Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/264

222 broken into ressauts resting on corbels in the shape of lions' heads projecting from the arch spandrels (Fig. 131), and over this entablature is a blind attic adorned with strap-work. The angles of the façade in which this porch occurs are furnished with buttresses in three stages with deep offsets, like those of Gothic art. The outer face of each stage is ornamented with a pair of pilasters on tall pedestals, with an entablature in ressauts, and over the topmost pair are two obelisks as finials. The pilasters are each broken in the middle by a larger block of stone after the manner of De l'Orme's columns.

The gatehouse at Tixall has a plain front of three stories with a projecting bay over the portal, and angle towers. The window openings are all of the broad mullioned Elizabethan type, and the façade as a whole would be admirable if it had nothing more.

But the Renaissance ideas led the designer to crown each story with an entablature, and to set a pair of classic columns on either side of the central bay, and in each tower angle. To cover these useless columns the entablature has to be broken into deep ressauts, and the three superimposed pairs carry nothing but a pedestal block above the main cornice, the several pedestal blocks being connected by a balustrade.