PALACE ARCHITECTURE OF THE FLORENTINE RENAISSANCE
While it was in church edifices that the neo-classic ideas in
architecture were first embodied, it was in vast palatial houses that
they were most extensively carried out. Early in the fifteenth century
luxurious living began to prevail among the upper classes of society,
and sumptuous private dwellings on an unprecedented scale were now
erected in Florence. Magnificent palaces had, indeed, been built in the
later Middle Ages which were among the chief ornaments of the mediæval
towns; but those were civic monuments expressive of the communal spirit
and artistic culture of their time. Such buildings as the Palazzo
Vecchio in Florence, the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, the Ducal Palace
of Venice, and many others were the material manifestation of a state
of municipal pride, and popular love of beauty and propriety in public
monuments. Upon these buildings the best craftsmanship was lavished,
while the dwellings of the most wealthy citizens were modest in scale,
though often beautiful in design.
[Illustration:
Plate IV
PALAZZO RICCARDI
Florence]
A fine example of an unostentatious, though dignified, house of a
Florentine Patrician of the thirteenth century still extant is the
Palazzo Mozzi. Its broad walled front of two stories over a high
basement, with narrow string courses of simple profile and moderate
projection, its well-faced and finely jointed masonry, and its plain
window openings of the characteristic mediæval Florentine form in
which the extrados is pointed while the intrados is round (Fig.
56), is a model of architectural simplicity, while it expresses the
superior social station of its inmates. A few smaller houses of similar
character as to quietness and simplicity of design, many of them suited
to the needs of humbler citizens, have been preserved in some of the
Italian towns. A few interesting examples of these may be found in
Perugia. They have plain stone fronts, with simple string courses
marking off the stories, and windows in some cases wholly round arched,
in others having the extrados pointed with an ogee curve (Fig. 57).
[Illustration: FIG. 56.]
[Illustration: FIG. 57.]
But early in the fifteenth century vast structures for private use
began to arise which rivalled in scale, and in costly splendour, the
great civic monuments of the former time. The first of these larger
palaces in Florence is the one now known as the Riccardi, designed
by the architect Michelozzi for Cosimo de’ Medici in 1430. It is a
princely edifice, and though comparatively plain in general aspect, it
is in many ways superior in architectural character to all of those
which followed it. Like other buildings of its class it is in plan a
survival of the ancient Roman house, having the form of a rectangle
enclosing an open court. In elevation (Plate IV) it has two stories
over a high basement, and is grandly simple in design, and fine in its
proportions. In buildings of this class there is no peculiar internal
system which requires attention before the outside can be understood.
The apartments have generally flat wooden ceilings, and where vaulting
occurs, as usually in the basement and sometimes in the upper stories,
it is of a kind that calls for no buttresses against the wall, the
thrusts being met by the thickness of the walls, and by the weight of
the upper stories. The façades of the Riccardi have no engaged orders,
but the great cornice has classic profiling, and its bed mouldings have
dentils and other classic details, while modillions of semi-classic
form support the corona. The window openings are of thoroughly mediæval
character in their larger features, and are each composed of a round
arch embracing two smaller arches with a central shaft and jamb
shafts, but the shafts have the tapering form with entasis, and the
_congé_, of classic design. The capitals are of nondescript form,
with a channelled bell, an ovolo with egg and dart ornament, reversed
Corinthianesque leafage depending from its angles, and a Corinthian
abacus in each. The openings are uniform in each story, and their
archivolts are treated in the mediæval Italian manner, the extrados
being struck from a higher centre than the intrados. The graduated
heights of the stories, and the varied treatment of the wall surfaces
by rough-faced rustication in the basement, smooth-faced rustication in
the principal story, and smooth close-jointed masonry in the top story,
add much to the beauty of this finest of early Renaissance palaces. It
is worthy of notice that here, as in the Italian domestic architecture
of the Renaissance generally, the roof is not visible in a near view of
the building, and no dormers or chimney-stacks appear. The conditions
of climate did not call for a high-pitched roof, nor for any of those
features that are naturally developed in the architecture of more
northern countries. The general outline of the edifice is thus severely
simple, and its agreeable effect is due to its fine proportions and
arrangement of parts. It is noticeable, too, that the reveals are
shallow on the outside, in marked contrast to the deep reveals of
the later Renaissance architecture. This is not only conducive to
quietness of effect, but it has the advantage of giving to the interior
the maximum of light--since the farther out the glass is placed the
less will be the shadow thrown upon it, while the internal reveal,
especially when it is splayed, reflects light into the interior.
The interior court of the Renaissance palace has a vaulted arcade on
each of its four sides beneath the overhanging upper stories. These
arcades are, in the Riccardi (Fig. 58), supported on columns of classic
form with capitals of a composite type, but of no great beauty. The
arches spring directly from these capitals, and have classic profiles,
while two string courses, with an interval forming a semblance of a
frieze, give the effect of an entablature passing over the crowns of
the arches.
The spacious apartments of these early Florentine palaces are generally
fine in their proportions and simple in their architectural treatment.
They are, however, rarely well lighted. The ceilings are at a great
height above the comparatively low windows, and the windows are
disposed for external effect, rather than for convenience within. Thus
while these apartments are stately, they are rarely adapted to cheerful
indoor life, and in a northern climate they would be intolerably
gloomy. When used, as they now often are, as galleries for the
display of works of art, they do not serve well, very small portions
of their vast wall spaces being well lighted, and the disposition of
the openings often such as to produce embarrassing cross lights and
reflections.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--Court of the Riccardi.]
Vasari tells us that “after Brunelleschi, Michelozzi was held to be
the most consistent architect of his time, and the one who with best
judgment planned either palaces, monasteries or houses.” And concerning
the Riccardi he adds, “All the more praise is due him since this was
the first Palace in Florence built in the modern manner, and which has
a disposition of apartments both useful and beautiful.”[86] He does not
explain in what the superior planning of the Riccardi consists, and it
is doubtful whether these remarks were based on any definite idea. But
however this may be, the building is indeed a stately and magnificent
one, of quiet aspect, and for the most part free from meaningless
features.
Hardly any other one of the Florentine palaces of the Renaissance
equals the Riccardi in beauty and dignity. That part of the Pitti which
was begun by Brunelleschi in 1435, though equally free from meaningless
features, is almost too bald to be called an architectural design. Each
story of its long façade is as monotonous as the Claudian aqueduct
which it closely resembles.
The front of the small palace called the Strozzino is in the style of
the Riccardi, and is attributed to the same architect. It has but one
story above the high basement, and the treatment is even more mediæval
in character, the window arches having the pointed form.
The Palazzo Strozzi, begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Majano, follows
the same general scheme as the Riccardi, but is less admirable in its
proportions. Vasari tells us that Majano carried the exterior almost
to completion, but that the court and the great cornice were the work
of Simione Pollaiuolo, called Il Cronaca. This cornice, he says, was
copied from an ancient model in Rome which the architect had drawn and
measured with great exactness, but he had here enlarged the scale to
suit the proportions of the building.[87] I think it may be said that
he enlarged it too much, and that, in common with the cornices of most
of these Renaissance palaces, it is too heavy. The Strozzi, more than
any other of the palatial houses of its time, has the fortress-like
character which indicates the turbulent condition of Florence in the
fifteenth century. The vast basement of ponderous masonry, with no
window openings near the ground, gives a gloomy and forbidding aspect
to the front, and marks a survival of the savage habits of feudal life
in this epoch of advanced Italian civilization and culture.
The Palazzo Pazzi, now known as the Quaratesi, is attributed to
Brunelleschi, and has the marks of his style in the details of the
windows. It has the same general scheme of design as the foregoing
houses, and its stories are proportioned with the same pleasing
gradation in their heights that we have noticed in the Riccardi;
but the wall surfaces are different, being uniformly overlaid with
stucco. A series of small circular openings, with mouldings over the
windows of the topmost full story, resembling those of the drum of the
Pazzi chapel, seem to give further evidence of Brunelleschi’s hand.
Still another building in this style, though of even plainer external
character, having small undivided openings, is the Palazzo Gondi,
designed by Guiliano da San Gallo toward the close of the fifteenth
century. The arcades of the court of the Gondi have Corinthian columns
of great elegance, and the arches have ornamental keystones.
Another type of Florentine palace of the early Renaissance is
exemplified in the Palazzo Guardagni, attributed to Simone Pallaiuolo.
It has an open loggia at the top, and the portals and windows have
the round arched form with the extrados pointed. This is a thoroughly
reasonable and appropriate Italian style of domestic building, and
if it had been consistently adhered to, without any admixture of the
classic elements that were soon introduced, the domestic architecture
of Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries might have merited
our unqualified admiration. On the simple and appropriate scheme of
the Palazzo Guardagni there was opportunity for such variations of
disposition, proportion, and details as utility and taste might call
for, without any resort to neo-classic elements.
The foregoing buildings, though larger and more elegant than the
private houses of the Middle Ages, are still in their main features
largely mediæval in character. But before the later buildings of this
class were erected, another phase of design in palatial architecture
arose in which the spirit of the Renaissance is more manifest in the
application of the classic orders to the walls of the façades. This
application, as is well known, occurs first in the Palazzo Rucellai,
designed by the architect Alberti and built just after the middle of
the fifteenth century. We have already (pp. 35–42) seen something of
Alberti’s use of classic orders in church architecture, and we have
now to consider further the influences which were guiding the public
taste as they are reflected in the works of the man who on the whole
did most at this early epoch to establish the new architectural ideas.
Alberti was a scholar and a man of high social station. Like most men
of culture in Florence he had a taste for the fine arts, but, as Vasari
tells us, he “applied himself not only to discover the principles and
the proportions of antiquity, but also, being naturally so inclined,
much more to writing than to practice.”[88] The moving purpose with
him was thus primarily archæological and literary, rather than artistic.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--Façade of the Rucellai.]
The Rucellai is in form substantially like the Riccardi and other
buildings of its class, but in place of the plain wall surfaces which
are appropriate for a building that has no structural framework, we
have an order of classic pilasters dividing the face of each story into
bays answering to nothing in the real system of construction (Fig. 59).
We thus have here in domestic architecture an instance of that false
use of the orders which in church architecture was first introduced in
the chapel of the Pazzi. Alberti’s classic tendencies are here shown
further in the introduction of a diminutive entablature passing through
the smaller arches of the windows, and these arches are merely cut in
relief on a solid tympanum (Fig. 59). It is worthy of notice, too, that
the rustication of the masonry of this façade does not mark the true
joints. The blocks of stone are in many cases much larger than they
appear, channels being cut upon them to simulate joints. The arch of
one window, for instance, which by the rustication would appear to be
made up of fourteen voussoirs, has in reality only three. The same lack
of conformity of the simulated jointing with the true masonry joints
is noticeable also in many parts of the façade of the Riccardi, and I
know not how general this treatment may be in the architecture of the
Renaissance.[89]
The initiative thus given by Alberti was not at once universally
followed. The orders did not come into general use in the façades of
domestic architecture until the period of the later Renaissance. The
most important Florentine palaces of the latter part of the fifteenth
century have, as we have seen in the Strozzi, no classic orders. The
classic elements of these buildings are confined to details such as
the profiling of cornices, and the introduction of dentils and other
kindred ornaments, and to the capitals of court arcades.
Early in the sixteenth century a further innovation in the treatment of
palace fronts was made in Florence by the Architect Baccio d’Agnolo,
whose design for the campanile of Santo Spirito we have already noticed
(p. 82), in the Palazzo Bartolini. This consisted in framing the
windows with small orders crowned by pediments (Fig. 60). Milizia thus
refers to this innovation: “This was the first palace with windows
adorned with frontispieces and with columns at the doorway carrying
architrave, frieze, and cornice. A novelty, like most others, at first
disapproved and then idolized. The Florentines all ridiculed Baccio for
this new style of architecture, not only with words, but with sonnets,
and with jesting devices attached to the building, taunting him with
having made a church of a palace.”[90] For the rest, though Baccio
d’Agnolo has not adorned the walls of this building with orders, he has
marked the stories with entablatures, and placed rusticated pilasters
at the angles.
As time went on the spirit of display in domestic architecture
increased. Buildings like the Riccardi owe their admirable character
largely to their moderation. The well-known remark of Vasari[91]
that Cosimo de’ Medici had rejected a scheme for that building which
had been prepared by Brunelleschi on the ground that so sumptuous a
dwelling for a private citizen might excite envy, indicates the more
modest feeling and sense of fitness, which as yet held in check the
spirit of ostentation. But the boast of Filippo Strozzi that he would
make his great palace excel all others in magnificence betrays the
ambition that governed the later builders of the great houses of the
Renaissance.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Window of the Bartolini.]
By the beginning of the sixteenth century the vigour of the Florentine
Republic was spent, and its artistic ascendency was declining. Lorenzo
de’ Medici had died, and the chief seat of artistic activity was, as we
have already seen, transferred to Rome where the conditions were very
different from what they had been in Florence during the earlier time.
Ideals and aspirations were further changed, and the quest of material
splendour was more than ever stimulated under the mundane ambitions
of a luxurious and profligate society. Thus it was that in connection
with the later neo-classic church architecture already considered there
arose a corresponding movement in the erection of sumptuous palatial
houses, though still for some time palatial architecture retained much
of the earlier moderation in design. The great Roman houses of the
early part of the sixteenth century have a dignity and grandeur that go
far to redeem their incongruities. It was not, as we shall see in the
next chapter, until men like Sansovino, Vignola, and Palladio appeared
that the Roman influences bore their full fruit.