Summary
Highlights
The 15th century saw Florence become the epicenter of artistic vanguard, initiating the Renaissance. Oligarchic states and aristocratic families like the Medici and Sforza funded this creative revival, shifting artistic patronage from solely religious devotion to also demonstrating power and prestige. This commercialization elevated artists from guild members to recognized authors.
Humanism, placing humans at the center of the universe, rooted the Renaissance in classical Greco-Roman culture. Vitruvius's 'De Architectura,' the only surviving treatise from classical antiquity, posited that architecture imitates nature and perfects construction, with the human body as the ultimate artwork. His proportional canon of the human body, later illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, laid the foundation for Renaissance architecture.
Filippo Brunelleschi, a pivotal architect, developed linear perspective around 1413, allowing realistic representation of objects in space based on the viewer's position. Unlike Gothic cathedrals that directed gaze upwards, Brunelleschi's designs ensured the building was comprehensible from a human perspective. His most famous work is the innovative double-domed, brick cupola of the Florence Cathedral, inspired by the Roman Pantheon.
Renaissance architecture favored basic geometric forms like squares and circles, influencing centrally planned churches that served as chapels due to limited capacity. Leon Battista Alberti, the first artistic theoretician of the Renaissance, detailed the link between architecture and mathematics in 'De re aedificatoria.' He redesigned the Gothic Basilica of Santa Maria Novella's façade using perfect musical proportions and added consoles to conceal side-nave heights, a solution later widely adopted. His San Andrés church in Mantua broke from traditional basilical forms with a single nave and lateral chapels, covered by a barrel vault.
Entering the 16th century, Renaissance buildings achieved greater grandeur, consciously evoking the monumental constructions of Imperial Rome.