Italy

Santa Maria Novella (Florence) was founded as a Dominican church in the mid-13th century. The facade was never completed above the main floor; the vaulted (curved) central roof and sloping roofs of the side aisles projected above the facade. Santa Maria Novella was the parish church of the Rucellai family, who commissioned Alberti to create a facade for the upper level. Renaissance architects were often asked to complete or restore medieval buildings. using his modular system of proportions, Alberti designed a facade that complemented the original design in shape and color, using green and white marble in striped patterns (c. 1458-70). The upper level was finished with a classicizing pediment above the frieze with its inscription, and with a gable on each side topped by a long, sloping scroll. The latter feature became a popular component of Renaissance facades designed in antique style.

Architecture and Urban Planning

4.4 Coffered ceiling in the porch of the Pazzi Chapel, 15th century, Florence, Italy. (Courtesy of Sandra Sider)

The Pazzi Chapel (Florence), probably by Michelozzo, functioned as a chapter house for meetings of members of the Franciscan order at the Church of Santa Croce. Commissioned by Andrea de’Pazzi, a wealthy Florentine and enemy of the Medicis, the building was his family burial chapel. Opening onto a courtyard, the Pazzi Chapel is a rectangular domed structure featuring a porticoed entrance and porch with triple-vaulted ceilings. The central ceiling of the porch is lavishly decorated in polychromed tiles, and both of the lateral barrel-vaulted ceilings are handsomely coffered in squares of Renaissance floral and geometric motifs. The interior coffered ceilings, in barrel-vaulted bays on each side, echo the design of the porch. With cream-colored stuccoed walls, darker geometric detailing, and glazed terra-cotta rondel reliefs of the apostles in blue and white, the interior of the Pazzi Chapel is a scintillating example of 15th-century architectural design. Michelozzo added an innovative touch in four large polychromed rondels of the Evangelists installed in pendentives supporting the dome. The curved ornamentation and structure of the chapel, including arches inscribed around the walls and rondels on the doors, unify the space, making it both vibrant and serene. The Pazzi Chapel is a jewel of Renaissance architecture.

Bramante’s 1502 Tempietto for the Church of San Pietro in Montorio (Rome) was a revolutionary structure. Loosely based on Roman models such as the Pantheon, the round Tempietto is only 15 feet in diameter. Nonetheless, with its lofty dome and deep niches, it is a powerful memorial to the martyr Saint Peter. The effect of the Tempietto is iconic, in that it was meant to be experienced as a three-dimensional image from the outside, more than as a structure that one entered.

Andrea Palladio, who published Le antichitd di Roma (The antiquity of Rome) in 1554, designed three churches for the Republic of Venice between 1562 and 1577. They all have classical porticoes like those on ancient temples, a Renaissance style that was seen as essentially Palladian. One of these churches, San Francesco della Vigna, is remarkable for its use of inscriptions. Palladio designed the facade in 1564, for a church built 30 years earlier from Sansovino’s plans. (The committee approving Sansovino’s design included Serlio, then living in the Veneto.) The grand bronze lettering on the facade, combined with the statuary, comprises an emblematic text indicating that the church was modeled on the “temple” of the human body. Relating structures and texts to the human body was a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism.