Iconographic Encyclopedia of the Arts and Sciences

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...storeys, belong to the fourteenth century, is the grandest work in this direction. These arcades extend along the west and south sides of the palace, and are composed of a series of richly-decorated columns (thirty-six below and seventy-one above) with pointed vaulting. A later addition is the massive wall borne above the arcades. This portion is enlivened by patterns in marbles of various colors, yet it severely burdens the slender columns below pi. 39, Jig. 5). Other palaces, most of them of the fifteenth century, are the Giovannelli fig. 4), Foscari, Pisani, Ca d'Oro, etc. Similar buildings were also erected in the portions of the coast subject to the Republic. Fountains.--Peculiar interest attaches to the fountains of Venice--wells in which the rain-water was collected. While in the previous period these had almost the character of a font fig. 8), in this they have that of the capital of a column, and here and there may be seen such capitals altered for the purpose, while certain others figs. 9 10), were made in this form; these, in connection with the capitals ifigs. 7, 11, 12), offer speaking examples of the methods of ornamentation displayed by the late Italian Gothic. VI. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE. 1. Italian Renaissance. When French Gothic had reached its highest development; when Germany no longer borrowed, altered, and worked single elements into her native art, but adopted the foreign forms in their entirety and treated them as necessity required, --then the outward form ceased to be regarded as an essential practical result of the impulse and sway of the inward forces, and was considered as entirely independent, as modelled purely after an outward foreign ideal. It was not only in the domain of Architecture that this was the...