Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/200

162 which a wide central bay wholly occupied by openings is flanked by lateral bays each with a solid wall on either side of an opening, is indeed retained, but the effect of it is much obscured by the prominence given to the orders, which are in high relief, and extend across the whole front. The openings have the mediæval form of two shafted arches beneath an embracing arch with a circle in the tympanum space. Three, instead of two, of these compound openings are grouped within the unusually wide central bay, and each one fills an intercolumniation of the order. In each lateral bay the columns of the order

are unequally spaced in conformity with the narrow strips of solid wall, one on either side of the opening, which they enclose, giving a wide central intercolumniation and two narrow ones. The cornice of the basement entablature is widened, and supported on corbels from the frieze, in front of the windows of the principal story, and balustrades are set on these projecting ledges so as to form balconies. To give emphasis to the topmost entablature as the crowning feature of the façade, it is made so high as to be out of all proportion to the order of which it is a part.

Of the later palace architecture of Venice it is unnecessary to give any extended analysis because it is less distinctly Venetian, and belongs more fully to the so-called Roman Renaissance style which is essentially uniform in character in all parts of the country. In these later palace fronts the main divisions of the typical Venetian scheme persist indeed, but they are so slightly emphasized, and so overladen with heavy orders, that they lose their proper effect. In Sansovino's Palazzo Cornaro, for instance, already described (p. 124), these main divisions of the front are hardly noticeable in a general view. The general