOSAIC DECORATION: CHURCH OF ST. JOHN LATERAN, ROME.
(By Jacopo Torriti, 1287-1292.)]
[Illustration:
_To face p. 61._]
PLATE 16.--ORNAMENT IN MOSAIC ON THE WINDOW REVEALS: CHURCH OF ST. JOHN
LATERAN, ROME: 1287-1292.]
around most of the frescoes by Giotto in the same church.
The drawings on Plate 16, from the mosaics of the window reveals in the
Church of St. John, Lateran, by Torriti, illustrate the type of ornament
that was common in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth
centuries. Plate 15 shows the position this ornament occupied in the
window reveals, below the semi-dome, and how well it serves as a
contrasting division between the figures of the Apostles on the wall
spaces between the windows. Here the ornament plays a most effective
decorative rôle in combination with the figure subjects of the tribune,
and goes to prove that Torriti was fully sensible of the value of
ornamental contrast in decorative mosaic, and that he was further aided
in obtaining the desired unity of effect by his proper use of colour and
simplicity of execution. This work testifies that Torriti was a master
in the science of decoration, as he applied the true principles of his
art with a correct and profound judgment, and is therefore worthy to be
classed among the great forerunners of the Renaissance, and of modern
art.
About the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy was in a
highly prosperous condition, numerous churches, civic and private
palaces, guild houses and merchants’ houses were erected, most of which
were of magnificent proportions, and were richly decorated with
sculptured marbles, frescoes, and other ornamentation. The civic
palaces and merchants’ houses generally presented a solid and massive
appearance, the style of architecture, especially in Florence and
Central Italy, being a sort of mixture of Romanesque and Gothic styles,
the latter being expressed in the window-heads, doorways, lower
arcading, and in other details. The massive appearance of the façades
were somewhat lightened by the battlements of the top storey and by the
boldly projecting cornices and string-courses under them, and under the
windows. These projecting features sometimes took the form of a gallery
carried on brackets or corbels, between which the machicolations
appeared. Types of these civic palaces with their elegant and lofty
towers are seen in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, and the Palazzo
Publico at Siena. Many castle-like guild houses of the fourteenth
century are still in existence in Florence and in other cities of Italy,
and representations of such may be seen pictured in the frescoes of
Giotto at Assisi, and in paintings by other artists in Florence and
Siena, where the interiors, with their furniture and decorations, as
well as the exteriors are represented. The ceilings of the rooms in
these houses were generally flat, or coffered between the beams, or the
flat ceiling was often painted to represent coffered panelling. The
walls were sometimes painted from the floor up to the dividing line of
the deep frieze with imitations of textile hangings, decorated with
geometrical patterns of a severe design, heraldic devices, or
conventional
[Illustration:
_To face p. 62._]
PLATE 17.--ITALIAN GOTHIC DECORATION IN THE CHURCH OF ST. ANASTASIA AT
VERONA.]
[Illustration:
_To face p. 63._]
PLATE 18.--DECORATION OF A PORTION OF ONE OF THE ROOMS IN THE
MACCHIAVELLI PALACE, FLORENCE.
(From a model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.)]
flowers and foliage. These imitation hangings were represented as
suspending from a horizontal rod, hanging perfectly straight, or in some
cases from fixed points at regular intervals so as to give them a
festoon-like appearance. This was a common method of decorating the
lower wall space of house and palace interiors, as well as of churches
and chapels. A good illustration of this method of decoration is seen in
the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where the lower walls under the
frescoes of Pinturrichio, Botticelli, C. Rosselli, Perugino, and others
are decorated with painted imitations of tapestry hangings. The friezes
of the old houses under notice were very important features in the
decoration, and were as a rule extremely beautiful in design and colour,
the designs usually consisting of a row of fruit trees, such as the
orange, lemon, pomegranate, apple, etc., alternating, and placed behind
and above a net-work fence, which usually divided the lower wall
decoration from the frieze proper, while between the trees, and at the
bottom appeared groups of gay flowers, and singing birds at intervals
helped to enliven the scene. The friezes often represented stately
gardens or orchards, painted in the lively colours of nature, with the
backgrounds behind the trees and flowers in black, and the spaces
between a deep vermilion red. In some cases the garden frieze was
continuous, and complete in itself, and other examples, as in the wall
decoration from an old house formerly in the Mercato Vecchio, and now in
the monastery of San Marco at Florence, the trees were placed under
Gothic canopies, with little towers between, or in arcading supported by
pillars, above which were triangular panels filled with heraldic
devices. Some of the wall decorations of these old houses had other
schemes of diaper-like ornamentation, consisting of lozenge-shaped and
foiled figures interlacing at the angles, some spaces being occupied by
figures of ladies on horseback, and others by various kinds of birds
grouped in landscapes, while the alternating spaces were occupied by
circles containing shields with heraldic devices, and around these
foliated ornament. The general colour scheme of the walls, frieze, and
ceiling was daring, yet delightful. It consisted of a warm harmony of
strong reds, black, various greens, golden yellows and russets, modified
here and there by the introduction of pearly greys, umber tones, and
mellowed white. Rooms decorated in this fashion would be very sumptuous
and rich, and would not require the aid of pictures to help out the
colour scheme. (Plate 18.) A satisfactory finish to such apartments was
admirably achieved by the furniture of the period, which consisted of
beautiful Cassoni, in carved or inlaid woods, or decorated in
gesso-work, painted and gilded, with representations of lively scenes of
the tournament, of hunting and hawking parties, and other romantic
subjects. The chairs, the seats against the walls, and the table were of
carved walnut, chestnut or cypress wood. If we add to these such
accessories as Majolica dishes of
[Illustration:
_PLATE XIX_
PORTION OF COVED-CEILING DECORATION BY GIULIO ROMANO IN THE PALAZZO
VECCHIO AT MANTUA]
lustred pottery, copper and brass vessels, Venetian glass and Oriental
carpets, we may conceive some idea of the magnificent effect that a
reception-room must have presented in one of these old Florentine houses
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In the charming medley of forms and colour which the wall decorations of
these houses presented we may clearly see the development of Giotto’s
Italian Gothic ornament, still mixed with some of the older Romanesque
forms that Torriti loved to use, and while Saracenic influences are not
absent, the chief element of beauty in the mixture is the definite
expression of natural form and colour, obtained by the trees, flowers,
and birds which are introduced in such a dignified manner that they
harmonise perfectly with the severer forms of the ornament to which they
are allied.
It is to be regretted that this interesting class of ornament was not
more fully developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alongside,
if not instead of, the less virile but more classical type which was
adopted and developed by Raffaelle and his pupils, Giovanni da Udine,
Giulio Romano, and Perina del Vaga, when they came to decorate the
Loggie of the Vatican, the interiors of the “Villa Madama,” Palazzo del
Tè, the Ducal Palace at Mantua (Plates 19 and 20), and the Castello
Sant’ Angelo at Rome.
In the early years of the sixteenth century excavations were being made
at San Pietro in Vincoli and among the ruins of the Palace of Titus, in
hopes, as Vasari states, of finding antique statues, when certain
subterranean chambers were discovered that were decorated with small
“grottesche,” so called because they were found in these grottos, or
underground chambers; some of the latter were evidently the bathrooms of
the palace. Other examples of this kind of decoration were found in the
Coliseum, and in the Baths of Diocletian at Rome. Some of these ancient
Roman grotesques were modelled in stucco in very low relief, and others
were painted, having subjects of mythological figures, amorini, stories,
and ornament. (Plate 21.) Raffaelle and his pupil Giovanni da Udine went
to see these works, and were so astonished with their novelty, freshness
and beauty that they resolved to imitate or adapt them for the
decoration of the Loggie of the Vatican. Thus Raffaelle and Giovanni
first conceived the idea of a _risorgimento_, a resurrection as well as
a revival of these antique forms of decoration, and adopted the scheme
and style of ornamentation for the piers, pilasters, arches and friezes
of the Vatican Loggie. The painted portion of the pilasters have
elaborate scroll-work, based on acanthus foliage, with designs
consisting of fruit, flowers, trees, birds, quadrupeds, human figures,
and enlarged copies of antique gems and bas-reliefs in panels surrounded
by decorated mouldings, all in a rich scheme of polychromy on
cream-coloured grounds. The vaulted ceilings of the Loggie are divided
into compartments having stucco mouldings, some of which contain painted
figure subjects, and others are executed in low-relief stucco work. The
decorations of the lower parts are now, however, in a bad state, being
mostly perished or rubbed off, but those of the ceilings and arches are
in a fairly good condition.
In some of the apartments of the Popes, in the Castello Sant’ Angelo at
Rome, there are many examples of this kind of decoration, executed by Da
Udine, Giulio Romano and Perina del Vaga, among which may be mentioned
the beautiful little bathroom, the walls and ceiling of which are
entirely covered with arabesques and grotesques, in colour on a white
ground, which Giovanni da Udine painted for Pope Leo.
The “Villa Madama,” near Rome, was built, or finished about 1521, from
designs by Raffaelle, a year or so after his death, and the interior was
decorated by Giovanni da Udine, chiefly in stucco, or _gesso duro_, in
the same manner as the work in the Vatican Loggie. The decorated portion
of this villa is chiefly confined to the great Loggia and its vestibule,
and the two square recesses between them. The Loggia is divided into
three bays, the centre one having a domed roof, while the other two have
vaulted roofs, each roof being divided into four segments. The designs
on the piers are executed in _gesso duro_, and consist of conventional
renderings of the vine, maple, and other plants, admirable in
conception and skilful in technique. This work, together with the relief
decorations of the circular vaulting of the recesses, and soffits of the
arches, is left uncoloured. Colour is used sparingly amongst the high
reliefs which cover the greater part of the central dome. There are four
panels in this dome with paintings of the figures of Neptune, Jupiter,
Juno and Plato which are attributed to Giulio Romano. The groin
ceiling-ribs of the right and left bays are painted with bands of
arabesques and foliage designs, and the surfaces of the vaults are
richly decorated with coloured ornaments. In the centre of each of these
four vault divisions there is a large oval panel, one set of four having
groups of sporting amorini, and the other four have mythological
subjects. The three recesses have similar decorations. Much of the
painting has suffered from damp, and wet from the roof, but in the
better preserved remains of the painted work, and of the stucco
decorations, there is sufficient evidence left to justify the great
praise that Vasari has bestowed upon it, for on the whole it is more
refined in design and execution than Giovanni’s early work in the Loggie
of the Vatican. Similar kind of stucco decoration may be seen on the
richly ornamented columns of the courtyard in the Palazzo Vecchio, at
Florence, and similar painted arabesques on the vaulted ceilings and
arch soffits of the same courtyard, though now much decayed and darkened
by age and weather.
In the Ducal Palace at Mantua are three
[Illustration:
_To face p. 68._]
PLATE 20.--ARABESQUE DECORATIONS IN THE DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA.
(By Giulio Romano: Sixteenth Century)]
celebrated “Camerini,” or apartments of Isabella d’Este, who became
Marchioness of Mantua by her marriage in 1490 with the Marquis Giovanni
Francesco Gonzaga. These rooms are in the part of the palace known as
the “Paradiso,” and were beautifully decorated by the best known artists
of the period to the orders of the Marchioness. The first of the three
apartments was the music-room, the walls of which were lined with
“intarsia” of different coloured woods representing views of towns. The
ceiling was panelled and decorated with ornament and heraldic devices in
low relief, and the frieze was formed of musical instruments carved in
the wood. The second apartment was the painting-room, which from the
point of decorative beauty was the most important of the three. Its
chief interest consisted in the six pictures which Isabella had painted
to her orders by Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa, Perugino, and Bellini. These
famous pictures, with the exception of the one painted by the last-named
artist, which cannot be traced, were taken from their places on the
walls of the room, and sold by Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga in 1627 to
Cardinal Richelieu, and were afterwards bought from the heirs of the
Cardinal by the French Government, and are now in the Louvre at Paris. A
model of one side of this beautiful “Camerino,” two-thirds of its actual
size, with copies of the three allegorical pictures which once adorned
its walls, together with the richly carved candelabra-like pillars that
separated the pictures, a portion of the frieze and panelled ceiling in
gold and blue, with the marble doorway by Cristoforo Romano is now in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, and another copy is in the Dublin
National Museum. The third apartment was reserved for receptions and was
decorated with delicately carved devices, mottoes, and the heraldic arms
of the family, executed in wood-carving and stucco finished in gold and
having a blue background. The celebrated pictures that originally
adorned the walls of the painting-room are elaborately finished and
highly imaginative works, and are therefore to be regarded more as easel
paintings than decorative compositions. This small room, which measures
only seventeen feet by ten feet, must have appeared, in its original
state, a veritable cabinet of the finest art and craftsmanship of the
Renaissance period.
Mantua is very rich in the work of Giulio Romano (1492-1546) and of his
pupils, Primaticcio and Niccolo dell’ Abbate; the two latter with
Serlio, the architect, were chiefest among the many Italian artists and
craftsmen who were summoned to Fontainebleau by the French King,
François I, and were in a great measure responsible for the spread of
the Italian influences which were so apparent in the art of the early
French Renaissance.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XXI_
PORTION OF DECORATION OF COVED CEILING IN THE VATICAN BY RAFFAELLE.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
Giulio Romano settled in Mantua in 1524, when he was employed by
Federico II to alter and decorate some of the rooms in the Ducal Palace.
He was also the architect and decorator of the Palazza del Tè, the
country house of Federico, near Mantua. The paintings executed on the
walls of these palaces by Giulio Romano and his pupils, Primaticcio,
Francesco Penni, Rinaldo of Mantua, and Niccolo dell’ Abbate, consist
chiefly of mythological subjects, and historical events from classic
literature, battles of giants, gladiatorial combats, market-place,
seaside and fishing scenes, with occasional subjects from the Old
Testament, all of which were painted in the vigorous style and strong
colouring so characteristic of Romano’s work. On the other hand, there
were many cabinets and apartments in these palaces that were richly
decorated with beautiful designs in stucco-work and fanciful arabesques,
painted in colours and in monochrome, with great brilliancy and freedom,
refined in conception, with lightness of touch in the execution, and not
wanting in the frank gaiety of colour expression. This kind of relief
and painted decoration occurs mostly on the vaulted and coved ceilings,
on soffits of the arches, in spandrels, and on numerous borders, friezes
and pilasters. (Plate 21.) The purely arabesque ornamentation usually
occupied the large spaces on ceilings and elsewhere that surround the
central oval, circular or rectangular panels which often contained
figure-subjects of a mythological character, or sometimes heads, busts,
or devices of various kinds, and usually consists of scroll-like foliage
of vines and other plants, interspersed with sporting amorini, birds,
and other creatures (Fig. 21), precisely a reflex of the grottesche
decorations of the Roman Imperial times, except that such painted
Italian arabesques of Raffaelle’s time, and later, would be more often,
in the earlier Roman period, modelled in very low stucco-relief, for the
ancients used their magnificent stucco composition to a far greater
extent in decoration than the Renaissance artists, whether it was
afterwards coloured or not.
It will be seen that all this kind of decoration, whether ancient or
modern, painted or modelled, was entirely an applied decoration, and
therefore non-constructional; that is to say, the ornamentation was
applied to large surfaces of walls, ceilings, piers and pilasters, etc.,
after the building was completed. The decoration was added, and did not
grow out of the structure, and was therefore unlike the Egyptian, Greek,
Persian, Arabian, Medieval Gothic, and much of the Byzantine decoration,
which grew out of the structure, as an inevitable growth, and which
would be illogical and incongruous if applied to any other style of
architecture than the particular style that had given birth to it.
The case is different in the applied decoration of the Roman and
Pompeian houses, baths and grottos, and in the Renaissance adaptation
of this kind of adornment, which does not appear to be strictly
connected with the architecture. Similarly shaped spaces, for example,
are found to be decorated in many different ways, some vaulted ceilings
are covered with elaborate scroll-work, others are divided into panels
of various shapes having stucco mouldings planted on the walls
surrounding them, or dividing all forms of space divisions. Wall spaces
are decorated in the Roman examples, but more especially in Pompeian
decoration, without much regard to the wall as an architectural feature,
for we find superimposed forms of thin columns, supporting fantastical
and impossible entablatures, curtains, festoons, scroll-work,
landscapes, figure subjects, animals, and all kinds of arbitrary
spacings. It must be said, however, that if this applied decoration is
unconnected with the building, it is very interesting and often charming
in its spontaneity of colour and form, while the beauty and refined
technique of the low-relief figure and animal forms go a long way to
counterbalance the illogical nature of the general surface adornment.