an entablature resting on these capitals cannot pass over them. Complete entablatures are therefore omitted, entablature blocks being set upon the capitals to support the raking cornices of the pediments (Fig. 63). This makes a bad composition, because the structural system simulated would in reality be an insecure one in consequence of the absence of a tying member which the entablature should form in such a scheme. The eye instinctively feels that the pediment cornices are tending to thrust so as to overthrow the supporting colonnettes. It is true that in the windows of the principal façade (the figure is taken from a window on the side of the building) the cornice of the entablature block
Fig. 63.—Window of the Farnese.
is returned against the wall over the arch; but this is so far in retreat, and so inconspicuous, that it does not properly complete the pediment triangle. Precedents for many of these Renaissance aberrations of design may be found in ancient Roman art, and this particular one is foreshadowed at Baalbek, where in the pediment already noticed (p. 95) the entablature, as well as the raking cornice, is broken, the middle part being set back in the plane of the wall, and the parts over the supporting pilasters forming ressauts. But I know of no ancient instance in which the entablature is completely removed between the ressauts, unless the one figured by Serlio[1] (reproduced in Fig. 64) be ancient. He does not say that it is, but he describes it among other things that he calls ancient, and says that he found it between Foligno and Rome, and that it exhibits an architectural license because the architrave is broken by the arch.
In the court of the Farnese we have a frank return to the
- ↑ Op. cit., bk. 3, p. 53.
