The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste

ARTAND

THOUGHT

259

Further, Renaissance

architecture was

essentially

an architecture of

experiment. Other

styles—the

Greek,

for

example

—

^would reveal

sestheticpurpose

clearly conceived, minutely

carried out. But

no

other

stylewasso

adventurousasthe

Italian,orso

varied in its attempt. The

humanist conviction

'

thateveryvalue isagood

tobe explored,'led in

Renaissance architecture toa perpetual

shifting in

theaimofitsdesign. Itcastson

thestudyofstyle

alightthatfallsfromever-changingangles.

But,

mostvaluable ofall,this

richness ofexperi-

ment was conducted

within

astrictly limited con-

vention. No aestheticpurposes could wellbe more

divergent than

thoseof Bramanteand

Bernini,yet

they employed a single speech. They used the

Orders. This classical inheritance the

Renaissance

architects perceived to be

not

an obstructive and

capriciousimposition,butalanguage. Theelement

offixitywhichtheOrdersimpartedtoarchitectural

designwasnomoretoberebelled againstthanthe

element of fixity which language

gives

to

speech.

TheOrderswerealong-developedinstrument fitto

giveclarityto

sharpideas,howevervaried,offunction

andofform. Throughtheiragencythe mindtran-

scribes itself the

more readily into the structural

terms of the design, identifies itself

with its scale,

respondstoits

dynamics. Thattheexperimentsof

Renaissancearchitecturewere

unifiedbythiscommon