VIGNOLA'S GESU

classical architecture, Alberti's solution was to have a ground floor
on the triumphal arch system and a top floor the width of the nave
only but with volutes, i.e. scrolls, rising towards it from the en-
tablature in front of the lean-to roofs of the aisles. This method was
adopted by Vignola in his design for the Gesft facade (though with
the fuller and less harmonious orchestration of his age), and then by
della Porta who substituted a new design for Vignola's. It has been

?3jO +p 60 *0 tO
i T i I i ' I i ( i -I

61. GIACOMO VIGNOLA: CHURCH OF JESUS (GESU), ROME, BEGUN 1568.
repeated innumerable times and with many variations in the Baroque
churches of Italy and the other Roman Catholic countries.
As for the interior (pL LXI) Vignola keeps Alberti's inter-
pretation of the aisles as series of chapels opening into the nave. He
does not however concede them as much independence as the
Renaissance architect considered necessary, always anxious as he
was to let every part of a building be a whole. The extreme width
of the nave under its powerful tunnel-vault degrades the chapels into
mere niches accompanying a vast hall, and it has been suggested
(Weise) that this motif was chosen by the Jesuits themselves to
whom it was familiar from the late Gothic churches of Spain with
their chapels between the buttresses and sometimes a passage con*
necting them (see p. 63). If the suggestion is accepted, there is here
117