Renaissance architecture

Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture and neoclassical architecture. Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities. The style was carried to other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact. It began in Florence in the early 15th century and reflected a revival of classical Greek and Roman principles such as symmetry, proportion, and geometry. This movement was supported by wealthy patrons, including the Medici family and the Catholic Church, who commissioned works to display both religious devotion and political power. Architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, and later Andrea Palladio revolutionized urban landscapes with domes, columns, and harmonious facades. While Renaissance architecture flourished most in Italy, its influence spread across Europe reaching France, Spain, and the Low Countries adapting to local traditions. Public buildings, churches, and palaces became symbols of civic pride and imperial strength, linking humanism with empire-building. Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts, as demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples remained. Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches and aediculae replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.

Historiography

The word "Renaissance" derives from the term rinascita, which means rebirth, first appeared in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1550. Although the term Renaissance was used first by the French historian Jules Michelet, it was given its more lasting definition by the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860, was influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance. The folio of measured drawings Édifices de Rome moderne; ou, Recueil des palais, maisons, églises, couvents et autres monuments (The Buildings of Modern Rome), first published in 1840 by Paul Letarouilly, also played an important part in the revival of interest in this period. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, (New York: Harper and Row, 1960) The Renaissance style was recognized by contemporaries in the term "all'antica", or "in the ancient manner" (of the Romans).

Principal phases

Historians often divide the Renaissance in Italy into three phases. Whereas art historians might talk of an Early Renaissance period, in which they include developments in 14th-century painting and sculpture, this is usually not the case in architectural history. The bleak economic conditions of the late 14th century did not produce buildings that are considered to be part of the Renaissance. As a result, the word Renaissance among architectural historians usually applies to the period 1400 to c. 1525, or later in the case of non-Italian Renaissances. Historians often use the following designations:

Quattrocento (c. 1400–1500) During the Quattrocento, sometimes known as the Early Renaissance, concepts of architectural order were explored and rules were formulated. The study of classical antiquity led in particular to the adoption of Classical detail and ornamentation. Space, as an element of architecture, was used differently than it was in the Middle Ages. Space was organised by proportional logic, its form and rhythm subject to geometry, rather than being created by intuition as in Medieval buildings. The prime example of this is the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446).

High Renaissance (c. 1500–1525) During the High Renaissance, concepts derived from classical antiquity were developed and used with greater confidence. The most representative architect is Donato Bramante (1444–1514), who expanded the applicability of classical architecture to contemporary buildings. His Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio (1503) was directly inspired by circular Roman temples. He was, however, hardly a slave to the classical forms and it was his style that was to dominate Italian architecture in the 16th century.

Mannerism (c. 1520–1600)

During the Mannerist period, architects experimented with using architectural forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships. The Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer and more imaginative rhythms. The best known architect associated with the Mannerist style was Michelangelo (1475–1564), who frequently used the giant order in his architecture, a large pilaster that stretches from the bottom to the top of a façade. He used this in his design for the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. Prior to the 20th century, the term Mannerism had negative connotations, but it is now used to describe the historical period in more general non-judgemental terms.

From Renaissance to Baroque As the new style of architecture spread out from Italy, most other European countries developed a sort of Proto-Renaissance style, before the construction of fully formulated Renaissance buildings. Each country in turn then grafted its own architectural traditions to the new style, so that Renaissance buildings across Europe are diversified by region. Within Italy the evolution of Renaissance architecture into Mannerism, with widely diverging tendencies in the work of Michelangelo, Giulio Romano and Andrea Palladio, led to the Baroque style in which the same architectural vocabulary was used for very different rhetoric. Outside Italy, Baroque architecture was more widespread and fully developed than the Renaissance style, with significant buildings as far afield as Mexico and the Philippines.

History

Development in Italy

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