Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/241

Rh scheme includes two stories and an attic, each of which is adorned with a classic order. In the basement and in the principal story the orders consist of fluted Corinthian pilasters on pedestals, while in the attic short pilasters, with their surfaces panelled in the Lombard Renaissance manner, are used. The principal orders only have complete entablatures, the order of the attic having only a cornice with a frieze which takes in the capitals, and this cornice is surmounted by a parapet with filigree ornamentation. In the intercolumniations of the basement order arches are sprung beneath the entablature in the Roman fashion, each arch embracing a narrow window with a segmental head concentric with the arch, while the window openings of the upper stories are rectangular, those of the principal floor having alternately round and angular pediments on consoles.

In the pavilions we have in each story a variation of the scheme of the Fountain of the Nymphs. The imitation of Serlio's cut (Fig. 117 above) is closer, Corinthian columns being used instead of pilasters as in Serlio's design. But in the basement the architect has made marked changes in the central bay, omitting the arch, and cutting out a portion of the entablature. This last device, of which, as we have seen, the later Renaissance architecture of Italy affords many instances, is not only a violation of the principles of classic design which these architects were professing to restore, but it is a barbarism, because it breaks the continuity of those lines which in such a composition should have the expression of binding the parts together. In the story above the entablature is not completely broken; the architrave and frieze only are cut in order to insert a tablet. In the attic, however, the cornice is cut out completely, and a segmental arch is sprung over the opening to form a pediment as a crowning feature of the pavilion. The traditional logic of French design is thus completely ignored by Lescot, and he abandons himself to capricious methods of composition as completely as the Italians had done. It is surprising not only to find the French people thus following the Italians in their irrational misuse of structural forms in ornamentation, but also to find them, after having produced in the Middle Ages the most living and beautiful forms of foliate sculpture that the world has ever seen, resorting to the heavy and formal festoons