Renaissance

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe. Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals and restrained naturalism associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo. Mannerism is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities

The mannerist style of architecture is often seen as setting the stage for the advent of the far more lavish and extravagant style of architecture known as the Baroque, which emerged in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century.

Commentary

Brunelleschi. The father of Renaissance?

One of the phrases I read most often when authors describe Brunelleschi contribution to architecture is order and linear perspective. Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters, semicircular arches, hemispherical domes and niches culminating in strong clear lines seemingy converging on an invisible spot in the distance. It brought depth, order, clarity and a sense of cohesion almost to the point that you could believe that that his buildings were solving a mathematical puzzle in a way that the irregular Gothic architecture could not. His use of perspective can be seen in Foundling Hospital in Florence and the use of engineering acumen in the dome of Florence Cathedral

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Sutton observes (p126) that the Rennaisance could not ne understood in purely archtectural terms. Brunelleschi may gave been inspired by rennaissance artists use of Approximate Perspective and while his use of classical architectural elements were not unique they assembled in innovative ways. While he may be the father of early Renaissance, Brunelleshi might not be described as it most didactic proponent. He was in some ways a transitional figure who employed some Gothic features (Florence Cathedral) as well as drawing inspiration from the classical and it was left to Alberti to codify and the rules of classical architrcture that enabled other architects to gain inspiration inspired and it was he who applied the rules most consistently. Ultimately, Sutton goes on to say (p136) that there was never a Golden Age of Renaissance Architecture orthodoxy and many (Mannerists) artists like Michelangelo sought to subvert and distort the rules to create yet more beauty. Yet Brunelleschi can still be thought of as more than just a milestone along the progression of experimentation and innovation insofar that he was able to combine engineering, geometry and aethetics to his buildings.

Brunelleschi's use of perspective certainly seems to have set him apart from his classical predecessors. It is one thing to imagine the volumes and forms of a structure, quite another to visualize the human experience of those forms at full scale.

It's fascinating to imagine the logical leaps undertaken by these individuals, leaps that, at the time, were unprecedented. Through centuries of familiarity, we now hold them as basic tenants of our understanding of the visual world. It's refreshing to be reminded that this was not always so.

From the American Institute of Architect online: http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek08/0328/0328p_duomo.cfm

The perspective machine Any survivor of architecture school should remember drawing class and establishing the vanishing point when drawing in perspective. Converging parallel lines in a drawing give it the illusion of depth and distance. Although the principle of the vanishing point was known to the Greeks and Romans, as was much other technology, that knowledge had been lost over the years. Brunelleschi is known as the person who rediscovered the principles of perspective drawing. These are the same principles that architects employ today in architecture school.

To demonstrate the effect of drawing in perspective, Filippo painted the Baptistery of San Giovanni from about six feet inside the center door of Santa Maria del Fiore. The painting included everything that could be seen from his positioned location. Instead of painting the sky, he affixed a plate of polished silver. He carved a peephole in the painted panel at the perspective vanishing point.

Standing at the same location where he painted the view, he demonstrated the accuracy of perspective drawing by holding the painted panel facing away, with the panel held up to his eye to peer through the hole. With his other hand he held a mirror at arms length in front of and facing the painting so that he was looking directly into the mirror at the reflection of the painting. The view through the hole into the mirror revealed the painting, drawn in perfect perspective, in the place where the subject of the painting would be viewed. The polished silver plate reflected the actual sky complete with drifting clouds. The view was so realistic that the viewer could not tell the difference between the painted scene and the actual image of the building’s shape and proportion.

It is interesting that Brunelleschi was not content to simply paint in perspective; he was compelled to demonstrate mathematically that the view was visually correct. It is a testament to his drive and desire to understand precisely how things worked or could work. It is an attribute of high intelligence.

Brunelleschi certainly does introduce a clear sense of visual order and perspective to his architecture - however we should not overlook the (often arcane and esoteric) use of mathematics and geometry which the master masons of the medieval period brought to bear in the contruction of their buildings. As we acknowledged in pervious units, many of the great medieval cathedrals of Europe possess intricate and subtle harmonies of ratio and geometry (Durham cathedral is a prime exampls of this). However Brunelleschi does seem to display an awareness of visual geomenry which is not necessarily shared by the masons of the Gothic era: as we can see from the photos above, his buildings seem to be very strongly orientated around specific viewpoints or perspectives, so that the viewer becomes inescapably aware of the reslotute progression of forms and volumes (i.e. columns, capitals, entablatures, etc.) as they march off toward the distant 'vanishing point' on the horizon...

This is not surprising: we must remember that Brunelleschi was himself instrumantal in introducing and codifying the laws of visual perspective during the early decades of the fifteenth century - and that he often made verey effective use of architectural views and vistas in his famous public demonstrations of the new Renaissance 'science' of perspective.

Conclusion

It’s impossible to overstate the historical significance of the architecture of the Italian Renaissance – and this is most definitely a period of architectural history which we have to fully understand if we are to make sense of much of the remainder of the course. In many ways, the architecture of the Renaissance ‘sets the scene’ for much of the architectural practice of the ensuing centuries (certainly as far as the end of the eighteenth century).

This being so, it is perhaps not surprising that this has been a most busy and productive week on the discussion forums. Chief amongst the topics for discussion – significantly, I think - have been the personalities and practices of the principal architects under consideration: Brunelleschi, and Alberti. This is, I suppose, hardly to be wondered at: the Renaissance was a period which propelled the individual into the foreground of human activities and affairs, to a degree unmatched since Roman times (certainly the medieval period did not recognise or value the efforts or identities of individual practitioners, in any field, to anything like as great an extent). Moreover, we should not, of course, overlook the simple fact that this is the first period in architectural history where the names and characters of the architects themselves are recorded: while we do now know the names, and can, to a certain extent, recognise the works of, some of the medieval master-masons, their individual characters and personalities are lost to us: this is clearly not the case with regard to the architects mentioned above. While, with regard to those architects: I think it is fair to say that our discussions of their works this week have been such as to highlight some of the chief intellectual and temperamental aspects of this most complex and multi-faceted of historical periods.

With regard to the question of whether Brunelleschi should, or should not, be accorded the (unimaginably grandiose!) title ‘Father of the Renaissance’, I think opinion tended toward the view that he should. This is for various reasons: firstly, there is his meticulous, thoroughgoing – yet also cool and elegant – interpretation of the neo-Classical style; along with the subtlety of his application of that style to contemporary circumstances. Yet there is, of course, also the sheer heroism of his work on the dome of Florence Cathedral: as I mentioned this week in one of my own forum postings, we should remember that nothing on quite this scale had been attempted since the end of the Classical age itself – the erection of such a vast, self-supporting dome would have defeated the engineering skills of even the master-masons of the Gothic period. Thus, although (as has been acknowledged this week) the dome itself bears little, if any, of the stylistic hallmarks of Renaissance neo-Classicism, the sheer ambition of its construction speaks eloquently of the new-found self-confidence of the Italian Renaissance: here was a generation who were not content to (as they saw it) live under the shadow of the Classical past – they were intent upon rivalling, or even surpassing, the achievements of that past.

More specifically, there have been some fascinating discussions in respect to Brunelleschi’s pioneering use of the new Renaissance ‘science’ of (single-point) perspective. While this is an area of discussion which opens out onto some issues of the relationship between architecture and human perception which really lie outside the scope of this course, I do think it is significant that we seemed to pick up very strongly on the powerful use which Brunelleschi makes of sight-lines and volumetric recessions in his architecture. As a key pioneer of the understanding of the visual perception of perspective (we saw a very clear illustration of his ‘perspective machine’ at work) this is worth emphasising: clearly Brunelleschi was keenly aware of the impact which architectural space has upon the viewer – indeed we might say that, in this respect, Brunelleschi stands as an early practitioner of the ‘theatre’ of architecture (a concept central to the later development of the Baroque). On a more general level, the postings this week have, I would say, fully reflected the extent to which your understanding of Classical architecture (gained during the first unit) has enabled you to fully get to grips with the architecture of the Renaissance – both in terms of its dependence upon Classical models; and, crucially, of its startling originality. As the postings this week have demonstrated, the architects of the Renaissance did not simply follow the examples of their Classical forebears in any slavish sense: rather they took the outward forms and styles of the Classical era, and refashioned these so as to create a wholly new architectural spirit, which was very much of its own age.

We will see that the legacy of the Italian Renaissance as manifested in a distinct cultural, national, and architectural context. We will hopefully be able to draw upon the understanding of the Renaissance architectural tradition which we have developed during this week’s work, in order to ask how far the ‘spirit’ of the Italian Renaissance was able to translate itself into this new and foreign context…