File:The builders of Florence (1907) (14766925231).jpg

Identifier: buildersoffloren00brow (find matches)
Title: The builders of Florence
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Brown, J. Wood (James Wood)
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: New York, E.P. Dutton and company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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trong enough here? This might have been question-able, especially as regards the intermediate pair, but for thereinforcement he gives them in the verticals of his panel borders.There is, in short, the just balance of one kind of decoration withanother which proves how well the artist knew what each could do.Had he not been in full sympathy with the style he used, how couldAlberti have handled it with such certainty ; down to its leastdetails, as of the ornaments that occupy the panel centres, or thecircle with the sacred monogram which seems to have floated up tothe tympanum of the pediment from the Ricci window below ? Werepeat, then, that this facade is, in all essentials, a living unity, andone possessing singular value. In it may be read the whole story ofdichroic decoration, applied or structural, from its double origin inthe classic schools of Art to the time of the great architecturalrevival in the fifteenth century. Giovanni Rucellai, whose name stands high on this facade, and
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Jrom ihe Y^4 THE RUCELLAI 223 his son Bernardo, named and buried at the threshold of its principaldoor, have other claims on our attention besides the fact of theirbelonging to a family which did so much for this place. In pre-vious chapters we have studied the industrial particulars of Wooland of Silk. The life of the great Acciaiuoli has shown us what anindividual could do to promote the general commercial prosperityof Florence. Ere we pass from this, the substantial foundation ofthe civic fortunes, let us now look for a little at a characteristicfamily, that of the Rucellai, notable as presenting in one of itsmembers a fair example of such enterprise and skill as madeFlorence what she early was ; and in others introducing us to thatsubtly advancing change which later shook the ground of suchprosperity, and that refined corruption which surely led to thefinal inevitable catastrophe. Nothing could better serve toacquaint us with the real meaning, alike of the prosperous andthe advers

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