The Renaissance

Early Renaissance (Florence in the 15th century)

and
High or Late Renaissance (Rome in the 16th century)

…via some other cities in between

Ouahes, Rachid - Sept. 2024

 A rst image of the architecture of the Renaissance
is this composition of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, from the 1460’s
which puts in order a number of buildings inside a perspective view
while guiding the look on a single volume symbolizing a center
most probably a temple
This composed order is the formal de nition of the Renaissance
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What does the Renaissance concept mean ?

In contradistinction to the naming of other periods of art or architecture

“Renaissance” was already used in its own time,
by reference to the inspiration that the arts, architecture, sciences
or other cultural domains, brought from the return to a GOLDEN AGE,
situated in Antiquity, either roman or greek.

Up until then, in the “Middle-Ages”, these domains of art and knowledge were
practiced through the codi cation made up by schools or craft corporations,
repeating or rehearsing an expertise transmitted through
a tradition that was carried from generation to generation.

This speci cally meant that, in the Middle-Ages, innovation was hardly
possible, whereas in the Renaissance, the recovering a dead past
was synonymous with a re-invention of it.
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 How and why did the idea of “recovering a dead past”
or of “a return to antiquity” came up?

This is certainly related to the growing knowledge and consciousness

of other civilizations’ trajectory, such as the Chinese or the Islamic.
A orentine fresco by Bonaiuti, showing the learned
Averroes (Ibn-Rushd 1126-1198)
acknowledges the inheritance of the islamic culture
in the Renaissance,
just before the decline of the arab civilization,
in Andalousia, after Grenada’s fall in 1492

1492 is also the year of America’s discovery

by Christofer Columbus
make thus another close relation between
colonization and civilization
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 Another question comes to mind on the Renaissance:
Why Florence, precisely at that moment (1420-1450) ?
One important response would be :
Because, since the 12th century,
Florence was the only city that had chosen the Republican System
as a mode of government, which kept the city out of the feudal grip
in Italy and all the rest of Europe.
« Since Athens and Rome, no western city had ever been this much a
place for such historical inventiveness. This experience has given rise to a
huge mix in polical re ection. There is born what the historians had called
“civic humanism”, in other words, the con uence of humanism as an
intellectual idea, and the communal traditions that implied a certain
freedom for the citizens ».
(voir : Jean Boutier, Yves Sintomer, « La République de Florence (12e-16e
siécle) - Enjeux historiques et politiques », Revue française de science
politique 2014/6 (Vol. 64), pages 1055 à 1081)
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 Leonardo da Vinci

Cesare Cesariano

The Vitruvian Man incarnates the placing

of the human gure in the center of the world,
in a tight relation of the body with geometry
which becomes henceforth
the basis of art and architecture
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 For the historians of that period,
the “republican freedom” had
also a cultural consequence in
highlighting the individual
through the development of
his subjectivity
in his practice of the arts

Individual artists like Michelangelo The David of Donatello

or Leonardo da Vinci, would then sculpted in a naturalist style,
be the most illustrious representatives away from the gothic conventions
of the artistic scene is an example of the orentine mythology
of a time where talented people in which the small and feeble
did particularly ourish resists and wins
in the face of the milanese Goliath
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 This freedom however is relative,
for, if the artist that is freed from the corporate system
that is closed to inventiveness and modern creativity
he is still forced to stand under the umbrella of a patronage
that exercises a certain amount of power over his production.

A patron of the arts is usually a Prince or a Pope, a rich aristocrat or a bourgeois,

who takes the artist to his service and commands his works,
in exchange for material support and life commodities.
Obviously, the more the artist is known and talented, the more the patron bene ts
in glory and prestige, just as the roman Popes did with Michelangelo
or the Sforza Duke of Milan, and the French King Francis 1st, with Leonardo da Vinci.

The Medici in Florence, the Montefeltro in Urbino, the d’Este in Ferrara,

the Sforza in Milan, the Malatesta in Rimini ou the Popes in Rome
made it a duty for them to support many artists that emulated
or most of the time competed with each other.

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 On the other hand, in the orentine scene,
the Pazzis patrons that competed with the Medici,
nally disappeared violently and tragically

Cosimo da Medici (1389-1464)

& his brother Lorenzo the Magni cent (1449 - 1492)
who dominated Florence during the Quattrocento

Ghiberti & Brunelleschi

presenting a model
to Cosimo da Medici
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The Renaissance reverses to the order of antiquity in which the urban
landscape belongs to the classical language of the roman Republic.
This return to classicism, in politics, literature or the arts, goes with the
republican spirit in its opposition to the duchies and feudal realms
of the other italian cities.
Architecture participates in this reframing through a monumental and
highly organized geometry on rational principles,
in the perspective view, as much as the ideal plan ( arch. Filarete).
The organized space of the Renaissance is clearly opposed to the informal urban
con guration of the medieval city
Sienne in 1340 (Lorenzetti) - Florence in 1330-40 (Bigallo) anf (Giotto)

The medieval city does not care much about public space
whose classical geometry has most frequently been destructed…
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 Italy in the 15th century, is made of an
ensemble of independant City-States
(Florence - Venise - Genoa - Pisa - Milano -
Lucca - Trento - Mantua - Padova…)
Roma being the Capitale of the Pope States
and Naples a Kingdom torn between
Spain and France

A view of Florence and its

main buildings in about 1470
 Starting in the 1420’s,
a group of artists dominated
the orentine scene
that established
the rsts steps
of the renaissance language

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1446),

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 - 1455),
was the main gure among
Michelozzo di Bartolomeo (1396 - 1472)
the architects
Leon Battista Alberti (1404 - 1472)
for his buildings
Donatello (1386 - 1466)
as much as
Masaccio (1401 - 1428)
for his experiments
Piero della Francesca (1416 - 1492)
(among others) in perspective laws
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 Florence cathedral
dominating the urban fabric
with a duomo conceived
and constructed by The Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore
Brunelleschi in Florence
The Belfry built by the architecte Giotto
after winning the competition
and the main entry facade
for its covering (1412)
 The roman Pantheon was the main
reference, with the brick construction
worked with concrete technics

After spending many years in Rome

(1410-1419), studying antique ruins,
Brunelleschi
inspired himself with the technics of
ingenious brick building maçonnerie that
allowed the covering of the Florence
duomo, with its exceptional dimensions
(42m diameter)
 Perspective studies
The Baptistery of Florence (12th century),
wrongly attributed to Antiquity, is mostly known for
the perspective representation it allowed in
Brunelleschi’s experiments

Florence Baptistery
facing the Cathedral
Santa Maria del Fiore
 It should be noted that the perspective
Brunelleschi experiments “discovery”, already known in Antiquity,
on a one is rather more of a “re-discovery”
vanishing point that is largely due to the theory of
perspective Abu Ali al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040)
and his book on optical sciences
(Kitab al-Manazir, 1015)
which puts into question the greek theories on
ancient authority,
putting forward instead the experimental method
and the discovery of the basic laws used by
Brunelleschi
(voir: T. V. Venkateswaran, « In uence of Ibn al-
Haytham on vision, optics, and experimental
sciences », Science and Culture, vol. 82, n° 11–
12, nov.-dec. 2016, p. 358-63)
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 Masaccio Fra Angelico
The Holy Trinity The annunciation
Santa Maria (1437)
Novella 1427 Convent of
San Marco

Brunelleschi experiments were shared

with the local artists as Masaccio
or Piero della Francesca

Piero della
Francesca
The ogging
(1455)
(Urbino)
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Other projects by
Brunelleschi

Considered the rst architect of the Renaissance,

Brunelleschi built or transformed many monuments with a simple
well proportioned architecture, of a particular elegance
that forced the admiration and marked the practice of the time
- Ospidale degli Innocenti
- Church of San Lorenzo
- Pazzi Chapel (Santa Croce Church)
- Santo Spirito Church …
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 Brunelleschi’s works

- One of the two sacristies of San Lorenzo monastery:

interior decoration (that in uenced strongly that times architecture),
when Michelangelo will realize the other’s mannerist decoration.
- Both churches of Santa Croce & Santo Spirito on a modular rythme
quite noticeable for those moments.
- The Pazzi Chapel (inside Santa Croce) built on the reference
to the triumphal arch model
- The Hospital of the “Innocenti” based again on a modular repetition of
the facade, giving a structure to the public space (which will be later
completed and closed, between 1525 and 1540, by the architects
Antonio da Sangallo and Baccio d’Agnolo, in total respect of the
brunelleschian style)
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Hospital of the Innocenti (of Found Children) - Brunelleschi 1419
Plan, urban facade & modular principle
 Simplicity
& geometry
of the round arches
in the Cloister
of Santa Croce

Brunelleschi

Piazza of the Santa Croce Church

 Pazzi Chapel
(Santa Croce)

roman triumphal arch pattern

Brunelleschi
 General plan showing
the sacristies
in a & b

San Lorenzo Basilica

(1418-29)
(seen from Florence Cathedral)

the central nave

Brunelleschi
Brunelleschi

The San Lorenzo (old) Sacristy

A hemispherical dome towering over
a cube with byzantine earrings
 The modular architecture
of Santo Spirito Church 1436-

Brunelleschi
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
Author of the rst architectural treaty in the Renaissance,
De re Aedi catoria
an interpretation / completion of Vitruvius antique treaty that had
just been (partially) rediscovered in a swiss convent
Alberti was probably the most in uential architect of his time,
As a humanist, curious of all domains, his celebrity overpasses
that of Brunelleschi’s, maybe because he wrote so many di erent
theoretical treaties (on architecture, painting, sculptur, the family…)

As an architect, he also realized some buildings :

- San Francesco Church in Rimini
- Palazzo Rucellai in Florence
- Santa Maria Novella Church in Florence
- San Sebastian & Sant’Andrea Churches in Mantua…
while trying each time to retrieve an antique or ideal form
in which he would inscribe the total project
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 San Francesco in Rimini
(or Malatesta Temple
1453-)

Leon-Battista Alberti
Experiment with the triumphal arch pattern
a edited medal on the construction
plan & proportion study (Franco Borsi)
 L. B. Alberti
San Sebastian church
Mantua (1460-)

Reconstruction of the initial

project by R. Wittkower
 L. B. Alberti
Sant’Andrea church in Mantua (1470-)

with a reference to the Trajan arch

(Ancône)
 Palazzo Rucellai (Florence, 1452-)
Inspired by the example of the Roman coliseum
Alberti proceeds for the rst time, in the Quattrocento,
to a layering of the antique orders (doric/ionic/corinthian)
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Palaces of
Florence

The Medici Palace, icon of Florence,

architectural canon of the aristocratic palace,
Bartolomeo de Michelozzo (1396 - 1472)
(extended by the Riccardi Family in the 18th century)

Despite Alberti’s introduction the regular order of the openings,

the medieval language of parement
keeps its defense or warfare signi cation.
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 In palaces, heights are exagerated to enforce a feeling of monumentality.
A building looking 3 stories from the outside, is much more complex in the inside,
comparable with 10 stories modern buildings

The interior is traditional,

with a directly accessible
courtyard through a porch,
a ground oor dedicated
to the commerce
and services,
a “noble” rst oor for
the landlord and his guests,
and the upper oors
dedicated for the servants
and others family members
Palazzo Medici
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 A listing and location of major
orentin Palaces
with their architects and heights
comparison drawing with a
modern building of
10 stories
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Palazzo Gondi 1489-
Giuliano da Sangallo

Palazzo Strozzi 1489-

Palazzo Pitti 1458- Giuliano da Sangallo & Benedetto a Maiano
 The Palazzo Pitti
that has become
the residency of the Medici
in the far end of the city,
facing the Boboli gardens.
It will be enlarged in the 16th century
by Bartolomeo Ammannati
(1511-1592)
 Other examples of Italian cities in which the Renaissance expands
(to be pursued in the TD)

Urbino
Ferrara city of the condottiere
city of the d’Este Federico da Montefeltro
Pienza (Corsignano) 1422-1482
dynasty et the poet
& the patronage of Pio II
(Enea Silvio Piccolomini Arioste (1474-1533) architects :
« the most modern city of the Luciano Laurana 1420-1479
1405-64) Renaissance »
elected Pope in 1458 (Jacob Burckhardt) Francesco di Giorgio Martini
1439-1502
architect :
architect :
Biaggio Rossetti 1447-1516
Bernardo Rossellino
1409-1464
 - Corsignano was a small village from which the Pope Pie II originated
(Enea Silvio Piccolomini 1405-64), elected en 1458.
Through his patronage, he made a small city of it, Pienza that entered the
legend, thanks to Alberti’s advices and his student Bernardo Rossellino
The means : an urban operation centered on a trapezoid public space,
surrounded with three palaces (including the city-hall) and a church.

Pienza:
plans & landscape view
 Borso d'Este 1413-1471 & Ercole d'Este 1431-1505
Under Florence’s in uence, the two brothers
that dominated Ferrara et its transformation

Ferrara
plan and monuments
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 The Palazzo
Municipale

San Francesco
church

Palazzo dei Diamanti

(Biaggio Rossetti)
 Aerial views of the
Duke Palace

Portraits of Frederico da
Montefeltro & Battista Sforza
(Piero della Francesca 1465-)

Urbino
 The Italian wars (1494-1559)
Eleven wars (11) in total were
conducted on the italian territory,
at the beginning of the 16th century,
confronting the French Kings
Charles VIII, Louis XII, François 1er,
and the Habsbourg Empire (Spain)
over the sovereignty on the
Naples Kingdom and the Milanese Duchy.
Some City-States of Italy were occupied
- particularly Milan (in 1498)
provoking the escape of Duke Sforza
to Austria,
- and Rome (in 1527), provoking the La bataille de Pavie,
“Sack” reduced considerably huile sur bois, XVIe siècle
the city’s means of recovery.
 These italian wars had at least one advantage, for Europe:
to allow or accelerate the process through which
the Renaissance expanded to the northern countries,
thanks to the exile of italian artists and writers
such as Leonardo da Vinci notably,
who followed François 1er in his return to France

Some of these artists choose

however to go south,
such as Donato Bramante who settled in
Rome in which he drew and erected
many buildings until his death,
beginning with the little
Tempietto (1502-09)
inside the church of
San Pietro a Montorio The Sack of Rome 1527
 After reaching the north of the Peninsula, in Milan,
and despite the “Italian wars” that break regularly in that time
the Italian Renaissance takes another dimension in its roman practices
by the turn of the 16th century (c.1500)
Henceforth, the rational simpli cation of a Brunelleschi
is not the main search of the architects,
but rather that of the ideal forms that will be thought by the new artists,
Bramante, Raphael or Michelangelo
of a new century. Instead of the legibility and clarity of the constructed
building, the cinquecento looks rather for the sophisticated detail that the
artist can come up with, leading to the maniera that springs around 1530
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 Rome
(1450-1550)
 General
1652_Panorama_Rome_color.jpg 1 536 × 668 pixels 28/11/2017 06)34

Morphology
of Rome c.1650

Rome had the particularity of being the papal city.

After their return from Avignon in the 14th century,

they invested the Vatican city and the Castel
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Sant’Angelo which allows them to hide from danger.

Rome in the end of the 15th century (Munster)

 In that moment, the Pope was the most powerful man in the city, and the
most important Patron of the arts and urban works.
The rst city works in Rome had to be direct to the Vatican complex and its
neighborhood, expanding much later, in the 16th century, to the secular city
sur la cité du Vatican et les quartiers qui l’entourent, et ne s’étendront

The site of the Vatican in roman times

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The restructuration of the Borgo, between Saint-Peter and the Castel Sant’Angelo

The rst premier Pope to undertake

these works is
Niccolò V (1447 - 1453)
who asked for
the renovation of the Vatican palace
introducing a library, a marble theater,
and others space of pomp ceremonials
(with Antonio da Firenze, and then Alberti’s
student Bernardino Rossellino in 1451).
Alberti himself was in Rome inn 1452,
giving more ambition to the program
that included the opening of three large
and linear streets, connecting Saint-Peter
to the Castel Sant’Angelo
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 Reconstruction
Pio II Piccolomini (1458 - 1464) of the Blessings
Loggia
founder of the Pienza village,
and friend of Alberti by Pio II,
on Saint-Peter’s
turns away from the preceding in
square
order concentrate on the facade of Francesco del
Saint-Peter’s basilica Borgo 1415-68
with the architect Francesco del
Borgo who introduced a roman
style based on the imitation of the
antique monuments such as the
Coliseum
and contradiction the
rationalization of the orentine
architects such as Brunelleschi
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 The Farnese
Palace and its front
square in Rome,
Sixtus IV della Rovere
whose monumentality
(1471-1484) generated an unneeded
invests himself strongly in the axis in the existing urban
urban works, opening a street structure
system leading to public
buildings (hospitals and
churches mainly)
encouraging the construction of
palaces, each one dominating
its quarter, sometimes
generating and grafting a public
space on the existing fabric.
At the end of the ponti cate of
Alexandre VI Borgia
(1494-1503)
some works were taken
to prepare the 1500 jubilee
opening of the Via Alessandrina
(already planned by Niccolò V)
an arti cial creation for the rst
time since Antiquity

and also the rst inauguration

of an authoritarian urbanism
that demolished
a great number of houses
Projects undertaken by
Sixte IV & Alexandre VI
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 The orentine architect
Baccio Pontelli (c. 1450- c. 1494)
formed in Urbino,
provoked a real change of style
in his Vatican and Secular Rome
works during the last decades
of the century :

- Palazzo della Cancelleria

- Belvedere villa and the Sistine
Chapel in the Vatican
- Castel of Ostia (la Rocca)
- San Pietro à Montorio Church (in
which Bramante added his Tempietto)

The Belvedere Villa

15th century sketch and recent view
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 Starting the 16th century, the Pope
Julius II (1503-1513)
will assume the roman works
with a rst patronage of Baccio Pontelli and
Giuliano da Sangallo (under Sixte IV),
and then with
Donato Bramante (1444-1514)
during his command, wishing to revive
a construction that had been slow
until the in Rome.

Up to the italian wars,

Bramate had been in the service
of the Sforza Duke of Milan
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 Donato Bramante
(1444-1514)

Born in Urbino, Bramante, as much of

the architects of that time, was a
complete artist, painter and sculptor.
Before his roman exile, he worked for
the Duke Ludovico Sforza (Il Moro),
in Milan, for whom he realized
di erent church projects, cloisters and others religious
buildings, along with the urban planning of the little
Vigevano town, that was used as a vacation resort
by the milanese court.
His later works, in Rome and the Vatican, gave him a
Bramante painter 1490
status of one of the most in uential architects of the The column Christ
Renaissance, besides Palladio.
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 Donato Bramante

Cloisters Church of Santa

Santa Maria Maria Presso
delle Grazie of San Ambrogio
Milan 1492-98 San Satiro
Milan 1492-97 Milan 1478-86
 Donato Bramante

Plan of Vigevano
Aerial view and public space
 Bramante
Il Tempietto di San Pietro a Montorio - Roma 1502-07

The original plan

and construction details inside and outside
An important reference
to the Tempietto
were the centered plans
studies for temples…

…by Leonardo da Vinci

(in Milan)

and the Temple of Vesta

in Rome (205)
partially conserved
 …which brings us
back to the
monumental
representation of the
urban space
as in the case of the
religious paintings of
Perugini & Raphael
 Reconstruction of the Vatican
and of Saint-Peter in Rome

Plan of the Vatican with the list of works

undertaken by Bramante
 The Cortile of the
Belvedere

does it derive
from the Vigevano
experiment …
or from
Nero’s circus?
 Plans, sections and
views of the Belvedere
 Saint-Peter’s Cathedral in Rome

Initial project of Bramante

in plan and volumetry
(on the medalion)
inspired by Brunelleschi’s
orentine dome et preferred to the one
by Giuliano da Sangallo
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The medieval Saint-Peter that
was drawn before demolition
plan & perspective view
The succeeding plans of Saint-Peter, by :
Bramante > 1514
Raphaël > 1520
Antonio da Sangallo Jr. 1534-46
Michelangelo 1547-64
Giacomo della Porta >1602
Carlo Maderno > 1629
Bernini <1631-
Reconstitution of Raphael’s project
inside and outside

Saint-Peter Cathedral - Rome

 Drawings and model
of Antonio da Sangallo Jr.
(1453-1534)

Saint-Peter Cathedral -
Rome
 Michelangelo’s
transformations

with a return
to the centered plan
and monumentality
a rmation Saint-Peter Cathedral - Rome
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 After or besides the Vatican, the later succeeding Popes got also involved in
the planning of the city, notably the evidencing of the main churches squares,
and their visual linking through a web of boulevards or starts opening.
These works gave Rome a real advance in the urban management of the
modern cities, up to 19th and 20th centuries

Popes’ urbanism
in secular Rome

the structures
of the urban fabric
in medieval time
and after the
Renaissance
Pope Leone X (1513 - 1521) Works undertaken or initiated
(drawn by Raphaël - 1517) by Bramante in Rome

Leone X gives a stronger dimension to roman building through the liberal

opening given to architects to conduct their own secular works
 Palazzo dei Tribunali Plan of the via Giulia district
(san Biagio) with the localisation of the
Bramante c. 1508 (work new buildings, churches and
stopped by the architect’s places being constructed
death)
Palazzo Caprini

(Casa Raphaël)

Bramante
1505-
 Palazzo Branconio del Aquila
Raphaël 1518-

A follower of Bramante last style

and intermediary with Palladio
(Geymüller)

Palazzo Caprini Palazzo Vidoni

 Other Palaces
Vidoni-Ca arelli
1510-
Alberini 1515-19
Jacopo di Brescia
1515
(démoli en 1936)

attributed to
Raphaël
but also to
Giulio
Romano…
and also
Lorenzo
Lotti…
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Bramante ? or Baccio Pontelli ?
or …?

Palazzo della Cancelleria

facade and inside court details
Palazzo Farnese 1513- (Antonio de Sangallo Jr.)
Baldassarre Peruzzi
(1481-1536)

Villa Farnesina 1510-

inside and outside
views
Raphael Sanzio
1483-1520
autoportrait

Villa Madama 1518- (for Giulio di Medici)

plans of the total project
as initially conceived
 Plan and view
of the realized
part
by Raphaël
and
A. da Sangallo

Restauration
of the rst project
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 inside decoration
by
Baldassarre Peruzzi
Giulio Romano
Giovanni da Udine
merci