Church Architecure of the Renaissance: Comparative Views by Pevsner, Fletcher, and Risebero

Church Architecture of the Renaissance

Nikolaus Pevsner, in an Outline of European Architecture, argues that the Renaissance was created for the merchants of Florence, bankers to the powerful Kings of Europe, the latter who embarked on Gothic building programs. Why the Renaissance emerged in Florence first, Pevsner attributes to a, “particular social situation coincided with a particular nature of country and people, and a particular historical tradition.” (174) Specifically, Pevsner argues that the location of Florence allowed a trading republic to flourish and the historical traditions of Etruscan art to hold an artistic legacy. The result of such prosperity was worldly, humanistic ideas rather than transcendental ones. These ideas, and the fact that Florentines were, “clear, keen, and proud” (175) allowed this particular culture to rediscover and adopt Roman Antiquity.

Bannister Fletcher, in A History of Architecture, focuses on the advances in technology and political situation as having a clearer effect on Florence being the genius loci of the Renaissance. He argues that three major advances- gunpowder, the mariner’s compass, and especially the printing press, propelled large shifts forward in Europe.The invention of printing led to the spread of knowledge and freedom of thought all over Europe. However, different places experienced different results. In Germany, this led to the Reformation and in Italy, this led to the Renaissance. This new freedom of thought and flow of information also compelled writers like Dante and Petrarch to rediscover classical texts. Their efforts were combined with a dire political situation: the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The fall of such a cosmopolitan and worldly city brought an influx of Greek scholars into Italy, and thus the knowledge that had been lost in Western Europe during the Middle Ages was rediscovered in Italy during this time. Most importantly for architecture, was the rediscovered work of Vitruvius, specifically De Architectura. Fletcher believed it was easy for the Florentines to find an immediate affinity with Classicism because the remnants of the ancient Roman Empire were literally all around them in ancestry, buildings, roads, and other structures. Without Gothic architecture or feudalism taking hold in Italy, the spirit of municipal enterprise emerged instead. Fletcher attributes the lack of Gothic building in Italy with a church-wide impetus to instead build during the Renaissance.

While both Pevsner and Fletcher entitled their respective chapters “Renaissance”, Bill Risebero, in The Story of Western Architecture, titled his chapter on the Renaissance “The Growth of Capitalism”. This is a clear indication of the driving force of this era, according to Risebero, and also a framework to interpret how such events unfolded. In countries like Germany, France, and Spain, the weakening of the Catholic Church ( due to many factors including the Great Schism of 1378) led royal or bourgeois patronage to become increasingly common in the church building process. Without power and money, the Catholic Church relied on the rich and powerful regional lords to contribute money for both structures, as well as influence. Rich lords and barons simultaneously built their own fortified castles alongside great cathedrals. Within their domains, these lords were producing massive amounts of raw materials to ship in and outside of Europe. It was Italy, the gateway between west and east, that pioneered modern commerce in this period. Italy gave loans, credit, and financial backing to northern Europe, while northern Europe supplied Italy with the raw materials needed to trade in the east. It seems logical to assume that incredible wealth was circulating. Indeed it was, but for a very small percentage. The gap was growing between rich and poor all over Europe. The Black Death, beginning in 1348, killed between 25-33% of the population in affected areas. Economically in the short term this devastated Europe. There was no one to work the fields, gather harvests, or engage in trade. However, the long-term effects were positive. Now stuck in an uncertain world, humanism grew in the arts, and defiance of accepted religious tenets grew amongst the educated and wealthy. Workers, now seeing labor at a premium, demanded more rights and better conditions. Like Fletcher, Risebero argues three developments propelled the Renaissance in Italy: the printing press, the rediscovery of an Imperial Roman past, and the rise of the new merchant aristocracy. With a weakened church and a thriving economy, this new class of people seized absolute power all over Italy. Each prince wanted to make their city the greatest and most powerful, so they provided patronage to artists of all kinds to improve their respective regions and bring prestige to the family and the city. In architecture, this was poignantly evident, and both great church and secular building developed.

Role of the Architect:

Pevsner argues that when Florence appointed Giotto, a famous painter, as the new master-mason to the cathedral and city, this marked the beginning of a new period in the professional history of architecture. The vastly wealthy and powerful Medici wanted their city's master-mason, the man in charge of all building, to be someone renowned, and Giotto was indeed famous- as a painter, not an architect. Great architects of this time were not typically architects by training; they were usually given positions outside of their craft simply because they were great artists. Cosimo Medici first called a painter, in recognition of his genius, divine. It would be Da Vinci who argued that painting and architecture should no longer be thought of as trade-arts, but rather as liberal arts. He demanded a new attitude from the patron, as well as a new attitude from artists concerning their own work. Leonardo believed artists should approach their craft from an academic manner. This academic spirit included the study of antiquities and rediscovery of the Roman Imperial past for artists in such fields of painting, sculpting, and masonry. Indeed, this academic approach not only encouraged study of the past, but also improvement of the present. With the discovery of the laws of perspective in 1425, painters and architects also sought to find rational proportions for their works and buildings. For the first time, we see an enthusiasm for space in the West, unknown or unseen in Antiquity.

Fletcher agrees that most architects were not ones by profession. Lacking the master-masons and designers that northern Europe had during the Middle Ages, Italy instead had skillful painters, sculptors, jewelers, and metal-workers such as goldsmiths and silver workers. Not only did these artisans consult architects on buildings, some of them would become architects themselves. Fletcher attributes this class of artisans to the people of Florence having “good taste.” This taste led to structures perceived and executed as works of art instead of simply the culmination of form and structural needs. He also argued that because of the wide use of artisans, the Renaissance became the “age of accessories.” Things like gold, iron, silver, tombs, monuments, altars, and fountains were highly regarded, built often, and considered special, individual stylistic features of the architect. Less concerned with the approach of architecture as an academic discipline, Fletcher argues that since most architects were trained in other areas, architects of the Renaissance were attracted by the external, sculptural quality of ancient Roman art; they saw the form as a simple vessel for the decoration. Construction, therefore, mostly followed the existing traditions of the Middle Ages, which did not separate the structure from the decoration. Their ignorance of Roman methods, such as forming the main walling of concrete and casing it with marble, stone, or brick was not followed. Instead, architects saw the building as a “picture with pleasing combinations of lines and masses than as a structure of utility.”

Risebero sees the profession of the architect through an economic lens, and the development between northern and southern Europe as far less admired by the ruling classes than our other authors posit. He argues that the medieval architect, no matter how gifted in his abilities, was prized as an asset to the wealthy, but still despised as a manual laborer. In 15th century Florence, the architect was not even really considered a profession in itself. An architect then had no choice but to approach it from one of the more recognized crafts: jewelry, silver-smithing, painting, sculpture, masonry, or carpentry. These positions were no longer inherited, as craft passed from generation to generation in the past, but rather had to be attained. Many artists fought viciously for their status: some refused to do any manual work whatsoever (instead they dedicated themselves to philosophy and natural science, more acceptable socially), while others married into nobility. With a higher status for the architect, came greater freedom of expression. In northern Europe, the architect lost something in this development. In the static, feudal society, the relationship between designer and user was better defined and closer. With the growth of capitalism, relationships became more complicated and more alienated. But in Florence, this alienation was not yet quite complete in the 15th century, architects in Florence enjoyed great independence, high status, and patronage from the merchant prince. What ensued was, “a great outburst of architectural achievement.” (121)

Renaissance Architecture versus Gothic:

In Renaissance architecture, the position of every detail of the building is determined, no shifting is possible, argues Pevsner. As a result, the viewer feels the contrast of Renaissance and Gothic sharply and distinctly. Buildings of the Renaissance are static, an aesthetic whole consisting of self-sufficient parts. In the Gothic tradition, an awareness of escalation is predominant everywhere. For example, the height of piers is not ruled by the width of bays or the depth of the capital in Gothic architecture- motif follows motif. “The beginning and the end are not fixed in time or space but are influenced by piety of generation after generation.” Like Renaissance architecture, the Romanesque is also static, it has clearly defined spatial units, walls are important in both the Renaissance and the Romanesque, but the Romanesque wall is inert as the architect seeks to express might and mass to the smallest detail possible. furthermore, sculptors did not rediscover the beauty of the human body in the Romanesque. In Renaissance architecture, the walls are active and dynamic, influenced by decorative elements which in their sizes and arrangement follow human reasoning. Arcades are lighter and more open, graceful columns seem animate, and the Renaissance keeps a human scale, it is never overwhelmed by size, evident in the sketch of the “Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo Da Vinci. However, Fletcher disagrees with Pevsner's concept of human scale in the Renaissance. Fletcher argues that the human figure is “abandoned as a scale, the statuary being often much larger than life-size” while the Gothic adheres to the human figure scale, “thus helping in giving relative value to parts.” (444) He gives us visual examples of the statuary of St. Peters in Rome. While Risebero is silent on that particular issue, his book explores class-based relationships, so would perhaps argue that the early Renaissance architect, less regarded as the divine artist as Cosimo Medici proclaimed, was more conscious of the relationship between user and design. In the High Renaissance and later however, with large church commissions such as St. Peters, the human scale is abandoned in order to bring godly scale to the structure. In what is called Mannerist architecture, proportions and scale are intentionally distorted and playful, but could only be done so by a group of architects with the utmost understanding of the basic rules of Classical and Renaissance architecture, including, notions of human scale.

All three authors agree that the classic orders were used largely in facades and courtyards, and general attempted conformity to the ideas of ancient Roman architecture. Fletcher argues that this departs from the Gothic, where columns and orders were purely structural. He also adds that color was achieved in the Renaissance not through stained glass, but rather through opaque decorations: frescoes and mosaics.


Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)

Lower Left: Sketch of Brunelleschi from (http://www.en.structure.de)
Lower Right: Presumed depiction in Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus, Masaccio (www.wikipedia.com)







All three authors mention Brunelleschi as Florence-born and trained as a goldsmith (although Risebero also claims him as a sculptor by trade). Risebero spends the most time detailing Brunelleschi’s rise to fame. He began his rise to stardom in 1401 by winning a competition entry for the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery. Both Fletcher and Risebero outline his subsequent interest in architecture, including his trip to Rome to study and sketch the monumental buildings, especially the features and construction of the Pantheon. This would have a considerable effect on his architecture. In 1418, Brunelleschi won a competition to complete the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore. He wanted to construct a dome over the crossing without using formwork, but a Florentine Board of Works was skeptical. To prove it could be done, Brunelleschi tried it out on a smaller scale at the church San Jacopo Oltrarno. Fletcher argues that Brunelleschi’s main objective in his career was to complete the unfinished dome over the Cathedral of Florence, but Risebero sees that as a very small feat for the architect. Ignoring earlier accomplishments, Pevsner’s story of Brunelleschi begins with the him being “chosen” to complete the cathedral of Florence by adding the dome over the crossing. Pevsner adds that the construction and shape of the dome is distinctly Gothic in character, while both Risebero and Fletcher focus on the Roman traditions within the dome. All three entertain the theory that Brunelleschi was the first to apply the laws of perspective to architecture, and they all certainly agree that he is the first one to use it prominently in building.


Santo Spirito, Florence Italy, Brunelleschi, 1428-1446


Image: Bannister Fletcher's sketch of Santo Spirito: detail of entablature, plan, and longitudal section. (p. 453)

Fletcher places San Spirito in context with other churches of the time, specifically with S. Lorenzo in Florence, built in 1425. Both are examples of churches on the basilican plan, with S. Spirito having aisles formed around the transepts and choir, a flat wooden ceiling to the nave, and a flat roof. Pevsner agrees but makes a clear connection to the Romanesque influences apparent in these features. Fletcher argues S. Spirito is probably the earliest instance where isolated fragments of entablature are placed on each column with the arches springing from these, but Pevsner sees a clear Roman connection in the bases and capitals of Corinthian columns and the entablature.


Image: Nickolaus Pevsner: photograph of the nave and altar of Santo Spirito (p. 179)

Pevsner refers to the niches of aisles also being Roman, with a twist. The nave is twice as high as it is wide, the ground floor and clerestory are of equal height. The aisles have square bays, ½ as wide as high, the nave has 4 ½ squares, with the odd half to be disposed of in a special way. The ground plan in S. Spirito departs from Romanesque or Gothic churches, and is, again, in a large, Latin cross plan.



Image: Nickolaus Pevsner: Plan of Santo Spirito (p. 178)

The transepts are identical with the choir, with an aisle running around all three, and a dome over the crossing makes us feel as if we are in a centrally planned church (very Roman, very un-medieval). Pevsner argues that these proportions contribute to the effect of a “serene order which the interior produces.” Risebero argues that the laws of perspective are clearly used in S. Spirito, and the church contains a “richness of spatial effect” that could have only come from rigorous preplanning.


Image: Bill Risebero: Plan and facade of Spirito Santo, with a plan of San Lorenzo for comparison (p. 125)

Both Pevsner and Risebero make note that Brunelleschi had an eclectic architectural style stemming from Classical, Gothic, and Romanesque influences. However, Renaissance design would eventually move from eclecticism to a heavily emphasized Classicism. This is best seen in the works of Leon Battista Alberti.


Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)





Left: Sketch of Alberti, published in ALBERTI, Leon Battista (1804) Della pittura e della statua, Societa Tipografica de' Classici Italiani, Milano

Right: Painting of Alberti from www.precinemahistory.com


All three authors spend a relatively large amount of time discussing the life of Leon Battista Alberti. Fletcher calls him a “scholar”, Pevsner a “brilliant dilettante”, and Risebero an “academic”. Alberti was accomplished in the areas of literature, music, athletics, painting, poetry, religion, philosophy, linguistics, among other fields. He is most notably and most often called, however, an architect. Yet as scholar James Beck argues “to single out one of Leon Battista's 'fields' over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti's extensive explorations in the fine arts."( 9) Despite the labeling problem, it is Alberti’s feats in architecture that most concerns us. Not surprisingly, Alberti came from a wealthy Florentine family and was well-educated. Pevsner argues that Alberti’s rise to fame marks a new type of architect in the history of the profession. Brunelleschi and Michelangelo were sculptor-architects, Giotto and Da Vinci were painter-architects, but Alberti was the “dilettante-architect”. Normally, a man of his means would have no interest in the degrading manual labor of an architect, but in the Renaissance world, architecture was seen as incorporating math, philosophy, and history. Alberti’s interest in architecture stemmed from reading Vitruvius. Inspired by the work and system behind the styles of Antiquity, he sought to revive it. Fletcher argues that this work largely “influenced men’s minds in favor of the revived Roman style.” Risebero notes that the study of Vitruvius led Alberti to publish his first book De Re Aedification (1485) and was the first author since Vitruvius himself to lay down a set of theoretical design rules for architecture. According to Fletcher, Alberti’s work exhibits more decorative treatment and is less massive than that of Brunelleschi.


Basilica di Sant'Andrea di Mantova, Mantua Italy, Alberti, 1462-1512

Alberti’s last work was S. Andrea in Mantua, but the church was not completed until 40 years after his death. The plan is a massive Latin-cross building.


Image: Bannister Fletcher's sketch of San Andrea in Mantua: plan, part longitudal section, and facade of porch (p. 465)

Fletcher marks this church as notable and important because it is the ‘type’ for all Renaissance churches. Pevsner calls it the illustration of an “all-pervading order.” The church consists of a single nave with transepts; the interior indeed reflects a single order on pedestals supporting a barrel vault.


Image: Nickolaus Pevsner's sketch of San Andrea in Mantua (p. 196)

The chapels alternate with the entrance vestibules. Fletcher argues that these take the place of the customary aisles on each side of the nave. Similar to S. Spirito, the east parts form a central composition, but the traditional nave and aisles have side chapels instead, making them not part of the eastward movement but rather a series of minor centers. The columns are replaced with pilasters. Crossing the nave with the transept is a dome on pendentives, forming the type in which future church work would be done. Windows light the interior of the base of the dome. Both Fletcher and Pevsner refer to the perfection of the proportions.


Image: Facade of San Andrea in Mantua from: http://architecturetraveljournal.blogspot.com/2008/02/santandrea-mantua.html


Fletcher calls S. Andrea one of the “grandest in style,” Pevsner refers to its “deeply restful harmony,” and Risebero calls it a “grand Roman character.”


Image: Bill Risebero's sketch of San Miniato, Santa Maria Novella, and San Andrea Mantua, visually comparing the development of the church facade in the Renaissance (p. 125)

The front façade is reminiscent of a Roman triumphal archway and Risebero visually traces the development of such a façade, the climax being S. Andrea Mantua where it became a total façade, only partially concealing the basilica behind.


Donato Bramante (1444-1514)



Sketch of Bramante from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donato_Bramante


In architecture, the period we call the ‘High Renaissance’ has specific meaning. It refers to the period where discovery and experimentation in architecture was over and architects instead worked within what Risebero calls an “accepted framework of knowledge and set formulae.” Scholars consider the three greatest architects of the High Renaissance to be: Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Donatello Bramante was the oldest of the three, and trained as a painter. Risebero illustrates his humble origins; he came from a poor background but his extraordinary talents allowed him to train as a painter in Urbino. Pevsner notes before going to Rome, he first traveled to Milan sometime between 1477-1480. His early work presupposes knowledge of S. Andrea in Mantua, and a connection to several sketches done by Leonardo da Vinci.


Image: Sketches completed by Leonardo da Vinci, most likely influenced the works of Bramante. (Pevsner p. 202)

In 1499, Bramante dramatically altered his style upon relocating to Rome. He eventually occupied the same position in Rome as Brunelleschi had in Florence. As stated previously, the Catholic Church was losing spiritual influence in this period, but were it lost in influence, it gained tremendously in wealth. Risebero argues that the Church used its vast wealth to demonstrate strong spiritual influence- in building form. Bramante was the main agent of that demonstration.


The Tempietto in the San Pietro in Montorio, Rome Italy, Bramante, 1502-1510



Image: Photograph of the Tempietto from: http://www.friendsofart.net/en/art/donato-bramante/tempietto

Fletcher refers to the Tempietto as a “perfect gem of architecture.” Pevsner refers to this structure as the “first monument of the High Renaissance” meaning that the structure has a more sculptural quality than an architectural one. Risebero calls it a “minor masterpiece”.


Image: Bannister Fletcher's sketch of the Tempietto: elevation and section (p. 468)

The structure is in the form of a small Roman temple and built in the courtyard of church of S. Pietro as a site to mark the spot on which St. Peter was supposedly crucified and subsequently martyred. Pevsner argues that it can be called a large reliquary, because Bramante wanted to alter the courtyard into a circular cloister to house the small temple. Its dimensions are small, 4.5 meters or 15 feet across internally. It is surrounded by a Doric peristyle, with a drum and dome on top. The columns are in the Doric Tuscan style; Bramante was the first to use this severe, unadorned order. Pevsner calls the structure initially “forbidding” due to the severe columns and the classical entablature that adds both weight and strictness.

The Tempietto lacks decoration of any kind except for the meotopes and shells in the niches. The proportions are perfect; they are simple and repeated in the lower and upper floors, giving this small “gem” a dignity far beyond its size. Pevsner proclaims, "space seems defeated here and Bramante has accomplished the ideal Renaissance expression of architectural volume." The Tempietto is a 16th century tribute to the Roman past, a conscious decision to emulate antiquity on part of the architect, and this fact all three authors can agree on.



Image: Bill Risbero's sketch of the Tempietto: section, plan, and sketch of building (p. 128)

A small, circular temple, Risebero argues, reflects an attempt to associate the church with the cosmos, and the most perfect symbol of the cosmos was that of a circle. While only thirty types of circular churches were created during the Renaissance, the Tempietto stands as one of architectural accomplishment; it dignifies both the Roman and Christian past, while placing the church in the context of a universal notion of the contemporary Catholic Church.


References:

Beck, James. "Leon Battista Alberti and the 'Night Sky' at San Lorenzo", Artibus et Historiae 10. No. 19 (1989:9–35)p. 9

Fletcher, Banister. A History of Architecture. 5th ed. London: Batsford, 1896. PDF.

Pevsner, Nikolaus. An Outline of European Architecture. [New York]: Penguin, 1978. Print.

Risebero, Bill. The Story of Western Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1997. Print.