Renaissance architecture

Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. 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. The style was carried to other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact.

Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts, as demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples remained. Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches and aediculae replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.

(c. 1400–1500)

Quattrocento

The first treatise on architecture was ("On the Subject of Building") by Leon Battista Alberti in 1450. It was to some degree dependent on Vitruvius's De architectura, a manuscript of which was discovered in 1414 in a library in Switzerland. De re aedificatoria in 1485 became the first printed book on architecture.

De re aedificatoria

(1475 – c. 1554) produced the next important text, the first volume of which appeared in Venice in 1537; it was entitled Regole generali d'architettura ("General Rules of Architecture"). It is known as Serlio's "Fourth Book" since it was the fourth in Serlio's original plan of a treatise in seven books. In all, five books were published.

Sebastiano Serlio

In 1570, (1508–1580) published I quattro libri dell'architettura ("The Four Books of Architecture") in Venice. This book was widely printed and responsible to a great degree for spreading the ideas of the Renaissance through Europe. All these books were intended to be read and studied not only by architects, but also by patrons.

Andrea Palladio

List of Renaissance structures

Alberti, Leon Battista. 1988. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykwert. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Anderson, Christy. 2013. Renaissance Architecture. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

Buddensieg, Tilmann. 1976. "Criticism of Ancient Architecture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." In Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500–1700, 335–348. Edited by R. R. Bolgar. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Hart, Vaughan, and Peter Hicks, eds. 1998. Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Architectural Treatise in the Renaissance. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

Jokilehto, Jukka. 2017. A History of Architectural Conservation. 2d ed. New York: .

Routledge

Koortbojian, Michael. 2011. "Renaissance Spolia and Renaissance Antiquity (One Neighborhood, Three Cases)." In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture, from Constantine to Sherrie Levine. Edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 149–165. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

Serlio, Sebastiano. 1996–2001. Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. 2 vols. Translated by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

Smith, Christine. 1992. Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence 1400–1470. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Waters, Michael J. 2012. "A Renaissance Without Order Ornament, Single-Sheet Engravings, and the Mutability of Architectural Prints." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71:488–523.

Tafuri, Manfredo. 2006. Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Wittkower, Rudolf. 1971. Architectural Principles In the Age of Humanism. New York: Norton.

Yerkes, Carolyn. 2017. Drawing after Architecture: Renaissance Architectural Drawings and their Reception. Venice: Marsilio.