GENERAL VIEW.
Gothic architecture had begun, before the close of the fifteenth
century, to show marks of decadence, and men's minds and tastes were
ripening for a change. The change, when it did take place, arose in
Italy, and was a direct consequence of that burst of modern
civilisation known as the revival of letters. All the characteristics
of the middle ages were rapidly thrown off. The strain of old Roman
blood in the modern Italians asserted itself, and almost at a bound,
literature and the arts sprang back, like a bow unstrung, into the
forms they had displayed fifteen hundred years before.
It became the rage to read the choice Greek and Latin authors, and to
write Latin with a pedantic purity. Can we wonder that in painting, in
sculpture, and in architecture, men reverted to the form, the style,
and the decorations of the antique compositions, statues, and
architectural remains? This was the more easy in Italy, as Gothic art
had never at any time taken so firm a hold upon Italians as it had
upon nations north of the Alps.
Though, however, the details and forms employed were all Roman, or
Graeco-Roman, they were applied to buildings essentially modern, and
used with much freedom and spirit. This revival of classic taste in
art is commonly and appropriately called Renaissance. In Italy it took
place so rapidly that there was hardly any transition period.
Brunelleschi, the first great Renaissance architect, began his work as
early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and his buildings, in
which classic details of great severity and purity are employed,
struck, so to speak, a keynote which had been responded to all over
Italy before the close of the fifteenth century.
To other countries the change spread later, and it found them less
prepared to welcome it unreservedly. Accordingly, in France, in
England, and in many parts of Germany, we find a transition period,
during which buildings were designed in a mixed style. In England, the
transition lasted almost through the sixteenth century.
As the century went on, a most picturesque and telling style, the
earlier phases of which are known as Tudor and the later as
Elizabethan, sprang up in England. It betrays in its mixture of Gothic
and classic forms great incongruities and even monstrosities; but it
allows unrestrained play for the fancies, and the best mansions and
manors of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, Burleigh, Bramshill,
and Audley End, are unsurpassed in their picturesqueness and romantic
charm.
The old red-brick, heavily chimneyed, and gabled buildings, with their
large windows divided by bold mullions and transoms, and their simple
noble outlines, are familiar to us all, and so are their
characteristic features. The great hall with its oriel or its bay,
the fine plastered ceiling, supported by heavy beams of timber; the
wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, and ornamented newel
post, and heavy-moulded handrail; the old wainscoted parlour, with its
magnificent chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling; these are all
essentially English features, and are full of vigour and life, as
indeed the work of every period of transition must almost necessarily
prove.
The transitional period in France produced exquisite works more
refined and elegantly treated than ours, but not so vigorous. Its
manner is known as the Francois Premier (Francis I.) style. No modern
buildings are more profusely ornamented, and yet not spoilt.
In Germany, the Castle of Heidelberg may be named as a well-known
specimen of the transition period, a period over which however we must
not linger. Suffice it to say, that sooner or later the change was
fully accomplished in every European country, and Renaissance
architecture, modified as climate, materials, habits, or even caprice
suggested, yet the same in its essential characteristics, obtained a
firm footing: this it has succeeded in retaining, though not to the
exclusion of other styles, for now nearly three centuries.
In Italy, Renaissance churches, great and small--from St. Peter's
downwards--and magnificent secular buildings, some, like the Vatican
Palace or the Library of St. Mark at Venice, for public purposes, but
most for the occupation of the great wealthy and princely families,
abound in Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan, and indeed
every great city.
In France, the transition period was succeeded by a time when vast
undertakings, _e.g._ the Hotel de Ville, the Louvre, the Tuileries,
Versailles, were carried out in the revived style with the utmost
magnificence, and were imitated in every part of the country in the
structures greater or smaller which were then built.
In England, the works of Inigo Jones, and of Wren, are the most famous
works of the developed style, and to the last-named architect we owe a
cathedral second to none in Europe for its beauty of outline, and play
of light and shade. To Germany, and the countries of the north-east
Europe, and to Spain and Portugal on the south, the style also
extended with no very great modification, either of its general forms
or of its details.
ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.
_Plan._
The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and symmetrical, and the
picturesqueness of the Gothic times was abandoned. The plans of
churches were not widely different from those in use in Italy before
the revival of classic art took place, but it will be remembered that
these were by no means so irregular or picturesque at any time as the
plans of French and English cathedral churches.
In secular architecture, the vast piles erected in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries by Italian, French, and Spanish architects are
to the last degree orderly in their disposition. They are adapted to a
great variety of purposes, and they display a varying degree of skill.
The palaces of Genoa are, on the one hand, among the cleverest
examples of planning existing; on the other hand, many of the palaces
in France are weak and poor to the last degree. As a rule the scale of
the plan is more considerable than in Gothic work. A very large
building is often not divided into more parts than a small one, or one
of moderate size. In St. Peter's, for example, there are only four
bays between the west front and the dome, everything being on a most
gigantic scale. As a contrast to this principle we may cite the nave
of the Gothic cathedral at Milan, which is not so long at St. Peter's,
but has at least thrice as many bays, and looks much larger in
consequence.
No style affords more room for skill in planning than the Renaissance,
and in no style is the exercise of such skill more repaid by results.
_Walls and Columns._
In the treatment of external walls, the mediaeval use of small
materials, involving many joints for the exterior of walls has quite
disappeared, and they are universally faced with stone or plaster, and
are consequently uniformly smooth. Perhaps the principal feature to
note is the very great use made of that elaborate sort of masonry in
which the joints of the stones are very carefully channelled or
otherwise marked, and which is known by the singularly inappropriate
name of rustic work. The basements of most Italian and French palaces
are rusticated, and in many cases (as the Pitti Palace, Florence)
rustic work covers an entire facade.
The Gothic mouldings in receding planes disappear entirely, and the
classic architrave takes their place. The orders are again revived and
are used (as the Romans often used them) as purely decorative features
added for the mere sake of ornament to a wall sufficient without them,
and are freely piled one upon the other. Palladio (a very influential
Italian architect) reproduced the use of lofty pilasters running
through two or even more storeys of the building, and often combined
one tall order and two short ones in his treatment of the same part
of the building, a contrivance which in less clever hands than his has
given rise to the greatest confusion.
The Renaissance architects also revived the late Roman manner of
employing the column and entablature. They frequently carried on the
top of a column a little square pier divided up as the architrave and
frieze proper to the column would be divided, and they surmounted it
with a cornice which was carried quite round this pier, and from this
curious compound pedestal an arch will frequently spring. The classic
portico, with pediments, was constantly employed by them; and small
pediments over window heads were common. A peculiarity worth mention
is the introduction in many Italian palaces of a great crowning
cornice, proportioned not to the size of the columns and of the order
upon which it rests (if an order be employed), but to the height of
the whole building. Much fine effect is obtained by means of this
feature; it is, however, better fitted for sunny Italy than for gloomy
England, and it is not an unmixed success when repeated in our
climate.
Towers are less frequently employed than by the Gothic architects, and
indeed in Italy the sky-line was less thought of at this period than
it was in the middle ages. In churches, towers sometimes occur,
nowhere more picturesque than those designed by Sir Christopher Wren
for many of his London parish churches. The frequent use of the dome
takes the place of the tower both in churches and secular buildings.
_Openings._
Openings are both flat-headed and semicircular, occasionally
elliptical, but hardly ever pointed. Renaissance buildings may be to
some extent divided into those which depend for effect upon window
openings, and those which depend chiefly upon architectural features
such as cornices, pilasters, and orders. Among the buildings where
fenestration (or the treatment of windows) is relied upon the palaces
of Venice stand pre-eminent as compositions admirably designed for
effect and very successful. In them the openings are massed near the
centre of the facade, and strong piers are left near the angles, a
simple expedient when once known, and one inherited from the Gothic
palaces in that city, but giving remarkable individuality of character
to this group of buildings.
In roofs, including vaults and domes, we meet with a divergence of
practice between Italy and France. In Italy low-pitched roofs were the
rule: the parapet alone often formed the sky-line, and the dome and
pediment are usually the only telling features of the outline. France,
on the other hand, revived a most picturesque feature of Gothic days,
namely, the high-pitched roof, employing it in the shape commonly
known as the Mansard[30] roof. Nothing adds more to the effectiveness
of the great French Renaissance buildings than these lofty terminals.
The dome is, however, the glory of this style, as it had been of the
Roman. It is the one feature by which revived and original classic
architects retain a clear and defined advantage over Gothic
architects, who, strange to say, all but abandoned the dome. The
mouldings and other ornaments of the Renaissance are much the same as
those of the Roman style, which the Italians revived; their sculptures
and their mural decorations were all originally drawn from classic
sources. These, however, attained very great excellence, and it is
probable that such decorative paintings as Raphael and his scholars
executed in Rome, at Genoa, at Mantua, and elsewhere, far surpass
anything which the old Roman decorative artists ever executed.
_Construction and Design._
The earlier Renaissance buildings are remarkable for the great use
which their architects made of carpentry, as the most modern
structures are for the use of wrought and cast-iron construction. As
regards carpentry, it is of course true that all the woodwork of the
classic periods, and much of that done in the Gothic period, has
perished, either through decay or fire; but making every allowance for
this, we must still recognise a very great increase in the employment
of timber as an integral part of large structures. Vaulted roofs for
example are comparatively rare, and domes, even when the inner dome is
of brickwork or masonry, have their outer envelope of carpentry. A
disuse of brick and rough masonry, or rather a constant effort to
conceal them from view, is a distinctive mark of Renaissance work. The
Roman method of facing rough walls with fine stone was resorted to in
the best buildings. In humbler buildings plaster is employed.
Renaissance architects made very free use of plaster. Inside and out
this material is utilised, not merely to cover surfaces, but to form
architectural features. Cornices, panels, and enrichments of all kinds
modelled in plaster are constantly employed in the interior of rooms
and buildings. On the exterior we constantly find imitations of
similar architectural features proper to stone executed in plaster and
simulating stone; a short-sighted practice which cannot be commended,
and which has only cheapness and convenience in its favour. There can
be no question of the fact that the features thus executed never
equal those done in stone in their effectiveness, and are far more
liable to decay.
Design in Renaissance buildings may be said to be directed towards
producing a telling result by the effect of the buildings taken as a
whole, rather than by the intricacy or the beauty of individual parts;
and herein lies one of the great contrasts between Renaissance and
Gothic architecture. A Renaissance building which fails to produce an
impression as a whole is rarely felt to be successful. No better
example of this can be given than the straggling, unsatisfactory
Palace of Versailles, magnificent as it is in dimensions and rich in
treatment. To the production of a homogeneous impression the
arrangement of plan, the proportion of storeys, the contrasts of voids
and solids, and above all the outline of the entire building, should
be devoted.
The general arrangement of buildings is usually strictly symmetrical,
one half corresponding to the other, and with some well-defined
feature to mark the centre. Of course in very large buildings this
does not occur, nor in the nature of things can it often take place in
the sides of churches; but the individual features of such buildings,
and all those parts of them which permit of symmetry in their
arrangement, always display it.
Proportion plays an important part in the design of Renaissance
buildings. The actual shape of openings, the proportion which they
bear to voids, the proportion of storeys to one another; and, going
into details, the proportions which the different features--_e.g._,
cornice, and the columns supporting it--should bear to one another,
have to be carefully studied. It is to the possession of a keen sense
of what makes a pleasing proportion and one satisfactory to the eye,
that the great architects of Italy owed the greater part of their
success.
Renaissance architecture is so familiar in its general features, and
these have been so constantly repeated, that we may not easily
recognise the great need for skill and taste which exists if they are
to be designed so as to produce the most refined effect possible. Many
of the successful buildings of the style owe their excellence to the
great delicacy and elegance of the mode in which the details have been
studied, rather than to the vigour and boldness with which the masses
have been shaped and disposed; and though grandeur is the noblest
quality of which the style is capable, yet many more opportunities for
displaying grace and refinement than for attaining grandeur offer
themselves, and by nothing are the best works of the style so well
marked out as by the success with which those opportunities have been
grasped and turned to account.
The concealment both of construction and arrangement is largely
practised in Renaissance buildings. Behind an exterior wall filled by
windows of uniform size and equally spaced, rooms large and small,
corridors, staircases, and other features have to be provided for.
This is completely in contrast to the Gothic principle of displaying
frankly on the outside the arrangement of what is within; but it must
be remembered that art often works most happily and successfully when
limited by apparently strict and difficult conditions, and these rules
have not prevented the great architects of the Renaissance from
accomplishing works where both the exterior and the interior are
thoroughly successful, and are brought into such happy harmony that
the difficulties have clearly been no bar to success. There is no
canon of art violated by such a method, the simple fact being that
Gothic buildings are designed under one set of conditions and
Renaissance under another.
It is less easy to defend the use of pilasters and columns large
enough to appear as though they were the main support of the building,
for purely decorative purposes; yet here perhaps the fault lies rather
in the extent to which the practice has been carried, and above all
the scale upon which it is carried out, than in anything else. Small
columns are constantly employed in Gothic buildings in positions where
they serve the aesthetic purpose of conveying a sense of support, but
where it is impossible for them to carry any weight. The Renaissance
architects have done the same thing on a large scale, but it must not
be forgotten that they only revived a Roman practice as part of the
ancient style to which they reverted, and that they are not
responsible for originating it.
It will be understood therefore that symmetry, strict uniformity, not
mere similarity, in features intended to correspond, and constant
repetition, are leading principles in Renaissance architecture. These
qualities tend to breadth rather than picturesqueness of effect, and
to similarity rather than contrast. Simplicity and elaboration are
both compatible with Renaissance design; the former distinguishes the
earlier and purer examples of the style, the latter those more recent
and more grandiose.
It should be observed that in the transition styles, such as our own
Elizabethan, or the French style of Francis the First, these
principles of design are mixed up in a very miscellaneous way with
those followed in the Gothic period. The result is often puzzling and
inconsistent if we attempt to analyse it with exactness, but rarely
fails to charm by its picturesque and irregular vividness.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Named after a French architect of the 17th century.
[Illustration: {FROM A TERRA-COTTA FRIEZE AT LODI.}]