1535, and at Genoa, in the wall that was built to enlarge the circuit of the city, there is a portal bearing the date 1553, in which the scheme figured by Serlio is carried out. This peculiar column had therefore undoubtedly been in existence, both in a book of architecture and in actual monuments, before De l'Orme was writing. It is, of course, quite possible that he may have devised his scheme in ignorance of the Italian examples, but whether he did or not is for us a matter of little importance. It is, I think, an architectural monstrosity, and reflects little credit on its designer.
It may be further remarked concerning De l'Orme's claim to this column as his own invention, that it expresses an idea which was at the bottom of most of the architectural misconceptions and mistakes of the Renaissance, the idea that architectural excellence may result from independent personal effort to be original. I think it may be said that the artistic aberrations of the Renaissance arose largely from this false notion. The conscious effort to be original in architecture is inevitably disastrous. The personal contributions of individuals in architectural development consist of little more than small improvements on lines of endeavour common to large bodies of men. The aggregate of such improvements finally become conspicuous, and mark fundamental changes of architectural styles; but the part of any individual in such changes is hardly noticeable. Noble architecture has always been, and must, I think, always be, mainly a social, communal, and national, not a personal product. De l'Orme failed to consider that the ancient orders were not inventions of individual designers, but the outcome of a process of evolution toward which the ingenuity of large numbers of men through long periods of time had contributed. He thought that he might himself invent a new order, and call it French. He ought rather to have called it by his own name, for it was not French in the sense of being a product of the collective French genius. Had he and his contemporaries had more discernment, they might have realized that a true French order was already in existence in that very Gothic art which they vilified, that the shaft and its load of the twelfth-century national style was such an order, a true evolution out of the ancient orders superbly adapted to new conditions.[1]
- ↑ Cf. my Development and Character of Gothic Architecture, p. 304 et seq.
