4.635 Renaissance Architecture

The textbook for this subject is Peter Murray. The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. New York (Schoken, 1986). It is a short essay on the material and should be read in the first two weeks of the semester to prepare you for the reading on key topics that will be discussed in class. Anyone wishing a more complete treatment should turn to L. H. Heydenreich and W. Lotz. Architecture in Italy, 1400 to 1600. Baltimore (Penguin, 1974). Wolfgang Lotz's section of this text, on the sixteenth century, is now available as a separate paperback. Two other books are available for purchase for this course at the Coop: James Ackerman's Michelangelo and his Palladio,

The subjects for the course and the sequence of lectures are listed below with the reading for each topic. All reading is on reserve at Rotch Library.  

Renaissance:
Gombrich, E. "From the Revival of Letters to the Reform of the Arts: Niccolo Niccoli and Filippo Brunelleschi." in Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. D. Fraser, H. Hibbard and M. J. Levine. London (1981).

The Architecture of the Italian Commune: Florence. John White, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1400 Baltimore (1966), pp. 170-173, 319-325.

Florence under Oligarchy:
A taste for architecture. Haines, M., "Brunelleschi and Bureaucracy: The Tradition of Public Patronage at the Florentine Cathedral," I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance, III (1989), pp. 89-125.
David Friedman, Monumental Urban Form in the Late Medieval Italian Comune: Loggias and the Mercanzie of Bologna and Siena," Renaissance Studies, XII, 3, pp. 325 - 339.

Filippo Brunelleschi.(2 lectures):
Eugenio Battisti, Filippo Brunelleschi, New York, 1981, chapter 1 (Brunelleschi and His World), ch. 3 (Hospital of the Innocents), ch. 5 (The Old Sacristy of S. Lorenzo).
H. Burns, "Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique," in Some Problems in Classical Influences on European Culture, R. R. Bolgar, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Rowland Mainstone, "Brunelleschi's Dome," The Architectural Review, September 1977, CLXII, no. 967, pp. 157-166.

Leone Battista Alberti (2 lectures):
R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles of the Age of Humanism, London, 1952, part 1.
Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance, New York, 2000, chapter 2 "Humanism: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Scholarship."
(For further reading: Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translation, J. Rykwert, N. Leach, R. Tavernor, Cambridge, 1988. Robert Tavernor, On Alberti and the Art of Building, New Haven and London [1998]. R. Krautheimer, "Alberti's Templum Etruscum" in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance Art, New York & London, 1969.)

Palaces:
Private Monuments and the City. Goldthwaite, R. A., "The Florentine Palace as Domestic Architecture," The American Historical Review, LXXVII, 4, October, 1972, 977-1012.

Giuliano da Sangallo and Francesco di Giorgio:
Heydenreich and Lotz, Architecture in Italy, 1400 to 1600. Baltimore (1974), chapter 7 (Urbino), ch. 13 (From the Quatrrocento to the Cinquecento).
Look at pictures: Il Libro di Giuliano da Sangallo, codice vaticano Barberiniano latino 4424,. ed. Cristiano Huelsen, Leipzig, 1910. (in restricted circulation at Rotch) and

Milan and Venice in the 15th century:
Heydenreich and Lotz, Architecture in Italy, 1400 to 1600. Baltimore (1974),chapter 9 (Venice), chapter 10 (Lombardy). (Ennio Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture, Cambridge (1998), pp. 114-174.)

Leonardo and Bramante at the Sforza court in Milan:
Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante, London (1977), chapter 3 (The Creation of the Organic Building), pp. 43 - 57.

Bramante in Rome. 2 lectures:
Bruschi, Bramante, London (1977), chapters 8 and 9. (The Tempietto, St. Peter's).

Raphael and Giulio Romano:
Imitation (of Antiquity) and Invention (Ornament). Heydenreich and Lotz, Architecture in Italy, 1400 to 1600. Baltimore (1974) chapter 15, Classical Architecgture in Rome: Raphael, pp. 167 - 177; chapter 20 Giulio Romano, pp. 227 - 233. J. Shearman, Mannerism, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1967, pp. 15-48.

Villa:
James Ackerman, The Villa, Form and Ideology of
Country Houses, Princeton, 1990, chapters 1 and 3. Claudia Lazzaro. The Italian Renaissance Garden, New Haven (1990), chapter 1 "Nature and Culture in the Garden," pp. 8 - 19.

Antonio da Sangallo:
Heydenreich and Lotz, Architecture in Italy, 1400 to 1600. Baltimore (1974), chapter 17 .James Ackerman, "Architectural Practice in the Italian Renaissance." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 13 (1954): 3-11. Reprinted with commentary and updated bibliography in Ackerman, James S. Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture. Cambridge, MA (MIT, 1991): chapter 12, pp. 361 - 384.

Drawings and Models:
Christph Frommel, " Reflections on the Early Architectural Drawings," in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo, eds. Henry Millon and Vittorio Lampugnani, Milan (1994), pp.101 - 122. Henry Millon, "Models in Renaissance Architecture," in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo, eds. Henry Millon and Vittorio Lampugnani, Milan (1994), pp. 19 - 74.

Architectural Treatises:
Paper Palaces. The rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise, eds. Vaughn Hart with Peter Hicks, New Haven, 1998, chapter 5 "Vitruvius in Print and in Vernacular Translation," by Ingrid Rowland, pp 105-121; chapter 8 "The Making of the Typographical Architect, by Mario Carpo, pp 158 - 169; chapter 11, " On Vignola's Rule of the Five Orders of Architecture, " by Richard Tuttle, pp199 - 218.

Michelangelo:
James S. Ackerman, Michelangelo, London: Zwemmer, 1961. (Pelican 1971.)

Rome in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century:
James Ackerman, "The Gesu in Light of Contemporary Church Design," in R. Wittkower and I. B. Jaffe, eds.,Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution, New York, 1972, pp. 15-28. Charles Burroughs, "Opacity and Transparency," Res, 41 (Spring 2002)56 - 71. Richard Tuttle, "Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola," in The Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, New York: Grove, 1996, vol. 32, pp. 502 - 508.

Venice in the Sixteenth Century:
Ennio Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture, Cambridge (1998), "The New Magnificence: The Cinquecento," pp. 173 - 236.
(for further reading. D. Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Venice, New Haven, 1975, pp. 1-61, and 120-157. M. Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, Cambridge, 1990, chapter 1. Wolfgang Lotz, Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture, Cambridge, 1977, Chapters 3 and 5.)

Palladio:
James Ackerman, Palladio, Hammondsworth (1966).

Archaeology, Antiquarianism, and Artistic License:
Anthony Grafton. "The Ancient City Restored: Archaeology, Ecclesiastical History, and Egyptology." in Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture. ed. Anthony Grafton. New Haven and London (Yale University Press, 1993): 87 - 124. Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance, New York, 2000, chapter 7, " His Lost City, " pp. 225 - 260. Christoff Thoenes, Patterns of Transumption in /Renaissance Architectural Theory, in Antiquity and its Interpreters,f ed. A. Payne, A. Kuttner, and R. Smick, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 191-6. Linda Pellechia, "Architects read Vitruvius: Renaissance Interpretations of the Atrium of the Ancient House," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, LI (1992), pp. 377-416.

Renaissance and Gothic:
R. Wittkower, Gothic vs. Classic. Architectural Projects in Seventeenth-Century Italy, Now York (1974), pp. 19 - 21, 83 - 88 and chapter 4 "San Petronio at Bologna and Florence Cathedral," pp. 65 - 81. Anne-Marie Senkowich"A Reconsideration of French Renaissance Church Architecture,' in L'eglise dans l'architecture de la Renaissance, ed. A. Chastel and J. Guillaume, Paris: Picard, 1995, pp. 161 - 180.