A more familiar instance of the
application of these arches is the Villa of Mecaenas at Tivoli, though it
is improperly styled a villa, being pretty well known to have been
nothing but stables.
138. The buttress is the only remaining point worthy of notice. It
prevails to a considerable extent among the villas of the south, being
always broad and tall, and occasionally so frequent as to give the
building, viewed laterally, a pyramidal and cumbrous effect. The most
usual form is that of a simple sloped mass, terminating in the wall,
without the slightest finishing, and rising at an angle of about 84 deg..
Sometimes it is perpendicular, sloped at the top into the wall; but it
never has steps of increasing projection as it goes down. By observing
the occurrence of these buttresses, an architect, who knew nothing of
geology, might accurately determine the points of most energetic
volcanic action in Italy; for their use is to protect the building from
the injuries of earthquakes, the Italian having far too much good taste
to use them, except in cases of extreme necessity. Thus, they are never
found in North Italy, even in the fortresses. They begin to occur among
the Apennines, south of Florence; they become more and more frequent and
massy towards Rome; in the neighborhood of Naples they are huge and
multitudinous, even the walls themselves being sometimes sloped; and the
same state of things continues as we go south, on the coast of Calabria
and Sicily.
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