Characteristics Of Renaissance Architecture

INTRODUCTION

The word Renaissance it’s used to indicate the cultural renewal’s stage, inspired by the ancient, which has its origins around the second decade of 16th century in Florence and three Florentines are the initiator and leading exponents: Brunelleschi regarding architecture, Donatello and Masaccio for sculpture and painting.

This cultural awakening has been prepared since the previous century by the literary and philosophical humanism conquests and by a recent interest in the culture of classical antiquity ( Argan,2008 ).

The transition from the Gothic to Renaissance should be contextualize as a part of a cultural transformation, much broader artistic needs. It coincided with the end of the Middle Ages which contemplated religious

In fact today the Renaissance architecture appears more heterogeneous than Romanesque or Gothic although most were based on static rules that aesthetic.

The search of proportionality is not applied only to the raise of building (elevations and sections) but also to the plants. The type that most interested him was the central plan. This became more regular: could be inscribed in a circle, which was regarded as pure geometric shape and aesthetically valid.

The churches, therefore, were designed with Greek cross plan and no longer Latin, but also the buildings or their courtyards, tended more and more to the square. Precocious example was the San Lorenzo’s old sacristy by Filippo Brunelleschi, but most of all from the 1500s the ‘Tempietto of S. Peter in Montorio’ by Donato Bramante, the ‘Church of San Biagio’ in Montepulciano, ‘Santa Maria della Consolazione’ in Todi (Bartolini,Bozzoni,Carbonara,Cerulli,Scalesse,White

If in fact the medieval churches were based on the principles of position immensely small of man against the infinite magnificence of divine and to this end favoured in building the vertical pattern and magnitude size, the Renaissance buildings were turned instead to represent a space on a human scale, practicable and rational in which the triumph harmony. In fact buildings designed and built by Filippo Brunelleschi it’s always possible trace the architectural application of geometric principle such as symmetry and balance of the composition, obtained by the rhythmic repetition of building modules or decorative.

Among the architectural elements derived from Roman Buildings, were introduced to the central plan (in the temple of S.Pietro in Montorio by Bramante), the arch barrel (in the Cappella Pazzi by Alberti), the coffered dome as in the Pantheon (in interior of S.Andrea in Mantova by Alberti), the columns in different styles (in San Lorenzo by Brunelleschi and the Venetian churches made by Colucci).