as in the wider ones, and carved festoons fill the spaces between them and the capitals on either side. It is a capricious scheme, by which the designer has sought to quicken the jaded sensibilities of people surfeited with architectural aberrations. Of course the arrangement of these elements is based on a certain rhythmical order which often appears to be thought a sufficient justification of such meaningless compositions; but order and rhythm do not alone constitute a fine work of art.
Of the secular architecture of Vignola the Palazzo Caprarola, in the hill country between Rome and Viterbo, is the most important. This building, says Milizia, "is without doubt the grandest and the most beautiful work of this great artist."[1] The building, which is illustrated by elaborate drawings in Vignola's own book, has in plan the form of a regular pentagon enclosing a circular court. The form is, of course, given from pure caprice, and imposes needless difficulties, as if with the sole purpose of ingeniously solving them. The basement, with a salient fortress-like bastion on each angle, is in two stages, of which the lower one has a batter wall. Over this are the principal story of the state apartments, and two other stories containing upward of eighty sleeping chambers. Slightly projecting bays are formed on the angles, as in the Cancelleria at Rome, and each façade is divided into two stages by super-imposed orders of pilasters on high pedestals. The projecting bays have rusticated quoins instead of pilasters, and the wall of the first story of each of these bays is rusticated. An open loggia with five arches in the intervals of the order, and one enclosed arch at each end, reaches across the main front of the principal story between the salient bays, and the main portal is an arched opening, with rusticated jambs in relief and an entablature, in the upper stage of the basement. This portal is reached by a double ramp mounting an outer terrace and the lower basement stage. Below this, giving access to the lower basement, is a rusticated portico with an order of rusticated pilasters and three open arches flanked by two narrow enclosed bays with niches, and crowned with a balustrade.
The circular court has an open arcade of widely spaced arches in two stages, of which the lower one has a plain rusticated wall, and the upper one an Ionic order with columns in
- ↑ Memorie, etc., vol. 2, p. 34.
