RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was a pivotal figure initiating the Italian Renaissance. He is considered a founding father of Renaissance architecture for his contributions to architecture, engineering, and linear perspective. His ingenuity in engineering is celebrated in the innovative design of the multiple dome structure of the Florence Cathedral. Planned since the 1300s, Brunelleschi designed the dome without traditional wood reinforcements. Built between 1420 and 1436, Brunelleschi’s octagonal stone and masonry design is still the largest masonry vault in the world. With an interior dome and an exterior dome, the diameter is 55 meters outside and 45.5 meters inside. The space between the two domes is united by 24 meridian and 10 parallel ribs, allowing an interior access stairway to the lantern at the top. Each dome comprises eight ‘sails’ with one setback further than the others to support the rest. Bricks are laid in a herringbone pattern, and terra cotta tiles cover the dome. The dome is a stunning masterpiece of art, towering over the city of Florence, enchanting the world since its creation. Today, the dome continues as the symbol of Florence, Renaissance culture, and Western humanism.

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Leon Battista Alberti, a humanist and architect, argued that the architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans was inherently better than all other styles and should be imitated. In 1442, his De Re Aedificatoria (Four Books on Architecture) united Vitruvian information with Christian architectural ideals. In 1472, Alberti designed Sant'Andrea in Mantua. The immense volume of the Latin cross (without aisles) borrowed a coffered barrel vault from Roman Architecture. The monumental façade was part temple and part triumphal arch. In 1485, Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture became the first printed book on Architecture, starting the lineage of architectural treatises.

The purest example of Renaissance ideals in architecture is found in the Tempietto of S. Pietro al Montorio (1502) by Donato Bramante (1444-1514). Bramante’s design reintroduces classical columns surrounding a cylindrical central space, topped with a dome marking the site of the passing of St. Peter.

Another famous individual associated with the Renaissance is Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1516). Offering his services as an engineer, a painter, an architect, a sculptor, and a master of weaponry, da Vinci epitomized the “Uomo Universal”, or the universal man, of the Renaissance. His drawing of the male figure, inscribed in the pure geometries of the circle and the square, epitomizes man as the center of the universe. His painting of the Mona Lisa, now in the Louvre in Paris, is one of the most famous portraits in the world. He also painted the Last Supper, the Sistine Chapel, and sculpted the La Pietà sculpture of Mary holding her son after he died on the cross.

Andrea Palladio had a profound and enduring impact on architectural history. He illustrated a version of Vitruvius, included plates of known Roman buildings, and featured his public and private work in his Four Books on Architecture. Palladio’s direct academic approach and clear illustrations made this volume the most circulated architectural text of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, and later, in the United States. In his hometown of Vicenza, he designed the Basilica Palladiana, a Renaissance building in the central Piazza dei Signori, the Teatro Olympico, and the Palazzo Chiericati. His countryside villas were intended as practical working farms that attracted Venetian families to summer retreats. These private country estates brought a new sophistication to country homes with simple symmetric harmonies, pure geometries, hierarchical massing, codified proportions, and classical orders. The masterpiece of his extensive career is the Villa Rotunda (Capra), from 1566, set on a hill just outside Vicenza. Temple porticoes, a symmetrical plan, and a low central dome marked the inspiration of Ancient Rome. Palladian villas provided a model for country homes of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries; a preoccupation with an idealized form contrasting surrounding nature provided a secular architecture that continued to influence the work of Inigo Jones in England, J. A. Gabriel in France, K. F. Schinkel in Germany and Thomas Jefferson in the United States.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) dominated European Art with his accomplishments well into the 20th century. In his own time, he was the subject of legends and easily became the most famous man in Europe. He was a sculptor in architectural projects from his first commission in 1516. The façade at San Lorenzo in Florence, followed by the new Sacristy at the Medici Chapel and the Medici Library at San Lorenzo, helped to develop the Renaissance language of Architecture. The manipulations of the classical language exemplified Michelangelo’s search for invention over imitation. In his design for the library, he subdivided the whole into three pure geometrical parts: a square, a rectangle, and a triangle. The tension of kinetic human energy is in the dramatic entry stair hall, the rhythm of the meditative reading room, and the highest power of divine wisdom in the planned, but unrealized, triangular rare book room.

He commissioned the Sistine Chapel from Michelangelo, the Stanza in the Vatican from Raphael, the painter, and the plan for the new Basilica of St. Peter’s from Bramante. Renaissance popes determined to replace the old Basilica of St. Peter’s from the 4th century with a more meaningful and celebratory architecture. As new popes were elected, papal architects for the significant effort rotated; by 1626, when St. Peter’s was completed, Rosselini, da Sangallo, Bramante, Raphael, Peruzzi, Michelangelo, and Maderno had all been consulted. The result is the largest church in Christendom pronouncing the majesty of the house of God as a centered cosmos, a new free field of vision, and the pursuit of absolute beauty. The dome, completed by Giacomo della Porta after Michelangelo died in 1564, rises 452 feet and is supported by four sixty-foot square piers and a series of apsidal forms. Stone ribs rise to support the majestic lantern that overlooks the monumental colonnaded plaza designed later by Bernini.