Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/253

 above and curved ones below, in another with curved pediments above and round archivolts below, in still another with curved pediments above and a single one embracing both windows below; and so on with continued change with no purpose but that of mere change. Viollet le Duc commends the architect of this façade for seeking what he calls a grand disposition without abandoning the logical principles of his predecessors. But the great French master appears to me to err in his reasoning here, as frequently elsewhere in his discourse on the architecture of the Renaissance. The great order of Doric pilasters used in this façade fills, he says, exactly the function of buttresses, and he then proceeds to defend the whole scheme by saying that, "Taking the order as a buttress it is possible, without violence to reason, to cut it by a floor" (i.e. to divide the space between the pilasters into two stories). But there is no sense in taking the order as a buttressing system, for there is nothing in the structure to require buttressing; and if there were, the pilasters of an order, even though doubled, as in this case, would not form an effective buttress system. It is in nothing but the general arrangement of the main lines that such a composition can be said to bear any resemblance to an organic mediæval system in which buttresses have a function, and are shaped so as to express it.

The interior façade of the same building (Fig. 126) presents a different scheme. The great order here has fluted pilasters, and the division of the building into two stories is not expressed on the outside. Viollet le Duc remarks on this façade as follows: "The architect wished here not only to accent the great order more clearly, but also to hide entirely the floor of the upper story; and in adopting this scheme, contrary to the logical principles of the architects of the Middle Ages, he has carried it out with remarkable skill. The line of the floor, naturally placed at the level A, is cut by arched niches, so that the eye does not suspect its existence, and