Character of Renaissance Architecture

PAGE Character of the Fine Arts of the Renaissance not hitherto correctly set forth--The Fine Arts always an expression of the conditions and beliefs of a people--Mediæval Chris...

Exhibits a wide departure from older dome constructions--Sources of the architect’s inspiration--General character of earlier domes--Remarkable construction of the dome of the F...

The Pazzi chapel--Gothic character of its central vault--Architectural treatment of the interior--Impropriety of a classic order in such a building--Awkward result of an entabla...

Bramante in Rome--His early training--Character of the Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio--Its likeness to a Roman temple of Vesta--Bramante’s project for St. Peter’s--Uncertai...

Other parts of the church of St. Peter--Beauty of its plan--This plan could not be carried out with a good result in classic Roman details--Awkward makeshifts to which Michael A...

The neo-classic ideas most extensively carried out in palatial houses--Domestic architecture of the Middle Ages in Italy--The Palazzo Riccardi--Its mediæval features--Its genera...

The Cancellaria--Its attribution to Bramante--Exhibits features in further conformity with the Roman antique--Its pilasters in pairs--Its projecting bays--Its portals--Arcades o...

Various other phases of the architecture of the Renaissance--The façade of San Bernardino of Perugia--The façade of the Certosa of Pavia--Its combination of local mediæval and d...

Marked local character of the palace architecture of Venice--Façade of east side of court of the Ducal Palace--Irregularities of its composition--North side of the same court--T...

Little architectural character in the sculpture of the Renaissance--Close imitation of Roman models--Great delicacy of design and execution in much carving of the Renaissance--L...

The Renaissance had not the same meaning north of the Alps that it had in Italy--A fundamental change in French architecture effected by the Renaissance influence--Survival of t...

French architecture further changed by Lescot and De l’Orme, yet still without elimination of native characteristics--Lescot’s design for the Fountain of the Nymphs--The sculptu...

Derivation of the Elizabethan domestic architecture from the native mediæval art--The reasonable character of the early Elizabethan house in its integrity--The ostentatious char...

The architecture of England in the seventeenth century properly called Renaissance only by extension of the term--Jones and Wren the only architects of importance at this time--...

The architecture of the Renaissance not based on consistent principles--Incorrectness of the notion that the Renaissance aberrations in the use of the orders was but a free adap...

The great change in ideas and ideals which, after the remarkable intellectual and artistic life of the Middle Ages, was manifested in the so-called Renaissance, is not always co...

The great dome of the cathedral of Florence marks the beginning of the Renaissance movement in architecture, though in its general form and structural character it has no likene...

No other work by Brunelleschi is comparable in merit to the great dome of the cathedral. None of his other opportunities were such as to call forth his best powers, which appear...

When in the year 1503 Pope Julius II came to the papal chair, the architect Bramante had recently settled in Rome. Born in Urbino, he had spent his early manhood in the North of...

As for the rest of the church of St. Peter, we need give attention to that part only which was designed by Michael Angelo on the basis of the original scheme of Bramante, namely...

While it was in church edifices that the neo-classic ideas in architecture were first embodied, it was in vast palatial houses that they were most extensively carried out. Early...

Among the first of the great Roman palatial houses of the Renaissance is the so-called Cancelleria, which together with the Palazzo Girand Torlonia of similar design, has been a...

While the architecture of the Italian Renaissance assumed the two principal phases that are broadly classified as Florentine and Roman, from the localities in which the conditio...

The palace architecture of the Renaissance in north Italy which has the most marked local character is that of Venice. We have already, in the preceding chapter, noticed several...

All effective sculpture on buildings, including that of the human figure, is architectural carving; but it is in Gothic art only that sculpture of the human figure, as well as t...

On the north of the Alps the Renaissance had not the same meaning that it had in Italy, and in France, where its influence was first felt, the art naturally assumed a different...

Among the architects of the later French Renaissance Pierre Lescot and Philibert De l’Orme were preëminent. The change which they effected gave the French architecture a more ma...

When the need for feudal strongholds had passed, and the conditions of life in the open country had become peaceful, a type of domestic architecture arose in England which assum...

It is only by extension of the term that the architecture of England in the seventeenth century may be properly called Renaissance. But if, in architecture, we understand by Ren...

I think it must be clear, in the light of the foregoing considerations, that the architecture of the Renaissance is an art without consistent principles. We have seen that it as...

[39] Serlio, the architect (a younger contemporary of Bramante), _op. cit._, p. 33, tells us that Bramante, at his death, left no perfect model of the whole edifice, and that se...