Page - 416 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 8416 pilasters become extremely elongated, while the arches are carried not by piers, but by an order of encased Tuscan semicolumns lacking an entablature, its capitals separated from the springing of the arch merely by a narrow string- course. The arcade is blind and the columns are half-columns not really carry- ing the full weight of the arches. The result constitutes a very unorthodox solution for which I have not been able to find an immediate example.46 Its consequence is that, when the win- dows with their pediments are fitted into the arches, they remain quite high above the ground: a vacuum that Strada filled up by inserting the basement windows which, as we have seen, must have been dummies. According to the interior elevation the lower parts of the windows on the ground floor were blind likewise, in order to provide wall space as a backdrop for the monumen- tal statues and busts on their pedestals, though the possibility to include full- size windows in one of the long facades may have remained open.47 Strada was sufficiently aware of architectural theory and practice to have consciously opted for this solution, ignoring simpler, more classical solu- tions.48 Though at first sight the superposition of a first floor articulated by coupled columns or pilasters over a rusticated ground floor is reminiscent of the Palazzo Caprini [above, Fig. 7.14], its effect is completely different. The cou- pled pilasters rest upon single semicolumns, giving a top-heavy effect, slightly reminiscent of the manner in which Raphael placed a void over a solid in his late Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila [Fig. 8.26–8.27]. Moreover, in Strada’s Anti- quarium design the entablature, or rather the whole top floor of the building, seems to rest directly on the apex of the arches—a static nightmare—rather than on columns or piers; the narrow, elongated pilasters at the corners in no way mitigate the resulting sense of instability.49 This sense of instability is reinforced by the format of the lateral, rusticated voussoirs of the arches, which do not quite reach to—and therefore do not help carry—the entablature: a quotation in the spirit, if not to the letter, of 46 Or even a comparable contemporary or later parallel. When used in conjunction with true arcades carried on columns, it is a common solution in Quattrocento architecture though, going back at least to the facade of Brunelleschi’s Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence. 47 Both the siteplan and Strada’s ground plan refer to this: ‘Mezzo Giorno / Questa parte risponde sopra un giardino de’ frati di S.to Fran.co / et se potra fare fenestre’, which implies, I think, windows that would provide a view as well as largely amplify the access of light. 48 He could for instance have opted for a high plinth or podium instead of including the blind arcade, in which case his columns could have supported the entablature. 49 This would be most notable on the long side-facades; repeating the pilasters every three bays might have reduced the effect of instability, and rhythmically articulated the long facades, but there is no space for that.