Key Characteristics of Quattrocento Art and Architecture

Quattrocento Architecture: Brunelleschi and Alberti

Constructive Elements

• The arch
• The barrel vault, sometimes decorated with lacunars
• Columns and pilasters with classical orders
• The semi-dome
• Emphasis on central plans, symmetry, and regularity

Ornaments

• Medallions or roundels
• Rusticated blocks
• Garlands
• Balustered columns
• Shell motifs (conchas)
• Grotesques (fantastic mixtures of humans, animals, and plants)

Quattrocento Sculpture: Ghiberti and Donatello

Characterized by slenderness of proportion and linear elegance derived from the International Gothic style, with a taste for the anecdotal. There is a preference for sculpture in the round using marble and bronze, focusing on light, space, and volume.

• Sculpture becomes independent of architecture
• Great interest in man as an individual; focus on anatomy and expressiveness
• Marked naturalism
• Implementation of perspective
• Geometrically simple formal schemes
• Prevalence of curved lines
• Tendency toward monumentalism
• Return to equestrian monuments

Quattrocento Painting: Angelico, Masaccio, Piero, and Botticelli

Building upon the renewal initiated by Giotto, 15th-century Italian painting features the following characteristics:

• The human being is the main theme, whether nude or clothed, at rest or in motion
• Maximum naturalism in representation
• Use of perspective to provide figures with corporeality
• Incorporation of new techniques, such as oil painting in the second half of the century, and the use of canvas as a support
• Continued use of mural painting, wooden panels, and tempera (colors dissolved in water with egg or glue)
• Use of chiaroscuro
• Dominance of design over color
• Use of formal schemes
• Monumental forms, shifting toward dynamism in the second half of the century
• Growth of portraiture and classical architectural landscapes
• Religious themes remain dominant in frescoes and altar tables, alongside mythological and secular subjects in palace frescoes

In Quattrocento painting, we can distinguish four schools, with the Florentine school being the most prominent.