Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/215

Rh Each detail ought to have a place and a posture which should make it a part of some system of related ornamental lines. This is, of course, elementary, and the principle is usually carried out in the ornamentation of the Renaissance, though in a highly artificial way. But in the design on the triangular panel of this console there is no fine system of related lines. The fruit and leafage have a disjointed arrangement, and the wriggled ribbon has no beauty of line or surface.

Instances of such disordered composition are conspicuous in the borders of the famous Ghiberti gates of the Florentine Baptistery, where the bosses of leafage set at regular intervals are composed in the same inorganic way (Fig. 101), and the bunches are bound with spiral fluted fillets. It is noticeable that the details are here elaborated with a minute naturalistic completeness that is incompatible with architectural effectiveness. The possibilities of the bronze material in which the design is wrought are developed to the utmost in the rendering of leaf veinings, serrations, and surface textures. This tendency to combine excessive naturalism with extremely artificial composition is a curious characteristic of both Roman and Renaissance art.

We find in the ornamental carving of the Renaissance not only a formal, and often a disjointed, scheme of composition, with artificial objects of no beauty or meaning introduced among elements derived from natural forms, but numerous instances occur where the design is made up entirely of such objects, as in a pilaster in the National Museum of Florence (Fig. 102). Such value as this design has lies wholly in its childish symmetry of arrangement of the ugly elements about an axis. It contains nothing else on which the eye can rest with pleasure. I think