How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

entablatures, and pediments. But it involves a feature that readily lent itself to extravagant exploitation; namely, the emphasis upon colossal columns. Vignola’s design, on the other hand, is characterised by a multiplication and elaboration of features, which his sense of classic propriety has kept within ordered bounds but which a less refined taste might easily degrade into exuberant pretentiousness.

And indeed a certain pretentiousness marks both these façades. They make claim to being imposed by methods that are actually a pretence. For neither design has grown out of the necessities and circumstances of the building. Each represents the arbitrary importation of alien ingredients, pieced together to conform to the principles of a style that was evolved for other purposes and conditions. Each design is false in motive and specious in its application of principles; and, since lies breed lies, it must share responsibility for the flagrancy of specious and pretentious shams that in time ensued from it.

And, already, in both these designs the imitation of the antique results in cold and rigid formalism. Compare, for example, Vignola’s façade with one of the Tuscan Romanesque, for instance, Pisa cathedral. The architects of the latter borrowed from the Romans the use of applied arcades of arches and columns; but used the device frankly as a decorative sheathing, subordinated in scale to the constructive mass, and maintained the rich simplicity of effect by repetition of the same decorative motive.

Vignola, however, treated his sheathing as if it had actual constructive meaning; and, moreover, multiplied the motives. Big, coupled columns, mounted on pedestals, supported an entablature, the cornice of which becomes the support of another series of big, coupled columns, which make a great display of supporting a little pediment. Comparing this Renaissance example with the Pisan, one may be reminded of a circus incident. At first there enters a performer who with delightful agility and grace keeps a number of balls moving lightly in the air. He is followed by another, who, assuming the attitudes of an Atlas supporting the world, labours with a cannon ball, which, when it is finally tossed aside, proves to be no heavier than a football.

Scarcely less incongruous is the Palladian design, with its colossal framework of columns, entablature and pediment, and the paltry scale of its doorway and windows. And then the enormity of the broken pediment, the two parts of which form the front of the series of side-chapels that flank the interior of the nave. Of course there is a sort of callous logic represented. The pediment is the end of a sloping roof; therefore, if the roof be separated into two parts, why not separate the pediment? But what about the taste which, as we have seen, always tempered the logic of the Greeks? Could the Greek taste have tolerated the cleavage in half of a little temple design and the swaggering intrusion between them of a giant design and persuaded itself that the domination of the latter produced a harmony of relations?

S. PETER’S

The culminating achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the new Church of S. Peter’s, the erection of which, dating from 1506 to about 1626, covers the whole period of the rise and decline of the Classic movement in Rome.

The original plan, as laid out by Bramante, was a Greek cross, comprising, that is to say, four equal parts. On this he proposed to design a building that should combine the three great barrel-vaulted halls of the Basilica of Constantine with the dome of the Pantheon. In 1514, the year preceding Bramante’s death, Sangallo the Elder, Raphael, and Fra Gioconda da Verona were associated with the work; but the advanced age of the first and third and Raphael’s preoccupation with painting and his early death caused little to be accomplished.

Meanwhile a difference of opinion had arisen as to whether the plan should be a Greek or Latin cross. The construction was continued under the directorship of Sangallo the Younger and Peruzzi, until in 1546 Michelangelo was appealed to. He rescued the ground plan of Bramante, reinforced the piers which the latter had begun at the crossing, and made drawings and a wooden model of the dome as far up as the lantern and actually completed the erection of the drum.

He was succeeded by Vignola, who added the four cupolas around the dome. The dome itself was completed from Michelangelo’s model, and finished (1585-1590) with a lantern, by Giacomo della Porta and Fontana.

During 1605-1612, at the instance of Paul V, the nave was lengthened by Carlo Maderna to form a Latin instead of a Greek cross and the façade was erected.

Finally, between 1629 and 1667, Bernini constructed the brazen baldachino and lavished sculpture on the interior, while completing the exterior effect by the colonnades which enclose the Piazza.

Easily the largest church in the world, S. Peter’s compares with other large churches as follows, the figures representing square yards of area in round numbers: S. Peter’s, 18,000; Seville, 13,000; Milan, 10,000; S. Paul’s, London, 9000; S. Sophia, 8000; Cologne, 7000. The interior measurement of S. Peter’s is approximately 205 yards long; the nave being 150 feet high and 87 feet wide (the same dimensions as those of the great hall of the Constantine basilica). The dome from the pavement to the summit of the lantern is 403 feet, the cross adding another 30; while the diameter is 138 feet, about five feet less than the dome of the Pantheon.

The prolongation of the nave by three bays has destroyed the symmetry of mass, conceived by Bramante and Michelangelo, besides interfering with the exterior view of the dome, which is visible only from a distance. The east façade (for S. Peter’s reverses the usual orientation from west to east) is, for all its magnitude, unimpressive. Its extension beyond the actual edifice at each end still further accentuates the comparatively mean scale of the portal. But scale is very generally sacrificed both on the exterior and in the interior of S. Peter’s. This is attributed by experts to the change of design introduced by Michelangelo.

As arranged by Sangallo the Younger, the façades were to comprise the superimposed orders; for which Michelangelo substituted his scheme of the Capitol Palaces—a single colossal order, surmounted by an attic. He thus gained dignity at the expense of scale; for although the huge pilasters are eighty-seven feet high, they look much smaller, while the windows between them, each twenty feet in height, give an impression to the eye of about half that size. There is a similar apparent dwarfing of size in the piers and engaged columns of the nave, which actually measure to the top of the entablature one hundred feet. And this necessitated a corresponding increase of the dimensions of the sculptured figures in the spandrels, which are twenty feet high, thus further overpowering the sense of height.

The noblest feature of the interior is the magnificent barrel vault of the nave, while the surpassing grandeur of the whole edifice consists in Michelangelo’s dome.

Like Brunelleschi’s it has an inner and an outer shell, and is constructed on sixteen ribs, which, however, are all visible internally. The chief difference is the elevation of the dome and drum upon a second and loftier drum, composed of coupled Corinthian columns and intervening windows. This design was an adaptation of those which had been made by Bramante and Sangallo the Younger. The former had suggested a peristyle of columns; the latter, two drums; and Michelangelo virtually combined the two. But, in doing so he conceived new proportions between the vertical parts of the drum and the curve of the dome, that give his design not only a superior majesty but also a superior lightness and airiness.

S. Peter’s indeed, notwithstanding much extravagant, tasteless, and meretricious sumptuousness, due to Bernini and others, remains a stupendous monument to the genius of Michelangelo and Bramante and to the genius of the Italian Renaissance. It is the fit symbol of an age that gradually lost touch of the finer things of the spirit and grew to worship greatness, power, and pomp; that had all but discarded Christianity for Paganism.

 

Meanwhile the noblest trait of the Italian genius was its worship of beauty as well as power. The creativeness of the Italians was revealed in their extraordinary sensitiveness to all forms of beauty in the visible world; and in the world of intellectual conception, and in their marvellous aptitude for translating their impressions of beauty into forms of equivalent refinement. Accordingly, the student of to-day visits churches to enjoy the treasures of pictured altar-pieces, sculptured tombs, pulpits, wonders of metal-work in screens and sacred vessels, marvels of exquisite craftsmanship in objects too numerous to mention. The Sistine Chapel draws him because of Michelangelo’s frescoes, the Stanze apartments for Raphael’s, and the adjoining Loggia for his pictured Bible. Again, it is Raphael’s frescoes that lead him to the Villa Farnesina, while many another villa charms to-day by the beauty of its gardens and terraces, fountains, cascades, and fish-ponds, shaded alleys and grottos. In innumerable ways it is the accompaniments of Italian Renaissance architecture, as well as the architecture itself, that excite admiration and have their message for ourselves.