Baccio d' Agnolo, who, beginning as a wood carver, imbibed the new enthusiasm for the antique, and after studying the ancient monuments of Rome[1] began the practice of architecture.
Fig. 41.—Tower of Santo Spirito.
This campanile is thus noteworthy as the first of a large class of modern towers with spires of which Wren's famous steeples were the ultimate outcome. The scheme is based on the mediæval campanile, the earliest form of which is the Lombard Romanesque tower. The Lombard tower is characterized by its simple rectangular outline, the walls rising sheer from the ground to the cornice, and strengthened and adorned with shallow pilaster-strips, corbelled string-courses marking the successive stories, and by small grouped openings. The tower of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is designed on this model, and the neighbouring tower of Prato and Giotto's famous campanile are later and richer modifications of the same type. In the tower of Santo Spirito (Fig. 41) Baccio d' Agnolo has taken the Lombard scheme and clothed it with a pseudo-classic dress. While his classic details have much of that elegance which belongs to the best Italian work, they are out of place in such a structure. The tall pilaster-strips of the mediæval tower gave an expression as of an organic skeleton running through the building. They had been developed out of the classic pilaster to meet the needs of the mediæval type of structure, and in substituting the superimposed classic orders for the appropriate continuous members, the artist did violence to the true principles of design.
- ↑ Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 239.
