Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/191

Rh. These pilasters are raised on pedestals forming ressauts to a podium, and some of the windows are grouped in pairs, some in double pairs, and some are single. In the taller part the windows are taller, and show considerable differences of design. One group, consisting of a double pair, has flanking pilasters reaching only to the impost, with a stilt-block rising from the capital of each to the crowning entablature, while Corinthian colonnettes, with strongly marked entasis, support the archivolts—both pilasters and shafts being raised on low pedestals. Separated from this by a considerable interval is another window group of the same design, but consisting of a single pair, while in the intervening space, and along the rest of the wall toward the church of St. Mark, are unequally spaced single windows with pilasters supporting the archivolts, and other pilasters flanking these, all raised on high pedestals connected by a continuous podium. In the upper stage of the basement, at the head of the giant's stair, the pointed arcade is interrupted by a group of three round arches on grouped pilasters. The wall surfaces are everywhere elaborately panelled and enriched with arabesques, and the friezes, spandrels, and podiums have panelled disks, festoons, and arabesque ornaments in tiresome profusion.



The north side is also in the Renaissance style, but here is only one enclosed story, and this is on the level of the upper arcade of the east side. The architectural scheme of this part is different, except that its entablature is a continuation of the lower one of the eastern façade. The work here appears to have been wholly new, and the regularly spaced windows are each framed with a pseudo-Corinthian order in high relief, the shafts of this order being raised on ornamented round pedestals resting on corbel-blocks (Fig. 90). The walls are incrusted with large slabs of