Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/156

124 The order is made lower and the attic higher. The Arch of Titus is the finest in proportions of all the Roman triumphal arches, and the grandest in monumental simplicity. Sansovino's changes and ornamental additions spoil the composition, and do not fit the design for the building to which it is attached. Such a design could not have any proper relationship to such a building. To attach any sort of a Roman triumphal arch scheme to the base of a mediæval tower is an architectural absurdity.

In the scheme of the Palazzo Cornaro an Ionic order and a Corinthian order frame in the round-headed windows of the upper stories. The columns of these orders are set in pairs, each pair having a plinth and pedestal in common. On the side walls of the building these orders are returned to the extent of one bay, which brings four columns together at the angles with clumsy effect. The frieze of the uppermost entablature is widened, as in the Library of St. Mark, but its surface is plain save for a series of oval openings which light a low attic. The high rusticated basement, which includes a mezzanine, has square-headed windows framed by a rusticated Doric order resting on a projecting sill supported on plain consoles; and over each of these a low rectangular window, flanked by elongated consoles on square blocks set upon the entablature of the window below, lights the mezzanine. A curved pediment over each of the lower windows, between the blocks that support the flanking members of the windows above, gives further awkwardness to the total scheme (Fig. 69). Barbaric compositions such as this were now to become of frequent occurrence in the architecture of the later Renaissance. While the designers were eliminating the mediæval forms more completely