Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/158

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ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE
chap.

the façade of the opposite side the scheme is varied, and is plainer. The columns of the order are disposed as before, but instead of being fluted they are rusticated like the walls, and have no bases, while a large round-arched opening, with impost mouldings and a plain keystone, fills each wide interval.

Of Sanmichele's palace fronts the best in Verona is, I think, that of the Palazzo Canossa, where over a high rusticated basement he has placed a shallow order of Corinthian pilasters in pairs, set close together, on a podium with ressauts. This order embraces both the principal floor and a low story above it, and has considerable elegance. The effect of the whole front is broad and quiet, save for the heavy balustrade with showy statues which crowns it. It will be seen, as we pass in review these different compositions, that the range of eccentricities of design embodied in them is as great as we find in the works of the earlier Renaissance, though they show fewer mediæval characteristics. The Palazzo Pompei alia Vittoria, also by Sanmichele, for instance, has a Doric order over a plain rusticated basement, like that of the Porta del Palio, but with the columns equally spaced, except that the central intercolumniation is made wider than the others in conformity with the width of the portal beneath it, and a pilaster is coupled with a column on each angle. Plain round-arched windows occupy the intervals between the columns, and a corbel in the form of a sculptured head is set under the entablature of the order over the crown of each arch. The plain windows of the basement have clumsy rectangular sills on consoles.

A more elaborate design by the same architect is that of the front of the Palazzo Bevilacqua (Fig. 71). Here an order of rusticated Doric pilasters, supporting an entablature with channelled consoles in the place of triglyphs, and a cornice surmounted with a balustrade forming a balcony to the story above, divides the basement wall into alternately wide and narrow bays. A round-arched window in each bay has a heavy keystone in the form of a sculptured bust, which forms at the same time a corbel to the entablature. The unequal spacing of the pilasters leads to an awkward irregularity in the spacing of the channelled consoles which do duty as triglyphs in the frieze. One of them is set over the centre of each pilaster, and the spaces over the wide intervals each give place to three of