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Carità at Venice, which is a lovely specimen of his style. His grandest church is that Del Redentore at Venice. Generally in the façades of his churches there are abuses, whereof it is scarcely credible he would have been guilty: such are the two half pediments in the church we have just mentioned. The theatre built upon the ancient model for the Olympic Academy at Vicenza gained great reputation for him. Palladio died in 1580.

355. The last architect of the Venetian school who obtained celebrity was Vincenzo Scamozzi. The son of an architect, and born in a country which had become the nursery of the art, his powers were exhibited at an early age. Like Palladio and other great masters, he selected for his principal guides the antiquities of the Eternal City, and the precepts of Vitruvius, whose work at that period was considered of high importance, as in truth it really was. There is no doubt that Scamozzi was much indebted to the works of Palladio, although he affected occasionally to decry them; but, in opposition to De Quincy, we think that his style is more founded on that of San Micheli or Sansovino. This is, however, of little importance; for his natural talents were of a very high order. At a very early period of his career, so great was his reputation that he was employed by the canons of San Salvadore in opening the lantern to the cupola of their church; a task in which it appears that he acquitted himself with great ability. For the upper order of the Procurazie Nuove at Venice he has often been unjustly reproached, because he did not confine himself to two stories, so as to complete the design of Sansovino. The design of Scamozzi, had it been continued in the Piazza San Marco, would have placed in the back ground every other piazza in Europe. The two lower stories of the Procurazie Nuove are similar in design to the Library of S. Marco; and it is greatly to be regretted that Scamozzi was so much otherwise occupied that he had not the opportunity of watching the whole of its execution, which would have extended to thirty arcades, whose whole length would have been 426 feet. Scamozzi only superintended the first thirteeen; the three built by Sansovino excepted, the rest were trusted to the care of builders rather than artists, and, from the little attention bestowed upon preserving the profiles, exhibit a negligence which indicates a decline in the arts at Venice. Scamozzi is placed in the first rank as an architect by his design for the cathedral at Saltzburg, whither he was invited by the archbishop of the see. This church, which was not completed till after his death in 1616, is 454 ft. long, and 329 ft. wide, being in the form of a Latin cross on the plan, over whose centre a cupola rises. The distribution of the interior is with a nave and two side aisles; the former whereof is 64 ft. wide, and 107 ft. high. Scamozzi's employment was very extended, and his country has to lament it; for fewer commissions would have insured greater perfection in their execution, which, in those that exist, is often unworthy of the name of the master. Scamozzi published a work on the art, which will be found in our list of authors at the end of this work. He died in 1616.

356. Besides Giovanni da Ponte and Alessandro Vittoria, the Venetian school contains the names of few more than those we have named: they appear to have commanded the whole of the employ of the states and neighbourhood of Venice for a period of about 110 years, ending in 1616. When, however, it no longer continued to grow and flourish in its native soil, its scions, grafted throughout Europe, spreading their branches in every country, prospered wherever they appeared. On the former of the two architects just ramed, a few observations are necessary. He died in 1597, at the age of eighty-five years. Principally occupied in the reparation and re-establishment of the buildings of the city that had fallen into decay, he was nevertheless engaged on some considerable works; among which was the great hall of the arsenal at Venice, 986 feet long, and the more celebrated work of the Rialto Bridge, whence he obtained the sobriquet Da Ponte, and for the execution whereof he competed with Palladio and Scamozzi. The span of the single arch of which the work consists is about 72 ft., and the thickness of the arch stones about 4 ft. 4 in. It is segmental, and the height from the level of the water is about 22 ft. 9 in. The width of the bridge is equal to the span of the arch, and this width is divided longitudinally into five divisions, that is, into three streets or passages, and two rows of shops. The middle street or passage is 21 ft. 8 in. wide, and the two side ones near 11 ft. The number of shops on it is twenty-four. The last work of Da Ponte was the construction of the prisons away from the ducal palace. This edifice is a quadrilateral building, with a portico of seven arcades A story rises out of it pierced by seven great windows decorated with pediments, and it is joined to the palace by the bridge so well known under the name of Ponte dei Sospiri. The work was not carried to completion during Giovanni's life, but was finished by his nephew Contino. In his church on the Grand Canal. constructed for the nuns of Santa Croce, there is little merit except that of solidity; indeed, he does not appear to have possessed much taste, as may be inferred from the two ranks of columns in the hall of the arsenal above mentioned, which cannot be said to belong to any of the species of columns usually employed. The solid character of the great prison is appropriate, and more in consonance with the rules of the art.

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SECT. XVII.

FRENCH ARCHITECTURE.

357. The architecture of Europe from the middle of the sixteenth century was founded on that of Italy. Of its value, the French and the English seem to have a stronger perception than the rest of the nations. We shall therefore now consider the architecture of France that of England from a much earlier date will be separately considered in the succeeding chapter. Philibert Delorme was among the first of the architects of France who promoted a taste for good architecture; and though in some respects he may have been surpassed by other artists of his time, in others, whether connected with theory or practice, he has left his rivals a great distance behind him. Although he might not have had the purity of detail of Jean Bullant, nor the richness of invention and execution of P. Lescot, he has acquired by his talent in construction a reputation which has survived his buildings. The Queen Catherine of Medicis having resolved upon the construction of a palace at Paris, which should far surpass all that had previously been done in France, resolved upon placing it on a spot then occupied by some tile kilns (Tuileries) in the faubourg St. Honoré, and committed the design and erection to Delorme. It is, however, contended by some that Jean Bullant was joined with him in the commission. If that was really the case, it is probable that the labours of the latter were confined to details of ornament and execution, rather than to the general design and disposition. What, if it was so, belonged to each is not now to be discovered; but the genius of Delorme has survived all the revolutions the celebrated building in question has undergone. Catherine seems not to have been satisfied with the works; for she appears to have begun another palace on the site of the Hotel Soissons, that of the present Halle au Bleds, and to have entrusted this to the care of Jean Bullant. That of the Tuileries was in the end continued by Henri IV.; enlarged by Louis XIII. on the same line, after the designs of Du Cerceau,with two main bodies and two composite pavilions; all which were in the time of Louis XIV. afterwards brought together by the designs of Leveau and Dorbay. In the centre pavilion all that now remains of Delorme's work is the lower order of Ionic columns. This morsel of Delorme exhibits a good Ionic profile in the order, and is one of his best works. Generally speaking, the profiles of this master, which Chambrai has admitted into his Parallèle, make one acknowledge the justice of that author's observation, that he had "un peu trop vu les plus belles choses de Rome, avec des yeux encore préoccupés du style Gothique. Le talent de cet architecte consistait principalement dans la conduite d'un b.timent, et de vrai il était plus consommé en la connaissance et la coupe des pierres que dans la composition des ordres; aussi en a-t-il écrit plus utilement et bien plus au long." Delorme was the author of two works on architecture: one, Un Traité complète de l'Art de Bâtir, on architecture generally; the other, Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bâtir et à petits frais. The last relates more especially to a practice in carpentry, which, on the Continent, has been put into execution with great success, its principle being still constantly applied. The method of carpentry invented by Delorme, and which still goes in France by his name, consists in substituting for the ordinary system of framing and rafters, curved ribs, in two thicknesses, of any sort of timber, three or four feet long, and one foot wide, of an inch in thickness, and which are connected in section and tie according to the form of the curve, whether pointed, semicircular, or segmental. These arches, in order to be strong and solid, should be fixed at their feet on plates of timber framed together, lying very level on the external walls; and the planks which are to form the principal curve are to be placed accurately upright on their ends, in which situation they may be kept by braces morticed into them at convenient distances, and retained in their places by wedges, for it is essential to the strength of this species of carpentry that it should be kept in a vertical position. In this country the species of carpentry just mentioned has never been practised to the extent it deserves. Delorme died in 1570. With him was cotemporary Jean Bullant, whose name has been just mentioned, and who, whilst San Gallo was occupied on the Palazzo Farnese, was raising the Château d'Ecouen, in which the prelude to good taste is manifest, and in whose details are exhibited the work of an architect very far advanced above his time, and capable of raising the art to a much higher pitch of excellence than it enjoyed, had not the habits of the nation restrained him in his useful course. A considerable portion of the façade of the Tuileries towards the Carousel is suspected to have been the work of Bullant; but the chateau of Ecouen, built, or rather begun, about 1540, for the constable Montmorency, was alnost the first step to the establishment of pure architecture in France, and its architect may fairly be named the Inigo Jones of the French

358. By the wars in Italy under Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I., the French had become intimately acquainted with the architecture of Italy, and the taste of the monarch last named induced him to bring from that country some of their most celebrated artists; so that in France there was almost a colony of them. Among them, fortunately

for the quicker working of good taste, was the celebrated Vignola, who resided in France many years; a circumstance which may, with some probability, account for the high esteem in which that great master's profiles have always been held, and indeed in which they are still held there, though, generally speaking, the French have invariably been more attached in their practice to the Venetian than to the Roman school. Serlio, another Italian architect of note, was employed in the country by Francis, and actually died at Fontainebleau. At the period whereof we are now treating there appears to have been a number of able artists; for to Delorme and Bullant must be added Lescot, who, with Jean Gougeon as his sculptor, was many years employed upon the building usually called the Vieux Louvre, to distinguish it from the subsequent additions which have quadrupled the original project of Lescot. To judge of the works of the French architects of this period, a relative, and not an abstract view, must be taken of them; relative, we mean, to the general cultivation of the arts when any individual artist appears. In this respect Lescot's works at the Louvre are entitled to the greatest praise; and from the examples he as well as Bullant and Gougeon afforded, it might have been expected that pure architecture would have proceeded without check until it reached a point as high as that to which it had been carried in Italy. Such was not, however, to be the case. Mary de Medicis, during her regency, having determined on building the Luxembourg palace, was anxious to have it designed in the style of the palaces of Florence, her native city. Jacques de Brosse, her architect, was therefore compelled to adopt the character required: his prototype seems to have been the Pitti palace, and his version of it is a failure. The gigantic palaces of Florence well enough bear out against the rustic and embossed work employed upon them; but when their scale is reduced, the employment of massive parts requires great caution. The palace, however, of the Luxembourg became a model for the fashion of the day, and produced an intermediate style, which lasted many years in France, and arrested the arrival at perfection whereof the above work of Bullant and others had opened a fair prospect. De Brosse was an able artist, and his design for the façade of St. Gervais of three orders is, under the circumstances, entitled to our praise. This architect acquired much honour by the aqueduct of Arcueil, the completion whereof, in 1624, it is supposed he did not long survive.

359. Under Louis XIV. the art remained for the most part in the intermediate state just noticed; and yet that monarch and his minister Colbert lost no opportunity of embellishing the kingdom with its productions. He employed Bernini to make designs for the palace of the Louvre; and for that purpose induced the artist to visit France, where he was received with the highest respect. He left a design for a façade of the building in question, which, though in a corrupt style, exhibits nevertheless marks of grandeur and inagnificence which would have been worthy of the monarch. Bernini, disgusted, as he alleged, with the workmen of Paris, departed from the country without leaving any example of his architectural powers. That he did so France has no reason to lament, since it gave Perrault the opportunity of ornamenting the capital with one of the most splendid monu. ments of the art which Europe can boast. To Perrault is the credit due of having given an impulse to French architecture it has never lost, and of having changed the heavy style of his time into the light and agreeable forms of the Venetian school. The beauties of the façade of the Louvre (fig. 176.) are so many and great that its defects are forgotten. The

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proportions are so exquisite, that the eye cannot rest on the coupled columns and the arch of the principal gate rising into the story of the colonnade. The original profession of Perrault was that of medicine, which, however, he only exercised for the benefit of his friends and the poor; hence the design he made with others in competition for the above work having been successful, he was associated for its execution with Louis le Veau, the king's principal architect. From the variety of sciences in which Perrault excelled, it is not probable that the assistance of a practical architect was actually necessary; indeed the four volumes which he published under the title Essais de Physique, and the collection of machines for raising and removing great weights, which he also published, show that he was, without assistance, quite competent to the charge which was committed to him with others. He built the observatory at Paris, possessing an originality of character which Milizia says is very conformable to its purpose. But however suitable it may have been considered at the time of its erection, and it cannot be denied there is a fine masculine character about it, it is for its purpose in the present age altogether ill adapted for the objects of astronomy. Perrault died in 1688. Cotemporary with him was Le Mercier, the architect of the church de l'Oratoire, in the Rue St. Honoré. Le Mercier died, however, in 1660; eight and twenty years, therefore, before the decease of Perrault. Among the architects whose practice was exceedingly extended was Jules Hardouin Mansart, the architect of Versailles, and the especial favourite of Louis XIV. He was principally employed between the years 1675 and his death in 1708. His ability, as Milizia observes, was not equal to the size of his edifices; though it is hardly fair for that author to have made such an observation on the architect of the cupola of the Invalides at Paris. Of this church and dome De Quincy has most truly stated, that though nothing that can be called classic is to be noticed about it, yet it contains nothing in dissonance with the principles of the art. It is a whole in which richness and elegance are combined; in which lightness and solidity are well balanced; in which unity is not injured by variety; and whose general effect silences the critic, however he may be disposed to find fault. In Versailles, the taste which we have above noticed as introduced by De Brosse is prevalent; but the interior of the chapel displays to great advantage the great genius of Mansart, and shows that he was not incapable of the most refined elegance.

360. Jacques Ange Gabriel was the relation and worthy pupil of Mansart. The colonnades to the Garde Meuble in the Place Louis XV. (now the Place de la Concorde) exhibit a style which, with the exception only of Perrault's façade of the Louvre, not all the patronage of Louis XIV. was capable of eliciting. To Gabriel almost, if not perhaps as much as to Perrault, the nation is under a debt of gratitude for the confirmation of good taste in France. He has been accused of pirating the Louvre; but reflection and comparison will show that there is no real ground for such an accusation. The difference between the two works is extremely wide. The basement of Perrault is a wall pierced with windows; that of Gabriel is an arcade: in the upper stories the columns are not coupled, which is the case at the Louvre. From these circumstances alone the character of the two works is so different, that it is quite unnecessary to enter into other detail. Architecture in France at this period, the commencement of the eighteenth century, was in a palmy state, and has never before or since risen to higher excellence; though the French are still, from the superior method of cultivating the art there, and the great encouragement it receives, the first architects in Europe. The great extent of the Place Louis XV. (744 ft. long, and 522 broad) is injurious to the effect of the Garde Meuble, which, as the reader will recollect, is rather two palaces than one. Its basement is perhaps, speaking without reference to the vast area in front of it, too high, and the intercolumniations too wide, for the order (Corinthian) employed; but it is easier to find fault than to do equally well; and we cannot leave the subject without a declaration that we never pass away from its beauties without a wish to return and contemplate their extreme elegance. They are to us of that class to which Cicero's expression may be well applied: "pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur." Gabriel died in 1742. Antoine, the architect of the Mint at Paris, was another of the choice spirits of the period: he continued the refined style whereof we are speaking; and though the age of Louis XV. was not destined to witness the erection of such stupendous edifices as that of Louis le Grand, it displayed a purer and far better taste. This architect was the first who employed in his country the Grecian Doric, which had then become known, though not perfectly, by the work of Le Roy. Antoine used it at L'Hospice de la Charité; and De Quincy cites it as a circumstance which called forth the approbation of people of taste, and observes that the attempt would have attracted more followers, if, instead of exciting the emulation of architects in the study of it and its judicious application to monuments, to which the character of the order is suitable, fashion had not applied it to the most vulgar and insignificant purposes. Antoine lived into the present century, having died in 1801, at

the age of 68.

361. Louis XV., during a dangerous illness at Metz, is reported to have made a vow which led to the erection of the celebrated church of St. Geneviève, or, as it has since been called, the Pantheon; the largest modern church in France, and second to none in simplicity,

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