Dwelling and Rule: the Renaissance villa and palazzo Flashcards
Key changes created by Renaissance
- Interest in humanism
- Power of secular society
- Rising interest in art, literature, music, architecture
- Patronage system changes to ruling class
- Revival of VITURVIUS - ideal of proportionality, rationality
- Treaties written by Alberti, Palladio, Serli
What is the palazzo typolgy
Italian word for large scale building, representative of a noble family or for institutional functions
What is the piano nobile?
The first floor of the Renaissance where the noble family had their apartments. Usually higher and more decorated, often with a central balcony
What is the technique of rustication?
Relief block work used on the facade of the Renaissance palazzo, delineates cornices from doorways
Palazzo Medici
Florence, Italy
Michelozzo di Bartolomeo
1445‐1460
- Classical cornice disguises the shallow hipped roof
- Use of groin vaults + arcading in courtyard
- Not symmetrical
- Displays some formality, but does not achieve rational perfection
- Round arch - Romanesque pretension
- Not proportional to/unified with narrow aedicules above
- Rustication of ground floor - solidity + mass
Palazzo Rucellai
Florence, Italy
Leon Batista Alberti
c. 1446
- More orderly facade
- Clear correspondence of elements
- Facade is grid-like and symmetrical
- Attic story generally smaller in height
- Trabeated system - understanding of the Classical idiom
- Still carries sense of Romanesque solidity
Palazzo Pitti
Florence, Italy
Filippo Brunelleschi and Luca Fancelli
1458‐1631 [later garden front Bartolomeo Ammanati]
- Official residence of Pitti family
- Expansive, massive in scale - also sense of orderliness, sophistication
- Facade has an almost tiered sort of appearance
- All the typical aspects of palazzo typology achieved par excellence
- Rise of a powerful secular class - resounding sense of wealth, restrained sense of luxury
Andrea Palladio, I Quattro libri dell’architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), 1570
- Described a functional, but also a rational, form of architecture
- One of the most seminal texts produced during the Renaissance
- Buildings should be built with mathematical integrity
Villa Rotonda
outside Vicenza, Italy
Andrea Palladio, 1565‐70
- Completley symmetrical building
- Four facades, each with projecting portico
- Flight of steps leads up to each portico
- Geometrical rationality - layering of the square and circle in plan
- Each portico has a Ionic, hexastyle peripteral
- Columns unfluted, no entasis - emphasis on verticality
- Triangular pediment above each lintel
Queen’s House
Greenwich, England
Inigo Jones, 1616‐35
- Villa typolgy - relaxed, retreat, opulence
- Cement and stone material
- Minimalistic colour scheme, white
- Square plan
- Italian, ballustrated flat roof
- Quoining of the sides
- Rustication of base
- Tetrastyle, upper story portico
- Sense of rhythm - larger rectagle windows on the outside, closer + smaller windows at centre
Palazzo del Tè, Mantua
Italy, Giulio Romano
1526‐1534
*Mannerist
- Extension of the Palace of Mantua - contains no bedrooms
- Series of elaborate paintings inside - depict destruction, anti-pleasure in a way, non-conformist
- Clear sense of axiality
- Assymetrical but rythmical
- Small irregularities in plan + form
- Each facade is different
- Key stone above the aedicule is out of place
- East + West courtyard, every third triglyph positioned downwards
- *
What is the difference between a villa and palazzo?
- Villa situated in the country, designed for pleasure and relaxation
- Asserts its modernity
- Master builder is usually an architect
- Fills a need that has not altered - need for escape, pleasure, entertainment, contemplation of nature
- Escape from the city to rural idyll will elevate mind and soul
