RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM C. I42O-C. l6oO
Continent often called Classicism pure and simple, but which in
England goes under the name of Classic Revival. The idea of copying
a whole Antique temple exterior (or a whole temple front) for
Western use is the quintessence of classicism. The i6th century did
not go quite so far. But it did conceive that blend of academic
rigidity with distrust of emotional freedom which made the
latter-day all-out revival possible.
A pupil of Raphael, Giulio Romano (1494-1546), arris t-in-chief
to the Duke of Mantua, designed a house for himself about 1544
(pi. LVI). It is a striking example of Mannerist classicism—apart
from being one of the earliest architect's houses on such an ambitious
scale. The facade is again flatter than would have pleased the High
Renaissance. Detail, e.g. in the window surrounds and the top
frieze, is hard and crisp. There is a proud aloofness, an almost arro-
gant taciturnity and a stiff formality about the building that reminds
one at once of the Spanish etiquette accepted everywhere in the later
i6th century. Yet the apparent general correctness is broken by an
occasional, as it were, surreptitious licence here and there (one such
licence in Giulio Romano's work as a draughtsman has been men-
tioned before). The smooth band above the windows of the rusti-
cated ground floor seems to disappear behind the keystones of the
windows. The entrance has a most illicit depressed arch, and the
pediment on top with no base to it is nothing but the main string
course at sill height of the first-floor windows lifted up by the effort
of the arch. These windows themselves are recessed in blank arcades
like those of the Palazzo Farnese, but as against the logical and struc-
turally satisfying surrounds and pediments there, one flat ornamen-
tal motif runs without hiatus along sides, top and pediments. It is
exquisite, but very self-conscious, just like the contemporary sculp-
ture of Benvenuto Cellini.
This style, first conceived in Rome and Florence, appealed almost
at once to North Italy and the transalpine countries. Giulio Romano
was the first to show it north of the Apennines. Sammicheli, though
fifteen years older, followed, partly under direct Roman influence,
partly under the influence of Giulio's early Mantuan masterpiece,
the Palazzo del Te of 1525-35, and reshaped the appearance of
Verona in this spirit of Mannerist classicism. At Bologna Sebastiano
Serlio, a pupil of Peruzzi, though six years his senior, and twenty-
four years older than Giulio, preached it. In 1537 he began to publish
a first part of a treatise on architecture which proved a source of last-
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