Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/187

Rh in mechanical execution. But the use of the inappropriate superimposed orders falsifies the design by giving it the appearance of two stories while in reality it has only one.

The façade of Santa Maria Formosa exhibits another phase of early Renaissance design in Venice. This façade is noticeable as reproducing some of the larger features of Alberti's west front of St. Andrea of Mantua with details having the character of the works of the Lombardi. The great central arch of St. Andrea is omitted here, and the existing portal is an alteration of a later time in a style that does not agree with the rest of the design. The three compartments into which the front is divided are treated as sunk panels flanked by half pilasters set against the larger ones, over which last the entablature is broken into ressauts. In each lateral compartment over a podium connecting the high pedestals on which the pilasters are raised is an opening of the Lombard type. The main lines of the composition correspond with the internal divisions of the building, except that the entablature of the order, which is carried across the entire front, divides the nave compartment into two stages.

The foregoing examples are enough to show the leading characteristics of the church architecture of the early Renaissance in north Italy. In the later period the local peculiarities give place for the most part to the measurably uniform style of which Vignola and Palladio were the leading masters, and which has been already considered under the heading of Church Architecture of the Roman Renaissance.