RENAISSANCE COMPARED WITH GOTHIC AND ROMANESQUE

units is essential. How then can the difference in principle be formu-
lated between a Norman and a Renaissance church? Walls are
equally important in both, whereas the Gothic style always en-
deavours to invalidate them. But a Romanesque wall is primarily
inert. If it is ornamented, the exact place where decoration is applied
seems arbitrary. One hardly ever feels that a little more or a little
less ornament, or ornament shifted to a slightly higher or slightly
lower position, would make a decisive difference. In the Renaissance
building this is not so. The walls appear active, enlivened by the
decorative elements which in their sizes and arrangement follow
laws of human reasoning. It is ultimately this humanising that makes
a Renaissance building what it is. Arcades are airier and more open
than they had been. The graceful columns have the beauty of animate
beings. They keep to a human scale too, and as they lead from part
to part, even when a building is very large, one is never overwhelmed
by its sheer size. This, on the other hand, is just what the Norman
architect wishes to achieve. He conceives a wall as a whole and then
keeps the expression of might and mass to the smallest detail. Hence,
one need scarcely add, Romanesque sculptors could not yet re-
discover the beauty of the human body. This rediscovery, and the
discovery of linear perspective, had to come with the Renaissance.

50. LEONE BATTISTA ALBERT!: S. ANDREA, MANTUA, BEGUN 1470,
91