History of Renaissance architecture
Contenido
La arquitectura renacentista se desarrolla a partir del siglo principalmente en Italia. Es común atribuir el lugar de génesis a la ciudad italiana de Florencia, ciudad donde el gótico apenas había penetrado, en el momento de la construcción de la cúpula de la catedral de Santa María del Fiore proyectada por Filippo Brunelleschi. Tal episodio no solo es un mero cambio en el perfil estilístico que predominaba en el escenario arquitectónico florentino, sino la demostración clara de la ruptura que vendría posteriormente en la propia forma de producir la arquitectura, abriendo camino para, no solo redescubrir el clasicismo, sino también para la promoción de la tratadística y para una teorización inédita sobre el tema. Son muchos los estudiosos que afirman que Brunelleschi construyó, de hecho, no solo una cúpula, sino el concepto de un nuevo tipo de arquitecto: altera las reglas de la construcción civil iniciando un proceso que, gradualmente, separará al proyectista del constructor.
Un hecho a destacar en la producción de Brunelleschi es que se manifiesta más importancia en el campo de la construcción que en el del estilo. Se asimila esto cuando se observa la obra en su conjunto, percibiéndose que, a pesar de querer seguir la canonización clásica, se produce un edificio que no es completamente comprometido con dichas reglas clásicas. Esto es causado por la carencia del arquitecto de conocimiento profundo de las normas clásicas, al que accedía más por la observación de las ruinas romanas existentes que por el estudio de los tratados.
Asimismo, Brunelleschi inicia una tradición que se separa al arquitecto de los antiguos gremios medievales y cuya profesionalización es cada vez más patente en la época, afirmándose como intelectuales alejados de la construcción propiamente dicha. Muchos críticos que analizan el fenómeno desde una óptica marxista identifican aquí el momento en el que la incipiente burguesía toma de las clases populares el dominio de los medios de producción (dejando éstas de poder construir y pasarán a poder diseñar), posibilitando así un proceso de explotación del proletariado por el capital "Capital (economía)"), que se recrudecerá durante la Revolución industrial.
Initial moment: the dome of Santa María del Fiore
The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, was initially executed in the late-Romanesque style, but its construction lasted several generations (it was begun in 1296 and at the death of Brunelleschi, in 1446, it had not yet been completed). It was not a planned building: its design and construction were carried out in parallel. Although there was a general plan for its shape and internal distribution, the construction details, as was common in medieval building practice, were being resolved as the construction progressed, in the work itself. Therefore, although the need to build a large dome over a certain point in the church pre-existed, its shape had not been decided beforehand. When the time came to erect it, the Florentine craftsmen found themselves with a 40-meter span, impossible to cover with traditional construction techniques.
The solution found in 1418, when the Republic of Florence already showed clear intentions to manifest its economic power in the city's architecture - with which the cathedral became, therefore, almost a visiting card - was to promote a kind of competition of ideas for the completion of the temple, which involved, of course, the solution to the problem of the dome. Filippo Brunelleschi, who was, at the time, a relatively renowned craftsman, accepted the challenge. To do this, he decided to travel to Rome in search of inspiration. Rome, in that period, was the place in the world where the ruins of classical antiquity were most visible, almost integrated into the landscape. The main source of inspiration for Brunelleschi was the Pantheon of Agrippa: a structure with a diameter similar to that of Santa Maria dei Fiori, topped with a full arch dome. Brunelleschi not only observed the construction solution used in the Pantheon, but also began to study the stylistic, proportional and formal relationships between the different elements that made up that space. And it was indeed this attitude that gave rise to the spirit of the Renaissance: an individual observes a certain reality through desire and intention with which he interferes in that ancient reality to look for useful solutions applicable to modern reality. Brunelleschi was not fully aware of classical theory, but he recognized a stylistic model that he would use to construct and devise his own architecture.
Upon his return to Florence, full of that experience with the classical world, Brunelleschi proposed a solution for the Florentine cathedral: a large 42-meter dome topped by a lantern, based on his research in Rome. But he did not limit himself to reproducing the Roman model, but proposed a totally innovative shape: his dome would be the first with an octagonal drum in the history of architecture. This dome has an aesthetic function (beautiful but austere, without giving a feeling of heaviness), but also an ideological function: it represents Christian unity. For its construction, Brunelleschi used a set of double domes, one internal and one external, formed by two layers built with two brick threads separated by a brick thread at the right angle, which advance in a spiral shape that makes the whole more rigid while configuring a space like an air chamber that gives lightness to the dome, at the same time drawing directing threads and topped with a lantern.
The Quattrocento: the mastery of classical language
Brunelleschi, therefore, will remain in the history of art as the person responsible for having traced the path that practically all Renaissance architects would follow to create their works. As has been said before, however, the Florentine architect did not have full knowledge of the different orders systematized in the classical language, which becomes evident when he ends up creating his own architectural language, in which the classical elements appear but do not respond to the ancient style.
The architects who followed this method outlined by Brunelleschi were, however, responsible for the full recovery of the classical language. The dominance of classicism was in fact achieved throughout the century (although its definitive systematization did not come until the publication of Sebastiano Serlio's treatise in the following century) and found its most paradigmatic figure in Donato Bramante. By then (especially after Alberti presented his theory of architecture in his treatise De re aedificatoria) the constitutive forms of Greek and Roman architecture as compositional possibilities were already more reliably known, and both their concrete solutions and the spatial synthesis typical of classical architecture were, in general, known. Thus, Renaissance architects had at their disposal all the creative potential offered by classical language and technique and the spirit of their time. The architectural language of the Renaissance was expressed through, not copies of the classics, but rather their improvement.
Two architects of Florentine palaces also stood out at this time: Michelozzo (Medici Riccardi Palace, 1444) and Bernardo Rossellino (Rucellai Palace, 1446-1451 - based on an initial design by Alberti-); and others around the Venetian core, such as Pietro Lombardo.
• - Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, renovation started in 1419, Filippo Brunelleschi.
• - Pazzi Chapel, 1441, Brunelleschi's last work.
• - Facade of Santa María Novella, Leon Battista Alberti, Florence, 1458-1470.
• - Malatestiano Temple of Rimini, Alberti, around 1450.
Bramante and the mature phase of the Renaissance
It is precisely in the work of Donato Bramante where this spirit is realized in a more complete way, which makes him the figure that represents the passage from Quattrocento to Cinquecento, in what is usually called the mature phase of the Renaissance. Bramante managed to demonstrate, through his projects in palaces or churches, that he not only knew the possibilities of classical language, but also understood the characteristics and atmosphere of his time, since he was able to apply ancient knowledge to a new, unprecedented, outstanding and, above all, classic form. His Tempietto or Templete de San Pietro in Montorio, in Rome (1502-1510), is practically a rereading (although not a copy) of the circular central plan temples, in turn derived from the Greek tholos, typical of a certain period of Roman architecture (for example, the Temple of Vesta, in the same city of Rome). The modest tempietto is almost a base model of the gigantic project (under construction since 1506) of the dome of Saint Peter, with a dome (42.5 meters) of dimensions comparable to that of the Pantheon (43.44 meters), that of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (32 meters) and that of Brunelleschi in Florence (41 meters). Later, in the Baroque era, the English architect Christopher Wren would in turn reread the work of Bramante and Michelangelo, and propose a new form in St. Paul's Cathedral in London (32 meters, 1676), and Francisco Cabezas and Francesco Sabatini did the same in the neoclassical era in San Francisco el Grande "San Francisco el Grande (Madrid)") (Madrid, 33 meters, 1760-1784); demonstrating the potential of the Renaissance creation process (which goes from the aesthetics of buildings to architectural thought), to adapt to new styles in later times.
Bramante also popularized another deeply classical form that was later developed and explored. It was inspired by the Roman triumphal arches and was brilliant for its compositional characteristics applied to the projects of palaces and villas, key pieces of the Renaissance in civil architecture.
The main image of this Bramantine style is found in the triads of openings adorned with arches, two of which are at the same height and with the largest central one, the so-called order plus arch system, based on the combination of the classical architectural order and the semicircular arch. Faced with the problem, then, of connecting two spatially similar entities but of different dimensions in the same unit, the solution was to use two systems of order plus arch of different dimensions following the rule that the extrados of the arch of the smaller dimension system was tangent to the lower molding of the entablature of the larger order.
The overcoming of the classics, always maintaining the search for classicism typical of the period, occurred especially to the extent that architects proposed classical spatial solutions for new projects (such as in large palaces, different from Roman constructions, or in new cathedrals or basilicas). Elements such as vaults and domes were used in a new way, and the orders (Ionic, Corinthian, etc.) characteristic of the architecture of Antiquity were used.
The Cinquecento: the overcoming of classicism
As the mastery of classical language evolved, a certain sense of formal liberation from the constricted rules of classicism grew in Renaissance architects, so that the eventual desire for improvement (which always existed to a greater or lesser extent) changed from being a fundamental element to being the fruit of the new production of these authors. Such a phenomenon, already considered as an announcement of the aesthetic movement that, years later, would take shape in the Baroque, would gain strength especially in the first decades of the century. The Cinquecento was a time when the intention to systematize the knowledge of the classical canons was completely surpassed, through the treatises of Sebastiano Serlio or Jacopo Vignola. Thus, the compositional elements of classicism were no longer used in buildings as experimentation "in search of the classic", but rather starting from their full consciousness, in "search of their innovation".
At first, the classical rules of composition were faithfully followed, but greatly expanding their scope of application. Classical rules were applied especially to large public works, large palaces and religious temples (buildings considered "noble", worthy of receiving the status of architecture according to the classical point of view). Therefore, new combinations of elements appeared. Andrea Palladio was the main exponent of this new way of working with classical language, as evident in his projects of "villas "Villa (Town)")" in the surroundings of Italian cities. Palladio's architecture was so peculiar and outstanding compared to that of his predecessors that his working method ended up creating a new style: Palladianism. This style is characterized by the application of the central floor in residential projects (such as villas) and by a certain type of synthetic ornamentation (called surface architecture), among other fundamentals. Palladio himself was the author of a fairly complete treatise on classical architecture, in which he explained his way of thinking and his perspective on this issue.
Mannerism: the great masters and the end of the Renaissance
Mannerism was the artistic movement produced during the Cinquecento and whose formation occurred in the first decades of the century and extended until the beginning of the century. It evidences the intention on the part of the architects, humanists and artists of the period of an art, which although in essence followed classicism, had a quite anti-classical content. In mannerism, therefore, constructive innovation is developed in confrontation with classical architecture, already fully known.
Once the impulse of the treatise, which provided a certain homogeneity to architecture through the imposition of certain rules, was spent, a new generation of architects emerged, strongly individualistic, which in fact represents a bridge between the Renaissance and the Baroque.
Michelangelo's architectural activity marked the culmination and overcoming of the classicism of the mature phase or of Bramante, and can be described as more classical in St. Peter's or in the Farnese Palace and more mannerist (for example in the famous staircase of the Laurentian Library). In a similar way to what happened in painting or sculpture (where the imitation of his maniera is clearer), the Italian architects of the mid-century, some of them leaving Rome when the sack and spread throughout the rest of the Italian cities, sought to challenge the classical canons. The main exponents of this new style were, in addition to the aforementioned Andrea Palladio and the Venetian nucleus, Giulio Romano (Tea Palace, Mantua, 1534), Bartolomeo Ammannati (renovation of the Pitti Palace, 1558-1570), Antonio Sangallo the Younger (Villa Farnese, Caprarola, 1559), Vasari (Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 1560-1581), or Jacopo Vignola with the Church of the Gesù (1568), this one in Rome, headquarters and exported model of the numerous Jesuit churches of the increasingly influential Company of Jesus, whose façade is due to Giacomo della Porta (1578, which later inspired Carlo Maderno).
In his works, references to classical compositional elements are constant, but in a "deconstructed" and almost ironic way. They convert decorative window patterns inside that should be placed outside, they play with the effects of optical illusion provided by perspective, through unusually sized volumes, etc. The same meaning, taken to an extreme, had the extravagant gardens of the Villa of Wonders, today Parco dei Mostri (Bosco Sacro di Bomarzo) in Bomarzo, in Lazio, by the architect and garden designer Pirro Ligorio.
The deepening of the characteristics of Mannerist constructions was the germ of the birth of the Baroque, which if superficially considered as a rupture of the classical ideal proposed by the Renaissance, really constituted the reaction to its exhaustion, already announced by Mannerism.