Page:Character of Renaissance Architecture.djvu/252

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210
ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE
chap.

completed. The exterior façade of the basse-court is divided into a long series of bays (Fig. 125) by colossal rusticated pilasters of two orders, embracing the two stories into which the elevation, above the basement, is divided. Each pilaster is crowned with a section of an architrave and frieze, in the form of a ressaut of

Figure 125

Fig. 125.—Façade of Charleval, Du Cerceau.

two orders, which interpenetrates the bed mouldings of the continuous cornice. Since the architrave and frieze are not carried along the intervening walls, the pilasters have no real entablature to support even in appearance. Another unmeaning freak of design in this façade is the kind of variation of the details of the several bays which it exhibits. The rectangular windows are in one bay surmounted with round archivolts, in the next with curved pediments, in another with angular pedi-