雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生藝術(shù)史79 回顧過去，展望未來

 
但大部分文藝復(fù)興式的建筑物都是被一絲不茍完成的。當時最優(yōu)秀的藝術(shù)家都成為了建筑師，并積極參與建筑設(shè)計。人們不再建造任何新的哥特式大教堂了，因為教堂已經(jīng)夠多了。所以大部分文藝復(fù)興式的建筑物是宮殿、政府大樓和圖書館等。 
79 BACKWARD AND FORWARD回顧過去，展望未來
 
IN 1492 Columbus discovered America. Every one knows that date. And so it is easy to remember when Renaissance architecture began in Italy. It was in the same century as 1492，the fourteen-hundreds. Some of the earliest Renaissance buildings of the fourteen-hundreds are the best. On the next page is a picture of the Riccardi Palace in Florence. It looks more like a fort than a palace and that is what it really was on the outside—a fort. 
There was so much fighting going on that these palaces in Florence had to be built like forts. Notice the iron bars on the lower windows. Notice the heavy rough stones in the lower story. That kind of stone-work is called “rusticated.” The stones bulge out from the joints between them. This makes the building look strong and solid. 
The top of the building is crowned by a ledge that sticks out all around the wall. Such a ledge is called a cornice. The cornice kept the building from looking like a plain box. The cornice finished off the top of a building just the way a capital finished off the top of a column. The windows have round arches, not pointed like Gothic. 
The building is more like a palace inside than outside. In the middle of the inside is an open courtyard which has balconies around it. There is a big banqueting hall, a library, and other finely furnished rooms. This Renaissance building is called the Riccardi Palace because Riccardi was the name of the family who bought it from the Medici family who built and lived in it first. And now is a good time to notice a great big difference between Gothic and Renaissance buildings. In Gothic buildings most of the lines are up and down. The eye is carried from the ground straight up to the top of the building. But in Renaissance buildings most of the lines are lengthwise—horizontal. In the Riccardi Palace your eye notices the horizontal lines of stones, the windows all in line, the horizontal ledges under the windows, and the long, straight cornice. 
Several famous Renaissance architects followed Brunelleschi. One, named Bramante, made a plan for a great cathedral to be built in Rome for the Pope. It was to be the largest church in the world. And was to be called St. Peter’s. But Bramante died before much work had been done. Several other architects worked on this big building, until it was finally given into the care of the mighty Michelangelo, who was the greatest Renaissance sculptor as well as a great painter, poet, and wonderful architect. Michelangelo was an old man, but he pushed the work forward on St. Peter’s so that it was almost finished at his death. Michelangelo’s plan was to have the church built in the form of a Greek cross, with a magnificent dome over the middle. 
 
No.79-1 RICCARDI PALACE, FLORENCE（佛羅倫薩里卡爾迪宮） 
Courtesy of The University Prints 
 
No.79-2 PLAZA OF ST. PETER’S, ROME（羅馬圣彼得大教堂廣場） 
Michelangelo made everything about St. Peter’s so tremendously large that the cathedral doesn’t look as large as it really is. That sounds funny, I know. You’d think the bigger a thing was, the bigger it would look. That isn’t always so. It depends on something called scale. If you take a photograph of a tree, you can’t tell from the photograph how big the tree is unless there is a man or a dog or a house or something near the tree to give you some way of measuring. (It is, the same with a map: you can’t tell whether a town is thirty miles away or three hundred miles unless there is a scale to measure by.) 
 
No.79-3 PLAN OF ST. PETER’S  
ROME 
（羅馬圣彼得大教堂平面） 
Courtesy of The University Prints 
The windows of St. Peter’s are about four times as tall as a man. So unless you see a man near them you would naturally think they were about four times as small as they are, because most windows are about as tall as one man. That is the great trouble with St. Peter’s. It lacks scale. 
Long after Michelangelo had died, another architect added a new front to the cathedral, and this cut off the front view of Michelangelo’s wonderful dome. This architect also made the church a Latin cross by extending the front. Then still later another man named Bernini added two colonnades, or rows of columns, to the front. These rows of columns are built around two sides of a great circular open space out in front of the cathedral. 
The colonnades by Bernini are beautiful, but they haven’t anything to help us judge their size by, any more than the cathedral has. They lack scale, just as the cathedral itself lacks scale. Look very closely at the picture and you will see some people in the square. When you measure the cathedral by them, you get some idea of how big it really is. 
Look at the plan of St. Peter’s, showing the cathedral itself and, at the top of the plan, the arrangement of the Bernini colonnades. 
Gothic columns were never very much like Roman columns. But the Renaissance architects used the Roman capitals on the columns of their buildings. Sometimes they even pulled down Roman buildings and used the columns for new Renaissance buildings. Notice, too, the columns, which are like Roman columns. 
There were many famous Renaissance architects in Italy and they have left many famous buildings, but we’ll have to skip over some of them to tell you about a man named Palladio. Palladio made famous a special use of columns. The columns run from the ground up past two or three stories. This is called the Palladian style, because Palladio wrote a book about it which architects in other countries as well as in Italy found very useful. The front of St. Peter’s shows columns running past two stories. 
Renaissance architecture spread from Italy to other countries and has been used ever since. All styles of architecture grow out of earlier styles. The Renaissance architecture grew by looking backward toward Rome, but its use came at a time when the world was looking forward to greater things. Explorers, scientists, thinkers were showing the way to modern times, though they were getting some of their ideas from studying ancient ways. They were looking backward but moving forward.