Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/868

Rh 830 ROME [TOPOGRAPHY AND Ecclesi- The only important church in Rome which is wholly Gothic in astical style is S. Mana sopra Minerva, the chief church of the Dominican Gothic, order. This was not the work of a Roman architect, but was de- signed by two Dominican friars from Florence Fra Ristoro and Fra Sisto about 1289, who were also the architects of their own church of S. Maria Novella. It much resembles the contemporary churches of the same order in Florence, having wide-spanued pointed arches on clustered piers and simple quadripartite vaulting. Its details resemble the early French in character. 1 It contains a large number of fine tombs ; among them that of Durandus, bishop of Mende (the author of the celebrated Rationale divinorum offici- orum), by Giovanni Cosmas, c. 1300, and the tomb of Fra Angelico, the great Dominican painter, who died in Rome, 1455. The most elaborate specimen of ecclesiastical Gothic in Rome is that part of S. Maria in Ara Coeli which was rebuilt about 1300, probably by one of the Cosmati, namely, the south aisle and transept. For at least two centuries after the death of Giovanni Cosmas no native Roman appears to have excelled in any branch of the fine arts. The sculptured effigy and reredos of Cardinal Aleii9on in S. Maria in Trastevere, executed about 1400 by a certain Paulus Romanus, is a fair example of the decadence which took place during this period ; the effigy is a very clumsy and feeble copy of the fine recumbent figures of the Cosmati. 3. Florentine Period, c. 1450-1550. The long period of almost complete artistic inactivity in Rome was broken in the 15th century by the introduction of a number of foreign artists, chiefly Florentines, who during this and the succeeding century enriched Rome with an immense number of magnificent works of art. The dawn of this brilliant epoch may be said to have begun with the arrival of Fra Angelico (see FIESOLE) in 1447, invited by Nicholas V. to paint the walls of his small private chapel in the Vatican dedicated to S. Lorenzo. Mino da To Mino da Fiesole (see Mixo m GIOVANNI, vol. xvi. p. 477), Fiesole. who spent several years in Rome between 1470 and 1484, and other Florentine sculptors are due almost all the very beautiful sculptured tombs which were made for a large number of the Roman churches during the last thirty years of the 15th century, as well as many altar frontals, reredoses, tabernacles, and the like. Though varied in details, most of these tombs are designed after one type, that employed by Mino in his fine monuments in the Badia at Florence. A life-sized recumbent effigy lies on a richly ornamented sarcophagus, over which is an arched canopy decorated with reliefs ; the piers which support this (usually) have statuettes in two or more tiers. For grace and refined beauty no type of sepulchral monument has ever equalled this Florentine design. The peaceful attitude and calm face of the effigy are frequently of the most perfect beauty, and the minute statuettes and reliefs are finished with ivory-like delicacy. Though the influence of Mino, very strongly marked, may be traced in all these numerous works (there are in Rome more than a hundred tombs of this class), yet a very small proportion can be actually by his hand. Mino created and trained a large school of sculptor-pupils in Rome, some of whom appear almost to have equalled their master in skill ; and it is to them that most of these works must be referred. A very long list of churches contain- ing sculpture of this class might be given ; perhaps the richest are S. Maria in Monserrato (the cloisters) and S. Maria del Popolo. 2 The architecture no less than the sculpture of the latter part of the 15th century was mainly the work of Florentines, especially of Baccio Pintelli, who partly rebuilt S. Maria del Popolo, S. Agostino, 3 and S. Cosimato in Trastevere. He also was the architect of S. Pietro in Montorio, erected in 1500 for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and probably designed the Sistine chapel for Sixtus IV. in 1473. Other buildings were earned out by another Florentine, Giuliano da Majano (see Ferrerio, Palazzi di Roma, 1825). The Palazzo di Venezia, begun for Cardinal Barbo, afterwards Paul II., about 1455, a very massive and stately building of mediaeval char- acter, was designed by Francesco di Borgo San Sepolcro. Bra- During the latter part of the 15th and the first few years of the mante. succeeding century Rome was enriched with a number of buildings by BRAMANTE (q.v.), one of the greatest architects the world has ever seen. With the most consummate skill, he combined the delicacy of detail and the graceful lightness of the Gothic style with the measured stateliness and rhythmical proportions of classic architecture. Though he invariably used the round arch and took his mouldings from antique sources, his beautiful cloisters and loggie are Gothic in their general conception. Moreover, he never committed the prevalent blunder of the 16th century, which was a fruitless attempt to obtain magnificence by mere size in a build- ing, without multiplying its parts. His principal works in Rome are the magnificent Palazzo della Cancelleria, built for Cardinal 1 The absence of a triforium in one of the chief reasons why the large Gothic churches of Italy are so inferior in effect to the cathedrals of France and England. T/, o w ? uld ** easy * double the list given in Perkins's valuable Handbook of ital. Sculpt., London, 1883, p. 417. Drawings of many of these are published by Tosi, Monumenti Sacri, &c., 1843. 3 These two churches were the first in Rome built with domes after the classical period. Riario in 1495, with its stately church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso ; the so-called Palazzo di Bramante in the Governo Vecchio, built in 1500 ; and the Palazzo Giraud, near St Peter's, once the ivsidmn. of Cardinal Wolsey, built in 1506. He also built the cortile of S. Damaso in the Vatican, the toy-like tempietto in the cloister of S. Pietro in Montorio, and'the cloisters of S. Maria della Pace, 1504. 4 In 1503 Bramante was appointed architect to St Peter's, and mad.- complete designs for it, with a plan in the form of a Greek cross. The piers and arches of the central dome were the only parts com- pleted at the time of his death in 1514, and subsequent architects did not carry out his design. For St Peter's, see AucHrrr.<Tri;K, vol. ii. p. 438 and plates XXII., XXIII. ; also BASILICA, vol. iii. p. 415 sq. Baldassare PERUZZI (q.v.) of Siena was one of the most talented architects of the first part of the 16th century ; the Villa Furnc'sina and the Palazzo Vidoni (usually attributed to Raphael) are from his designs. 5 His later works bear traces of that decadence in taste which so soon began, owing mainly to the rapidly growing love for the dull magnificence of the pseudo-classic style. This falling off iu architectural taste was due to MICHELANGELO (q.i: ) more than to any other one man. His cortile of the Farnese paluee, though a work of much stately beauty, was one of the first stages towards that lifeless scholasticism and blind following of antique forms which were the destruction of architecture as a real living art, and in the succeeding century produced so much that is almost brutal in its coarseness and neglect of all true canons of proportion and scale. During the earlier stage, however, of this decadence and throughout the 16th century a large number of fine palaces and churches were built in and near Rome by various able artists, such as the Villa Madama >y Raphael, part of the Palazzo Farnese by Antonio da Sangallo the younger, S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini by Jac. Sansovino, and many others. 8 4. Modern Period. Under Vignola (1507-1573), Carlo Maderna (1556-1639), Bernini Periol (1598-1680), Carlo Fontana (1634-1714), and others architectural degrd beauty in Rome steadily declined, till the prevalent style beninx ikm. a mere caricature of classical forms, twisted and contorted into every possible incongruous and ridiculous shape, void of all sense of harmony of proportion and unredeemed by any grace or even decency of detail. Clumsy weightiness and extravagance of out- line, with the frequent introduction of the most ungraceful curves, are the main characteristics of this unhappy period, which, un- fortunately, was one of great activity in building. The degraded taste of the 17th and 18th centuries could see no beauty in the stately simplicity of the early basilicas, in the delicate grace and rich ornament of the Cosmati period, or even in the refined har- monious beauty of the Renaissance. 7 Every church in Rome i< more or less disfigured inside with extravagant stucco pilasters and reliefs, transfiguring the whole interior, while outside many have clumsy fasades stuck on without the slightest reference to the structures they are meant to decorate. The Lateran basilica is on.' of the most conspicuous instances of this sad treatment of a grand old building ; and the hideous facades which disfigure the fine churches of S. Marcello and S. Maria in Via Lata (both in the Corso) are typical examples of the degradation into which archi- tecture had sunk in its latest stages. In the present century taste Nine- has somewhat improved. Since 1870, when Rome became the tu. nth capital, an immense amount of building has been carried out, <vutur mostly innocent in design, though dull and lifeless. The modern l mi Id- architects of Rome possess the rare merit 'of acknowledging their ings, f own artistic incapacity, and the more important recent buildings have been copies, fairly faithful in design though not in material, of fine palaces of the best 15th and 16th century architects. The Cassa di Risparmio in the Corso and some large houses in the new quarter across the Tiber are good copies of the Strozzi and other Florentine palaces ; the Hotel Bristol is from a fine palace at Venice; and Bramante's Palazzo Giraud has been imitated in a new house near the Piazza Nicosia. Unfortunately stucco is mainly iised for the exteriors of these otherwise handsome buildings, a material which, however, lasts fairly well in the mild climate of Rome. The growing rage for the Parisian style of building, with wide straight boulevards, is rapidly destroying all tin- jiirtmesque- ness of the city ; and these broad streets, from their want of shade, are not suited to an almost constantly sunny climate. The chief architectural work of the 19th century has been of arches on the columns. 6 There appears now to be some doubt whether the Famesina may not lm v Ixjen designed by Raphael ; an original sketch by Peruzzi's own hand of the Palazzo Vidoni is preserved in the Ufli/i. 6 A valuable account of Raphael's architectural works is given by Geymiiller, liciffiiello come Archltetto, Milan, 1882. Drawings of many of the finest palaces of Rome are given by Percier and Fontaine, Edifices modernes A Rome, Paris, 1708 ; and especially in the fine work by Letarouilly, Edifices de Rome moderne, Brussels, 1856-66. 7 Even the frescos of the chief earlier artists were not spared ; those by Pinturicchio in the 3d chapel (south) of S. Maria del Popolo were covered by wretched stucco ornaments, only removed in 1850 ; and numberless works of art by Giotto and other early painters were wilfully destroyed.
 * The upper story of the latter is varied by having horizontal lintels instead