2. Renaissance
- from M. F., rebirth, from O. F. renaistre to be born again
- started 14th to 17th century in Italy and later spread to the
rest of Europe
“Early Modern” - it falls between the medieval period and the
industrial revolution
Florence – birthplace of Renaissance
3. Early Renaissance
- Growing importance of the upper
bourgeoisie (especially merchants,
bankers)
- Expansion of industry and world
trade; voyages of exploration begin
- Commercial and financial
dominance of Flanders and Italy
- Increased patronage of the arts
by wealthy individuals
4. Culture
- revival of learning based on
classical sources, the rise of
courtly and papal patronage,
the development of
perspective in painting, and
advancements in science
- wide-ranging consequences
in all pursuits but is best
known for its artistic aspects
5. Demographic
Italy, 13,000,000
Spain and Portugal, 10,000,000
France, 16,000,000, in its boundaries in
1600
England and Wales, 4,500,000
Scotland and Ireland, 2,000,000
Netherlands, 3,000,000, including the
Spanish Netherlands in 1600
Denmark, 600,000
Sweden, Norway, and Finland:
1,400,000
Poland with Prussia: 3,000,000
Germany: 20,000,000
7. "Man is the measure of all things.“ - Protagoras
8. (Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua by Alberti)
Characteristics
- Plans were square,
symmetrical appearance in
which proportions are
usually based on a module
which is often the width of
an aisle
9. (Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua by Alberti)
Characteristics
- Arches are often used
in arcades, supported on
piers or columns with
capitals
10. Characteristics
- The Roman orders of
columns are used:- Tuscan,
Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and
Composite which can be
structural or decorative
- architects aimed to use
columns, pilasters,
and entablatures as an
integrated system
Old Sacristy, Brunelleschi
11. Characteristics
- Vaults do not have
ribs. They are semi-
circular or segmental
and on a square plan,
unlike the Gothic vault
which is frequently
rectangular
(Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Alberti)
12. Characteristics
- Dome is 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
Florence Cathedral’s Dome, Brunelleschi
13. Characteristics
- Façades are symmetrical
around their vertical axis
- Church façades are generally
surmounted by a pediment and
organized by a system of
pilasters, arches and entablatures
Cathedral of Pienza, Rossellino
14. Characteristics
- 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
Palazzo Rucellai, Alberti
15. Architectural Materials
- Italian Renaissance
construction used
materials like stone,
marble, terracotta tile and
stucco (a mortar mixture)
- Watermills to saw timber
and convert trees to planks
16. Filippo Brunelleschi
- More interested in
construction rather than the
visual appearance of Roman
buildings
- one of the founding fathers
of Renaissance
- best known for his work on
the Cathedral of Santa Maria
del Fiore (the Duomo) in
Florence
17. Science of Florence Cathedral's Dome
- Building up the dome in a succession of
horizontal courses as in the concrete
dome of the Pantheon
- Giving it a double shell so as to reduce
the weight, a device borrowed from the
baptistery of Pisa
- Echoing Gothic rib construction by
stretching the outer skin of the de over a
frame of 24 ribs
- Giving the dome a pointed profile
because it exerts less side thrust
20. Leon Battista Alberti
- provided the first theory of what
we now call linear perspective in
his book, Della Pittura
- His book De Re Aedificatoria was
the first architectural book
published in moveable type (1485)
and was instrumental in reviving
the Classical style of architecture
- architecture was not merely a
means of constructing buildings; it
was a way to create meaning
24. Michelozzo di Bartolomeo
- architect under patronage of
the Medici family
- He was one of the first
architects to work in the
Renaissance style outside
Italy, building a palace
at Dubrovnik
- has respected the Florentine
liking for rusticated stone
27. Donato Bramante
- if a building's design is perfect,
nothing could be either added to
or subtracted from it without
ruining the design
- first great Renaissance
architect in Rome, working on
St. Peter's, the Vatican and the
Tempietto in S. Pietro in
Montorio, Rome
It encompassed the revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly and papal patronage, the development of perspective in painting, and advancements in science. The Renaissance had wide-ranging consequences in all pursuits, but is perhaps best known for its artistic aspects.
the end of the medieval world and the beginning of the modern may be dated to the Black Deathin the middle of the 14th Century, the Fall of Constantinople in the middle of the 15th Century, or the Age of Exploration and the resulting epidemic deaths.
The technology to make this possible was introduced from China in the 1300s. By the 1400s, movable type was being used in Europe as Johann Gutenberg began printing the Bible in everyday language. Soon millions of books were in circulation. This invention led to a higher literacy rate among people, and helped with the spreading of Renaissance ideas.
Alberti set out the mathematical detail of square cube circle sphere and the ideal proportions of a building that should follow on harmonizes with idealized human body A building represents the image of the divine creator if architects followed the logic of mathematical proportions.
The Roman 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.
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
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) is widely considered the first Renaissance architect. Trained as a goldsmith in his native city of Florence, Brunelleschi soon turned his interests to architecture, traveling to Rome to study ancient buildings. Among his greatest accomplishments is the engineering of the dome of Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo). He was also the first since antiquity to use the classical orders
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
in a consistent and appropriate manner.Although Brunelleschi’s structures may appear simple, they rest on an underlying system of proportion. Brunelleschi often began with a unit of measurement whose repetition throughout the building created a sense of harmony, as in the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Florence, 1419). This building is based on a modular cube, which determines the height of and distance between the columns, and the depth of each bay.
Pazzi Chapel A building of great delicacy and subtlety The central domed square is flanked by tunnel vaulted side bays
S. Lorenzo (1421) S. Spirito (1436) Designed to create an ordered harmonious balance which is a parallel to the discovery of laws of perspective
First, an artist created a “floor” (a ground or stage on which figures and objects would be placed) in a painting and drew a receding grid to act as a guide to the relative scale of all other elements within the picture. Alberti suggests relating the size of the floor squares to a viewer’s height. This suggestion is important because it reveals an underlying principal of the Renaissance. The act of painting would no longer be to glorify God, as it had been in Medieval Europe. Painting in the Renaissance related instead, to those people looking at the painting.”
Church of Sant’Andrea The columns here are not used decoratively, but retain their classical function as load-bearing supports.
It was well known for its stone masonry includes rustication and ashlar. The tripartite elevation used here expresses the Renaissance spirit of rationality, order, and classicism on human scale. This tripartite division is emphasized by horizontal stringcourses that divide the building into stories of decreasing height. The transition from the rusticated masonry of the ground floor to the more delicately refined stonework of the third floor makes the building seem lighter and taller as the eye moves upward to the massive cornice that caps and clearly defines the building's outline.
Clearly Bramante was aware of the principles set out by Vitruvius and Alberti, and he has followed the ideas of proportion very closely. The intrados of the lunette is created by a circle that can be perfectly doubled between the floor level and the intrados. The extrados creates a circle that when carried down ends in the radius of two rondels in the column base. As well, the line between the uppermost point of the capital on the right extending down to the bottom of the base on the left exactly cuts the door in two.