turesque effect in
his buildings; not, as previous architects had done, by a lavish use
of loosely decorative details, but by the piling up and massing
together of otherwise dry orders, cornices, pilasters, windows, all of
which, in his conception, were to serve as framework and pedestals for
statuary. He also strove to secure originality and to stimulate
astonishment by bizarre modulations of accepted classic forms, by
breaking the lines of architraves, combining angularities with curves,
adopting a violently accented rhythm and a tortured multiplicity of
parts, wherever this was possible.

V

In this new style, so much belauded by Vasari, the superficial design
is often rich and grandiose, making a strong pictorial appeal to the
imagination. Meanwhile, the organic laws of structure have been
sacrificed; and that chaste beauty which emerges from a perfectly
harmonious distribution of parts, embellished by surface decoration
only when the limbs and members of the building demand emphasis, may
be sought for everywhere in vain. The substratum is a box, a barn, an
inverted bottle; built up of rubble, brick, and concrete; clothed with
learned details, which have been borrowed from the pseudo-science of
the humanist. There is nothing here of divine Greek candour, of
dominant Roman vigour, of Gothic vitality, of fanciful invention
governed by a sincere sense of truth. Nothing remains of the shy
graces, the melodious simplicities, the pure seeking after musical
proportion, which marked the happier Italian effort of the early
Renaissance, through Brunelleschi and Alberti, Bramante, Giuliano da
Sangallo, and Peruzzi. Architecture, in the highest sense of that
word, has disappeared. A scenic scheme of panelling for empty walls
has superseded the conscientious striving to construct a living and
intelligible whole.

The fault inherent in Italian building after the close of the Lombard
period, reaches its climax here. That fault was connected with the
inability of the Italians to assimilate the true spirit of the Gothic
style, while they attempted its imitation in practice. The fabrication
of imposing and lovely facades at Orvieto, at Siena, at Cremona, and
at Crema, glorious screens which masked the poverty of the edifice,
and corresponded in no point to the organism of the structure, taught
them to overrate mere surface-beauty. Their wonderful creativeness in
all the arts which can be subordinated to architectural effect sed