 The Renaissance was a period not so much of

rebirth as of revival, a conscious attempt to look

back beyond the immediate past to the classical
age of Greece & Rome.
 Its obvious characteristics are the use of simple
geometrical forms, based largely on the circle &
square & the use of the classical orders both
structurally & for decoration.
 The most important gift to the Renaissance from the
classical world, via Vitruvius, was the theory of
proportions.
 Man was the measure, so that all dimensions were
related to the human scale-something that fitting in
very well with current humanistic thinking & all
dimensions were related to one another in simple
arithmetic proportions.
 Leon Battista Alberti (Italian: 1404 –1472): Alberti born
in Genoa in 1404 in a noble Florentine family & was
educated at the university of Padua.

 Alberti was an Italian humanist, a brilliant theorist, a

classical scholar, historian, scientist, artist, poet, priest, a
mathematician, philosopher and as a writer left an
important body of treatises, essays, plays, poems &
letters before he turned to architecture.
 Alberti’s talents were two fold.
 First of all he had the Latin to read Vitruvius’s surviving
classical treatise on architecture &
 Secondly he had the scholastic training to formulate
rules in his own treatise.

 The text of Vitruvius’s treatise on architecture, known but

only partially understood in the Middle Ages, was
compared with Roman buildings by Alberti & edited by
scholar archaeologists.
 The work of art is, according to Alberti, so constructed
that it is impossible to take anything away from it or add
anything to it, without impairing the beauty of the whole.

 Beauty was for Alberti "the harmony of all parts in

relation to one another," and subsequently "this
concord(unity) is realized in a particular number,
proportion and arrangement demanded by harmony.
 The approach to antiquity of Leon
Battista Alberti was far more
archaeological: comparing Roman
buildings with Vitruvius’s text, he
introduced specific ancient features
such as the triumphal arch & the
temple front into his churches.
He took care to combine arch
with pier & column with straight
entablature in the Roman manner.

 According to Alberti the task of an

architect is primarily two fold.
1) Design &
2) Execution of the building.
 In 1435, Alberti wrote the first general treatise on the
laws of perspective, De pictura (On Painting) in Latin, in
which he emphatically declares the importance of
painting as a base for architecture.
In this treatise he explains the theory of the
accumulation of people, animals, and buildings, which
create harmony amongst each other with a certain
sense of pleasure and emotion.
In this treatise set forth for the first time the rules for
drawing a picture of a three-dimensional scene upon the
two-dimensional plane of a panel or wall.
 Alberti emphasized the intellectual requirements for the
practice of architecture- theoretical as well as practical
knowledge, the mastery of geometry, mathematics,
philosophy, classical culture etc. through which a
craftsman would “promote” himself to architect.

 He defined the classical orders

& their use for various kinds of
buildings.
 Alberti introduced a new
element to distinguish the
three floors by the three orders
Doric, Ionic & Corinthian from
bottom to top.

 Integration of classical features

with a structure organized
according to harmonious
proportions can be seen in his
buildings.
 Ex: The facade, Palazzo Rucellai, 1455-70, Florentine
It was a remodeling of old building with a new
facade by using classical features by Alberti.

The first domestic building articulated with classical

orders- Doric for the ground floor & two varieties of
Corinthian for the upper storey.

The use of the orders is purely ornamental.

 Flat, regular, precisely cut stone blocks are overlaid
by a grid formed horizontally by running entablatures &
vertically by smooth pilasters nearly level with the ashlar,
dividing the surface into almost equal bays.

The Palazzos were usually

astylar (no orders) but he made
use of the orders in the facades.
 Alberti’s ingenuity in pairing a new facade with an older
structure illustrates the practical side of his nature, his
easy adaptability to reworking & rebuilding as well as
building a new.
Ex: The facade of Santa. Maria Novella, Florence, 1456
– 70.
The facade of Santa Maria Novella (1458-71) is
considered his greatest achievement since it allows the
pre-existing and newly added parts of the building to
merge into a clear statement of his new principles.
The facade provides a new solution to the problem
of broad lower storey & a narrower top storey by joining
them with large curved scrolls or volutes.
 On the facade he used his favourite ancient image
the pedimented temple front (pilasters, entablature,
trabeation & triangular pediment) become the prototype
of Renaissance facade to a basilican church &
enormously influential for several centuries.
 Alberti’s churches in Mantua are reinterpretations of
ecclesiastical architecture in antique terms. It fulfills
many of his ideas about sacred architecture, though it
was largely constructed after his death.
Ex: The facade, S. Andrea Mantua, Begun, 1472.
Alberti’s own buildings were chiefly churches. Alberti
had recourse not to temples but to triumphal arches for
his new churches.
 On the facade he combined two of his favorite
ancient images-
 The pedimented temple front (pilasters, entablature,
trabeation & triangular pediment).
 The triadic triumphal arch (arched central section &
lower portals on either side).
 Facades of Alberti, like painting become an exercise in
2-Dimensional surface decoration.

 ornament as a separate form from structure. Structure

could be hidden in favour of appearance.

In Greek Architecture, Structure & ornament always

very well integrated, but Romans used pilasters to hide
the structure. Alberti was in favour of Romans, so he
used pilasters to hide the structure.
 Palladio’s was not simply theoretical knowledge, he had
been an active professional since his early years as a
stonemason & what he learned from study he put it into
practice.