n in a consistent
style. The religious, municipal, signorial, and ecclesiastical functions
of the little town are centralised around the open market-place, on
which the common people transacted business and discussed affairs. Pius
entrusted the realization of his scheme to a Florentine architect;
whether Bernardo Rossellino, or a certain Bernardo di Lorenzo, is still
uncertain. The same artist, working in the flat manner of Florentine
domestic architecture, with rusticated basements, rounded windows and
bold projecting cornices--the manner which is so nobly illustrated by
the Rucellai and Strozzi palaces at Florence--executed also for Pius the
monumental Palazzo Piccolomini at Siena. It is a great misfortune for
the group of buildings he designed at Pienza, that they are huddled
together in close quarters on a square too small for their effect. A
want of space is peculiarly injurious to the architecture of this date,
1462, which, itself geometrical and spatial, demands a certain harmony
and liberty in its surroundings, a proportion between the room occupied
by each building and the masses of the edifice. The style is severe and
prosaic. Those charming episodes and accidents of fancy, in which the
Gothic style and the style of the earlier Lombard Renaissance abounded,
are wholly wanting to the rigid, mathematical, hard-headed genius of the
Florentine quattrocento. Pienza, therefore, disappoints us. Its heavy
palace frontispieces shut the spirit up in a tight box. We seem unable
to breathe, and lack that element of life and picturesqueness which the
splendid retinues of nobles in the age of Pinturicchio might have added
to the now forlorn Piazza.

Yet the material is a fine warm travertine, mellowing to dark red,
brightening to golden, with some details, especially the tower of the
Palazzo Communale, in red brick. This building, by the way, is imitated
in miniature from that of Florence. The cathedral is a small church of
three aisles, equally high, ending in what the French would call a
_chevet_. Pius had observed this plan of construction somewhere in
Austria, and commanded his architect, Bernardo, to observe it in his
plan. He was attracted by the facilities for window-lighting which it
offered; and what is very singular, he provided by the Bull of his
foundation for keeping the walls of the interior free from frescoes and
other coloured decorations. The result is that, though the interior
effect is pleasing, the churc