CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN NORTH ITALY
While the architecture of the Italian Renaissance assumed the two
principal phases that are broadly classified as Florentine and Roman,
from the localities in which the conditions and influences that gave
rise to them chiefly prevailed, it is also true, as is well known, that
other influences became active in various parts of Italy, leading to
the production of phases of design that cannot be strictly classed as
either Florentine or Roman. No exact classification of these can be
made, but the most marked types having distinctly local characteristics
are those of Lombardy and Venice.
But before we examine the church architecture of the Lombard and
Venetian Renaissance, one small building of exceptional character in
central Italy is worthy of special notice, namely, the façade of the
church of San Bernardino of Perugia, dating from the second half of the
fifteenth century. This work is remarkable for delicate workmanship,
and affords a rare instance of the use of colour in the architecture
of the Renaissance. It is made up of red and white marble, with points
of dark green and turquoise blue, arranged with quiet harmony of
effect. But it is a combination of members put together with no regard
to structural consistency. The designer appears to have had not the
slightest idea that arches and columns, pilasters and entablatures,
have any meaning save as elements of abstract ornamental composition
to be played about according to his fancy. The front (Plate V) is an
upright rectangle, crowned with an entablature and a low pediment. A
broad pilaster is set on each angle, and the space between is filled
with a wide and deep recess having a splayed arch reaching to the
entablature on splayed jambs. A smaller entablature at the arch impost
crosses the entire front, breaking around the jambs and pilasters,
and dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The smaller details
consist of panellings and medallions in the splays of the jambs and
archivolts, of sculptured reliefs on the tympanum and on the panels,
and of shafted and gabled niches sheltering statues on the pilasters.
The panels of the splays are flanked with diminutive pilasters which
are superimposed with only a narrow fillet between those below and
those which rest upon them, and the ornamental framing of the niches is
made up of colonnettes carrying rectangular stilt-blocks on which small
pediments are set. The elaborate richness of this façade is unusual in
the Renaissance architecture of central Italy, except in the smaller
compositions of tombs and pulpits, which in treatment it resembles. But
profusion of ornament is a marked characteristic of the architecture
of the Renaissance in north Italy, to which we may now turn. In Milan
and Venice the neo-classic influences were, even more than in Florence
and Rome, confined to ornamental details, and in these details the
designers of the North had still less regard for classic correctness
and consistency than those of central Italy had shown; while the larger
structural forms of their buildings still remained essentially Lombard
and Venetian. Much of the architecture of the North was, it is true,
the work of architects from central Italy, but these architects were
so far influenced by local tastes and conditions as to produce designs
very different in character from those of Florence or of Rome.
A characteristic early example of this Northern Renaissance design in
its most florid form is the well-known façade of the church of the
Certosa of Pavia, dating from the close of the fifteenth century. The
effect of this front is in its larger parts much like that of a late
mediæval Italian one, but the details are pseudo-classic with strange
admixture of mediæval elements. The general scheme is a reproduction
of the pseudo-Gothic façade of the neighbouring cathedral of Milan,
having nearly the same general proportions, and being divided into
five bays by deep buttresses. The steep gable, however, which in Milan
embraces the whole front, is omitted, and in its stead a horizontal
cornice crowns the three central bays, and this, together with the
strongly marked horizontal lines below, greatly modifies the general
effect of the composition. In the smaller details there is no likeness
between the two façades, that of Pavia showing a survival of Lombard
Romanesque forms with the pseudo-classic elements ingrafted on them.
A prominent feature of the Lombard Romanesque architecture is the
diminutive open arcade. This feature is extensively employed in the
mediæval portions of the church to which this façade is the western
enclosure, and it is reproduced, with neo-classic modifications, at
the top of each of the two principal stages into which the façade is
divided. The arches are here carried on small piers, and are framed
with diminutive pilasters and entablatures. The portal has a pair of
free-standing Corinthian columns on each side, bearing a ressaut of an
entablature which spans the opening, and from these ressauts an arch is
sprung with spandrels in relief crowned with a classic cornice. In each
one of the other bays of the ground story a rectangular window, with
classic mouldings and a cornice of classic profile, is subdivided in
the mediæval manner with two small arches on a central column and jamb
shafts. These last have a tapering form, with a profusion of carved
ornament in high relief, and are like the shafts of candelabra (Fig.
78). The mediæval feature of a large circular opening over the central
portal is enclosed within a rectangle surmounted by an entablature and
a classic pediment, while this compound is flanked on either side by
a pair of arches opening beneath a larger arch. To all this mixture
of Romanesque and neo-classic features a pseudo-Gothic character is
superadded by statues set in niches of the buttresses, and spiky
pinnacles over the lateral bays. The details of this overelaborate
composition, the work of several successive architects, have no merit
in themselves, and the work as a whole is trivial and unmeaning.
[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Certosa of Pavia.]
Among the monuments of the early Renaissance in Milan are several of
importance, and of these the church and sacristy of San Satiro are
of special interest because they are said to have been designed by
Bramante.[104]
The church bears, I think, unmistakable marks of Bramante’s
authorship, being a reflection on a reduced scale of St. Andrea of
Mantua by Alberti, which there is every reason to believe had been
studied and admired by Bramante during his travels in the north for
improvement in his art, and a foreshadowing of the great scheme which
he subsequently prepared for St. Peter’s in Rome. Like St. Andrea, it
has a barrel-vaulted nave and transept, with a dome on pendentives
over the crossing. The aisles have groined vaulting, and the piers are
square and are faced with pilasters. The dome is raised on a very low
drum moulded in stucco into the form of an entablature, and the vault
surfaces are elaborately coffered in stucco. The church has no eastern
arm, since a wall with a much-venerated painting of the Virgin is said
to have stood so near the site that space for such an arm could not
be had without demolishing it; and as this was not to be thought of,
Bramante made a semblance of an eastern arm in the form of a sunk panel
with splayed sides, on which he wrought in stucco relief the elaborate
perspective which is so noticeable a feature of the interior.
[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Sacristy of San Satiro.]
The sacristy (Fig. 79) was built immediately after the church, in the
form of an octagon about eight metres in diameter. It is covered with
an octagonal dome lighted by a circular opening in each of its sides
just above the springing level. The walls of the interior are divided
into two stages, the lower one having segmental niches alternating
with shallow rectangular recesses, one on each side of the polygon
except that of the entrance, while the stage above has a gallery, like
a triforium, in the thickness of the wall, with a pair of round-arched
openings in each bay. The dome is enclosed within a drum of brick which
is covered by a low-pitched timber roof.
The ornamental details of the interior are all of stucco, and consist
of two superimposed false orders of pilasters set in the angles,
and broken on plan so as to fit them, the entablature of each order
having a ressaut over each pilaster, and the surfaces of the friezes
and pilasters being profusely enriched with ornaments in relief. But
these details are said to have been extensively worked over in later
times, so that it is doubtful whether any correct idea of the original
character of this interior can now be formed, except as to its larger
features.
The monument is a diminutive adaptation, in simplified form, of a local
mediæval type of building of which San Vitale of Ravenna appears to
have been the original example, and San Lorenzo of Milan an offshoot.
There are points of similarity between the sacristy of San Satiro and
the church of the Consolazione of Todi (Fig. 36, p. 76) that go far to
determine their common authorship. The superimposed pilasters broken
into the angles of a polygon, the niches in the lower bays, and the
ribs on the surfaces of the vault rising from the pilasters[105] are
similar in both.
A curious domed structure of the early Renaissance in Milan is the
east end of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The dome is
hemispherical, and is raised on a drum resting on pendentives over
a square area. The most noticeable part of the composition is the
exterior, which completely masks the inside. The drum (Fig. 80) is
a polygon of sixteen sides, and is in two stages, the lower one of
which is solid, and rises above the springing of the vault, while the
upper stage, in the form of an open arcaded gallery, with an attic in
retreat, reaches far above the haunch of the dome which is covered with
a low-pitched roof of timber crowned with a lantern. The lower stage
has an order of pilasters with a nondescript entablature, having an
enormously high frieze ornamented with an engaged balustrade. A pair of
square-headed windows with mullions, surmounted with pediments, opens
through each face of the polygon, except the four which fall over the
piers of the interior. Against each of these sides a turret rises,
forming an abutment. A panelled podium crowns the entablature of this
lower stage, and upon it the shafted arcade of the top story rests. The
north and south sides of the square beneath have each a low apse, while
on the east is a rectangular choir with an apse like the other two.
The architectural treatment of this exterior is not expressive of the
inside. The square parts are divided into four stages answering to
nothing within, and the lower three of these stages are carried around
the apses. The wall surfaces are broken into rectangular panellings by
mouldings and pilasters, every alternate pilaster in the third stage
having a tapering ornamental member, like the window shafts of the
Certosa of Pavia, worked in relief on its face; and the panels are
adorned with disks and medallions. Like most of the early Renaissance
architecture of Milan, this building is entirely of brick with
ornaments of terra-cotta.
[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Santa Maria delle Grazie.]
The design is attributed to Bramante,[106] and it has features that
lend support to belief in this authorship. The encircling arcade at
the top suggests the encircling colonnade of the same architect’s
subsequent design for the dome of St. Peter’s. It may not be unlikely
that this arcade, wrought while the author was under the influence of
the local Lombard Romanesque, suggested the idea of the encircling
colonnade after he had come under the severer classic influence in
Rome. The alternation of pilasters in the top story of the apses, with
the two intercolumns over each interval in the stage below, corresponds
to the design of the interior of the sacristy of S. Satiro.
In the chapel of St. Peter Martyr of the church of Sant’Eustorgio,
attributed to the Florentine architect Michelozzi, we have a circular
celled vault on salient ribs, like Brunelleschi’s vault of the Pazzi.
This vault is enclosed within a drum carried on pendentives, and is
lighted by a circular opening in the drum under each alternate vault
cell. The drum is polygonal on the outside, is carried up far above the
haunch of the vault, and is covered with a low-pitch roof of timber
crowned with a tall lantern. The lower walls of the interior of the
square beneath this vault have an order of pilasters, and over the
entablature of this order are arched windows, one on the north and the
other on the south side, each of which has a mullion and jamb shafts
of the Certosa tapering type, and pseudo-Gothic tracery. Most of the
details of this interior are of stone, which give it a more monumental
character than the buildings before noticed have. The outside is of
brick, the square part being plain, with simple angle buttresses, and
crowned with a cornice of classic profiling. Pinnacles made up of
neo-classic details rise from the angles, and the drum is adorned with
an order of pilasters, and with moulded circular panels alternating
with circular openings. The building as a whole has the moderation of
the works of the early Florentine Renaissance, and is in noticeable
contrast to the more florid designs of this region already noticed.
A somewhat later example of ecclesiastical architecture of the
Renaissance in Milan is the church of the Monastero Maggiore, dating
from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and said to have been
designed by Dolcebono, a pupil of Bramante. This is a rectangular
structure without aisles, having round-arched pseudo-Gothic vaulting,
and divided into two parts by a screen across the middle, and into two
stories by superimposed orders of pilasters. In each bay of the ground
story is a deep round-arched rectangular recess in the thickness of
the wall, and over each of these an open gallery with two colonnettes
and two small jamb pilasters carrying an entablature over each of the
lateral spaces so formed, and an arch over the central one, an early
instance of a form of compound opening that was much used in the
architecture of the later Renaissance.[107]
[Illustration: FIG. 81.--East end of Como.]
The cathedral of Como affords further illustration of the style of
early Renaissance design that is peculiar to north Italy. The building,
however, has parts which belong to different periods ranging from
1396 to the early part of the eighteenth century. The features most
worthy of attention are chiefly those of the exterior,--the east end
and the sides of the nave. It is said that Bramante worked here also,
and certainly as viewed from the east the composition bears a striking
likeness to the church of the Consolazione at Todi (pp. 74–77). It is,
however, in the larger features alone that the likeness holds. The
details of Como are not, as at Todi, of purely neo-classic character;
they are mediæval Lombard modified by neo-classic elements. Instead
of superimposed orders of pilasters we have here (Fig. 81) Lombard
Romanesque buttresses reaching from the ground to the cornice. The
cornice has the neo-classic profiling, and is broken into ressauts over
the buttresses, and at a lower level a subordinate band of mouldings is
carried along the wall and around the buttresses, the whole forming a
likeness to an entablature. The traditional Lombard features peculiar
to this region are further reproduced in the arcades of each bay just
beneath the pseudo-entablature; but instead of mediæval colonnettes
these small arches are supported by diminutive pilasters. The walls
are divided into three stages by string courses of classic profiling,
and a rectangular window with plain classic jambs and lintel opens in
each bay of the middle stage, while the basement wall is unbroken by
openings. Disks, one in each bay, adorn the frieze of the simulated
entablature, and a sculptured figure is worked on the corresponding
part of each buttress. The bases of the half domes over the apses are,
as at Todi, treated like attics, but the central dome, with its high
drum, is not by Bramante. It is of a later period, and has a more
advanced neo-classic character. The scheme of the Lombard buttresses
is extended along the walls of the nave, but the details of the window
openings, and of the portals here are very different from anything in
the apses, and are in a more florid style.
[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Portal of Como.]
[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Porch of San Zeno, Verona.]
[Illustration: FIG. 84.--Portal of San Pietro in Cielo
d’Oro, Pavia.]
The ornaments of these openings are composed in a manner which appears
to be peculiar to this region. The portal (Fig. 82) of the south side,
for instance, has the mediæval scheme of a shafted round arch of two
orders reproduced in neo-classic details, with an entablature for a
lintel passing through the imposts, and another entablature with a
pediment placed over the crown of the arch on spandrels in relief. To
associate the entablature with the arch in any way is unreasonable, but
to put one entablature under the arch and another one over it in this
manner is childish composition. Yet illogical and puerile as the scheme
is, I believe it is derived from a common form of Lombard Romanesque
porch which is entirely reasonable in design. A comparison of this
portal with the porch of San Zeno of Verona (Fig. 83) will illustrate
this. In San Zeno we have a sheltering porch and a portal, and each is
reasonable in itself, while they are equally reasonable in combination.
But if the porch were eliminated, with exception of its façade, and
this façade were drawn back into the plane of the wall, so as merely
to frame in the portal, the result would resemble, in composition of
lines, the portal of Como, and would be as illogical. The first, or
encompassing, order of the portal of Como is like the façade of such
a mediæval porch wrought in relief against the wall as an ornamental
framework. For the Lombard columns the Renaissance designer has
substituted pilasters, for the plain lintel an entablature, and for the
mediæval gable a classic pediment with an entablature.
A curious instance of a somewhat similar composition of lines in a
Lombard Romanesque portal without an overhanging porch occurs in the
façade of the San Pietro in Cielo d’Oro in Pavia (Fig. 84). Here the
arched opening is flanked by tall engaged shafts which carry a narrow
string course surmounted by a gable over the crown of the arch, while
another string course, on short colonnettes resting on the capitals
of the larger shafts, passes over the apex of the gable. But in this
case it is only the childish association of members without structural
meaning that offends the eye. There is no introduction of forms, like
the classic pilasters and entablatures of the portal of Como, that are
foreign to the architectural system.
[Illustration: FIG. 85.--Window of nave of Como.]
This scheme, with various modifications, became a characteristic one in
the Lombard and Venetian Renaissance, and was extensively applied to
windows, as in the nave of the same cathedral of Como. The windows of
this nave are splayed, and are flanked with pilasters from the capitals
of which their archivolts spring, while in some of them diminutive
pilasters rise from the same capitals and carry an entablature and
pediment over the crown of the arch (Fig. 85).
A variety of forms occur in these openings of the cathedral of Como,
like so many experiments in fanciful composition without any basis
of reason. The window, for instance, of the bay adjoining that here
represented, seems to show that the designer felt dissatisfied with the
small pilaster set upon the larger one, and accordingly omitted it, a
moulding on the edge of the spandrel, profiled like the lower member
of the crowning entablature, taking its place. But again, as if he now
felt that the entablature required a more architectural support, he
has in another window reproduced the small pilaster, but instead of
a large single one below he has employed two narrow ones, thus giving
separate support to the arch and the entablature. The doorway on the
north side of the nave presents a further modification of the scheme.
Here the jambs and the arch are splayed as before, and a tall column
of the ornamental tapering form, already noticed in the windows of
the Certosa of Pavia and in the chapel of St. Peter Martyr, is set on
either side of the composition. This portal, like the one on the south
side, has two entablatures with an arch between, and these columns
reach to the upper entablature of which they carry ressauts. No great
pediment crowns this doorway, but a tall niche, framed in with an order
of diminutive pilasters and surmounted with a small pediment, rises
over the centre of the upper entablature. This niche shelters a statue
of the Virgin, and is flanked by a statue on either side. Many variants
of this ornamental scheme for door and window occur in Lombardy and
Venice, and it was reproduced in many other parts of Italy, occurring,
as we have seen, even in Rome as in the palace of the Cancelleria and
the Palazzo Torlonia.
In the fifteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, the architecture of
each principal locality developed peculiarities of style in accordance
with its peculiar tastes and conditions. Thus the Renaissance design of
Venice has a general character of its own, though it drew some of its
materials from Florentine and Lombard sources. Michelozzi had followed
the exiled Cosimo de’ Medici to Venice, and Vasari tells us[108] that
he made there many drawings and models for private dwellings and public
buildings. On the other hand a family of architects and sculptors from
Lombardy, known as the Lombardi (Pietro Lombardo and two sons, Santo
and Tullio), had come to Venice in the fifteenth century and introduced
features from the Lombard Renaissance.
Among the churches of the Venetian Renaissance San Zaccaria is one of
the earliest, and its interior exhibits a singular mixture of those
mediæval and pseudo-classic forms of which the Italian architects
produced such an astonishing variety. To an apse with a half dome and
pseudo-Gothic substructure is joined a nave of three square bays, the
first of which is covered with a dome on pendentives, while each of
the others has a plain groined vault. These vaults spring from an
entablature which crowns the great arcade, and is returned on the ends
of the building, with ressauts on corbels at the imposts. The aisles
have oblong groined vaults on pointed transverse arches springing from
corbels on the wall side, and tied with iron rods. The main proportions
conform with those of the so-called Italian Gothic churches, the
great arcades of the nave, and consequently the aisle vaulting, being
relatively very high. The most singular feature of this interior is
the column (Fig. 86) of nondescript character, and a variant of the
tapering Lombard Renaissance shaft of Pavia and Como. It consists of a
shaft of pseudo-Corinthian form raised on a high octagonal pedestal,
with a very wide and richly moulded base.
[Illustration: FIG. 86.]
The church of San Salvatore, dating from the close of the fifteenth
century, and attributed to the architect Tullio Lombardo, though begun
by Spavento,[109] has a modified Byzantine structural scheme applied
to a long nave with three domes on pendentives separated by short
sections of barrel vaulting. The supports (Fig. 87) of this vaulting
are peculiar, and are like the piers of the nave of St. Andrea of
Mantua modified by piercing them both transversely and longitudinally
so as to leave four slender solid parts at the angles (two of which are
engaged in the aisle wall), the void being covered with a diminutive
dome on pendentives. The plan of the structure as a whole suggests
this comparison with St. Andrea, but the character of the supports
suggests their derivation from the piers of the church of St. Mark.
These last are square masses of masonry pierced longitudinally and
transversely so as to leave four heavy solids as in Figure 88, the void
in this case being covered with a diminutive groined vault. In San
Salvatore the solids are greatly reduced in volume, and are faced with
neo-classic pilasters, above which the pier is solid, and is faced with
an entablature surmounted by an attic from which the vaulting springs.
The use of an attic in an interior, and especially as a support for
vaulting, is one of those architectural aberrations with which the
Renaissance has made us familiar. I know not when or where it first
occurred, but there can be few earlier instances than this. It was not
seldom introduced by the architects of the later Renaissance, and, as
we shall see, by Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul’s cathedral. It is
worthy of notice that the system of San Salvatore is that of the church
of St. Mark modified by lightening the piers in the way that we have
seen, and by the application of neo-classic details.
[Illustration: FIG. 87.]
[Illustration: FIG. 88.]
The nearly contemporaneous church of S. Fantino has the same general
character, except that groined vaulting takes the place of domes on
pendentives in all but the easternmost compartment of the nave, and the
attic story is omitted.
[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Santa Maria dei Miracoli,
Venice.]
No work of the early Renaissance in north Italy exhibits more
refinement in its details than the small church of Santa Maria dei
Miracoli in Venice, the design of which is ascribed to Pietro Lombardo
(Fig. 89). The plan is a simple rectangle with a rectangular sanctuary.
The plain walls of the nave are covered with a round timber roof,
and the sanctuary has a small dome on pendentives. The interior
is richly incrusted with marble and relief carvings of the utmost
delicacy, and of unusual beauty of design. The walls of the exterior
are divided into two stages by superimposed orders of pilasters on
podiums. The pilasters of the upper order carry archivolts instead
of an entablature, thus recalling the mediæval Lombard blind arcade,
and the walls above this are crowned with an entablature. Over the
portal a curved pediment is set against the entablature of the lower
order, and the whole façade is crowned with a semicircular pediment
pierced with a large round opening and five smaller ones ranged on
its semicircumference. The wall surfaces are incrusted with marble
panelling set with disks and lesser panels of cruciform and rectangular
shapes in faintly coloured marbles, and the whole building is a
marvel of excellence in mechanical execution. But the use of the
inappropriate superimposed orders falsifies the design by giving it the
appearance of two stories while in reality it has only one.
The façade of Santa Maria Formosa exhibits another phase of early
Renaissance design in Venice. This façade is noticeable as reproducing
some of the larger features of Alberti’s west front of St. Andrea of
Mantua with details having the character of the works of the Lombardi.
The great central arch of St. Andrea is omitted here, and the existing
portal is an alteration of a later time in a style that does not agree
with the rest of the design. The three compartments into which the
front is divided are treated as sunk panels flanked by half pilasters
set against the larger ones, over which last the entablature is broken
into ressauts. In each lateral compartment over a podium connecting
the high pedestals on which the pilasters are raised is an opening of
the Lombard type. The main lines of the composition correspond with
the internal divisions of the building, except that the entablature of
the order, which is carried across the entire front, divides the nave
compartment into two stages.
The foregoing examples are enough to show the leading characteristics
of the church architecture of the early Renaissance in north Italy. In
the later period the local peculiarities give place for the most part
to the measurably uniform style of which Vignola and Palladio were
the leading masters, and which has been already considered under the
heading of Church Architecture of the Roman Renaissance.