Renaissance architecture is a neo-classic style, inspired by the examples of ancient Greek and Roman architecture and classical ideas of symmetry, clarity, beauty and harmony. The Renaissance was a time of heightened interest in classical secular culture, art, philosophy and mythology. It was also associated with Protagoras’ principle that “man is the measure of all things”. This was as true of Renaissance religious art and architecture as it was of Renaissance secular art and architecture.
While Renaissance architects dismissed the pointed-arch style which had been prevalent in previous centuries, and coined the term Gothic architecture to associate it with the destroyers of ancient Rome, it was also an outgrowth of the Gothic period and style. In painting and sculpture, the Renaissance represented the human form more anatomically accurately than in the prior Romanesque period. But whereas, for example, Gothic cathedrals are meant to inspire awe at the power of God and the Church and make individuals who enter cathedrals feel small in comparison to the vast interiors and vaulted ceilings, Renaissance churches and secular buildings are meant to relax the individual, who has a comforting feeling that all is harmonious and in a human scale.
Overview
The Renaissance architecture is the stage of Italian architecture that evolved from 1420 to the mid- sixteenth century, with the return to life of antiquity classic. The main characteristics of Renaissance architecture are in fact the sensitivity towards the ancient past, the resumption of classical orders, the clear articulation in the plans and elevations, as well as the proportions between the individual parts of the buildings.
The style of the so-called “early Renaissance” originated in Florence, favored by the affirmation of the bourgeoisie and humanistic culture, then flourishing in other courts such as those of Mantua and Urbino. The subsequent sixteenth-century phase, called “Classical Renaissance”, had in Rome the new center of artistic life, coexisting in the same century with Mannerism, which is generally considered by historiography as the third phase of the Renaissance.
In the following centuries, the architectural ideas developed in Italy also spread to the rest of Europe, but the resulting works had little in common with the characteristics of Italian architecture, consisting in the revival of Roman details and in the sense of balance and stability.
Treatises and theories
In the Renaissance, with the rediscovery of the only treatise on architecture it arrived intact from antiquity, the De architectura of Vitruvius, became widespread the ability to express in a more complete form theories and practical knowledge of art edificatoria. Directly connected to the Vitruvian model is the De re aedificatoria, a treatise that Leon Battista Alberti published in Latin in the mid-fifteenth century. The work took up from the classical text the subdivision into ten books, as well as most of the themes, however addressing them in a more rational order; while fully incorporating the theory of architectural orders, Alberti subjected the statements of Vitruvius to a comparison with the still surviving buildings of antiquity, analyzing the principles from which certain precepts had originated.
After Alberti, Filarete composed a manuscript treatise in twenty-five volumes, in which the architectural concepts were not exhibited in a systematic way, but in an episodic and narrative tone, starting from the description of the foundation of the city of Sforzinda, the first fully theorized ideal city of Renaissance. Other original ideas are found in the treatise by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, in which research on the innovative principles of fortifying art, called modern fortification, is of great importance.
In 1537 Sebastiano Serlio published the first of The Seven Books of Architecture: the work met with immediate success, was repeatedly reprinted in Italian and French, and had translations, complete or partial, also in Flemish, German, Spanish, Dutch and English. It was in fact the first architectural treatise to privilege the practical aspect over the theoretical one and the first to codify, in a logical sequence, the five orders, also offering a vast repertoire of motifs, including openness, formed by a central arch and two lateral architraved openings, known as the serliana. The most important part was the illustrations, while the text was given the task of explaining the drawings, rather than the reverse. However, the influence that the stroke had on French and English architecture was very bad, because the master builders took possession of the most striking mannerist elements, to superimpose them on structures still linked to Gothic architecture.
In his Rule of the five orders of architecture (1562), Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola further reduced the parts containing the text, simplified the method for determining the proportions and fixed the module as an absolute measuring instrument, i.e. freeing it from different regional measurement systems. The treatise was an unprecedented success, so much so that it was published in over 250 editions and in 4 different languages.
The four books of architecture, which Andrea Palladio published in 1570, also enjoyed great success. More exhaustive than Vignola’s treatise and more precise than Serlio’s, Palladio’s work is characterized by the rigor in the use of the method in orthogonal projections and the renunciation of drawings with pictorial and perspective effects, so as to facilitate reading. proportions. In addition to the architectural and constructional issues orders, they The four books contain the antiquity buildings designs, as well as plants and elevations of factories carried out by the same architect. Inigo Joneshe studied it in depth and through him Palladian architecture found success in seventeenth-century England.
Features
The term “Renaissance” was already used by treatise writers of the time to highlight the rediscovery of Roman architecture, of which various vestiges survived in the fifteenth century. The main indices of this attitude were the newfound sensitivity towards the forms of the past, not only of Roman architecture, but also of the early Christian and Florentine Romanesque, the revival of the classical orders, the use of elementary geometric shapes for the definition of the plans, the search for orthogonal and symmetrical articulations, as well as the use of harmonic proportion in the individual parts of the building. In particular, a common characteristic between Renaissance and Roman architecture is the effect produced by the adaptation of simple masses based on the modular systems of proportion, whose module is fixed by the half-diameter of the columns.
The obvious distinguishing features of Classical Roman architecture were adopted by Renaissance architects. However, the forms and purposes of buildings had changed over time, as had the structure of cities. Among the earliest buildings of the reborn Classicism were churches of a type that the Romans had never constructed. Neither were there models for the type of large city dwellings required by wealthy merchants of the 15th century. Conversely, there was no call for enormous sporting fixtures and public bath houses such as the Romans had built. The ancient orders were analysed and reconstructed to serve new purposes.
After all, the art historian Bruno Zevi defined the Renaissance as “a mathematical reflection carried out on Romanesque and Gothic metrics “, highlighting the research, by the architects of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of a spatial metric based on elementary mathematical relationships. In other words, the great achievement of the Renaissance, compared to the past, was to have created in the interior spaces what the ancient Greeks had created for the exterior of their temples, giving life to environments regulated by immediately perceptible laws and easily measurable by the observer. The study of perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi certainly had a decisive weight in this; Brunelleschi introduced a totalizing interior vision, elevating the perspective to a global spatial structure. From Brunelleschi onwards, “the true space of architecture, the one in which one enters and lives, is intentionally thought in view of a prospective result”.
Plan
The plans of Renaissance buildings have a square, symmetrical appearance in which proportions are usually based on a module. Within a church, the module is often the width of an aisle. The need to integrate the design of the plan with the façade was introduced as an issue in the work of Filippo Brunelleschi, but he was never able to carry this aspect of his work into fruition. The first building to demonstrate this was St. Andrea in Mantua by Alberti. The development of the plan in secular architecture was to take place in the 16th century and culminated with the work of Palladio.
Façade
Façades are symmetrical around their vertical axis. Church façades are generally surmounted by a pediment and organised by a system of pilasters, arches and entablatures. The columns and windows show a progression towards the centre. One of the first true Renaissance façades was the Cathedral of Pienza (1459–62), which has been attributed to the Florentine architect Bernardo Gambarelli (known as Rossellino) with Alberti perhaps having some responsibility in its design as well.
Domestic buildings are often surmounted by a cornice. There is a regular repetition of openings on each floor, and the centrally placed door is marked by a feature such as a balcony, or rusticated surround. An early and much copied prototype was the façade for the Palazzo Rucellai (1446 and 1451) in Florence with its three registers of pilasters
Columns and pilasters
Roman and Greek orders of columns are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. The orders can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a wall in the form of pilasters. During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Brunelleschi.
Arches
Arches are semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental. Arches are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental scale at the St. Andrea in Mantua.
Vaults
Vaults do not have ribs. They are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault which is frequently rectangular. The barrel vault is returned to architectural vocabulary as at the St. Andrea in Mantua.
Domes
The dome is used frequently, both as a very large structural feature that is visible from the exterior, and also as a means of roofing smaller spaces where they are only visible internally. After the success of the dome in Brunelleschi’s design for the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and its use in Bramante’s plan for St. Peter’s Basilica (1506) in Rome, the dome became an indispensable element in church architecture and later even for secular architecture, such as Palladio’s Villa Rotonda.
Ceilings
Roofs are fitted with flat or coffered ceilings. They are not left open as in Medieval architecture. They are frequently painted or decorated.
Doors
Doors usually have square lintels. They may be set with in an arch or surmounted by a triangular or segmental pediment. Openings that do not have doors are usually arched and frequently have a large or decorative keystone.
Windows
Windows may be paired and set within a semi-circular arch. They may have square lintels and triangular or segmental pediments, which are often used alternately. Emblematic in this respect is the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, begun in 1517.
In the Mannerist period the Palladian arch was employed, using a motif of a high semi-circular topped opening flanked with two lower square-topped openings. Windows are used to bring light into the building and in domestic architecture, to give views. Stained glass, although sometimes present, is not a feature.
Walls
External walls are generally constructed of brick, rendered, or faced with stone in highly finished ashlar masonry, laid in straight courses. The corners of buildings are often emphasized by rusticated quoins. Basements and ground floors were often rusticated, as at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi (1444–1460) in Florence. Internal walls are smoothly plastered and surfaced with lime wash. For more formal spaces, internal surfaces are decorated with frescoes.
Details
Courses, mouldings and all decorative details are carved with great precision. Studying and mastering the details of the ancient Romans was one of the important aspects of Renaissance theory. The different orders each required different sets of details. Some architects were stricter in their use of classical details than others, but there was also a good deal of innovation in solving problems, especially at corners. Mouldings stand out around doors and windows rather than being recessed, as in Gothic architecture. Sculptured figures may be set in niches or placed on plinths. They are not integral to the building as in Medieval architecture.
The palace
The rise of the Florentine bourgeoisie favored important changes in the urban fabric of the city: the numerous tower-houses that emerged in the urban fabric were replaced by the palaces of the merchants, who were entrusted with the task of reconciling the life needs of the inhabitants with the renewal of the urban face cities, at the same time approaching the prototypes of antiquity. However, unlike some temples, in the 15th century no ancient palace had survived intact, so much so that knowledge of the plans was countered by the lack of models relating to the articulation of the facades. Not even Vitruviusand the other authors of the Roman period had provided precise indications, concentrating their attention above all on the layout in the plan and not on the elevation.
Starting from these considerations, the courtyard in the center of the building, deriving from planimetric models of the past, became the cornerstone of the new compositions. The accentuation of the horizontal extension of the buildings, however, allowed a better distribution of the rooms compared to traditional medieval schemes: the ground floor, closed like a fortification, was used for the movement of traders, visitors and customers; the first floor, known as the noble floor, was intended for the reception rooms, while the second floor was reserved for the real residence of the family.
The Medici palace, commissioned by Cosimo the Elder to Michelozzo before the mid-15th century, can be considered the archetype of the early Renaissance palace: it is a “stone die”, with a courtyard on columns and external facades characterized by a rustic graduation of ashlars, which reflect elements deriving from medieval public buildings. Inside, however, the different functions are not yet attributable to a fully symmetrical and axial scheme, which is still limited to the entrance and courtyard area.
The solution with the rusticated façade of Palazzo Medici was opposed by the one with orders of semi-pillars, which still finds its first realization in Florence, in the Rucellai palace by Leon Battista Alberti. In any case, the articulation of the surfaces by means of semi-pillars, while detaching itself from the medieval tradition, did not particularly take hold in Tuscany, but nevertheless opened the way for future developments.
At the height of the Renaissance, the axial symmetry of the plan became a fundamental design principle. Although deriving from the model of Palazzo Medici, Palazzo Strozzi, built in Florence at the end of the 15th century, presents an axial symmetry of the plan and double-flight staircases that herald the trend towards double systems of the Baroque period. The plan of the later Valmarana palace in Vicenza, built in the second half of the following century by Andrea Palladio, is characterized by a specular axial composition, offering a balanced and proportionate division of spaces.
Still in the middle of the Renaissance, Bramante and Raffaello proposed new models of facades for palaces, with the combination of ashlar on the ground floor and scanning of the facade with orders in relief.
Palazzo Farnese in Rome, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Michelangelo, became the prototype of a new, very long-lasting model, based on the rejection of both rustication and orders in favor of a smooth facade crossed by horizontal members (string course, marcadavanzali) with windows kiosk topped by pediments triangular and curved alternating, that the ground floor become kneeling.
The villa
In country residences, centralization nevertheless became a fundamental principle. Leon Battista Alberti, in the treatise De re aedificatoria, dedicates a tome to the “stately homes”, which refer to the model of the villa of Pliny the Younger: the layout of the main rooms, such as the vestibule, the living room and the dining area they open onto a central space (atrium), the winter dining room features a stove, while the summer dining room overlooks the garden.
The Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano (around 1470) can be traced back to this type. Raised on a project by Giuliano da Sangallo towards the end of the fifteenth century, it is one of the main examples of the early Renaissance. The building is spread over two floors above a large terrace, with a loggia surmounted by a classic pediment, which anticipates the Palladian solutions of the following century; the interior spaces are distributed in a cross around the central hall, with a rectangular plan and closed by a barrel vault, with four apartments of three or four rooms that develop between the corners of the building and the main spaces.
In Rome an elongated building volume develops, with a sequence of parallel spaces and central loggia: this is the case of the Villa Farnesina built by Baldassarre Peruzzi at the beginning of the 16th century, from which a series of country villas will derive, such as the Imperial one in Pesaro, renovated by Gerolamo Genga in the second decade of the sixteenth century.
The sixteenth-century scene is however dominated by the villas that Andrea Palladio built in Veneto; among these, the project of the so-called Rotonda had an intense fortune, which became a source of inspiration for various artists belonging to the current of international Palladianism: the Rotunda has a central plan, highlighted by a dome, with foreparts on each side characterized by pronaos with Ionic columns.
The library
The Renaissance was the decisive time for the birth of libraries in the modern sense. The spread of humanistic studies and the invention of printing favored the birth of various civic libraries and the development of ecclesiastical ones: we remember the Viscontea-Sforzesca one preserved in the castle of Pavia, the Malatestiana of Cesena, the Estense in Ferrara (later transferred to Modena), the Laurenziana of Florence, the Marciana of Venice, as well as theVatican Apostolic Library of Rome.
The system with three naves with time, adopted for the Malatesta Library in Cesena and that of San Marco in Florence, became a model for the subsequent construction of renowned Italian monastic libraries, for example those of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan (1469), of San Domenico in Perugia (1474) and of the Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni in Parma (1523). The success of this form continued until the moment in which the evolution of the Renaissance canons imposed, in the first decades of the sixteenth century, a solution capable of favoring the unity of space and the uniform diffusion of lighting, with consequent renunciation of the division into naves, as in the case of the Laurentian Library built by Michelangelo.
The theater
Humanism, with the spread of classical Latin texts and the foundation of the academies, brought about the rebirth of the theater towards the end of the fifteenth century. Initially the performances took place in private places such as gardens, courtyards of convents and halls of buildings decorated for the performances; the scene was therefore temporary and was mainly characterized by curtains that were opened and closed during the entrances and exits of the actors.
During the following century, permanent installations began to be built to contain the scenographies, as in the case of the Loggia del Falconetto in Padua. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Teatro Olimpico by Andrea Palladio, the model of the ancient auditorium merged with Renaissance setting, but its influence was limited to a few other buildings, such as the Ancient Theater of Sabbioneta, by Vincenzo Scamozzi, or the later Teatro Farnese in Parma.
The church
The central plan
In the early Renaissance, the preference for elementary geometric shapes and for the harmony between the parts led to the conception of churches with a central plan, in which the aesthetic and symbolic ideal was placed before functionality. Starting from 1420 Filippo Brunelleschi raised the dome of the Florentine cathedral, the largest organism with a central plan since the Pantheon; several centralized buildings can be attributed to the same architect, such as the Old Sacristy, the Pazzi chapel and the Rotonda di Santa Maria degli Angeli. In the wake of Brunelleschi there are numerous Greek cross churches, such as the basilica of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato, by Giuliano da Sangallo (1486), as well as some drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, which had a significant influence on sixteenth-century architectural thought and, in particular, on that of Bramante.
Bramante’s style was also affected by the influence exerted by the early Christian churches, which he was able to observe during his stay in Milan. Above all the basilica of San Lorenzo, a grandiose organism with a central plan formed by a square with four apses. Moreover, for its first known construction, the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, restored the ancient chapel of San Satiro, a building with a central plan with a typical early Christian design (a Greek cross in a square inscribed in a circle).
The subsequent temple of San Pietro in Montorio, one of the first constructions built by Bramante after his transfer to Rome, expresses a new concept in the type of complexes with a central plan, showing a greater derivation from the models of antiquity (the temple of Vesta in Rome and the temple of Vesta in Tivoli). Despite its small size, the small temple can be considered the embryo of Bramante’s original design for the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, an imposing Greek cross complex dominated in the center by a colossal domehemispherical. A series of centralized churches will descend from it and its Michelangelo version, such as Santa Maria di Carignano in Genoa by Galeazzo Alessi, the Gesù Nuovo in Naples and the church of the Monastery of the Escorial near Madrid.
The longitudinal plan
Despite the success of the central plan schemes, the longitudinal plan, which represented the traditional form of the community church, was not set aside. The great Florentine churches built by Filippo Brunelleschi between 1420 and 1440, San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito, still refer to a Latin cross scheme, on three naves, in which the elements of tradition are updated to the Renaissance modular system.
The next generation made significant changes. For the basilica of Sant’Andrea, in Mantua, Leon Battista Alberti elaborated a very large hall, flanked by side chapels which, referring to the Roman constructions of the imperial age, also enjoyed success in the following centuries, starting with the church of the Gesù, in Rome.
The facade
The facades, with the rediscovery of ancient motifs such as pronaos, pediments and triumphal arches, were conceived as scenographic elevations.
Among the first examples of Renaissance facades are to remember Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome and Santa Maria Novella in Florence. In particular, the façade designed by Leon Battista Alberti for Santa Maria Novella, despite the insertion of pre-existing Gothic elements in the lower part and the continuation of the marble inlaysof the Tuscan tradition in the upper level, it can be considered the most successful scheme, which will be applied, in its numerous variants, also in the following centuries: it presents an order of two-storey half-pillars, joined by horizontal frames, with the high section central front, placed in support of the triangular pediment, connected to the side aisles by inserting large volutes.
The triumphal arch solution is also linked to Alberti, exemplified by the Mantuan basilica of Sant’Andrea: repeating the rhythm of the interior, characterized by the succession of round arches, the facade consists of a forepart that combines the theme of the triumphal arch to that of the classical temple.
Ten years later, in the design of the facade of Santa Maria near San Satiro, Bramante proposed a scheme based on the facade with two gables, with the wings of the lower pediment placed in correspondence with the side aisles. This solution will find subsequent developments in the façade of the church of Santa Maria in Castello di Carpi del Peruzzi, but above all in the facades of the Venetian churches erected by Palladio in the late Renaissance, in which the fusion of the front of two classical temples is completed: the first, higher, placed at the end of the main nave, while the second, lower and extended on the sides, shields the lateral spaces.
Town planning
In the Renaissance urban planning took on a scientific-theoretical character, striving to combine human needs, defensive ones, aesthetics, symbology and stately centralism.
At the base of the urban planning experiences of the fifteenth century there is the methodology established by Leon Battista Alberti in De re aedificatoria. For Alberti the city was a complex object, the construction of which could not be assimilated to that of individual buildings, but was influenced by the constraints and properties of the environment. For this reason the walls could be different according to the variety of places, while the main roads, wide and straight in the big cities, could follow a curved path in the small towns.
The situation was different for public spaces, which Alberti considered as single works of architecture, with a unitary aspect, with squares surrounded by arcades and arcades. Basically, Alberti reached a mediation between the medieval city and the Renaissance one, integrating the new organisms into the pre-existing urban nuclei; an influence found in small towns,, but less so in the big cities, such as Rome or Milan, where the Renaissance initiatives broke the coherence of the old nuclei, opening the way to important transformations.
At the same time, the popularity of the Treaty of Vitruvius inspired the drafting of numerous projects of ideal radiocentric cities, with regular plans delimited from fortification to modern, but only very few were realized; among these it is worth mentioning Palmanova, dating back to the late sixteenth century. Among the projects left on paper is that of Sforzinda, a city with a stellar plan described by Filarete in his treatise on architecture.
The basic figure is an eight-pointed star inscribed in a moatcircular; Sixteen streets radiate from the center of the town, joined by an intermediate ring road, while the main square is still linked to the medieval tradition, with the castle and the church facing each other in a rectangular space. In 1480, Francesco di Giorgio Martini presented a design for an ideal city placed symmetrically around a rectilinear canal; the complex can be traced back to an elongated octagon, with two mighty bastions intended to defend the town. In each part of the city there is a rectangular square, closed on each side and without any direct view of the river.
A fusion between the Renaissance utopian vision and a more functional scheme, suited to the needs of a thriving merchant city, was recorded in Amsterdam only at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when, around the old city, a series of polygonal canals were built along the which arose narrow terraced houses and warehouses, protected by a fortified wall about eight kilometers long.
The square
The spatial quality of the square is based on the relationship between the horizontal surfaces and the volumes that, with their structure and arrangement, delimit it. The Renaissance tended to regularize the shape of the square, favoring the construction of proportionate buildings along its perimeter. In ideal cities, the square takes the form of an ideal geometric plane, which appears in all its crystalline clarity in the frescoes or in the perspective representations. In practice, the squares conceived in the early Renaissance are realized in Pienza, where the small size does not compromise the overall balance, and in the Piazza Ducale in Vigevano, which represents an intervention aimed at standardizing the pre-existing medieval structures behind extensive arcades.
In the following century the models became more complex. For example, the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, designed by Michelangelo, expresses a new conception of public space, in which a complex combination of movements are opposed: the straight upward motion of the access staircase and the circular one around the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on which the Senatorio palace is the background.
The classical Renaissance
Bramante in Rome
If the early Renaissance was fundamentally Tuscan, the full Renaissance became essentially Roman thanks to the work of Bramante and Raphael, who were the greatest exponents of Classicism.
Bramante, the eldest, arrived in Rome from Milan in 1499, when he was over fifty years old. Far from the tastes of the Lombard court and influenced by the ancient vestiges of the city, his style took on a more austere character, which can be found even in the first works: the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace and above all the temple of San Pietro in Montorio.
The cloister, while deriving from his project for the courtyard of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, is structured on two levels: on the ground floor it presents an order of Ionic-style pilasters supporting an entablature with a continuous frieze, with a concatenation of arches at all sixth set on flaps, which refer to the theater of Marcellus. On the second level, however, there are pillars treated as pilasters in the pseudo- Corinthian style, with the insertion of free columns, of the same order, which double the pitch of the underlying arches.
More significant is the second intervention, the temple of San Pietro in Montorio, dating back to 1502. It is the “first monument of the full Renaissance in contrast with the proto- Renaissance, and it is a true monument, that is, a more plastic than strictly architectural realization”. It was built in the place where, according to tradition, St. Peter had been crucified; the small building was thus conceived as a kind of martyrdom early Christian and designed on the temples model peripteral a central planof antiquity.
What constitutes the fundamental point of this work is not so much its classicism, more advanced than that of Brunelleschi and Alberti, but the fact that the temple should have been placed at the center of a centralized space, made permeable by the presence of arcades., becoming its fulcrum. Although the courtyard was not completed according to the original plan, it is possible to recognize the geometric effect obtained by the combination of concentric circles in plan with concentric cylinders in elevation. The temple consists of two cylinders (peristyle and cell), placed in proportional relationships to each other, with a hemispherical dome both inside and outside.
In civil architecture, a prominent place belongs to his Caprini palace (destroyed), also known as Raphael’s house, dating back to 1508; it can be considered one of the paradigms of the sixteenth-century palace. The work takes up the characteristics of the Florentine models, namely the rustication of Palazzo Medici and the architectural orders of Palazzo Rucellai, placing them respectively on the ground floor and on the first floor of the facade; the ashlars are arranged around the arched openings of the lower register, while the architectural order translates into a series of coupled columns that support the entablature.
It is also necessary to remember the commissions for the Vatican palaces: the courtyard of San Damaso, conceived by Bramante as a series of open arches derived from those of the Colosseum, but above all the arrangement of the Belvedere courtyard, conceived as a succession of stepped courtyards that had the task of connecting the Apostolic Palace to the Belvedere building. Despite the alterations suffered over the centuries (such as the Pirro Ligorio niche and the arms of the Vatican Museums), the most important aspect of the Belvedere today is constituted by the way in which Bramante resolved the great extension of the wall surfaces by resorting to modules similar to those adopted by Leon Battista Alberti in the nave of the Basilica of Sant’Andrea: round arches interspersed with twin pilasters.
All these works were however outclassed by his most demanding work: St. Peter’s Basilica. After the first interventions of recovery of the ancient paleochristian basilica started by Niccolò V around the middle of the fifteenth century, Pope Julius II was convinced of the opportunity to rebuild the most important church of Western Christianity. Bramante probably did not leave a single definitive project of the basilica, but it is common opinion that his original ideas, presumably influenced by the architectural sketches found in Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts, envisaged a Greek cross plan, dominated, in the center, by a large hemispherical dome, with four minor domes in correspondence with the side chapels and as many bell towers on the sides.
This configuration can be deduced, at least in part, from the image imprinted on a Caradosso medal coined to commemorate the laying of the first stone of the temple, on April 18, 1506, and above all from a drawing considered autograph, called “parchment plane “. In any case, the only certainty about the last intentions of Julius II and Bramante, who died respectively in 1513 and 1514, is the realization of the four pillars joined by as many large round arches intended to support the dome.
A series of central-plan churches can be traced back to the centralized model of Bramante’s San Pietro: Sant’Eligio degli Orefici in Rome, San Biagio in Montepulciano and Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi.
The first, to which the name of Raphael is often connected, was probably begun by Bramante in 1509 with the help of Sanzio himself, given the similarity of the subject with the School of Athens. The church was finished by Baldassarre Peruzzi and it is not easy to establish where it stands with respect to the development of San Pietro.
Closely linked to San Pietro, as well as to the basilica of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato, is the church of San Biagio, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder and built starting from 1518. Also in this case the plan is a Greek cross, slightly elongated near the apse, with two bell towers on the sides of the facade, of which only one has been completed.
Even simpler is the layout of the Consolation Temple (1509): the plan, obtained from four apses aggregated to a square, is very similar to a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The building was built under the direction of Cola da Caprarola, an almost unknown architect, so much so that attempts have been made several times to attribute the project to Bramante. However, the contract relating to its construction spoke of only three apses: the church was turned towards the end of the sixteenth century and the dome in the early seventeenth century. However, its character of delicacy does not fail, with that indelible and pleasant accent that goes back to the fifteenth-century taste.
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio was born in Urbino in 1483 and had had an artistic training in the workshop of Perugino. Painter, even before being an architect, in the last years of his short life he also dedicated himself to the design of some palaces, a chapel and a villa, replacing Bramante in the construction site of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
The Chigi chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo is a small variation of the central nucleus of San Pietro and also refers to Sant’Eligio degli Orefici, albeit with a much greater wealth. On the outside, the dome brings to San Bernardino by Francesco di Giorgio Martini: a cylinder covered by a cone, with clean lines, in which simple windows are inserted.
If Palazzo Vidoni Caffarelli, probably designed with Lorenzo Lotti, is almost a copy of Palazzo Caprini, the solution adopted by Raphael in Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila is completely different. Disappeared during the seventeenth century, but still known through a series of graphic representations, the building built for Giovanni Battista Branconio dell’Aquila exhibited a facade characterized by a rich ornamental repertoire.
The ground floor featured arches on Tuscan half- columns, topped by a continuous entablature, while the main floor was characterized by the alternation of niches and windows, the latter framed in a series of aedicules surmounted by curved and triangular tympanums, beyond which ran a band decorated with festoons by Giovanni da Udine, inside which the mezzanine was obtained; the building was then completed by an attic floor with a cornice and triglyphs. If some have identified in this facade a beginning of Mannerism, for others the Branconio dell’Aquila palace sees only a revival of the Roman taste updated to the archaeological discoveries relating to the large stucco decorations of the Domus Aurea and the baths of Tito, which will become a mannerist motif only in the later Spada palace.
Another significant contribution is made up of Villa Madama, the large country residence that Raphael designed for the future Pope Clement VII. Of the large complex that should have rivaled the courtyard of the Belvedere, only the central nucleus was built, consisting of a large loggia, an evident reference to the Basilica of Maxentius. The original design included a large wall, derived from Roman thermal buildings, inside which the various rooms of the residence, the baths, the theater, the garden, the fishpond and the warehouses should have been inserted.
After Bramante’s death, Raphael received the arduous task of continuing the reconstruction of the Vatican basilica. However, Raphael’s superintendence on the work of the Vatican basilica did not last long, as he died at the age of 36, in 1520. Raphael presented a proposal that differed significantly from the Bramante model with a central plan: from a plant attributed to Sanzio, a longitudinal body can be distinguished before the pillars of the dome, articulated by means of pillars with double pilasters and concluded, on the facade, by a deep portico; probably, the idea of the walkers around the apses is due to Raphael, which was later confirmed by his successor, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
Mannerism and the late Renaissance
and Roman Classicism; however, if the first two phases are distinguishable from each other, the same cannot be said between Classicism and Mannerism, which coexisted since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Suffice it to say that when the greatest exponents of Classicism, Raphael and Bramante, set their hands on the church of Sant’Eligio degli Orefici, in 1509, one of the main architects of Mannerism, Baldassarre Peruzzi, built the Villa Farnesina.
The “manner”, which already in the artistic literature of the fifteenth century indicated the style of each individual artist, became in the sixteenth century a term to designate the relationship between norm and derogation, that is to say the continuous search for variations on the theme of the classic. The rejection of classical balance and harmony, through the contrast between norm and derogation, nature and artifice, sign and undersign, represent in fact the main characteristics of Mannerism. In Mannerism the elementary laws lose all meaning: the load has no weight, while the support does not weigh anything; the perspective escape does not end in a focal point, as in the Baroque, but ends in nothing; vertical organisms simulate an equilibrium which is actually “oscillating”.
From the decorative point of view, the junction between Classicism and Mannerism is represented by the phenomenon of grotesques, paintings centered on fantastic representations of the Roman era, which were rediscovered during some archaeological excavations in the Domus Aurea, becoming a source of inspiration for the ornamental apparatus of numerous buildings, even influencing the architecture (Palazzo Zuccari in Rome, Parco dei Mostri in Bomarzo and others).
In any case, Mannerism did not cancel the characteristics and values of Classicism, which will continue to survive in the architectural panorama not only of the sixteenth century, but also of the following centuries, both in the context of the Roman school and in that of the Venetian school; after all, the style of Jacopo Sansovino or Andrea Palladio could hardly be defined as mannerist in the sense in which the term can be used, instead, to define that of Giulio Romano or Michelangelo Buonarroti, among the main exponents of this current.
Giulio Romano
On Raphael’s death it was clear that his style was about to enter a new phase, characterized by greater richness and freedom of expression, highlighted in the Branconio dell’Aquila palace and in the Chigi chapel. His pupil Giulio Romano, the first great artist born in Rome after many centuries, had the task of completing the Vatican frescoes and the paintings of Villa Madama.
In 1524, when he was around 25 years old, he left Rome to put himself at the service of the Gonzagas, lords of Mantua, where he took care of the construction of Palazzo Te. The palace was conceived as a suburban villa: a square-plan building, empty in the center, with a large garden facing east. The use of Roman walls, the use of serliane, the openings surmounted by fan ashlars and even the planimetric setting are all elements taken from the classical code, but the rustic character of the facades, the differentiation of the elevations and the remarkable depth of the arcades articulated on columns aggregated in tetrastyle groups, fall within the sphere of exceptions and project Palazzo Te into the sphere of Mannerism.
Another significant work of the architect’s active Mantuan is the mansion that he built for himself shortly before his death in 1546. Here the Bramante model of Palazzo Caprini undergoes a variation: the rustication extends over both floors of the building, while the architectural order of the first floor gives way to a series of pillars and arches within which the windows with the tympanum open.. Another tympanum is inserted above the entrance portal, extending to the upper floor and breaking the continuity of the string course frame.
If in the cathedral of Mantua Giulio Romano shows himself to be more severe and contained in the classical sense, it is in another civil architecture, the courtyard of the Cavallerizza of the Palazzo Ducale, that the culmination of the search for exceptions from the Bramante prototype is achieved, with the profound alteration of every classic reference, accentuated by the presence of twisted semi-columns that stand out on a rusticated arched face.
Baldassarre Peruzzi
Baldassarre Peruzzi, born in 1481, was trained in Siena as a painter and moved to Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Although his drawings are preserved in various museums in Italy, his figure remains somewhat mysterious and is usually remembered as an aid to Bramante.
Between 1509 and 1511, on the right bank of the Tiber, he built the Villa Farnesina for the banker Agostino Chigi. Although the rule prevails over the exception, the villa can be considered a starting point for Mannerist architecture. The building has a U-shaped plan, with two wings enclosing a middle part in which, on the lower floor, there is a portico consisting of five round arches. The articulation of the façade, decorated with pilasters and angular ashlar, is still classical, but the richly decorated frieze, which runs at the top of the building, already highlights a change in tastes.
In the Massimo alle Colonne palace, built over twenty years later, the exception prevails over the norm. The plan, conditioned by the need to make the most of the limited space available, has a convex elevation; the rustication extends over the entire facade, while the columns, compared to the Bramante model, are moved to the ground floor, where they define a shady atrium.
Michelangelo
The great event of sixteenth-century architecture is represented by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Born in 1475, as a boy he was apprenticed to a painter and, once he entered the circle of Lorenzo de ‘Medici, he learned sculpture from Bertoldo. His first intervention in the field of architecture dates back to 1518-1520, with the construction of the kneeling windows in the loggia of Palazzo Medici, in Florence, but a few years earlier he was also interested in the facade for the basilica of San Lorenzo; the San Lorenzo project, translated exclusively into a wooden model, already enunciated the vision of architecture conceived in plastic terms, with a facade conceived as a container for a large number of sculptures.
The subsequent New Sacristy, built on the opposite side of Brunelleschi’s inside the basilica of San Lorenzo, is also a space conceived in a plastic key; despite the resumption of the planimetric layout of the Old Sacristy and the recourse to the theme of the coffered dome of the Pantheon, the walls do not present the sober harmony of the Brunelleschi model, but rather fake windows that hollow and shape the surface, in a very personal style that marks the break with Vitruvian classicism. The New Sacristy can be counted among the first authentically Mannerist works.
The project for the Laurentian Medici Library fits into this context, which Michelangelo personally took care of between 1524 and 1534. Having to take into account the pre-existing buildings, the complex was solved with the construction of two adjacent rooms: the atrium, with a reduced surface. and characterized by a high ceiling, and the reading room, located on a higher floor. The walls of the atrium are configured as building facades facing inwards, with blind niches and recessed columns which have the purpose of reinforcing the load-bearing structures; a staircase that expands downwards, made by Bartolomeo Ammannatiseveral years later, it leads to the reading room, consisting of a brighter room, of smaller vertical dimensions, but much more extended in length, so as to overturn the spatial effect.
In 1534 Michelangelo moved definitively to Rome, where the layout of the Piazza del Campidoglio awaited him. Michelangelo began to prepare the drawings in 1546 and the works proceeded slowly, so much so that they were completed, with some modifications, by Giacomo Della Porta. In the figure on the plan, however, he had to take into account the pre-existing buildings, which led him to devise a trapezoidal-shaped plant, with the larger side corresponding to the Palazzo Senatorio, the smaller one facing a staircase that descends down the hill and the oblique sides delimited by the Palace New and from the mirror image of the Conservatives; in the center, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, from which the geometric design of the intertwining flooring unfolds. The most important innovation of these buildings was the introduction of the giant order in civil architecture, which has the task of enhancing the perspective grid by contrasting with the horizontal lines of the architraves that cross the facades.
Also in 1546, on the death of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo took over two significant building sites: that of the Farnese palace and that of the basilica of San Pietro in the Vatican. Antonio da Sangallo, nephew of Giuliano and Antonio the Elder, had arrived in Rome at the beginning of the century, making a career in the San Pietro factory and becoming the architect of Cardinal Farnese, then elected to the papal throne with the name of Paul III.
The palace designed by Sangallo for the Farnese family was the largest and most sumptuous of the Roman palaces; the original design referred, without flights of fancy, to the Florentine models, but without the base in drafts and with windows framed inside newsstands; the interior presumably included a courtyard on three superimposed orders of arched loggias, deriving from the Colosseum and the theater of Marcellus. Michelangelo’s intervention was substantial, starting from the central window, which Sangallo had thought of as an arch and which instead was brought back to an architrave surmounted by the Farnese coat of arms; the last floor was raised and received a grandiose cornice, while in the courtyard the filling of the arches on the first floor and the construction of the entire top floor can be attributed to Michelangelo.
Also in the construction site of the Vatican basilica, Michelangelo made radical changes to the Sangallesco project. Sangallo had inherited the supervision of the works after Raphael’s death, proposing a mediation between the longitudinal scheme of his predecessor and the centralized one from Bramante. His project, translated into a colossal and expensive wooden model in 1539, involved the construction of a forepart flanked by two very high bell towers that framed the double- drum dome. Michelangelo took over the direction of the works by now old, but not devoid of energy. The history of the Michelangelo project is documented by a series of construction site documents, letters, drawings by Buonarroti himself and other artists, frescoes and testimonies of contemporaries, such as Giorgio Vasari.
Despite this, the information that can be obtained often contradicts each other. The main reason lies in the fact that Michelangelo never drew up a definitive project for the Vatican basilica, preferring to proceed in parts. However, after his death, several engravings were printed in an attempt to restore an overall view of Michelangelo’s drawing, including those by Stefano Dupérac, which immediately established themselves as the most widespread and accepted.
Michelangelo, considering the very expensive Sangallo model not very bright, too artificial and with references to Gothic architecture, rejected the idea of his predecessor; he therefore returned to the central plan of the original project, simplifying it and giving it a main direction with the inclusion of a pronaos. He demolished what had been built of the ambulatory planned by Sangallo at the end of the apses, treating the jagged external surfaces with a giant order of Corinthian pilasters, with the aim of wrapping the building like a barrel, in a continuous succession of tensions and rests. Everything was thought of as a function of the dome, but when Michelangelo died in 1564, the construction had only reached the top of the spurs of the drum.
The events related to the construction of the basilica will be solved only in the seventeenth century, in the Baroque period, when Carlo Maderno extended the eastern arm of the basilica, definitively compromising Michelangelo’s conception. Michelangelo’s San Pietro however exercised a certain influence in the history of architecture: it is enough to mention the Genoese basilicaof Santa Maria di Carignano by Galeazzo Alessi, or the church ofMonastery of the Escorial, near Madrid, both characterized by a cross inserted in a square.
After Michelangelo his energetic style lost much of the favor it enjoyed: Giacomo Della Porta, who had the task of completing the dome of San Pietro, soon changed his style, Tiberio Calcagni, who had assisted him by creating the wooden model for the project for the basilica of San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini died in 1565, while Giorgio Vasari did not build anything significant in Rome. The one who continued Michelangelo’s work was Giacomo Del Duca, his assistant in the Porta Pia construction site, who built the small church of Santa Maria in Trivio and built the disproportionate dome ofSanta Maria di Loreto.
Vignola
The most sensitive architect in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century was Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola. Emiliano, trained as a painter, strengthened his authority in the field of architecture with the publication of a treatise that met with immediate success. He began his work as an architect in Bologna, where the Bocchi palace is worthy of note, where the memories of Palazzo Te and the grammar of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger converge. In Rome he worked on the construction site of Villa Giulia, but the presence of Vasari and Ammannatilimited the work of the Emilian: a characteristic of the building is the contrast between the exterior, of regular shapes, and the interior, open to the garden, with the elegant hemicycle, the loggia and the nymphaeum.
The church of Sant’Andrea on the Via Flaminia also shows the rigid sangallesque imprint of Santa Maria di Loreto, but is surprising for the oval dome; concept that will be repeated in Sant’Anna dei Palafrenieri and that will have luck in the Baroque era.
In any case, there is no doubt that Vignola’s major works are the Villa Farnese in Caprarola and the church of Gesù in Rome. The villa was originally a pentagonal fortress designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who had left the work incomplete upon his death. When the defensive purpose failed, Vignola resumed work in 1559, radically modifying the original design; while maintaining the planimetric layout of the fortification, he transformed the bastions into terraces and raised a compact polygonal mass above the level of the walls. The loggia on the main floor, which opens in front of a large trapezoidal square preceded by a series of double-flight stairs, was treated with a language deriving from theVilla Farnesina del Peruzzi. Inside, however, the splendid solutions of the circular courtyard with a double order of ambulatories and the round staircase, which like rotors unexpectedly contrast with the external pentagon, are surprising.
The church of Gesù, built for the Jesuit order, derives from the basilica of Sant’Andrea in Mantua. Vignola took up and elaborated the planimetric layout of Alberti, conceiving a Latin cross hall, covered by a barrel vault and equipped with a dome at the intersection of the transept, overlooked by a series of side chapels; a sort of anticipation of the extension of the nave of St. Peter, a solution resulting from the Counter-Reformation climate, destined to be exported all over the world and “to exert an influence perhaps wider than any other church built in the last four hundred years”.
Its scheme was substantially replicated, but with some modifications, in the basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle, a work begun at the end of the sixteenth century, which now introduces the Baroque era. The facade of the Gesù was built by Giacomo Della Porta, with a less happy solution than that proposed by Vignola and somewhat confusing, overloaded with columns, pillars and scrolls. The interior, originally austere, is now characterized by a rich decoration, the result of interventions carried out in the following centuries.
Alongside these works, it is necessary to mention an intervention in the field of urban planning: the Palazzo dei Banchi, which delimited, with an extended but not monotonous portico, the side of the Piazza Maggiore parallel to the basilica of San Petronio, in Bolonga. The project probably dates back to the sixties of the sixteenth century, when in Piacenza he was also working on the Farnese palace, a grandiose building that remained incomplete.
In the period between his death in 1573 and the advent of the Baroque, the Roman scene was dominated by Domenico Fontana and Giacomo Della Porta. The first was a talented engineer, uncle of Carlo Maderno, known for having transported the Vatican Obelisk in front of the Basilica of San Pietro and for the reconstruction of the Lateran palace on the model of the Farnese palace; the fame of the latter is linked to the Aldobrandini villa in Frascati and to a series of Mannerist-style projects that herald the inventions of the following century, such as Sant’Atanasio dei Greci, with the two towers delimiting the facade.
Sanmicheli and Sansovino
Michele Sanmicheli and Jacopo Sansovino exerted great influence in Veneto and northern Italy.
Sanmicheli, from Verona, had probably been in Rome as an aid to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, then moved to Orvieto and worked in the cathedral of Montefiascone, to return to his native city shortly after 1527 and develop a long career as a military architect of the Republic of Venice. In this context he built, for example, the monumental gates of the city of Verona, including the Porta Nuova and the Porta Palio, both characterized by an impenetrable ashlar cladding, with heavy keys above the small openings.
His contributions in the military field left an imprint on his architectural style, as in the case of the projects for three Veronese palaces, in which Sanmicheli seems to express the strength of the architecture of the bastions and fortresses. Palazzo Pompei, ascribable to the 1930s, is a clear reference to Palazzo Caprini, but with some exceptions aimed at accentuating, in the lower register, the solids on the voids: the ground floor has smaller openings than the Bramante model, while on the first floor Sanmicheli he replaced the windows with a loggia of great expressive force.
In the Canossa palace, dating back to the same period, the rustic elements and those of artifice reach greater integration and a balustrade is introduced at the top.
The third of these buildings is the one built for the Bevilacqua family. Although in direct connection with Palazzo Pompei, Palazzo Bevilacqua has a richer face: the door is decentralized, the ground floor is treated with a rustic face that also envelops the semi-pillars, while the upper register is lightened by large arched openings that they alternate with windows of smaller dimensions contained in the space of the intercolumniation. The sense of discomfort deriving from the presence of the mezzanine openings above the minor windows, the rich decorations and the bandaged pillars on the ground floor project the Bevilacqua palace among the great examples of Northern Italian Mannerism.
A greater classicism, perhaps due to the attraction exercised by the Roman remains that still survived in Verona, is denoted in the Pellegrini chapel, clearly derived from the Pantheon. It is a circular structure, with a coffered dome supported by eight semi-columns surmounted by a cornice; the frame, however, does not run uninterrupted as in the model of the Pantheon, but projects in correspondence with the altars, forming the support for the concave pediments. The subsequent church of the Madonna di Campagna also refers to the circular scheme, but Sanmicheli’s project was altered after the architect’s death in 1559.
Jacopo Sansovino came from Tuscany, where he was born in 1486; sculptor and architect, before settling in Veneto after 1527, he had trained at Bramante’s school in Rome and had worked in Florence. In 1529 he was appointed chief architect of Venice, a position that allowed him to deal with the renewal of the city for forty years. In 1537 he began work on the Marciana Library, his masterpiece, which occupied the side of Piazza San Marco facing the Doge’s Palace.
The work, completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi who will repeat the general approach in the arm of the Procuratie Nuove, had to fit into a context dominated by monumental buildings; for this Sansovino conceived a long facade, lower than that of the Doge’s Palace, so as not to dominate the scene, also making use of rich decorations and a play of chiaroscuro, which place the library in dialogue with the pre-existing structures. The scheme of the façade takes up the Bramante model on two orders: the lower one has columns that support architraves and round openings, while the upper one, in which the Mannerist taste is more evident, consists of serlianas framed by columns that support a richly frieze ornate. The interior also features the elaborate characters, but in a style different from that of the other Northern Italian Mannerist, Giulio Romano.
Also by Sansovino and substantially contemporary to the library are two other works located in the area of Piazza San Marco: the loggia of the bell tower of San Marco and the Palazzo della Zecca. The first, rebuilt after the collapse of the tower in 1902, consists of a portico with an atticdivided into panels and decorated with reliefs. The second, intended to collect the golden resources of the Republic of Venice, has the appearance of a solid and impenetrable construction. The scheme of the facade is innovative: the portico on the ground floor supports a loggia formed by ringed columns, surmounted by a double architrave; the last floor, probably added later on probably by the same architect, still takes up the theme of the channeled columns, interspersed with large windows with triangular tympanums.
In the context of private buildings, the Corner building represents Sansovino’s most important contribution. It arises from the union of the Roman and Venetian layouts: the building consists of a closed block, with an internal courtyard but, due to the depth of the lot, access to the courtyard is via a long hall; the upper floors house a central hall, typical of Venetian architecture, while the main facade derives from the tried and tested layout of Palazzo Caprini. Palazzo Coner will become the model for other subsequent constructions, such as Ca ‘Pesaro and Ca’ Rezzonico, by Baldassarre Longhena.
Andrea Palladio
Andrea Palladio is probably the most elegant architect of the late Renaissance. Born in Padua in 1508, he spent his entire life in Vicenza and in the neighboring territories, building a large number of villas and palaces in a highly personal style, based on the use of a rich classical repertoire that obscured the Roman authority in the field architectural. He published the treatise The Four Books of Architecture (1570), in which, alongside illustrations reproducing the classical orders and ancient buildings, he inserted a large part of his own works, thus acquiring notoriety, especially in England. He was essentially a Bramante classicist; he visited Rome several times studying ancient architecture, but he also felt the influence of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Of its vast production it is useful to remember first of all the restoration of the Palazzo della Ragione in Vicenza, now known as the Basilica Palladiana. The original building had been completed in 1460, and in 1494 an external portico similar to that of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua was added. Following the partial collapse of the south-west side, the most important architects of the region were consulted for its restoration, over which Palladio’s project prevailed. The solution, put in place starting from 1549, was limited to the reconstruction of the external loggia, leaving the pre-existing nucleus unchanged. Having to take into account the alignments with the original openings and passages, the system is based on two orders of serlians, composed of constant-span arches and rectangular lateral openings of variable width, which were entrusted with the task of absorbing the differences in width of the spans, inherited from previous yards.
The evolution of Palladio’s style can be followed through a series of palaces that the architect built in Vicenza in different periods. The first is Palazzo Porto, completed in 1552, in which the scheme of Palazzo Caprini di Bramante is repeated and to which are added sculptures of Michelangelo’s inspiration. If the general effect refers to the architecture built by Sanmicheli in Verona, the planimetric setting reveals Palladio’s passion for symmetry, who conceived a series of blocks arranged symmetrically on the sides of the large square courtyard.
The Chiericati Palace, commissioned in 1550, has a facade screen by two superimposed colonnades, treated strictly classicist spirit; along the short sides, the laws are connected to the mass of the building by means of round arches, according to a solution borrowed from the portico of Octavia in Rome. The Palladian invention lies in the presence of a sort of forepart, obtained by doubling, both on the façade and in the sense of the depth of the loggia, the columns placed on the sides of the central part.
Palazzo Thiene, erected a few years later, testifies to an interest, entirely mannerist, for the compositional plot and, at the same time, offers a plan with forms derived from Roman thermal architecture. However, a more extreme mannerism is recorded in the terminal span of the Valmarana palace, built starting from 1566, while the main facade houses the giant order dear to Michelangelo, which will also be resumed in the Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello, built after 1570.
As for the villas, the Venetian architect’s production originates from a residence designed by his patron, Gian Giorgio Trissino. Analyzing the numerous country residences designed by Palladio, three types of villas have been identified: those without a portico and unadorned, dating back to the early years (for example the villas Pojana, Forni Cerato and Godi); those with a two-storey high block, decorated with a two-tiered portico closed by a pediment (such as the Pisani and Cornaro villas); finally those formed by a central building surrounded by wings for agricultural uses (such as the villas Barbaro, Badoer and Emo).
Beyond this classification, the most significant Palladian achievement is the Villa Almerico Capra, built in Vicenza in the second half of the sixteenth century. It is a square-plan building, perfectly symmetrical and inscribed in a circle. The villa was among the first profane constructions of the modern era to have a facade of a classical temple as a facade; the four elevations, equipped with a pronaos with a hexastyle loggia placed on a high podium, make the villa also take the shape of a Greek cross.
Two other suburban residences, villa Serego in Santa Sofia di Pedemonte and villa Barbaro in Maser, are affected by the Mannerist influence. The first was built around 1565 and features loggias with rustic columns, made of just hewn limestone blocks, overlapping to create irregular piles. A few years more recent, the villa Barbaro is inserted along the slight slope of a hill. If in most of the Palladian villas the actual residence is often preceded by the rooms dedicated to agricultural work, here this relationship is inverted and the main house precedes the work environments; on the back opens a large exedra, which refers to the nymphaeum of the Roman villas.
In the last years of his life Palladio devoted himself to the design of the Olympic Theater, which is based on the Roman principle of the fixed scenario preceded by the stage. Unlike the theaters of antiquity, it is a covered space: the auditorium has a semi-elliptical shape, with a perspective scenario executed by Vincenzo Scamozzi based on a design by Palladio.
Relatively few are the religious architectures that can be attributed with certainty: the basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, the Redentore and the facade of San Francesco della Vigna, all located in Venice. Characteristics of these religious buildings are the so-called “double temple” facades, which offer a solution to the double problem of adapting an ancient basilica to a Christian place of worship and of connecting the side aisles to the central, higher one; issues to which,
in the past, Alberti had offered their contribution in the basilica of Santa Maria Novella and Bramante in the project attributed to him for the facade ofSanta Maria near San Satiro. Compared to his predecessors, Palladio achieved a strong integration between the parts, which is particularly evident in the facades of San Giorgio Maggiore (1565) and San Francesco della Vigna (1562), while in the Redentore the high height of the central nave and the presence of buttresses along the sides determined a significant variation of the scheme, with the presence of an attic at the top of the facade. However, more than in the configuration of the facades, the greatest differences between the Palladian churches and those built in Rome in the same years are found in the apsidal part, but the pronounced apses of San Giorgio and del Redentore, in reality, responded to the precise need to host a large choir for the religious functions of particularly numerous congregations.
The Florentine Mannerists
Influenced by Michelangelo Buonarroti in the second half of the sixteenth century, various Tuscan architects were involved in the construction of Mannerist- style factories. Bartolomeo Ammannati, born in 1511, was a sculptor and architect. He collaborated with Sansovino in Venice, worked in Rome on the construction site of Villa Giulia and in 1555 he returned to Florence, putting himself at the service of the Grand Duke. His most important work was the extension of Palazzo Pitti: he redesigned the windows on the ground floor in the facade, redesigned the apartments and above all designed the courtyard, with three orders, making use of the stepped ashlar, derived from the Mint of Venice.. His other important works are the Santa Trinita bridge, rebuilt after the destruction inflicted by the Second World War and the Ducal Palace in Lucca.
The fame of Giorgio Vasari, a contemporary of Ammannati, is linked above all to the publication of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects; it is a series of biographies of artists, printed for the first time in 1550 and republished, updated, in 1568. As an architect he collaborated, with Ammannati and Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, in the construction of Villa Giulia, although his activity was probably limited to the administrative sphere only. In Cortona he built the church of Santa Maria Nuova, conceived according to a centralized scheme, while between 1560 and 1574, the year of his death, he was engaged in the construction ofUffizi, intended to house the administrative offices of the Tuscan state. Of great urban significance, the Uffizi were conceived as two long parallel galleries between the Arno and the Palazzo Vecchio; on the other hand, the details of the work show little inventiveness, except for some parts made by Buontalenti after his death.
Bernardo Buontalenti was the youngest of the three; born in 1536, he became the greatest Tuscan architect of the last part of the sixteenth century. He built the Medici villa of Pratolino, which was later destroyed, he designed the door of the Suppliche for the Uffizi palace, the facade and the altar of the basilica of Santa Trinita (later transported to the church of Santo Stefano al Ponte), the grotto in the garden of Boboli, also engaging in urban projects, such as that of the fortified city of Livorno.
The spread of the Renaissance in Europe
In the rest of Europe the Renaissance manifested itself mainly in its Mannerist variant. In fact, fifteenth-century Europe was predominantly Gothic, although some traces of Italian influence are found in Hungary and Russia. However, even in the sixteenth century, outside of Italy the most genuine principles of Renaissance art were almost never fully understood, apart from some buildings by Philibert Delorme, the palace of Charles V in Granada and a few other examples.
In sixteenth-century France, the Italian style was initially limited only to the decorative apparatus of numerous castles. For example, in the renovation and expansion of the castle of Blois (1515 -1524), cross-shaped windows and attics were built in the mannerist style; on the other hand, the strongly inclined roof and the structure of the external staircase, which was decorated according to the Renaissance style, refer to the French medieval tradition. Similar considerations can be expressed for the castle of Fontainebleau (1528) and for the castle of Chambord (1519 – 1547): the first with a loggia with three overlapping orders that refers to the Ducal Palace of Urbino, while the second, designed by Domenico da Cortona, characterized by a double spiral circular staircase inspired by an idea by Leonardo da Vinci.
Sebastiano Serlio, one of the major treatises of the sixteenth century, contributed to exporting the Renaissance style to France; lent his work in the castle of Ancy-le-Franc and, inspired by the villa of Poggioreale by Giuliano da Maiano, he designed a square building flanked by corner towers, while on the fronts of the internal courtyard he used the motif of the niches and paired pillars proposed by Bramante in the courtyard of the Belvedere in Rome. The Cour Carrée of the Louvre, by Pierre Lescot, whose fronts were enriched, in a mannerist sense, by the decorations ofJean Goujon. The works began in 1546 and lasted longer than expected, with the construction of facades with three superimposed orders with volumes, slightly protruding from the back wall, surmounted by arched pediments. For the proportions, the treatment of the orders, the use of alternating pediments on the windows and the attention to detail, the Cour Carrée is counted as the first true French Renaissance work.
The ‘ French architecture reached full independence with the work of Philibert Delorme, who, after an apprenticeship in Italy he settled permanently in Paris. However, almost all of his works were destroyed: some parts of the castle of Anet, built for Diana of Poitiers between 1552 and 1559, are worth mentioning. The other important French architect was Jean Bullant, who worked in Écouen and in the castle of Chantilly, where he built a facade perhaps inspired by the Bramante one of Santa Maria Nuova, with a large arch supported by coupled columns.
In Spain, Renaissance architecture was introduced thanks to trade with southern Italy, where the Spaniards had settled. One of the first examples is found in the Royal Hospital of Santiago de Compostela, begun in 1501 by Enrique Egas, which for its cruciform pattern refers to the Ospedale Maggiore del Filarete.
The facade of the Alcázar of Toledo (1537-1573), designed by Alonso de Covarrubias, is influenced by Italian influences limited to the decorative apparatus. Instead, the original courtyard, rebuilt after the destructions inflicted by the Spanish Civil War, presented an articulation on two levels similar to that of the Palazzo della Cancelleria.
Another example of Italian-style classicism is the palace of Charles V, in Granada, designed between 1526 and 1527 by Pedro Machuca, a painter who surely had the opportunity to know Bramante’s works during the years of his training spent in Italy. The building is notable for a rustic facade and for the circular courtyard on two orders of colonnades, which respectively reflect the model of Palazzo Caprini di Bramante and the courtyard, never completed, of the Villa Madama. In the context of Spanish architecture of the time, the work must have had a certain relevance, breaking with the Plateresque style, but its influence was not immediate.
The direct successor of the palace of Charles V is the monastery of the Escorial in Madrid, a vast and austere building built between 1563 and 1584 by Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera. Wanted by Philip II, it has a regular plan that still refers to the model of Filarete, with a central courtyard overlooked by the church surmounted by a dome. The plan of the church, however, closely resembles the scheme of St. Peter in the Vatican.
Compared to Spain and France, in the rest of Europe the situation appears decidedly more confused, also due to the Protestant reform, which was an obstacle to cultural exchanges with Italy. However, we highlight early examples of Italian architecture: the chapel built in the cathedral of Esztergom (1507, destroyed) and the Palace of Facets in Moscow. Then there are a series of buildings built by Italian architects, or directly influenced by Italian architecture: the chapel of the Fugger family (1509-1518) in Augusta, the Sigismund chapel in Krakow inBartolomeo Berecci (1516 – 1533), the Stadtresidenz in Landshut (from 1536) and the residence of Queen Anne in Prague (begun in 1533).
In the northernmost areas, the affirmation of Renaissance tastes had to wait until the second half of the sixteenth century. In the Flemish countries, Nordic and Renaissance elements, derived from Bramante and Serlio, merged into the Antwerp Town Hall, built between 1561 and 1566, which became the model for several European palaces, in particular Dutch and German. In fact, it goes back the Municipality of Augusta, built in the early seventeenth century and designed by Elias Holl.
Like other regions of continental Europe, in the sixteenth century England was also separated from Italy, but also in England there was at least one early example of Italian style: the tomb of Henry VII, by Pietro Torrigiano. The construction of the tomb took place between 1512 and 1518 inside the specially built Gothic chapel at the bottom of Westminster Abbey, giving rise to a striking stylistic contrast.
As elsewhere, the Italian influence in England for a long time remained limited to the decorative apparatus. The royal palace of Nonsuch (destroyed) perhaps represented the first construction of the English Renaissance: despite the forms distant from the Italian taste, the rich antique decorations certainly had to represent a model for other later constructions, such as Hampton Court, in which it is present, emblematic, an unfortunate attempt to have a coffered ceiling. Even in the last part of the sixteenth century England proved unable to fully incorporate the Renaissance style, as evidenced by a series of large country houses (Longleat House, Wollaton Hall andHardwick Hall) very far from the balance and proportions of contemporary Italian buildings.
The turning point came only in the seventeenth century, when Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style in the region. Works such as the Banqueting House, the Queen’s Chapel, the Queen’s House testify to the complete assimilation of Andrea Palladio’s style and demonstrate that even in England it was therefore possible to practice a classical style.