Early Exponents
An active agent in this revival was Brunelleschi, a native of Florence, who in company with Donatello, visited Rome to study the remains of classical antiquity. His principal successor, Leo Battista Alberti, contributed largely to the new style. Ultimately the Roman Orders and their details were appropriated and adapted to local requirements.
The most prominent artists of the day turned their attention to the designing and making of wood-work, and the decoration of rooms.
No. 76. Strozzi Palace, Florence.
The earlier work is severely architectural in character, being closely based on the antique, with all the usual features of columns, pilasters, cornices and pediments.
The greatest achievement of the architects of the Renaissance was perhaps their adaptation of the antique Roman style to the modified needs of secular buildings, of which the Palazzo Pitti at Florence by Brunelleschi is an early and notable example. This creating a form of architecture which perhaps reached its noblest expression in the Palazzo Strozzi, begun in 1489 A.D. by Benedetto da Majano.
As previously suggested, climate and local material are essential agents in the formation of style, and from Tuscany stone of large size was easily obtainable.
No. 77. Pandolfini Palace, Florence.
The contentious conditions existing in many of the Italian cities, entailing necessity for defence, must also be taken into account, and in connection with the foregoing were responsible for the massive and fortress-like construction of the principal dwellings of this period.
In the best examples of these, though columns and pilasters were not employed in the façade, the stories are proportioned as if the orders were used. The crowning cornice, however, is proportioned to the whole, varying in height between one fourteenth to one fifteenth.
From Florence the movement spread to Rome and other cities, but Venetian Renaissance indicates undoubted evidence of Lombardic influence.
Until the end of the fifteenth century the period was one of experiment, but from 1500 to about 1560 the style may be said to have attained a phase distinct and local.
At first the various features, structural and decorative, were frank reproductions from the antique, which were studied and measured, and from which systems of proportion were deduced by various exponents, among whom the names of Vignola, Palladio and Serlio are conspicuous.