Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/184

150 with a dome on pendentives, while each of the others has a plain groined vault. These vaults spring from an entablature which crowns the great arcade, and is returned on the ends of the building, with ressauts on corbels at the imposts. The aisles have oblong groined vaults on pointed transverse arches springing from corbels on the wall side, and tied with iron rods. The main proportions conform with those of the so-called Italian Gothic churches, the great arcades of the nave, and consequently the aisle vaulting, being relatively very high. The most singular feature of this interior is the column (Fig. 86) of nondescript character, and a variant of the tapering Lombard Renaissance shaft of Pavia and Como. It consists of a shaft of pseudo-Corinthian form raised on a high octagonal pedestal, with a very wide and richly moulded base.



The church of San Salvatore, dating from the close of the fifteenth century, and attributed to the architect Tullio Lombardo, though begun by Spavento, has a modified Byzantine structural scheme applied to a long nave with three domes on pendentives separated by short sections of barrel vaulting. The supports (Fig. 87) of this vaulting are peculiar, and are like the piers of the nave of St. Andrea of Mantua modified by piercing them both transversely and longitudinally so as to leave four slender solid parts at the angles (two of which are engaged in the aisle wall), the void being covered with a diminutive dome on pendentives. The plan of the structure as a whole suggests this comparison with St. Andrea, but the character of the supports suggests their derivation from the piers of the church of St. Mark. These last are square masses of masonry pierced longitudinally and transversely so as to leave four heavy solids as in Figure 88, the void in this case being covered with a