Renaissance Architecture: Alberti, Bramante & Key Works

Classified in Physics

Written at April 1, 2025 on English with a size of 4.6 KB.

Santa Maria degli Angeli (Florence)

(Demolished after 3 years)

Blended integration and relation of elements.
Centralized floorplan: Representing an aesthetic ideal and an expression of the order of the universe – absolute symmetry.
Surrounded by a world of well-proportioned beauty.
Relation with Villa Rotonda; centralized building as a key urban form.

An urban palace where the facade is an important aspect.
The wall treatment softens and smooths in the upper levels, representing the wealth of the Medici family.
Exterior conveys solemnity, giving higher status to the city as well.
Features a very heavy cornice at the top.

Had extensive contact with Florentine Humanists; friend of Brunelleschi and the Pope.
Attempted a theoretical systematization of the arts.
Viewed statues as perfectly mathematical and scientific representations of the human form.
Authored De Re Aedificatoria (The first major architectural treatise after Vitruvius).
Believed architecture occupies the highest hierarchy of human values: Necessity, Comfort, Pleasure, Harmony.
Stated: "Beauty consists in the reasoned harmony of all the parts of a body."

Facade treated as a surface to unify the building.
Features pilasters framing windows.
Superposition of classical orders for each level: Tuscan, Corinthian (adapted), Composite (adapted).
Internal floor levels did not match the divisions of the orders on the facade; they were completely independent.
Concept: All things can be understood as surfaces.

Applied an external, unrelated skin to an existing church (San Francesco).
New facade features sepulchral niches on the side facades (no relation with the old structure).
Main facade based on a Roman Triumphal Arch motif, framed with semi-columns.
(Never finished)

Flat facade incorporating a large Triumphal Arch motif.
Demonstrates superposition of the facade onto the architectural body.
The triumphal arch motif is extruded inwards to form the barrel vault covering the central nave.
Side naves are replaced by chapels framed with pilasters.

Bramante's first significant work in Milan.
The exterior expression of the choir is represented as a flat surface.
Features an famous Illusory Choir (painted perspective creating the illusion of a deep choir space).
Considered an early example of a Greek Cross church within a square plan in the Renaissance.

Financed by the Spanish monarchs.
A martyrium designed as a space turning around itself, covered with a hemispherical dome.
Generates volume through convexity (dome, columns) and concavity (niches).
Elevated on a three-step podium.
Surrounded by 16 Doric columns.
Features small niches carved into the wall behind the columns, projecting the cella (inner chamber).
Exhibits carefully considered proportional sections.

A large complex connecting St. Peter's Basilica with the Pope's Palace (Vatican Palace).
Connection achieved through long corridors framing a central open space.
Horizontal corridors were designed to absorb the significant topographical difference between the two points.
Featured three levels employing different classical orders.
Served as both a garden and a space for the papal collection of antiquities (early museum concept).

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