on this point: "It is true that all these proportions, whether in painting or in sculpture, must be subject to the correction of the eye, so that proportions ought to be adopted always with its approval, notwithstanding all fixed rules, seeing that this has been the custom of all the best artists, confirmed by the memorable saying of the great Buonarroti that it is necessary for the master to have the compass in his eye."[1]
In the light of what we have seen I think it must appear that the claims which have been advanced for the architecture of the Renaissance as the only architecture of correct principles since that of classic antiquity, and as an architecture in comparison with which the Gothic art of the Middle Ages should be considered as the barbarous product of an unenlightened age, are without justification. The mistaken notions of the Italian writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (labouring under strange misapprehension of the principles of classic art on the one hand, and ignorance of the true Gothic on the other) have been too much inculcated in our own time; and the belief that classic art offers suitable models for modern uses, and that the architecture of the Renaissance embodies classic principles, has been accepted with too little examination of its grounds. A few of the most competent modern authors, while in the main disposed, by force of custom, to take a favourable view of the architecture of the Renaissance, have occasionally shown a juster sense of its real character. Thus the recent Italian writer Melani says:[2] "We always admire the beautiful productions of the art of the Renaissance, because we are accustomed to value the good wherever it is found; but when we think of the absurdity of this art, and still worse, of the consequences to which it has given rise, we cannot but deplore so much ill-directed energy."
