Search results
An overview of Renaissance architecture. Renaissance architecture, style of architecture, reflecting the rebirth of Classical culture, that originated in Florence in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe, replacing the medieval Gothic style.
- Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio (born September 6, 1475, Bologna...
- Baroque Architecture
Baroque art and architecture. Baroque architecture,...
- Sebastiano Serlio
- Studying The Past
- Contemporary Influences
- Churches
- Public & Domestic Buildings
- Written Works on Architecture
- The Spread of Renaissance Ideas
The Renaissance period witnessed a great revival in interest in antiquity in terms of thought, art, and architecture. The first and most obvious point of study for Renaissance architects was the mass of Greco-Roman ruins still seen in southern Europe, especially, of course, in Italy. Basilicas, Roman baths, aqueducts, amphitheatres, and temples wer...
Architects not only studied the distant past but also what colleagues were doing elsewhere. Drawings and prints spread new concepts far and wide so that those unable to see new buildings in person could study developing trends. Sometimes, influences came from unlikely places. The Florentine painter and sculptor Michelangelo(1475-1564) created some ...
Churches continued to be a very important part of any community, and one of the most outstanding Renaissance contributions in this area was the dome of Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, designed and built by Brunelleschi. Completed in 1436, the brick dome measures at the base 45.5 metres (149 ft) in diameter, and it made the cathedral the...
A public building which is often cited as a typical example of early Renaissance architecture is Brunelleschi's Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence (completed 1424). The architect's use of tall slim columns to support arches which create a loggia with shallow domes was imitated for the facades of many other types of public buildings throughout the...
Many architects, as noted, wrote books on their subject. Alberti's On Building (De Re Aedificatoria) came out in Latin in 1452 and then in the Tuscan vernacular in 1456. Alberti catalogued the defining principles of classical architecture and noted how these might be applied to contemporary Renaissance buildings. He emphasised the need for building...
Architects travelling to different cities and the spread of written works helped ensure Italy was not alone as a witness to the architectural revolution. Books were often translated and so, for example, the 50 illustrations of highly decorative doorways in Serlio's books became popular with Mannerist architects in Northern Europe. Architects also m...
- Mark Cartwright
Stylistically, Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture and neoclassical architecture. Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities.
Artists followed suit by reviving Renaissance ideals of beauty, infusing into the era's artwork, music, and architecture a revived nod to classicism further enhanced by a new exuberant extravagance and penchant for the ornate. This highly embellished style was coined Baroque and became marked by its innovative techniques and details, delivering ...
Baroque art and architecture. Baroque architecture, architectural style originating in late 16th-century Italy and lasting in some regions, notably Germany and colonial South America, until the 18th century. It had its origins in the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church launched an overtly emotional and sensory appeal to the faithful ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Studying the past. Renaissance architects studied the mass of Greco-Roman ruins still seen in southern Europe, especially in Italy. They also studied Byzantine buildings, features of Romanesque architecture, and medieval buildings.
Baroque architects took the basic elements of Renaissance architecture, including domes and colonnades, and made them higher, grander, more decorated, and more dramatic. The interior effects were often achieved with the use of quadratura (i.e. trompe-l'œil painting combined with sculpture): the eye is drawn upward, giving the illusion that one ...
