Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/196

 best of them the neo-classic details are used sparingly, though not without strange new inconsistencies of form and adjustment.

The Palazzo Corner-Spinelli (Plate VII), attributed to Pietro Lombardo, is one of the most characteristic. Its broad-walled basement, and the well-ordered subdivisions of the upper stories, are exceedingly fine, though the basement is high and the principal story rather low. No complete orders occur in this façade, but superimposed pilasters are placed on the angles, and an entablature is carried across each of the upper stories, while only a narrow string course crowns the basement. The windows are disposed in the manner of those of the mediæval Venetian palaces, a pair of them being set together in the middle, and a single one occupying the centre of each lateral bay in conformity with the divisions of the interior. These windows are wide, and are composed in the mediæval manner, with a dividing shaft and two small arches encompassed by a larger arch, as in the Scuola di San Rocco. A noticeable peculiarity of detail in these windows is the incomplete circle in the tympanum space, which intersects the smaller arches so as to form sinuous curves like those of Flamboyant Gothic tracery. The archivolts are carried by small pilasters, and the spandrels are framed with mouldings. The windows open on corbelled balconies with balustrades in Renaissance form of great refinement and elegance, and the balcony rails are carried as string courses along the walls. The panelling of the pilasters, as in this design and many others that we have noticed beginning with Alberti's façade of St. Andrea of Mantua, is of questionable propriety, for supporting members need to have an expression of concentrated strength with which such treatment is hardly compatible. The surface of a pier or pilaster may be enriched by any kind of fluting or chasing that does not materially diminish its substance, but to sink panels in such supporting members is to destroy in a measure the expression of homogeneous compactness. The classic details in this building show the same disregard for correct classic forms and proportions that we find in the art of the Renaissance generally. The superimposed pilasters on the angles are of uniform width, though they differ greatly in height, and those of the various openings are of still different proportions and sizes. This association of members of the same kind, but of many different