Early Renaissance Architecture in Italy Week 1

1.1 About the course

Welcome to the class. During these eight weeks, we'll pass through many different artistic centers and

architectures in renaissance Italy. We hope to excite your interest for the creativity and culture of the field, and

we’ll concentrate our attention on the second part of the 15th century. 1450-1500. The architectural proposals

that matured in those times, coming from an Italian and a European context, medieval, for political and social

institutions, and gothic for the architectural structures and forms, will continue to find success in the future.

Erwin_Panofsky identified the dividing line between medieval revivalism of antiquity and true renaissance in

the very awareness of a break in tradition. Once every continuity had fallen away, the Renaissance could create

a real REBIRTH OF ANTIQUITY by re-integrating the forms with their meanings. We will discuss this research in

architecture following the identification of the architectural orders, up to Donato Bramante, who will conclude

our class. In this first week, we will briefly touch the beginnings of the 15th century Florence, where Filippo

Brunelleschi renewed the architectural tradition looking back to antiquity, and Rome as source of antiquity,

because of so many ruins, defined the past greatness.

It will be useful to deal with the architecture of the second part of the century, starting from Leon Battista

Alberti who received, integrated and transformed Brunelleschi’s proposal looking to the antiquity, and giving

his own decisive contribution from the theoretical and practical point of view to the success of the new

Renaissance architecture. Alberti was also well aware of other components of Brunelleschi's renewal. He also

wrote about PERSPECTIVE, which is the geometrical method invented by Brunelleschi to represent on a

surface, three dimensional objects standing at different distances in the space. Invented for painting, the

perspective became the main way to imagine architectural and urban spaces and to measure them. But

another component of Brunelleschi's work was considered by Alberti, the invention and application of new

technologies, again looking at antiquity, particularly in order to compete with antique architectures and to

respond to different conditions and methods of building. The role of TECHNOLOGIES in Renaissance times is

more important than usually supposed. And Brunelleschi's building of the Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore in

Florence, or problems with erecting great monoliths demonstrate this.

We will also examine architectures, as fortresses and fortifications, responding to new firearms technologies.

When Alberti completed his treatise about architecture, around 1452, his initial study of texts and monuments

of antiquity was based on mathematics and geometry as a reflection of nature, with the strong belief that

architecture was a part of a man's civil duty. This attitude would condition the architectural principle of the

earlier Renaissance and the architects did not apply themselves to textual imitations of individual antique

moments. In Florence, they preferred to accept and articulate the rational system of Brunelleschi either by

transforming it, like Alberti, or breaking with it in a return to tradition like Michelozzo.

In north and south Italy the battle between innovation and resistance was increasing in strength and

substance. This was so because it not only encompassed immediate questions of decorative language, antique

forms and architectural orders, but also included the problems of conceiving and constructing an architecture

that could replace the gothic structural memory with a continuous measuring of antiquity. At first, the new

decoration was frequently adapted to the existing architectural system. And only later did it find a home in the

different spatial and structural conceptions that descended from Florentine example. Beside the antique

monuments, an important reference for earlier renaissance architects was the only antique text surviving on

architecture, “De Architectura” of Vitruvius, an architect of Augustus' time. But his Latin was obscure and the

illustrations lost, so that it was very difficult to link Vitruvius’ descriptions of buildings and the definitions of

architectural parts, with the existing ruins. This is also true for Vitruvius’ descriptions of the three old Greek

orders, Ionic, Doric, Corinthian and a simpler local order, Tuscan, with their own parts and proportions.

Moreover, a large part of surviving antique monuments were built after Vitruvius’ death.

Therefore artists and architects of the earlier Renaissance very soon found that there was not a full

correspondence between the ruins still visible and Vitruvius’ rules. This was an area of obvious problems of

interpretation and imitation, not to say about the artists’ difficulties to understand the Latin language.

We have very numerous contributions of all those topics as a result of long and thorough research by historians

- Art historians and architectural historians. They can be reached through the bibliography, quoted in the books

indicated, as the sources for our course. You could start with Giorgio Vasari, who wrote Lives of Artists and

Architects; “Le Vite”, a century later, 1550 and 1568. But I would suggest to start with the most recent book

indicated in our bibliography. To go back to the previous studies and the historical sources, following your

interests.

The course wants to illustrate as mentioned the extreme variety present in identifying the usage of

architectural orders in the second part of the 15th century. To demonstrate that the so-called five orders,

Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, as they will be established after Bramante, are not abstract entities

with eternal rules, became object of the passionate and inventive research after the first proposals of

Brunelleschi. It is not only a question of simply identifying the orders by the forms of capitals, but, as we will

see, of recognizing forms and proportions of every part of them: pedestals, columns with their bases, shafts,

capitals, trabeation with their architraves, friezes, cornices - it means: both the vertical parts, columns with, or

without pedestals, and the horizontal parts, trabeations; also relating the intercolumniation and the

superimposition of more stories until obtaining a complete proportionate frame, or the representation of the

frame of the building. The orders will therefore be related to the singular architectures examined even if it will

force us to ignore or mention briefly other aspects of such patterns, functions, and structural characteristics.

Following this line, the course commits its topics to images no less than to words. All the colored images are

mine. You will draw your conclusion from them as a complement of what I will be able to illustrate. You will find

names, dates, and references in the captions that will guide you to relate the different cities, sites, altars, and

monuments. Knowing that in spite of the lack of efficient communication systems a remarkable exchange of

ideas, forms and architectural solutions took place through artists and artisans between the main Italian artistic

centers. We will start to examine them from the next lecture.

1.2 FLORENCE IN THE EARLY XV CENTURY

This is the FLORENCE we look at today and that

many of us know. But at the beginning of the 15th

century the Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, the

cathedral of the city, was not yet built. In those

times, Florence had an independent Republican

government based on a tradition coming from the

Middle Ages, a tradition as well as for the city's

ordinary buildings as for its monuments. As far

back as 1367 the new cathedral Santa Maria del

Fiore was under construction following a Gothic

model.

They forsaw an octagonal dome, but a constructional technique had not yet been found. The great apses were

roofed in. And the drum of the dome was only raised to the spring level (= the level of the springer or tas-de-

charge) when Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti presented in 1418 a model for a double-shell dome,

which was approved and built on the late Gothic structure of the cathedral.

Other Medieval buildings were important in Florence for the new architectural early Renaissance:

the Palazzo Vecchio or Palazzo della Signoria, seat of the city government, a massive and rusticated

Gothic building with a high tower;

the Loggia della Signoria in front of Palazzo Vecchio, a full gothic space, although without pointed

arches.

the Orsanmichele with pointed windows, but with clear divisions and subdivisions of its huge rooms

and stories.

But the chief models for Brunelleschi and the artists who innovated the

Florentine artistic tradition were older and romanesque. The church of

San Miniato, which looks at Florence from the hill in front of the city

with a series of full arches and half columns at the first level of the

facade, with a pediment and pilasters at the second level, with green

and white intarsias on the walls.

The San Giovanni Baptistery, believed [to be]

antique from the Florentines of those times.

Those last buildings will be taken, as models, from the main Florentine architects, also in the later part of the

15th century, as Brunelleschi did, looking at antiquity, and at the Florentine tradition as well.

Among several examples that I could mention, seems

significant the Saint Louis Tabernacle that Donatello

completed in 1425 with the statue of the saint and that

later gave hospitality to the statue of Saint Thomas by

Verrocchio.

The tabernacle in antique forms was inserted in an

Orsanmichele's pillar.

We can see here the main order of pilasters and the

minor order of columns with the entablature on the

columns intersecting with the plaster on the major

order.

This is a solution that Brunelleschi had experimented, as we will see in the Porch of the Innocenti, and with the

Masaccio in the Holy Trinity's fresco, in Santa Maria Novella.

The main example of the first early Renaissance Florentine

architecture raised on a late Gothic building, remains, in any

case, the Santa Maria del Fiore dome which Brunelleschi

completed in 1436, 40 meters in diameter and 56 meters in

height.

In the same year, Brunelleschi also won the competition for

the lantern's design.

Brunelleschi invented not only many technical solutions for

masonry, but also designed the machines of the erecting yard

when he became the solely responsible architect of the dome

in 1432.

Here we have a load positioner, a crane and the hoist.

(drawn by Bonaccorso Ghiberti, Lorenzo Ghiberti'snephew).

It is difficult therefore, to judge the new Brunelleschi

architectural language, from the mere shape of the

dome that we see here on the late Gothic structure of

the Florentine cathedral.

1.3 BRUNELLESCHI AND THE ARCHITECTURAL ORDER

The research of a new architectural language adapted from antiquity by Filippo Brunelleschi goes on at the

same time as his research of technical solutions for building the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.

The two approaches share a rational and geometric statement in facing problems, statement that is also

present in the regularity of the plan in the Ospedale degli Innocenti ( the foundling hospital) designed by

Brunellesci in 1419.

Architectural forms, coming from antiquity, appear in the portico

(porch) of the Ospedale, organized in a simplified and rational

progression of columns, with Corinthian capitals and full arches;

as a rule the proportion of the base corresponding to a square in

plan and in front.

To underline the novelty, the vaults are shallow domes (not

traditional groin vaults).

At the end of this series of arches on a simple impost block and

capitals, we find a measured order of fluted pilasters, always

Corinthian, sustaining an entablature, framing the arches and the

minor order.

The architectural order became again an instrument of proportion, as

it was in that remote antiquity.

The architectural order, aimed at proportional spaces, finds full expression in the Sagrestia Vecchia di San

Lorenzo. Brunelleschi was charged with the design probably in 1419 and the work began in 1422. He designed

a cubic space with pilasters at the corners of the walls, sustaining the arches and the pendentives under a

hemispherical umbrella dome of arches and walls in between.

In the scheme we see piers becoming pilasters at the

corners.

The pendentives are sustaining an umbrella dome

over the cubic space.

Here we have the umbrella dome with arches and

vaults in between, the solution invented by

Brunelleschi.

We find folded pilasters in the corners, pilasters in

the corners of a little choir, a small part of entire

pilasters in the inner corners, a solution to save

space between all that's inside the square plan.

Full evidence of Brunelleschi's meaning of architectural

order appears in the nave of San Lorenzo Church that

Brunelleschi continued after the Sagrestia Vecchia.

The impost that we found in the Innocenti’s Porch (Portico

of the Innocenti) between capitals and arches becomes in

fact a block of entablature, corresponding to the entablature

that ran on the pilasters of the aisles.

As in the Innocenti porch, at the cross between the nave and

the transept, the series of arches stops at the major order

and frames the minor order and its arches with its

entablature.

And here we see the corner

solution with the major order

framing the minor order and

arches on it. This is Brunelleschi's

system here, fully realized; using

square bases, borders, and arches

he gives sure proportions to his

two dimensional space.

(from top to bottom): the full order - full order with arches - full order and arches positioned on a square bay -

the composition of square bays with orders and arches.

A detail of San Lorenzo’s Corinthian capital shows why this is called “Corinthian”.

Brunelleschi interpreted the forms of antique Corinthian capital adding a volute on

the middle of each side to emphasize the perspective axis.

The Facade of San Lorenzo has remained without orders and

unfinished.

1.4 THE SOURCES OF THE ANTIQUITY

Antonio Manetti reports that Brunelleschi was in Rome with Donatello to survey the old monuments, as many

artists did after them. Rome was in fact the site where the remains of antiquity were more present and

imposing inside large spaces, only partly peopled within the walls of the city.

This is specified by the representations of Rome:

This fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico di Siena (Public palace,

Town Hall) is dated at the beginning of the 15th century and

characterized by realistic and symbolic elements within a circle -

synonymous of perfection.

We can observe the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Capitol Hill,

the monumental columns, the Dioscuri on the Quirinal Hill, the

Marcus Aurelius still aside San Giovanni, numerous churches,

and on the right side of the river Tiber, the Saint Peter’s Basilica

defended by Sant'Angelo Castle.

More realistic views are available at the end of the 15th century, as those in the Codex Escurialensis, where we

can see the Vatican complex, the Sant'Angelo Castle and the Pantheon - or the disorderly crowding of houses,

towers, and monuments along the Tiber.

Everywhere the Pantheon emerges as the principal

moment of antiquity - preserved because used as a

church - with its big pediments and columns, its bronze

doors and its impressive dome.

The architects of those times tried to represent such a huge building in the little

pages of their sketch books - either as a whole or in details - doing a big effort of

abstraction through their drawings. Here we see the Pantheon's door carefully

represented, with all its parts well delineated.

The attempt to investigate and to know the solutions and forms of the

antique architectures and the great variety of ruins, found the main

sources in the Fora (latin plural for “forum”), that were not visible as

they are today, after several campaigns of excavation during the 19th

and 20th century. We have in fact to consider, that they were covered

by about six meters of ruins and earth.

Among the monuments still visible, the Triumphal Arches were without doubt, the main examples of the

architectural orders and their ornaments. Here, we can see the Septimius Severus’ arch and the Constantine’s

arch very far indeed from forms and solutions of the Greek or Hellenistic temples.

A temple still visible in the 15th century was for example, the

Minerva's temple, no longer existing. We can see it here in

the drawing of the codex Escurialensis. The drawing shows in

what condition the ruins were, through the eyes of architects

and artists: partly buried, confused with other ruins, difficult

to identify.

Here we can see 2 columns of the Forum Transitorium, still existing near the wall of the Augustus forum, as we

saw in the previous drawing. The “Augustus' forum” was at those times considered an antique model of

rusticated wall, probably of a palace. The decorative richness of the free standing columns of the Forum

Transitorium competes with the projecting entablature in their forms with those of the triumphal arches.

One of the most followed models, as far as the connection of the trilithic system of architectural orders and the

system of piers and arches concerns, was the Colosseum, the structure of concentric rings still visible today.

And we have here a representation of the 15th century, showing exactly the inner structure and the outside

structure of the monument.

Seen from the front, the Colosseum shows the superimposing orders from the heavier to the lighter:

Tuscan / Doric – Ionic – Corinthian; and the arches and piers framed by the orders, that is to say, half columns

and entablatures.

More than the triumphal arches, the Greek columns of Marcus

Aurelius and Trajan (image) show how important was in

antique architecture, the union with the sculpture, testimony

of enterprises, clothes, and arms of the ancient Romans.

Therefore, also the antique sculptures began to be imitated, to

be placed in new architectural spaces, as happened for the

statue of Marcus Aurelius in the capital's Piazza.

And on the left we see a bronze representation of Marcus

Aurelius by Filarete following the antique model.

The statues of the Dioscures, then attributed to Phidias, will

be represented many times and restored on the Quirinal Hill,

where they still are today.