RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM C. I42O-C. l6OD
used its pilasters in the facade and thereby introduces a splendid new
means for articulating a wall. There are three superimposed orders of
pilasters with a free Doric treatment on the ground floor, a free Ionic
on the first floor and Corinthian on the top.
While these pilasters divide the front vertically, sensitively de-
signed cornices emphasise the horizontal divisions. The top cornice
is probably the earliest in Florence, earlier even than that of
Michelozzo's Palazzo Medici. Before then projecting eaves in the
mediaeval way had been used. The windows of the Palazzo Rucellai
are bipartite as in the other palaces, but an architrave separates the
main rectangle from the two round heads. The relation of height to
width in the rectangular parts of the windows is equal to the relation
of height to width in the bays. Thus the position of every detail seems
to be determined. No shifting is possible. In this lies, according to
Alberti's theoretical writings, the very essence of beauty, which he
defines as "the harmony and concord of all the parts achieved in such
a manner that nothing could be added or taken away or altered
except for the worse".
Such definitions make one feel the contrast of Renaissance and
Gothic most sharply. In Gothic architecture the sensation of growth
is predominant everywhere. The height of piers is not ruled by the
width of bays, nor the depth of a capital, or rather a cap, by the height
of the pier. The addition of chapels or even aisles to parish churches
is much less likely to spoil the whole than in a Renaissance building.
For in the Gothic style motif follows motif, as branch follows branch
up a tree.
One could not imagine a donor in the I4th century decreeing, as
Pope Pius II did when rebuilding the cathedral of his native town
(renamed Pienza to perpetuate his name), that no one should ever
erect sepulchral monuments in the church or found new altars, or
have wall-paintings executed, or add chapels, or alter the colour of
walls or piers. For a Gothic building is never complete in that sense.
It remains a live being influenced in its destiny by the piety of genera-
tion after generation. And as its beginning and end are not fixed in
time so they are not in space. In the Renaissance style the building
• is an aestheticVhole consisting of self-sufficient parts. A composition
in the flat or in space is arrived at by grouping such parts according
to a static system.
Now the Romanesque style is—as has been shown—also a static
style. It is also a style in which the adding of clearly defined spatial
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