Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/265

Rh The gatehouse of Stanway has a portal with a four-centred arch framed with a shallow Doric order, having a pilaster with a free-standing column in front of it on either side. The entablature has a double ressaut over each of these compound members, and a curved pediment over the entablature is likewise broken into ressauts. A rectangular tablet with an escutcheon, surmounted by a smaller pediment, breaks through the middle of the larger pediment, and acroteria are set on its sides, while a keystone in the arch carries a shallow ressaut in the entablature. The front of Westwood Park is for the most part free from foreign elements, but it has a porch in the form of a Roman triumphal arch with three openings, and a Corinthian order of almost correct ancient proportions.

A remarkable illustration of the architectural taste of this time is afforded by the well-known Gate of Honour at Caius College, Cambridge. A triumphal arch scheme with an Ionic order, a Tudor arch, no openings in the lateral bays, and no attic, is surmounted with a Greek temple front of an engaged Corinthian order raised on tall pedestals connected by an engaged balustrade. This embraces in width only the central bay of the substructure, and solid abutments of concave outline are carried up over the side bays. A plain attic over the pediment of the temple forms the base for a square pyramid intersected by a tall hexagon, surmounted with a hexagonal dome. No voids, except the central opening under the Tudor arch, break the solid mass, but the wall surfaces are ornamented with disks, niches, entablatures, and small pediments in relief; and the pedestals of the temple order are carried on corbels and ressauts in the lower entablature.

Of the many English houses built at the close of the sixteenth century, few are more tasteless and pretentious than Wollaton Hall, built by Sir Francis Willoughby "at great expense, it was said, for a foolish display of his wealth." An order of coupled pilasters, broken in the middle by salient blocks, adorn each story, while vacant niches in the upper stories break the narrow wall surfaces between the pilasters on either side of the large mullioned windows. The chimney-stacks are, as in Longford Castle, shaped in the semblance of pseudo-Doric columns, and the square angle pavilions have their cornices