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THE RENAISSANCE
Florence - Europe early 15th century - 17th century medieval world - modern outlook (classical antiquity, humanism, fields such as art, science, and literature) 文文文文文文文文文文文文文文 Means‘Rebirth’ A cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement A revival of Classical learning and wisdom New scientific laws New forms of art and architecture New religious and political ideas 文文文文文文文 The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity The classical orders The practise of drawing to study the antiquity Studies on proportions The invention of the perspective Architectural treatises
FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI:
THE FIRST RENAISSANCE ARCHITECT
Trained as a goldsmith in his native city of Florence Traveling to Rome to study ancient buildings An underlying system of proportion A unit of measurement(order+arch on a modular cube, determines the height of and Distance between the columns, and the depth of each bay) The building created a sense of harmony First central plan church - the Rotonda degli Angeli (Florence, 1434) The dome of Florence Cathedral
FLORENCE, S. MARIA DEL FIORE, 1296-1367, 1418-
Longitudinal section Lantern Construction of dome The Santa Maria del Fiore, also called Florence Cathedral, is one of the representative architectures during the renaissance period. The most appealing point of the building is its huge dome. The problem is raising a dome over this crossing. The expected solution of raising the dome on a wooden framework known as centering, used in the construction of vaults and arches, would be impossible here because of the width of the span. The dome was
which is a parallel to the discovery of the laws of perspective by Florentine painters at that moment. The churches became models of proportional planning, since the square of the crossing is the basic module for the whole composition. Thus at S. Spirito this square is repeated three times to form the choir and transepts; the nave is four squares long and is twice as high as it is wide; the clerestorey and arcade are of equal height; and the aisles consist of square bays, also twice as high as they are wide. All the parts are harmoniously related to each other imperial Roman grandeur by the powerful Corinthian colonnade marching all round the interior.
THE PAZZI CHAPEL, FLORENCE, SANTA CROCE
1425-1430 ca.
FLORENCE, ROTONDA DEGLI ANGELI
(late 1430s, not completed) The Pazzi chapel (begun c. 1430), a building of great delicacy and subtlety, is not, strictly speaking, centrally-planned since the central domed square is flanked by tunnel-vaulted side bays. It is preceded by an entrance loggia which also has a central saucer- domed space neatly balancing the small domed choir in axis with it on the other side of the chapel. The interior is articulated with a linear pattern produced by the structural and decorative members
which, made from pietra serena (local grey stone), stand out against the white plastered walls as though they were the lines of the newly discovered laws of perspective drawn on the architecture. His later work became heavier and more moulded, as in the lantern of the cathedral and the exedrae in the drum of its dome, and in the uncompleted church of S. Maria degli Angeli (1434-7). This was the first fully centrally-planned Renaissance building , a type which was to fascinate all fifteenth and sixteenth-century architects. The central domed octagon of this church is defined by a ring of eight piers which support the drum and form the dividing walls of the eight radiating chapels or apses. Thus the whole building is treated as a sculptural unit based on the concept of the moulded wall-mass, which must derive from his study of the centrally-planned domed interiors of ancient Rome.
LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI
In Florence, Rimini, and Mantua Treatises: Della Pittura (On Painting), De Sculptura(On Sculpture), and De re Aedificatoria (On Architecture) Re-create the glory of ancient times through architecture
principles to the design of the ordinary parish church.
Florence, facade of Palazzo Rucellai
(between around 1453 and 1460) Colosseum facade
Florence, facade of the church of Santa Maria Novella
(work begun 1460) Santa Maria Novella was the first papal church in Florence. Completed in 1470, it was the perfect realization of Alberti's design vision. In fact, the main part of the church was built in the 13th century and is a typical Italian Gothic architecture. Here, Alberti once again used the image of the triumphal arch on the facade of the church, but deliberately retained the small arcades of the original Gothic facade on either side of the central arch, hoping to establish an organic connection between the old and new buildings. Columns are also used on both sides of the arch. Above the triumphal arch on the ground floor of the church, Alberti used a small temple to complement the interior's three-gallery Basilica structure.The width of the central bay is the same as the width of the lower arch (the round Windows are also preserved from the original Gothic facade),
but the columns on both sides do not connect properly with the original Gothic arcade on the lower level, so Alberti designed a wider wall between the upper and lower columns to separate them. On both sides of the upper small temple, he designed an extremely exquisite scroll shape to organically connect the upper and lower levels, solving the problem of the stepped facade shape connection that had plagued Italian medieval craftsmen for a long time. The facade is constructed in a very simple way, and everything is precisely controlled in a proportional organization based on the square.
Mantua, Church of San Sebastiano
work begun 1460
Mantua, Church of Sant’Andrea
work begun 1472 S.Sebastiano is the first in a line of domed churches on Greek cross plan, but the more influential S.Andrea, Alberti's finest work, created a new type of church at a stroke by replacing the traditional aisles of the Gothic and basilican church with a series of sidechapels. This gave all the pilgrims who flocked to the church an uninterrupted view of the domed crossing. The architectural precedent for such a plan was to be found in Roman buildings like the Baths of Diocletian
Roma, Cloister of Santa Maria della Pace
ROMA, CORTILE DEL BELVEDERE 1503-
Bramante’s Belvedere Court, with its terraces, loggias, sculpture courtyard, open-air theatre, orange trees and fountains is a conscious attempt to echo the ancient imperial palaces on the hills of Rome, such as the Golden House of Nero, Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, and the palace on the Palatine with a hippodrome which inspired the shape of the Belvedere Court.
ROMA, TEMPIETTO DI SAN PIETRO IN MONTORIO
This was commissioned in 1502 by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to mark the spot in Rome where St Peter had traditionally been crucified. Bramante erected - for the first time since Roman days - a domed peripteral rotunda, that is a circular cella completely surrounded by a colonnade in the manner of the so-called Temples of Vesta at Tivoli and near the Tiber in Rome. The Tempietto is thus a monument of exceptional artistic gravity and with no practical function, yet charged with a profound Christian significance. To underline this, the peristyle is composed of genuine antique Roman Doric columns while the metopes in the
triglyph frieze which they support are carved with the keys of St Peter and the liturgical instruments of the mass: a parallel to the frieze of the Temple of Vespasian which, carved with sacrificial instruments, is known to have been above ground in the sixteenth century. Moreover, as a circular building intended by Bramante to stand in the centre of a circular colonnaded court, its form was regarded as representing the world and divine reality, a concept dear to medieval and Renaissance thinkers.
