Leon Battista Alberti and the Palazzo Rucellai Architecture

The Work of the Palace

The Rucellai family commissioned the building of their palace from the Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had worked for this family. The building rose at mid-century and is a work from the first stage of his career.

The Artist

Although most of Alberti's extant works are religious buildings, the design of the Palazzo Rucellai is key in his production. Alberti sought, through the articulation of the facade and decorative elements, to propose a new system distinct from the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, which was for many years the model for the enriched Florentine bourgeoisie.

Formal Analysis

On the facade, Alberti maintains the essential characteristics of Florentine palaces: rustication (padding), organization on three floors, and a ground floor for commercial purposes. However, the organization of the facade is new and much more elaborate. It not only emphasizes the horizontal division, as usual, but also creates vertical divisions, forming a grid of entablature and pilasters that sorts and organizes the surface without falling into monotony. He applied the principles outlined in his theoretical treatises, superimposing different orders and carefully studying the ratios.

The ground floor has high ceilings and, to maintain the size of the pilasters, Alberti designed a continuous bench (bank run) that closes the front at the bottom, just as the cornice does above. The textures of the facade—wall padding, flat pilasters, entablature with moldings, and reliefs carved into the bench in lozenges—create soft lighting contrasts that give variety to the flat facade.

Meaning and Significance

Alberti applied the classical vocabulary of the city palace to the Florentine big bourgeoisie and created a facade full of rhythm and proportion. The work has a representational function and points to the power and importance of the family, not through the size or wealth of materials, but through the prestige of beauty, as was common in Renaissance palaces. The building is united by the principles of proportion, symmetry, and harmony that characterize the work of Alberti. Everything is measured until the end, so it is difficult to make changes without disrupting the original design scheduled for the building by the artist.