Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/58

 nearest approach to it in Roman art is the entablature block resting on the capital (as in the great hall of the Baths of Caracalla), which was a blundering device of the later Roman architects. The complete entablature running through the impost, as in the chapel of the Pazzi, sometimes, indeed, occurs in the early churches of Rome and elsewhere, as a result of unsettled conditions of design, while the architects were struggling

13.—Façade of the Pazzi chapel.

with the traditional use of the entablature and the introduction of the arch sprung from the columns. But after the admirable logic of the mediæval arched systems of construction had been reached it appears strange that any designer should go back to this irrational combination.

In the portico (Fig. 13) the incongruities of design are of a still graver nature because they involve weakness of construction. The order of the interior is, as we have just seen, but a