THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CENTURY

Just as the introduction of Greek ideas gave a new impetus to literature and art and sculpture and painting, so it did also, and perhaps to an even greater degree, to architecture. The effect of classic thought had begun to be felt before 1450. It was noted first in ecclesiastical architecture and its influence can be traced throughout Europe. Brunelleschi, who built the great dome of the Cathedral in Florence, died in 1444, but not until he had shown the world of his time how beautiful such a conception was and how it could be accomplished. He had gone to Rome and studied the Pantheon, as well as all the other great buildings which the Romans had left in that city, and during his studies, becoming enamored of the subject, he mastered every detail of their style and became familiar with every form of Roman art. He first completed the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence and then was entrusted with a larger work, the completion of the Santo Spirito, which Arnolfo and Giotto had left unfinished and apparently, according to the practice of the Middle Ages, without even a drawing to show how they intended to complete it. They would have given it a Gothic roof. Brunelleschi conceived the dome and then, in the course of his studies and designing, definitely initiated the development of Renaissance architecture.

The first important influence in the architecture of our century is Leon Battista Alberti, who was led to the study of architecture because of his interest in classical literature and his desire to restore a classical style in building as well as in letters. In order to accomplish this, he wrote a text-book of architecture, "De re aedificatoria." Besides the theory of classic architecture, he also devoted himself to its practical exemplification, and there are some models of his work that are well known. The charming little classic Church of San Francesco at Rimini and the much more important Church of San Andrea at Mantua were erected under his direction. The latter Church is noted, according to Fergusson in his “History of Modern Architecture,” for “the beauty of its proportions, the extreme elegance of every part and the appropriateness of the modes in which classical details are used without the least violence or straining.” All the details of the classical architecture as applied to Churches are to be found in this in their simplest and most sincere form. They were to become so familiar afterwards as to represent a standard of Church architecture.

The great development of this new style came under Bramante of Urbino, who was born the year that Brunelleschi died. His most remarkable monument in ecclesiastical architecture is the Church at Lodi. Alberti’s work had been mainly the restoration of the Basilican form. Bramante emphasized the domical or Byzantine type. After these two the change from the mediaeval to the modern style of architecture may be said to have been completed and under the most favorable auspices. The dome of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which Fergusson pronounces “both externally and internally one of the most pleasing specimens of its class found anywhere,” is another monument to Bramante’s genius. Bramante is most famous, however, for his bold design and magnificent foundations for St Peter’s at Rome. He did not live to complete this, but had his original plan been carried out, the finished building would have been in many ways more satisfactory than it is and would have exhibited many less serious architectural faults.

An excellent type of the ornate architecture of the Renaissance period is the façade of the famous Certosa near Pavia. The designs for it were prepared by Borgognone, a distinguished Milanese artist of that time, one of whose pictures will be found reproduced in the chapter on Secondary Italian Painters. He was much more essentially a painter than an architect, and this the Certosa demonstrates. Many an architect, with no ambition outside of his own department, would be eminently well pleased, however, to have succeeded in producing so beautiful and harmonious a design as may be seen in the façade of the great Church of the Italian Carthusians.

The architectural monument of the century is St. Peter’s at Rome, designed originally by Bramante, whose design was developed and harmonized very beautifully by Sangallo, but only after Raphael had carried on Bramante’s work for some six years and Baldassare Peruzzi had succeeded him for an equal term, though without accomplishing much. The defects so often noted come from this succession of architects. Sangallo’s design has been preserved for us and shows what a magnificent conception he had. Michelangelo’s dome might well have taken its place in this design without any of the overpowering effect that it has on the structure as completed. In spite of all the criticism that may be made of St. Peter’s, because, as the editor of the recent edition of Fergusson’s “History of Architecture” (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1899) says, “the big pulls away from the beautiful and there must be a compromise,” it is one of the most wonderful of churches and one of the most marvellous structures that ever came from the hand of man. Fergusson himself is severe in criticism, and yet he says, “in spite of all its faults of detail, the interior of St. Peter’s approaches more nearly to the sublime in architectural effect than any other which the hand of man has executed.”

In England Renaissance architecture, that is the influence of the classical, had very little, indeed almost no effect during Columbus’ Century. The genius, as well as the taste of the builders and architects of the time, however, is well illustrated by the development of Gothic architecture which took place in this period. The Italians of the Renaissance decided that the interior of buildings should be decorated by paintings. The English builders were yet in the period in which they considered that the interior decoration, just as the exterior decoration, should flow naturally from the construction of the building. These two styles are very well illustrated in two famous structures which were built within the same generation, though separated by half the width of the European continent, and which are triumphs of the respective styles of architecture. These are the Sistine Chapel at Rome and King’s College Chapel of Cambridge, the plans of which, because of the inevitable contrast they suggest and the supreme effectiveness of both of them, deserve study. Each has a beauty of its own that advocates of either style cannot help but admire, and both give magnificent testimony to the power of the men of this time to express themselves nobly and beautifully in structural work under the influence of religious ideas.

In Spain the architecture of the time is noteworthy, though it is mainly of ecclesiastical character. All of the buildings erected by Ferdinand and Isabella are in the Gothic style, and the famous Church of St. John of the Kings at Toledo is as Gothic as the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster. The Cathedral at Salamanca commenced in 1513 and that of Segovia in 1525 are both thoroughly Gothic. These buildings are so well known that the accomplishment of this period in architecture need scarcely be emphasized. The first distinctively Renaissance work in Spain is the Cathedral at Granada, which, though Gothic in certain ways, contains Renaissance suggestions and modifications of form that have been adopted for many modern Churches.

The secular architecture of this period made as great progress as the ecclesiastical architecture, and it is of even greater interest because nearly all the ideas in common use among architects for monumental public buildings or ambitious private structures in our time are adopted and adapted from the architecture of Columbus’ Century. As in ecclesiastical architecture, the Renaissance begins in Florence. The erection of two of the magnificent palaces of the city, still well known and admired, the Riccardi, formerly called the Medicean, and the Pitti, were the initial steps. The Riccardi was designed by Michelozzi and has a splendid façade 500 feet in length and 90 feet in height. The Pitti is 490 feet in length, three stories high in the centre, each story 40 feet in height, with immense windows 24 feet apart from centre to centre. They show very well what the architects of this time could accomplish on this grand scale. Both were completed just about the beginning of Columbus’ Century. After this, the Florentine buildings became more ornate, and yet with the ornament properly adapted to the structure and producing an effect of beauty that has deservedly won modern admiration and study. Probably the two most famous buildings of the first half of Columbus’ Century are the Rucellai and the Guadagni palaces of Florence, the façades of which have been much admired. The Rucellai Palace was designed by Alberti, the Guadagni by Bramante. As their ideas dominated ecclesiastical architecture, so now they were to dominate secular architecture.

After Florence comes Venice, and here the wealth of the city, its Oriental affiliations and the light and air of its surroundings gave rise to a series of marvellously beautiful ornate Renaissance buildings, famous throughout the world and especially known to English-speaking people through Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” The most famous of these is the Palazzo Vendramini, which may be permitted to speak for itself. One of the most beautiful buildings in Venice is the Library of St. Mark, situated exactly opposite the Doge’s Palace and built by Sansovino. Scarcely less beautiful is San Micheli’s masterpiece, the Palace of the Grimani, which is now the post-office. These buildings are familiar to all. To know them is to admire them, and the architects of every progressive structural period since have devoted much study to them.

A very interesting development of Renaissance architecture took place in the little city of Vicenza, the birthplace of Palladio and the scene of some of his best work. Palladio was not so perfect in his achievements, as some of his admirers have suggested, but he applied most of the Renaissance ideas to architecture very successfully, and his influence upon the after-time, as some of the illustrations which we have selected from his work will show, has been felt at all times and nearly everywhere. The Thiene Palace, which has been very much praised and is generally quoted as one of his most successful designs, has been criticized rather severely by Fergusson, and yet its effectiveness cannot be gainsaid.

The Chiericate Palace, another one of Palladio’s designs reckoned among his best, has the objection that it is open and weak at the angles and solid in the centre and the centre is full above and weak below, and yet, after mentioning these faults, Fergusson says that there is “an exquisite proportion of parts which redeems this façade and an undefinable elegance of detail which disarms the critic of Palladio’s work so that in spite of the worst possible arrangements they still leave a pleasing impression on the mind of the spectator.” This is, perhaps, damning by faint praise, but it is praise indeed from Fergusson. Many others have been most enthusiastic about this and other of Palladio’s works, and one has only to look around at our modern ambitious structures to realize how much of influence Palladio still has.

In Genoa there are some very beautiful buildings of this time, though as their material, despite the name “the city of palaces,” was mainly rubble masonry covered with stucco, the windows without dressings, the intention being to paint the architectural mouldings on the stucco and also to paint frescoes between them, the unsatisfactoriness of much of the architecture for modern study can be realized. In spite of these limitations, Galeazzo Alessi (1500 to 1572) succeeded in making some very beautiful buildings. Probably the most admired example is the building now known as the Municipalata in the Strada Nuova, formerly known as the Tursi-Doria Palace.

Vignola (1507 to 1573) occupies the place in Rome that Palladio holds in Vicenza towards the end of Columbus’ Century. A charming example of his construction is the Villa of Pope Julius near Rome, the façade of which is certainly his and which, without being ambitious, represents his power to express simplicity and dignity even in a summer house.

His great work is the Palace of Caprarola, built some thirty miles outside of Rome for the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. The building is all the more interesting because it has furnished ideas for some of the larger public buildings of our time and contains more than a suggestion for some recent architectural plans of somewhat startling character for New York City.

The plan of the Palace of Caprarola is a pentagon enclosing a circular court, each of the five sides measures 130 feet and the court is 65 feet in diameter, while the three stories are each about 30 feet in height. It is usually considered one of the finest palaces in Italy. In spite of the difficulty of the task and the singularly unfavorable nature of pentagonal form for architectural effect externally and commodious arrangements internally, the architect succeeded admirably. As the picture of it shows very well, the approach was managed beautifully and the effect of castellation very well secured.

The story of architecture, secular as well as religious, outside of Italy is quite as interesting as that in Italy itself at this time. Everywhere throughout Europe beautiful buildings were erected in charming taste and with fine effectiveness. This is particularly true as regards the municipal buildings of various kinds, the town halls, the hospitals, the asylums for foundling children, and all the other structures due to civic munificence at this time. Just as in regard to painting and sculpture, the Netherlands was the seat of some extremely beautiful artistic work of great originality and perfection of detail during this period. There is scarcely an important town of Belgium, and even a number of those that have become quite unimportant in our time, which does not present some architectural monument of cardinal importance in the history of architecture. While Italy is much better known, Belgium deserves, and in recent years has very properly received, devoted attention from students and amateurs in all the arts, and not least has its architecture come into its due meed of praise and appreciation.

One of the most beautiful architectural monuments of the later fifteenth century is the town hall of Louvain. Indeed, it is one of the most beautiful architectural monuments of its kind in the world. Schayes, in his “History of Architecture,” says, “Not only is the Hotel de Ville of Louvain the most remarkable municipal edifice in Belgium, but one may seek in vain its equal in Europe.” Its architect, whose name was unknown until well on in the nineteenth century, was only a master mason of this capital of Brabant when he was entrusted with the task of making for the burghers of one of the most important towns of the time a town hall such as they would consider worthy of them, but above all surpassing those erected by any of the neighboring towns. He succeeded eminently in fulfilling the commission, and fortunately the town hall remains almost in its original condition as a monument to the wonderful artistic workmanship of the time.

George Wharton James, in his book on “Some Old Flemish Towns,” says, “The exquisite Hotel de Ville reminds one of the caskets or reliquaries which Kings and Queens used to give to be placed upon the high altars of Cathedrals. There is the same simplicity of design, the same beauty of line, the rectangle with gables, emphasized by a graceful tower at each pinnacle, and another at each angle, the whole finished with a crown spire tipped with a golden flèche.” The decorations are most delicate, reminding one of the lace work of the country, but it seems almost incredible that this effect should have been produced so marvellously in stone.

In spite of the multitude of decorations, the structure does not strike one, as do so many of the buildings of the seventeenth century, as over-decorated, but somehow all the charming sculptured ornament seems as suitably in place here as it is in the exquisite patterns of the lace of the town.

The beautiful Hotel de Ville of Brussels is almost as interesting as that at Louvain and represents the early part of the Columbus’ Century. At the opposite side of the Grande Place is what is now known as the Maison du Roi, formerly known as the Broodhuis or House of Bread, which is scarcely less interesting, though very much restored, than the Hotel de Ville. The one is a monument of the Gothic of the middle of the fifteenth century, the other shows the influence of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. The whole of the Grand Place gives an excellent idea of the devotion of these municipalities to civic beauty and monumental construction and represents an anticipation of ideas that are usually considered modern but that were very thoroughly developed and applied in making the “City Beautiful” in Columbus’ Century. Were there space, much might be said here about the magnificent town halls of Bruges, Ghent and other cities of the Netherlands.

The architecture of Spain, practically always connected with the names of ecclesiastics and usually built for ecclesiastical or educational or charitable purposes, shows very well the profound intellectual genius of the people for whom Columbus’ discovery was made and who were beginning to reap the material benefits of his extension of the Spanish realms in the Western continent. One of the most important of the buildings of the time is that of the University of Alcala, under the direction of the celebrated Cardinal Ximenes, or Cisneros. The rebuilding commenced about 1510 and continued nearly to the end of Columbus’ Century. It is an extremely beautiful building. The Archiepiscopal Palace is quite equal to it, and its court has been very highly praised. Fergusson has spoken highly of the bracket capitals in the upper story of this court, of which we give a sketch, and he thinks this invention of the Spanish architect a distinctly new and valuable idea in architecture which unfortunately has not been commonly adopted.

Some of the internal arrangements have been very much admired, and the Paranimfo, a state apartment in the University, deserves attention not only for its intrinsic beauty, but from its being so essentially Spanish in style. The roof is of richly-carved woodwork in panels in a style borrowed from the Moors. Fergusson says that there is another and more beautiful specimen of this sort of work in the chapel of the University above the Cenotaph of the great Cardinal.

Elsewhere in Spain some of these beautiful courts and interiors were ornamented very highly as became a Southern people, and yet with an effectiveness and taste that have caused them to be very much admired in after-times. In the Monastery of Lupiana there is a cloistered court similar in design to that at Alcala, but even grander, four stories in height, each gallery being lighter than the one below it and so arranged as to give the appearance of sufficient strength, combined with the lightness and elegance peculiarly appropriate to domestic architecture, especially when employed internally as it is here. Fergusson, from whom the opinion just expressed is quoted, thinks that the Spanish architects were far more happy than their Italian brethren in this regard and mainly because they borrowed ideas from their own Spanish art rather than kept too insistently to classic ideas.

Two royal buildings in Spain, the Palace of Charles V at Granada and the Alcazar of Toledo, deserve to be mentioned. The Alcazar was begun before the end of Columbus’ Century, but not finished until later. The sketch of it here presented gives an excellent idea of how simple and yet properly ornate for monumental purposes the Spanish architects were making their buildings at this time. The truly Spanish features of solidity below, with the increasing richness and openness above, is very effective and is all the more interesting because historians of architecture declare that this effect was little understood outside of the Spanish peninsula.

The upper portion of the famous tower of the Giralda at Seville, which has always attracted so much attention for its beauty, was being built just at the close of the century. We in modern America have given it the tribute of sincerest flattery by imitating it in the tower of Madison Square Garden. It is interesting to realize that the Spaniards put a figure of Faith at the summit of the beautiful tower, pointing strikingly heavenward. Is it significant that we in our time have found nothing better to put there than the outworn symbol of a statue to Diana?

French secular architecture at this time made some fine achievements which are very well known and have been very much admired. The Louvre in Paris is a succession of monuments to the architectural spirit of the French for centuries. I think that there is very general agreement that the portion of this building erected in Columbus’ Century is not only the most interesting, but the most beautiful. The Pavilion de I’Horloge is quite charming in its effectiveness. The ornamental portions are said to have been sculptured from designs furnished by Jean Goujon. This is enough of itself to make us sure that they would be beautiful, but they were besides very artistically designed to heighten the effect of the architecture.

The best-known contributions to architecture by the French in this time are their famous chateaux. The typical example of these is the Chateau of Chambord, commenced by Francis I immediately after his return from his Spanish captivity. While the design is classical in detail, it is eminently French in character, and it has been a favorite study of architects ever since. Its repute shows how well architects at this time accomplished their purpose of making an impressively beautiful building. At this same time the Chateau of Madrid, situated in the Bois de Boulogne at Paris and which was unfortunately destroyed during the Revolution, was built, and the sketches that are left to us show us its beauty and effectiveness secured through comparative simplicity. All the famous chateaux of France were either built or received their most famous additions under the influence of the new spirit that came into architecture under the influence of Francis I. Those of Bury and Blois and Amboise and Chenonceaux were products of this period. The staircase and the wing in the centre of which it stands at Blois are among the most admired, or at least the most frequently drawn, of the works of this age.

All the other departments of architecture, besides the ecclesiastical and municipal, were affected by the enterprising spirit which entered into architecture at this time. Leonardo da Vinci offered to build fortifications under any and all circumstances, the more difficult the better, and succeeded in doing some excellent work. According to tradition he laid firm foundations, even under water, for certain French fortifications, and these still remain. In bridge building particularly this period did some excellent work. In the chapter on Social Work and Workers will be found an illustration of the bridge built across the Avon at Stratford by Sir Hugh Clopton about the time of the discovery of America, which shows that they could build beautifully as well as enduringly at this time. There are many private houses in the towns of Europe erected at this time, some of them even by families without any pretension to wealth or nobility, which illustrate very well how sincere and thorough was their domestic architecture, how beautiful because of its honest straightforwardness and how eminently enduring. Fra Giocondo, who edited the Aldine edition of Vitruvius in 1511 and who edited Cæsar in 1513, introduced illustrations into these works, and particularly a plan of Caesar’s bridge across the Rhine. He used his classical knowledge to good purpose, however, for in the service of the king of France he probably built two of the noble bridges that still span the Seine. These were finished early in the sixteenth century. It would not be difficult to note other examples of this same kind in many parts of Europe at this time.

Fergusson summed up the place of this century in architecture very well in his advice to Italy as to what must be done in order to restore to that country the precedence that she won in architecture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He said : “Italy has only to go back to the inspirations which characterize the end of the fifteenth and the dawn of the sixteenth century, to base upon them a style which will be as beautiful as it would be appropriate to her wants and her climate. If she will only attempt to revive the traditions of the great age which is hallowed by the memories of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, of Bramante, Sangallo, and even of Michelangelo, she cannot go wrong. These men erred occasionally from inexperience, and because the system under which the art was conducted in their days was such as to render success impossible; but their aspirations were right, and there was an impress of nobleness on their works which has not since been surpassed.

“Since their time the history of Italian art may be summed up in a few words. During the fifteenth century it was original, appropriate and grand; during the sixteenth it became correct and elegant, though too often also tinctured with pedantry; and in the seventeenth it broke out into caprice and affectation, till it became as bizarre as it was tasteless. During the eighteenth it sank down to a uniform level of timid mediocrity, as devoid of life as it is of art.”

It is as true for all the countries of Europe as for Italy that what is needed for the redemption of architecture from the unfortunate sordid influences which have crept over it is a return to the ideas of Columbus’ Century. Fortunately, since Fergusson wrote his paragraph of advice for Italy, a great change has come over the attitude of men generally toward architecture, and beautiful buildings are being erected nearly everywhere, most of them with Renaissance ideas prominent in them, but above all with the lessons drawn from this fruitful period of beautiful construction guiding the minds and hands of architects and builders. All around us handsome Renaissance buildings are rising. Inasmuch as they are mere imitations, they are unfortunate evidence of our lack of originality. If, somehow, using the same high standards of taste and the inspiration of the classic authors as did the men of Columbus’ Century, we can succeed in evolving an architecture suited to our conditions and our environment and appropriate for the uses of our day, then we shall accomplish the solution of the problem which they solved so well. What they did above all was to accomplish in building Horace’s dictum that “he who mingles the useful and the beautiful takes every point.” The merely useful is hideous. The merely beautiful is monstrous. Success lies in that combination of use and beauty, of which Columbus’ contemporaries so ingeniously found the key.