Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/497

Rh ITALIAN.] ARCHITECTURE 439 Faustina, the Pantheon, the portico at Assifii, and the other classic models, which he drew, but clearly did not appreciate. His columns upon columns, his attached and clustered columns, his stilted post-like columns, his broken entab latures, his numberless pilasters, straggling and unequal intercolumniations, inappropriate and inelegant ornaments, circular pediments, and the liks, are blemishes too numerous and too great to be passed over because of occasional elegance of proportion and beauty of detail. Scamozzi did not improve on the style of his master, which, however, he very much affected. Indeed, the term Palladicm was long used as synonymous with beautiful and excellent archi tecture, so that it cannot be wondered at that Palladio s pupils and successors should have imitated him ; nor is it surprising that they did not surpass, or even equal him, for they were taught to look to his works as the ne plus ultra of excellence. Giacomo dclla Porta, a contemporary of Palladio, followed Michel Angelo in several of his works, and imbibed much of his manner, on which he certainly improved; but still his own is far from being good. Delia Porta was much employed in Rome; and it fell to him, in conjunction with Domenico Fontana, to put the cupola on St Peter s. Fontana s style of architecture is not particularly distinguished for its good or bad quali ties : he obtained more reputation as an engineer than as an architect, having been engaged in removing and setting up most of the obelisks which give so much interest to the architectural scenery of Rome. The Lunghi, father, son, and grandson, the Rainaldi, Maderno, Borromini, Bernini, Carlo Fontana, Fuga, Vanvitelli, and many others in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, carried the peculi arities of the Italian school to the greatest extremes. Of those enumerated, Bernini was perhaps the least offensive, and Borromini the most extravagant ; but throughout that period, except in extreme cases, individual manner is less distinguishable, and that of the school more strongly marked. It may be gathered from the preceding remarks, that the secular architecture of the Italian school is generally preferable to the ecclesiastical, and that the architects of the 15th and 16th centuries were generally superior to those who followed them. In Italy tho school has not yet ceased to exist, nor indeed has its style ceased to be studied. Designs are still made by the students of the various academies in the manner of the Cinquecento, and on the models with which the country abounds. The pre cepts of Vitruvius are yet inculcated, and the men whose names have just been mentioned are looked up to as masters of architecture in the country which contains tho Roman Pantheon and the Greek temple of Neptune at Prestum, and has access to the more exquisite works of Greece herself. As has been already stated, Italian architecture, though professedly a revival of the classical styles of Greece and Rome, was formed without reference to the existing specimens of cither, but on the dogmas of an obscure Roman author, and the glosses of the &quot;revivers&quot; on his text. Vitruvius described four classes or orders of columnar composition ; and on the principles which governed him in subjecting to fixed laws all the varieties with which he appears to have been acquainted, they formed a fifth, of a medley of two of his, thus completing the Italian orders of architecture. Tho school which was founded on the Vitruvian theories has systematised everything to an absurd extent, and laid down laws for collocating and proportioning all the matter it furnishes for architectural composition and decoration. It teaches that columns are modelled from the human figure ; that the Tuscan column is like a sturdy labourer a rustic; the Doric is somewhat trimmer though equally masculine a gentleman, perhaps ; the Ionic is a sedate matron ; tho Corinthian a lascivious courtesan; and the Composite an amalgam of the last two ! In a composition which admits any two or more of them, the rustic must take the lowest place ; on his head stands the stately Doric, who in his turn bears the comely matron, on whose head is placed the wanton, and the wanton again is made to support the lady of doubtful character ! With out commenting on this, we proceed at once to point out the general features of the Italian style, premising only, that according to the practice of the school everything is confined to an exclusive use and appropriation ; such columns may be fluted, and such must not; such a moulding may be used here, but not there ; and so on. The propor tions and arrangements of an order, of any part of one, or of anything that may come within an architectural composi tion, are fixed and unchangeable, whatever may be the purpose or situation for which it is required ; whether, for instance, an order be attached or insulated, the column must have exactly the same number of modules and minutes in height. It is true that the masters of the school are not agreed among themselves as to those things in which they are not bound by Vitruvius ; but every one not the less contends for the principle, each, of course, pre scribing his own doctrine as orthodox and final on these unsettled points. Mouldings are considered by these authorities as con stituent parts of an order, and are limited to eight in number, strangely enough including the fillet. They are the cyma-recta, the cyma-reversa (or ogive or ogee), tho ovolo, the torus, the astragal or bead, the cavetto, the scotia, and the fillet. They are gathered from the Roman remains, but reduced to regular lines or curves, which un like all good artistic work may be drawn with a rule or struck with a pair of compasses. By their arrangement according to certain proportions, with flat surfaces, modil- lions, and dentils, a profile is formed ; no two conjoined mouldings may be enriched, but their ornaments, as well as the modillions and dentils, must be disposed so as to fall regularly under one another, and, when columns occur, above the middle of them. An order is said to be composed of two principal parts, the column and the entablature ; these are divided into base, shaft, and capital in the one, and architrave, frieze, and cornice in the other, and are variously subdivided in the different orders. The Tuscan column must be mado seven diameters in height, the Doric eight, the Ionic nine, and the Corinthian and Composite ten. The height of the entablature, according to some authorities, should be one- fourth the height of the column, and, according to others, two of its diameters. The parts of the entablature of all but the Doric may be divided into ten equal parts, four of which are given to the cornice, three to the frieze, and three to the architrave ; and in the Doric, the entablature being divided into eight parts, three must be given to tho cornice, three to the friezo, and the remaining two to the architrave. For the minor divisions a diameter of the column is made into a scale of sixty minutes, by which they are arranged ; but this is obviously irrelevant if the whole height of tho entablature is determined by the height of the column, and not by its diameter ; in this case, therefore, they must be proportioned from the general divisions already ascertained. Columns must be diminished, according to Vitruvius, more or less as their altitude is less or greater, those of about fifteen feet high being made one-sixth less at their superior than at their inferior diameter, while that proportion is lessened gradually, so that columns fifty feet high shall be diminished one- eighth only. On this subject, however, many of his disciples controvert the authority of their master ; and some of them have fixed the diminution at one-sixth of a diameter for