RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE

Renaissance Period
Assignment- 1
209207
Anushka Bhargava

Contents of Assignment
01. Technological advancement
during Early, High &
Late Renaissance Period.
02. Architects and there works
in Early,
High & Late Renaissance period.
01. Structural analysis of the building and addition of Greek,
Roman & Renaissance style in architecture.
Assignment Part-1
Assignment Part-2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

01. Technological advancement
during
Early,
High &
Late Renaissance Period.
Part-1

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was a mathematician and
astronomer who proposed that the sun was stationary in the
center of the universe and the earth revolved around it.
• Disturbed by the failure of Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the
universe to follow Aristotle’s requirement for the uniform
circular motion of all celestial bodies and determined to
eliminate Ptolemy’s equant, an imaginary point around which
the bodies seemed to follow that requirement, Copernicus
decided that he could achieve his goal only through a
heliocentric model.
• He thereby created a concept of a universe in which the
distances of the planets from the sun bore a direct
relationship to the size of their orbits.
• At the time Copernicus’s heliocentric idea was very
controversial; nevertheless, it was the start of a change in
the way the world was viewed, and Copernicus came to be
seen as the initiator of the Scientific Revolution.
Early Renaissance
Nicolaus Copernicus
Technological Advancement

1. Da Vinci’s interests ranged far beyond fine art.
2. He studied nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics,
architecture, weaponry and more, often creating accurate,
workable designs for machines like the bicycle, helicopter,
submarine and military tank that would not come to
fruition for centuries.
3. He was, wrote Sigmund Freud, “like a man who awoke too
early in the darkness, while the others were all still
asleep.”
4. Several themes could be said to unite da Vinci’s eclectic
interests.
5. Most notably, he believed that sight was mankind’s most
important sense and that “saper vedere”(“knowing how to
see”) was crucial to living all aspects of life fully.
6. He saw science and art as complementary rather than
distinct disciplines, and thought that ideas formulated in
one realm could—and should—inform the other.
High Renaissance
Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo Da Vinci

1. At some point in the early 1490s, da Vinci began filling notebooks
related to four broad themes—painting, architecture, mechanics
and human anatomy—creating thousands of pages of neatly drawn
illustrations.
2. The notebooks—often referred to as da Vinci’s manuscripts and
“codices”—are housed today in museum collections after having
been scattered after his death.
3. The Codex Atlanticus, for instance, includes a plan for a 65-foot
mechanical bat, essentially a flying machine based on the
physiology of the bat and on the principles of aeronautics and
physics.
4. Other notebooks contained da Vinci’s anatomical studies of the
human skeleton, muscles, brain, and digestive and reproductive
systems, which brought new understanding of the human body to a
wider audience.
5. However, because they weren’t published in the 1500s, da Vinci’s
notebooks had little influence on scientific advancement in the
Renaissance period.
High Renaissance
Codex Atlanticus

1. Leonardo knew of Vitruvius’s work – that with the navel as the
centre, a perfect circle could be drawn around a body with
outstretched arms and legs.
2. He realised that if arm span and height are related, the person
would fit perfectly inside a square.
3. His Vitruvian Man took these observations and attempted to solve
the problem of “squaring” a circle.
4. It’s not, in fact, possible to do this exactly (squaring the circle is a
metaphor for the impossible), but he managed to come very
close.
5. There exists in mathematics a number, called the “Golden Ratio”,
which appears in some patterns in nature – such as the spiral
arrangement of leaves.
6. It was first recognized by Luca Pacoli in 1509 that the use of the
Golden Ratio led to aesthetically-pleasing images.
7. Da Vinci believed it was critical in providing accurate
proportionality, and it underpins the structure of the Mona Lisa.
High Renaissance
Vitruvius’s work

1. He combined an imagination ahead of his time,
an understanding of the emerging principles of
science and engineering, and his superlative
draftsmanship to devise new uses for levers,
gears, pulleys, bearings and springs.
2. His creations were designed to be useful but
also to be appealing to his patrons: the warring
dukes and kings of late 15th- and early 16th-
century France and Italy.
3. Although he apparently despised war, he was
employed for much of the time as a military
engineer, devising new defences and concepts
for terrifying weapons.
4. His sketches show a prototype “tank” circa
1485, with armour plating and the ability to fire
in any direction.
Da Vinci’s prototype ‘tank’, drawn in the late 15th
or early 16th century.
High Renaissance
Prototype ‘tank

1. Most of Leonardo’s designs were never built or
tested, although modern-day attempts to recreate
them have met with mixed success, including some
spectacular failures.
2. His imagination was so far ahead of its time that it
would take four centuries before ideas such as the
tank became practical through the development of
light and strong materials, such as steel and
aluminium, and new sources of power in the form
of engines powered by fossil fuels.
3. He would no doubt recognize – and be fascinated
by – much of the machinery of modern life that we
take for granted.
Leonardo da Vinci’s design for a helicopter,
late 15th or early 16th century
High Renaissance
Helicopter

Late Renaissance
1. Johannes Gutenberg c. 1400 – February 3, 1468)
was a German goldsmith, inventor, printer, and
publisher who introduced printing to Europe with
his mechanical movable-type printing press.
2. His work started the Printing Revolution and is
regarded as a milestone of the second
millennium, ushering in the modern period of
human history.
3. It played a key role in the development of the
Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Enlightenment,
and Scientific Revolution, as well as laying the
material basis for the modern knowledge-based
economy and the spread of learning to the
masses.
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg

1. The introduction of the mechanical movable type printing press by
the German goldsmith Johanne Gutenberg is widely regarded as the
single most important event of the second millennium, and is one of
the defining moments of the Renaissance.
2. The Printing Revolution which it sparks throughout Europe works as
a modern "agent of change" in the transformation of medieval
society.
3. The mechanical device consists of a screw press modified for
printing purposes which can produce 3,600 pages per
workday,[allowing the mass production of printed books on a proto-
industrial scale.
4. By the start of the 16th century, printing presses are operating in
over 200 cities in a dozen European countries, producing more than
twenty million volumes.
5. By 1600, their output had risen tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200
million copies, while Gutenberg book printing spread from Europe
further afield.
Two printers operating a Gutenberg-
style printing press (1568). Such
presses could make around 3,600
impressions per workday.
Late Renaissance
Printing Press

• By 1500 the presses of Europe had produced some six million books.
• Without the printing press it is impossible to conceive that the Reformation would
have ever been more than a monkish quarrel or that the rise of a new science,
which was a cooperative effort of an international community, would have occurred
at all.
• In short, the development of printing amounted to a communications revolution of
the order of the invention of writing; and, like that prehistoric discovery, it
transformed the conditions of life.
• The communications revolution immeasurably enhanced human opportunities for
enlightenment and pleasure on one hand and created previously undreamed-of
possibilities for manipulation and control on the other.
• The consideration of such contradictory effects may guard us against a ready
acceptance of triumphalist conceptions of the Renaissance or of historical change in
general.

02. Architects and there works in
Early,
High &
Late Renaissance period.
Part-1

Check Point :
• Early Renaissance (c. 1400 CE onwards), the first tentative reuse
of classical ideas
• High Renaissance (c. 1500 CE), the full-blooded revival of
classicism
• Mannerism (aka Late Renaissance, c. 1520-30 CE onwards) when
architecture became much more decorative and the reuse of
classical themes ever more inventive.

1. The person generally credited with originating the
Renaissance style of architecture is Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377–1446), whose first major commission—the
enormous brick dome that covers the central space of
the Florence Cathedral—was also perhaps
architecturally the most significant.
2. Known as the Duomo, the dome was engineered by
Brunelleschi to cover a spanning in the already existing
Cathedral.
3. The dome retains the Gothic pointed arch and the Gothic
ribs in its design.
4. The dome is structurally influenced by the great domes
of Ancient Rome such as the Pantheon , and it is often
described as the first building of the Renaissance.
Early Renaissance : Florence Cathedral
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446)

Filippo Brunelleschi
Florence Cathedral
Early Renaissance

The architecture of the Brunelleschi Dome
• The structure of the dome is a double-shell structure consisting of an inner
dome as well as an outer dome.
• Both the pillars are supported by sturdy pillars.
• This practice was successively followed in many domes including Les
Invalides of Paris and the United States Capitol in Washington.
• This protected the inner dome from rain by the outer dome and allowed a
higher and more majestic form.
• The frame of the dome is composed of twenty-eight horizontal and vertical
marble ribs, or, eperoni, eight of which are visible on the outside.
• Those visible on the outside are largely decorative since the outer dome is
supported by the structure of the inner dome.
• A narrow stairway runs upward between the two domes to the lantern on the
top.
• In contemplating this masterpiece, it is noticed that the builders have made
use of balance and harmony between each of its parts.
• Each architectural element contributes to the stability of the dome as it
stands without supporting structures.
Florence Cathedral
Early Renaissance

• To position the ball, they used machines invented by Brunelleschi.
• High up on the fresco in the dome, around the cupola, hovers a temple with the twenty-four
elders of the Apocalypse; beneath this, on terraced registers, follow choirs of angels with
the instruments of the Passion; groups of saints; personifications of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, of the virtues, and of the beatitudes; and finally, the regions of hell with various
deadly sins.
• The composition of the fresco thus takes into account the architectonic form of the vault in
its eight sections, hard upon one another.
• These frescoes can be seen very well on the way up to the dome.
• The work on the dome, the lantern and the exedra occupied most of the remainder of
Brunelleschi’s life.
• Brunelleschi’s success can be attributed to his technical and mathematical genius.
• Brunelleschi used more than four million bricks in the construction of the octagonal dome.
• Notably, Brunelleschi left behind no building plans or diagrams detailing the dome’s
structure; scholars’ surmise that he constructed the dome as though it were hemispherical,
which would have allowed the dome to support itself.
Florence Cathedral
Early Renaissance

Exterior
• The octagonal shape of the dome is definitely inspired by that of
the Baptistry. In fact, from an octagonal drum of the dome stand
eight segments, the sails, arranged on two shells separated by a
space.
• Brunelleschi wove regular courses of herringbone brickwork,
little known before his time, into the texture of the cupola, giving
the entire structure additional solidity.
Florence Cathedral
Early Renaissance

Interior
• The church is particularly notable for its 44 stained glass windows, the
largest undertaking of this kind in Italy in the 14th and 15th century.
• The windows in the aisles and in the transept depict saints from the Old and
the New Testament, while the circular windows in the drum of the dome or
above the entrance depict Christ and Mary.
• They are the work of the greatest Florentine artists of their times, such as
Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello and Andrea del Castagno.
Florence Cathedral
Early Renaissance

Mystery
1. No one was able to develop a workable plan for building a dome nearly 150 feet across
that would have to rest 180 feet above the ground on top of the existing walls, which were
built to form an approximate octagon without a true center.
2. No one was certain if a dome could be built at all over the octagonal floor without
allowing the masonry to collapse inward as it arced toward the apex.
3. Moreover, the architecture prevented the use of traditional Gothic flying buttresses and
pointed arches familiar to builders working at that time.
4. Almost 600 years ago after it was built, Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome of Santa Maria del
Fiore in Florence, Italy, remains the largest masonry dome ever built.
5. Leaving no plans or sketches behind, some of the secrets of its construction that
Brunelleschi pioneered are still an enigma today.
Florence Cathedral
Early Renaissance

High Renaissance : Tempietto,Renaissance,
ROME, Italy, 1502 AD
Donato Bramante
Donato Bramante
Tempietto
• Donato Bramante, Donato also spelled Donino or Donnino,
(born c. 1444, probably at Monte Asdrualdo, Duchy
of Urbino [Italy]—died April 11, 1514, Rome), architect who
introduced the High Renaissance style in architecture.
• His early works in Milan included the rectory of
Sant’Ambrogio and the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.
• In Rome, Bramante served as principal planner of
Pope Julius II’s comprehensive project for rebuilding the city.
• St. Peter’s Basilica, of which he was the chief architect, was
begun in 1506.
• Other major Roman works were the Tempietto at San Pietro
in Montorio (1502) and the Belvedere court in the Vatican
(begun c. 1505).

Donato Bramante
Tempietto
The architecture of the Tempietto
• Often considered one of the earliest buildings of the , the
tempietto defines a specific location important in christianity.
• Located on the west side of the tiber river in rome, the building
is small in scale situated in a of the san pietro in montorio
building.
• Bramante designed a clear figural object within the figural
voided courtyard .
• Bramante also designed the courtyard with a circular further
reiterating center.
• In addition, the edges of the courtyard would be circular as
well.
• All of these concentric circles are reinforcing a centrality of the
object within the courtyard.
• The tempietto is one example demonstrating how designers
aren’t always able to build their ideal design.
High Renaissance

Donato Bramante
Tempietto
• Today there is one public entrance to the courtyard.
• Entering the courtyard, the centrality is clearly focusing on bramante’s design.
• In plan, it is a circular building within the square courtyard.
• Though it does not have two separate centers, one can understand a clear
lineage from the parti of an object within a circle and square.
• The front door is clearly presented to enter the space.
• After ascending a few steps and passing the threshold of the circular
colonnade, the interior is a small double height space.
• The interior is one cylindrical room, capped with a celestially painted dome
ceiling and a small hole in the center of the floor .
• This small room at ground level is not the most important space. Instead
as one continues walking to the rear of the project, there is a stair descending
under the ground plan.
• Below the main room at ground level there is another room below .
• The hole in the middle of the floor at ground level makes a direct connection
to what is happening below.
High Renaissance

Donato Bramante
Tempietto
Exterior
• The Tempietto is considered by many scholars to be the premier
example of High Renaissance architecture.
• With its perfect proportions, harmony of its parts, and direct
references to ancient architecture, the Tempietto embodies the
Renaissance.
• This structure has been described as Bramante’s “calling card” to
Pope Julius II, the important Renaissance patron of the arts who
would then employ Bramante in the historic design of the new St.
Peter’s Basilica .
High Renaissance

Donato Bramante
Tempietto
Interior
• While not indisputably proven, the importance of the Tempietto is marking the place
believed to be where St. Peter was crucified.
• It is a different site from the location where St. Peter was believed to be buried,
located at St. Peters Basilica in Rome.
• The underground room is important, burrowing closest to the location of the
crucifixion.
• The front door is clearly presented to enter the space.
• After ascending a few steps and passing the threshold of the circular
colonnade, the interior is a small double height space.
• The interior is one cylindrical room, capped with a celestially painted
dome ceiling and a small hole in the center of the floor
High Renaissance

• Another primary example of Renaissance Roman
architecture includes the Palazzo Farnese, one of
the most important High Renaissance palaces in
Rome.
• First designed in 1517 for the Farnese family, the
building expanded in size and conception from
designs by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger when
Alessandro Farnese became Pope Paul III in 1534.
• Its building history involved some of the most
prominent Italian architects of the 16th century,
including Michelangelo, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola,
and Giacomo della Porta.
Late Renaissance : Palazzo Farnese
Michelangelo, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola
Michelangelo,
Jacopo Barozzi da Vignol
Palazzo Farnese

• Key Renaissance architectural features of the main facade include the
alternating triangular and segmental pediments that cap the windows of the
piano nobile, the central rusticated portal, and Michelangelo’s projecting
cornice , which throws a deep shadow on the top of the facade.
• Michelangelo revised the central window in 1541, adding an architrave to give
a central focus to the facade, above which is the largest papal stemma, or
coat-of-arms with papal tiara, Rome had ever seen.
• The Palazzo Farnese courtyard, initially open arcades , is ringed by classically
inspired columns (characteristic of Italian Renaissance architecture), in
ascending orders (Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic).
• The piano nobile entablature was given a frieze with garlands, added by
Michelangelo.
Michelangelo,
Palazzo Farnese
Late Renaissance

• On the garden side of the palace, which faced the River Tiber, Michelangelo
proposed the innovatory design of a bridge which, if completed, would have linked
the palace with the gardens of the Vigna Farnese.
• While the practicalities of achieving this bridge remained dubious, the idea was a
bold and expansive one.
• During the 16th century, two large granite basins from the Baths of Caracalla were
adapted as fountains in the Piazza Farnese, the urban face of the palace.
• The palazzo was completed for the second Cardinal Alessandro Farnese by
Giacomo della Porta’s porticoed facade towards the Tiber (finished in 1589).
• Following the death of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese in 1626, the palazzo stood
virtually uninhabited for 20 years.
Michelangelo,
Palazzo Farnese
Late Renaissance

Exterior
Michelangelo,
Palazzo Farnese
• Each storey has different window frames (alternating pediments for
the piano nobile) placed in dense rows against the flat neutral wall
surface, which enhances the sense of scale.
• The crowning cornice was substantially enlarged by Michelangelo
(who also designed the window over the portal) and casts a heavier
shadow onto the façade than that envisaged by Sangallo.
Late Renaissance

Interior
Michelangelo,
Palazzo Farnese
• Michelangelo is responsible for the balcony, the
large coat of arms, the windows of the upper
story, and the cornice of the main facade, as well
as for the upper story of the cortile, or main
courtyard, which is more Mannerist than High
Renaissance in style.
• The interior is decorated with frescoes
by Annibale Carracci.
• The palace now houses the French embassy.
Late Renaissance

01. Structural analysis of the
building and addition of
Greek,
Roman &
Renaissance style in architecture.
Part-2

Palazzo Rucellai , Florence, Italy. (1445–70 ) Early Renaissance
Leon Battista Alberti

1. Higher than the upper floors, The pilasters on the ground floor have the Tuscan order at the base- a
reinterpretation of the ' Doric columns’
2. In front is a "bench away," an element of practical use and which also created a sort of basic plan for the
palace, as if it were a stylobate in ancient roman buildings.
3. The backrest of the bench play is the Opus reticulatum : a form of brickwork used in ancient Roman
architecture, (the skill having been lost with the end of the Roman Empire, and rediscovered by means of
archeology by Leon Battista Alberti.)
4. The frieze on the ground floor contains the insignia of the Rucellai family.
Early Renaissance

1. On the first floor ( main floor ) the pilasters are a Renaissance original: Alberti's own
invention (acanthus leaves with a center palmette) in place of the Ionic order at the
second level.
2. Large double windows, with embossed frame, column and oculus at the center.
Early Renaissance

1. The top floor pilasters have Corinthian style Altering with mullioned windows of the same
type.
2. Above the building is crowned by a cornice projecting slightly, supported by brackets ,
which is hidden beyond a loggia; evidence of the break with medieval tradition and
openness to the great age of Renaissance.
Early Renaissance

Analysis of Structure
Greek
Ionic order
Cornice
Entablatures
Frieze
Roman
Tuscan order
Pilasters
Corinthian style
Semi Circular Arch
Renaissance
Mullioned windows
Large double windows
Oculus
Loggia
Brackets
Flat geometry
Flat surface
Golden Ratio
Early Renaissance
Palazzo Rucellai

Tempietto chapel, Rome, Italy, 1502
High Renaissance
Donato Bramante

Tempietto, small circular chapel erected in the
courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome on the
supposed site of the martyrdom of St. Peter.
High Renaissance
Donato Bramante
1. A two-cylinder arrangement is created by
the structure's main circular core, called
the cella, and the ring of columns that
surrounds it, called the peristyle.
2. The upper part of the cella is comprised of
the drum, which supports the
hemispherical dome.
3. The sixteen columns forming the peristyle
were constituted from both old and new
parts.

High Renaissance
Donato Bramante
1. In having a domed circular core surrounded by a
colonnaded porch, the Tempietto is the first building since
antiquity to be based on a peripteral temple (temple
whose cella is surrounded by a peristyle.)
2. Bramante's Tempietto was the first building in the
Renaissance to use the Roman Doric order correctly in
terms of both the proportions of its parts and the
inclusion of triglyphs and metopes in its frieze.
3. The metopes depict papal symbols and items used in
prayers.
4. Sixteen pilasters on the same radii as the sixteen
columns articulate the cella wall on each story.
5. This arrangement of pilasters is not directly reflected on
the interior, where eight pilasters stand between large
and small niches.

Greek
Triglyphs
Metopes
Frieze
Roman
Pilasters
Roman Doric order
Renaissance
Peristyle
Cella
Flat geometry
Flat surface
Golden Ratio
High Renaissance
Donato Bramante
Tempietto chapel

Church of the Gesù, Rome , 1568 -1584 Late Renaissance
Giacomo della Porta

Late Renaissance
Giacomo della Porta
• The lower section is divided by six pairs of
pilasters (with a mix of columns and pilasters
framing the main door).
• The main door is well decorated with low relief
and two medails.
• The main door stands under a
curvilinear tympanum and over it a huge
medaillon/shield with the letters IHS
representing the Christogram and an angel.
• The two other doors have triangle pediments,
and in the higher part of this first level, two
statues are set in the alignment of each of
these doors.

Late Renaissance
Giacomo della Porta
• One of the most striking parts of the
temple is the ceiling fresco painted by
Baciccia (Giovanni Battista Gaulli).
• The fresco manages to look three
dimensional thanks to the wooden figures
and stuccos added to the fresco.
• The church has an amazing Baroque
facade, unmatched in whole Italy.

Greek
Fresco
Triglyphs
Metopes
Frieze
Pediment
Roman
Pilasters
Fresco
Curvilinear tympanum
Renaissance
Flat geometry
Flat surface
Golden Ratio
triangle-pediments
Scroll architecture
Late Renaissance
Giacomo della Porta
Church of the Gesù

CA-1 Assignment
209207
Anushka Bhargava

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE

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