ITALIAN 
DECORATIVE 
IRON W^ORK 
By the Marchese Ridolfo Peruzzi Medici 
(See House and Garden, January, 1906) 
the decline of the six- 
* ^ teenth century, and with the 
general decadence ol art, works in iron lost their 
simplicity of line and fell into showy scrollwork and 
complicated geometrical designs, while flowers and 
leaves, heavy of aspect, though cut out of thin sheet 
iron, were pinned on to bald bars. Color, too, was 
made use of to give relief to sculpture. Still it is 
not rare to find truly artistic work even in this period 
of decadence. The sixteenth century screen of the 
Spanish Chapel is happily 
conceived, the horizontal 
voluted cross-bars, wbicb 
are neither too much nor 
too little interwoven, are 
reposeful to the eye, giving 
an impression of solidity, 
while the vertical strips seem 
to relieve the whole, and 
produce a graceful general 
effect. Most elegant, too, 
are the railings that shield 
Jacopo Talenti’s lovely 
double arched windows in 
the Chiostro Verde, which, 
cut out of a single sheet of 
solid iron, represent scrolls 
gently undulating in appro¬ 
priate frameworks. And 
what grace of contour! Not 
a forced curve, not a useless 
agglomeration of lines, hut 
an excellent composition 
that appears to hang like a 
curtain from the architrave. 
Good, too, is the seventeenth 
century gate of the Palazzo 
Bartolommei in the Via 
Standard Bearer 
Lambertesca, conceived 
, , XIV Century 
m a mood or h a p p y 
fantasy and executed 
with mathematical precision. lire 
centre of the lunette is occupied by the 
family crest, a frieze of excellent com¬ 
position runs along the lateral pilasters and the 
two wings of the door, formed of vertical rails held 
together by simple volutes traversed by a band with 
geometrical designs; in short, a most felicitous 
union of some five decorative 
motifs, very dissimilar and 
which yet here are made to 
harmonize perfectly with one 
another. 
Splendid is the lantern in 
the shape of a cornucopia 
now preserved in the court¬ 
yard of the Bargello. It is 
the colossal work of Giiilio 
Serafini, a native of Aquila, 
and is all one mass of vine 
leaves and tendrils. Grip;!- 
nally it decorated the Palazzo 
Guanacci of Orvieto. 
Characteristic and pictur¬ 
esque is the famous wellhead 
of the large cloister of the 
Certosa, in which the capri¬ 
cious undulations, placed 
thereon without any real 
purpose, end in an aureole on 
which is seen, cut out a jour 
the monogram of Christ. 
But even this work of art, 
of indisputable worth, seems 
to prelude our age, wherein 
the machine takes the place 
STANDARD REARER, PALAZZO FINETTI, 
XV CENTURY 
Lantern Holder in the 
form of a Cornucopia 
167 
