How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

The qualities which it exhibits are a direct reflection of the influence of the classic literary revival. The latter encouraged mental qualities of logic and orderliness and an appreciation for beauty that was characterised by precise taste and exacting refinement. And, just as Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto on their foundation of classic learning built the beginnings of a literature in the native tongue—the first natural expression of the Italian genius, liberated by the study of antiquity to new ideals of their own modern life—so it was with the artists. Having graduated from the school of the past, they applied what they had learned to meeting the needs and conditions of their own day.

Perfection of Detail.—Again, just as Petrarch and Boccaccio and their followers in literature devoted themselves to perfection of expression, so the architects of the Renaissance were distinguished by the exquisiteness of the details they introduced into their designs. They were, in the first analysis, individualists, so that the great ones—and they were numerous—created individual styles. But, further, they brought the keenness of their Italian intellect and the consummate refinement of their taste to the disposition and actual execution of the details. It has been said—and one may believe the truth of it—that “the layman is not capable of appreciating the refinements and the clearness of their mouldings, and the vigour and strength their virile natures put into their silhouettes.”

Individualism being the characteristic of the Italian architects of the Renaissance, we will enumerate the most important personalities.

PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS OF THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL

Brunelleschi.—Among the first of these deliberate students of antiquity was the architect Brunelleschi. He was born in Florence in 1379 and displayed early a talent for mechanical construction. Accordingly his father apprenticed him to the Gild of Goldsmiths. He quickly became a skilled workman and acquired a knowledge of sculpture, perspective, and geometry. During a visit of some five years to Rome, the chief repository of classic remains, he made a profound study of architectural construction, especially as illustrated in the dome of the Pantheon, the vaulted chambers of the baths, and the use of successive orders of columns in the exterior of the Colosseum.

Returning to Florence, he entered into deliberation with the city council to erect the Dome of the Cathedral. It crowns, like his Milan cathedral dome, an octagonal plan. A design for it, which is pictured in a fresco in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, had already been prepared by Arnolfo di Cambio, the first architect of the cathedral and the designer of the Palazzo Vecchio. Brunelleschi deviated from it by raising the dome upon an octagonal drum, pierced with circular windows, thereby securing the impressiveness of additional height, while preserving the lightness of effect. He undertook to erect the dome without the great expense of timber centerings, and accomplished the feat, it is said, by placing voussoirs one above another with horizontal joints.

The dome is composed of an inner and an outer shell of brickwork, reinforced by eight main and eight intermediate ribs. It is 138 feet wide, with a height from the spring of the drum to the eye of the dome of 135 feet. The lantern was added after Brunelleschi’s death, from the design he had prepared. This dome is not only a monument to the genius of its creator, but scarcely rivalled in beauty by any other work of the Renaissance. That of St. Peter’s may be a prouder and more imposing structure, but it is more sophisticated in its use of classic details lacking the grand simplicity of Brunelleschi’s—the natural nobility, if one may say so, of a thing that has grown to life. It may be less stately, but is more companionable; less imposing, but more intimately inspiring. The contrast between the two domes reveals in a remarkable way the difference between the dawn of the Renaissance and its high noon.

Brunelleschi’s churches in Florence include S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, both of which are on a basilican plan, with elevations that involve modifications of Roman construction. The former is barrel vaulted in the Roman manner, but the nave ceiling of S. Spirito is of wood and flat. The dome of the latter is erected upon pendentives which henceforth were employed on all Renaissance domes. Brunelleschi’s choicest ecclesiastical design, however, is the Pazzi Chapel in S. Croce—a dome over a square compartment, entered through a colonnade. He introduced columned arcades into cloisters and palace courts and used them also as features of the arcade in the Loggia S. Paolo and the Ospedale degli Innocente or Foundling Hospital.

The two lower stories of the main front of the Pitti Palace were designed by Brunelleschi, who also carved the fine crucifix in the Santa Maria Novella. He died in 1446 and was buried in the Cathedral of Florence.

Michelozzo.—Michelozzo, born in Florence in 1391, was the son of a tailor and became a pupil of Donatello. He worked in marble, bronze, and silver, one of the examples of his sculpture being the young S. John over the door of the cathedral. As an architect he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici, for whom he built the Riccardi Palace, which was the earliest example of stately domestic architecture in Florence and proved a model for subsequent Tuscan palaces. During a temporary exile of his patron he accompanied him to Venice, where he designed the Library of San Giorgio. When in 1437 Cosimo bestowed the Monastery of San Marco on the Dominican monks of Fiesole, Michelozzo was employed to remodel it, erecting, among other features, the beautiful arcaded cloisters, which no doubt inspired the architectural details in Fra Angelico’s picture of “The Annunciation.” At his death, which appears to have occurred in 1472, he was buried in San Marco.