side of the corner column, instead of over its centre as the other triglyphs of the series did (Fig. 66). This had made it necessary to lengthen the last metope, and to narrow the last intercolumniation. The Romans had set the last triglyph over the centre of the corner column, and had thus been obliged to give less than half a metope to the corner (Fig. 67), though they secured uniformity in all the rest of the parts. The frieze, however, had now an appearance of incompleteness at each end, as of a thing cut off arbitrarily through one of its members. The architects of the Renaissance appear to have disliked this narrow section of a metope at the end of the frieze, and to have sought a way to make it exactly half. This, as Milizia tells us, Sansovino did in the Library of St. Mark by lengthening the frieze enough to give the fragment of metope the width that was desired. Turning to the design itself (Fig. 68), we find that this obliged him to set a square pier with a pilaster on its face at the angle. Of this device Milizia remarks that it was a folly.[1]
Fig. 67.—Roman corner.
In the general scheme of this façade (Fig. 65) Sansovino has followed that of the ancient theatre of Marcellus, with a free introduction of additional enrichments. In the order of the basement he has departed from the severe plainness of the Roman model by adding mouldings and keystones to the archivolts, reliefs to the spandrels, and disks to the metopes
- ↑ "Sansovino lo sciolse con allungar il fregio quanto bastasse per supplire al difetto di quella porzione di metopa: ed il problema, e 'l ripiego sono un' inezia."
