ARCHITECTURAL CARVING OF THE RENAISSANCE
All effective sculpture on buildings, including that of the human
figure, is architectural carving; but it is in Gothic art only
that sculpture of the human figure, as well as that of subordinate
ornamentation made up of the other elements, has at once an appropriate
architectural character and a high degree of excellence in the
development of form. In the best Greek art the carving of the human
figure has, indeed, a grandly monumental quality; but the Greek
sculptor did not seek primarily to give his work an architectural
expression. He wrought it with a kind of perfection that is not
compatible with the fullest measure of such expression. Greek
sculpture, though placed on a building, is in a measure independent of
it, and thus it not only loses nothing, but may even gain in value,
when taken from its place on the building and set up in a museum where
it can be viewed by itself.
In the art of the Renaissance the human figure in the full round is
treated so independently as to lose nearly all monumental expression,
while for strictly architectural carving we have reliefs on pilasters,
friezes, and capitals, made up of scrolls and meanders with leafage,
grotesque animal life, and a great variety of objects, including the
human figure, represented more or less fantastically as ornament.
Renaissance sculpture of the human figure thus having so little proper
architectural character, we shall not consider it here, but confine
our attention to the relief carving, which has a closer architectural
connection, if not a much truer architectural expression.
[Illustration: FIG. 96.--Roman Arabesque.]
[Illustration:
Plate IX
RELIEF OF THE LOMBARDI
Venice]
[Illustration: FIG. 97.--Renaissance Arabesque.]
A great deal of this carving is in close imitation of Roman models,
as a comparison of a fragment of Roman arabesque from the Museum of
Florence (Fig. 96) with a fragment of Renaissance arabesque from
the Ducal Palace of Gubbio (Fig. 97) will show. But in elegance,
delicacy, and subtlety of line and surface, the best carving of the
Renaissance is superior to that of ancient Rome. The linear basis
of such design is highly artificial, consisting of formal scrolls
and meanders, and the leafage and other forms introduced are treated
artificially without being finely conventionalized. The conventions of
this art are not the natural result of a true sense of ornamental
abstraction, of architectural fitness, and of the nature of materials.
They do not manifest a fine appreciation of the beauty of the object
conventionalized. They are factitious conventions which often do
violence at once to the forms of nature, and to the true principles
of design. The ear of barley, and the flower stalks, in Plate IX, a
characteristic work of the Lombardi in the church of Santa Maria dei
Miracole in Venice, illustrate this. The rigid parallel straight sides
and the square end of the barley ear, and the flaccid sinuousness
of the flower stalk, are expressive of no architectural or material
conditions to which the artist had to conform. They express nothing
but the designer’s insensitiveness to the character and beauty of
the natural forms. Compare the ear of barley (Fig. 98) from an
ancient Greek coin in the British Museum.[111] Though severely
conventionalized, this representation finely expresses the true
character of the real object. Such details as the rectangular barley
ear and nerveless flower stalk in Plate IX would seem to indicate an
incapacity on the part of the designer to appreciate those elements
of beauty in plant life which may be made effective in ornamental
carving, were they not associated with other details that manifest
a fuller sense of vital character. The foliation of the scrolls in
the same relief (Plate IX) has a character which makes us wonder how
a designer who could so finely render the nervous life of leafage
could associate with this leafage the lifeless details just noticed,
and the further monstrosities of the axial composition including the
characterless grotesque animals out of which the scroll leafage issues.
The symmetrical Arabesque scheme of the whole, and the nonsensical
details of the central part, are from the Roman source,[112] while the
leafage, though also cast in the Roman form, owes much of its best
quality to the inspiration of Gothic art. The qualities that give their
subtle charm to such conventionalized forms elude complete analysis
and definition, but they are based on the proportions, curvature, and
relations of lines and surfaces that belong to the organic forms of
nature.
[Illustration: FIG. 98.--Greek coin, magnified.]
Such subtle beauty of leafage is exceptional in the ornamental design
of the Renaissance. The carver of the fifteenth century generally
misses the vigour of line, the finer surface flexures, and the
expression of organic structure shown in the supremely fine details of
the reliefs by the Lombardi. The convolutions of Renaissance design
are apt to be more formal and the leading lines less springy. In some
cases the finer qualities of curvature are wholly wanting, as in the
scrolls that border the bronze door-valves of St. Peter’s in Rome by
the Florentine sculptor Filarete (Fig. 99). In these scrolls the heavy
and lifeless character of the poorest Roman models is reproduced. The
finish of these carvings, in the better examples, is usually elaborate,
and in such work as that of the Lombardi in Venice it is exquisite.
But in many cases it is mere surface smoothing without expressive
character, as in the leafage of Benedetto da Maiano in the pulpit of
Santa Croce of Florence, where the expression of the beautiful leaf
anatomy is almost wholly polished out.
[Illustration: FIG. 99.--Arabesque by Filarete, Rome.]
It is a fundamental weakness of this style of ornamentation that it is
so largely made up of artificial convolutions and formal symmetries.
Reduced to its linear elements, it mainly consists either of an axial
line with scrolls and weak curves set symmetrically on either side of
it, or of a formal meander with alternating scrolls. The wearisome
repetition of these two schemes of composition is a characteristic of
the art of the Renaissance. Many changes are wrung on these primary
motives, but no possible variation of them can relieve their dulness.
That they are derived from an ancient source does not justify their
use. They are not, however, drawn from the best ancient source. In
Greek art elements of a kindred nature had been treated in a finer way,
with exquisite moderation of curvature and vitality of line. But the
ornamental designers of the Renaissance drew their inspiration from the
Græco-Roman travesties of Greek ornamentation, such as the tiresome
arabesques that were painted on the walls of Pompeian houses.
[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Console of pulpit in Santa
Croce.]
The arrangements, as well as the treatment, of the details drawn
from plant life that are associated with this style of design are
often most artificial and inorganic, as in the pulpit of Santa Croce
before mentioned, where on the side of a console (Fig. 100) fruit
and leafage issue from a nondescript receptacle of ungraceful shape,
having a clumsy fluted stalk bound with a fluttering ribbon ending in
a tassel. Such unnaturally composed details are unknown in the pure
Gothic art which the men of the Renaissance thought so barbaric. The
introduction of objects like the singular cornucopia and the ribbon of
this design is common in Renaissance ornamentation. Without affirming
that artificial objects may never enter into an ornamental composition,
I think it may be said that such objects, if used as conspicuous
features, ought to have some beauty of form,[113] and certainly every
group of objects, of whatever kind, should be composed so as to
produce an effect of organic unity. Each detail ought to have a place
and a posture which should make it a part of some system of related
ornamental lines. This is, of course, elementary, and the principle is
usually carried out in the ornamentation of the Renaissance, though in
a highly artificial way. But in the design on the triangular panel of
this console there is no fine system of related lines. The fruit and
leafage have a disjointed arrangement, and the wriggled ribbon has no
beauty of line or surface.
[Illustration: FIG. 101.--Leafage from the Ghiberti
gates.]
Instances of such disordered composition are conspicuous in the borders
of the famous Ghiberti gates of the Florentine Baptistery, where
the bosses of leafage set at regular intervals are composed in the
same inorganic way (Fig. 101), and the bunches are bound with spiral
fluted fillets. It is noticeable that the details are here elaborated
with a minute naturalistic completeness that is incompatible with
architectural effectiveness. The possibilities of the bronze material
in which the design is wrought are developed to the utmost in the
rendering of leaf veinings, serrations, and surface textures. This
tendency to combine excessive naturalism with extremely artificial
composition is a curious characteristic of both Roman and Renaissance
art.
We find in the ornamental carving of the Renaissance not only a formal,
and often a disjointed, scheme of composition, with artificial objects
of no beauty or meaning introduced among elements derived from natural
forms, but numerous instances occur where the design is made up
entirely of such objects, as in a pilaster in the National Museum of
Florence (Fig. 102). Such value as this design has lies wholly in its
childish symmetry of arrangement of the ugly elements about an axis.
It contains nothing else on which the eye can rest with pleasure. I
think it may be taken as a true principle that architectural ornament
cannot be good unless it be an expression of the kind of beauty that we
find in organic nature. I do not say that the elements of such ornament
must be directly, or consciously, drawn from nature; but every quality
of line and surface that, in a healthy state of mind, we feel to be
beautiful is exemplified in organic nature, so that however abstract
or conventional a piece of good carving may be, its forms will have a
correspondence with those of natural objects.
[Illustration: FIG. 102.--Pilaster in the National
Museum, Florence.]
The finest forms that occur in the carvings of the Renaissance are
those of foliation such as we have already noticed (p. 170). But even
these are rarely of real excellence. An appreciation of the vital
beauty of leafage has in general not been manifested by the Italians,
whether ancient or modern. The leafage of Roman art is as inferior
to Greek leafage as that of the Renaissance is to the foliation of
the French Gothic carvers. Take, for instance, the crisp acanthus
leaves of the capital from Epidaurus (_A_, Fig. 103) in the National
Museum of Athens, with their strong nervous life notwithstanding their
severely conventional treatment; or the leaf _B_ in the same figure,
from another Greek capital in the same museum, with its spiky cusps and
its exquisite systems of radiating lines--at once true to nature and
effective as ornament; and compare with these any examples of Roman, or
Græco-Roman, leafage, as _A_ and _B_ (Fig. 104). Observe in _A_, from
a composite capital in the Naples Museum, the excessive convolution
of the leaf ends, the obtuse rounded cusps, the lack of radial
relationship in the lines of depression, and the unmodelled flatness of
the surfaces between the furrows. And notice in _B_, from a Corinthian
capital supposed to have belonged to the so-called Temple of Jupiter
Stator, the immoderate and artificial undulations of line and surface.
[Illustration: FIG. 103.--Greek leafage.]
[Illustration: FIG. 104.--Roman leafage.]
Turning now to the Renaissance leafage of capitals, we may take,
first, any one of the portico of the Pazzi chapel by Brunelleschi. The
obtuseness shown here (Fig. 105) to the fine qualities of natural forms
that may be made effective as architectural ornament is really amazing.
The treatment is of the Roman kind with emphasis on the artificial
conventions of Roman art. The rigid lines and rectangular sections of
the furrows, each ending abruptly in a straight line across the bottom,
and the unmodelled flatness of the intervening surfaces indicate a
surprising lack of appreciation of those elements of beauty which
distinguish really fine ornamental carving. Such leafage is, indeed,
exceptionally poor, yet instances of a kindred sort are not seldom met
with, as in the capitals of the doorway of the sacristy of Santa Croce
in Florence by Michelozzi.
[Illustration: FIG. 105.--Leafage of Brunelleschi.]
The more characteristic Renaissance leafage is, however, sometimes
beautiful, as in the capitals of the municipal palace of Brescia (Fig.
106). Nevertheless, a curious, and singularly artificial, convention is
noticeable here in the fillet-like form, and abrupt angular termination
of the upper end, of the ridges which mark the subdivisions of the leaf
surface. This peculiar detail is of almost constant occurrence in the
acanthus foliation of the Renaissance, and is in marked contrast with
the finely rounded and more natural treatment of the corresponding
parts of the Greek leaf forms as in Figure 103. This unnatural detail
sometimes takes another form, as in a capital by Giuliano da San Gallo
in the Palazzo Gondi, where its edges (Fig. 107) are less angular, its
surface grooved lengthwise, and the upper end is rounded. But whatever
beauty this Italian leafage may have, the design is rarely more than
a recast of Roman models, with little manifestation of that fresh
inspiration from nature that gives such charm to Gothic foliation.
[Illustration: FIG. 106.--Leafage of Brescia.]
[Illustration: FIG. 107.--Leafage of San Gallo.]
[Illustration: FIG. 108.--Relief of the Scala d’Oro.]
[Illustration: FIG. 109.]
The grotesque, which enters largely into these ornamental
compositions, is uniformly weak and characterless. This has been
already noticed (p. 170) in the work of the Lombardi. It is equally
marked in all other neo-classic representations of imaginary
creatures. The southern genius appears never to have been capable of
conceiving the grotesque in an imaginative way. That power appears
to have belonged exclusively to the northern races. The monster of
the Renaissance, like his Roman ancestor, has no organic life, no
suggestion of reality, and therefore no impressiveness comparable to
that of the grotesque creature of the Gothic carver. And not only is
the grotesque of the Renaissance unimaginative and insipid, but its
forced monstrosities not seldom have a repulsive vulgarity, as well as
a structureless incoherence. Take, for instance, the silly creatures
in the relief of the Scala d’Oro in the Ducal Palace of Venice by
Sansovino (Fig. 108). These nondescript monsters, without anatomy, and
without point or meaning of any kind, are merely disgusting when we
attend to anything more than the ornamental lines in the abstract, and
even these lines are without any fine qualities. The masks ending in
leafage (Fig. 109), from a pilaster in the church of the Miracole in
Venice, are fantastical, but neither witty nor effectively grotesque;
and the _Putti_ treated in the same way, so frequently introduced,
are equally pointless, and without particular merit as design.