NAME : ISSAC BIJOY V.

EN. NO : 02

1ST ANS :

The Renaissance was a period in Europe, from the 14th to the 17th century,
regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It
started as a cultural movement in Italy, specifically in Florence, in the late
medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe, marking the beginning of
the early modern age.

The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its own invented version of
humanism, derived from the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as
that of Protagoras, who said that “Man is the measure of all things.” This new
thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, and literature. Early
examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled
knowledge of how to make concrete. Though availability of paper and the
invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later
15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced
across Europe.

"Renaissance" literally means "rebirth." It refers especially to the rebirth of

learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth century, spread to the north, including
England, by the sixteenth century, and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth
century (earlier in Italy). During this period, there was an enormous renewal of
interest in and study of classical antiquity.

Yet the Renaissance was more than a "rebirth." It was also an age of new
discoveries, both geographical (exploration of the New World) and intellectual.
Both kinds of discovery resulted in changes of tremendous import for Western
civilization. In science, for example, Copernicus (1473-1543) attempted to prove
that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the planetary system, thus
radically altering the cosmic world view that had dominated antiquity and the
Middle Ages. In religion, Martin Luther (1483-1546) challenged and ultimately
caused the division of one of the major institutions that had united Europe
throughout the Middle Ages--the Church. In fact, Renaissance thinkers often
thought of themselves as ushering in the modern age, as distinct from the ancient
and medieval eras.

Study of the Renaissance might well center on five interrelated issues. First,
although Renaissance thinkers often tried to associate themselves with classical
antiquity and to dissociate themselves from the Middle Ages, important
continuities with their recent past, such as belief in the Great Chain of Being, were
still much in evidence. Second, during this period, certain significant political
changes were taking place. Third, some of the noblest ideals of the period were
best expressed by the movement known as Humanism. Fourth, and connected to
Humanist ideals, was the literary doctrine of "imitation," important for its ideas
about how literary works should be created. Finally, what later probably became an
even more far-reaching influence, both on literary creation and on modern life in
general, was the religious movement known as the Reformation.

Renaissance thinkers strongly associated themselves with the values of

classical antiquity, particularly as expressed in the newly rediscovered classics of
literature, history, and moral philosophy. Conversely, they tended to dissociate
themselves from works written in the Middle Ages, a historical period they looked
upon rather negatively. According to them, the Middle Ages were set in the
"middle" of two much more valuable historical periods, antiquity and their own.
Nevertheless, as modern scholars have noted, extremely important continuities
with the previous age still existed.

As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed the innovative flowering of

Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of
learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch; the
development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural
reality in painting; and gradual but widespread educational reform.
In politics, the Renaissance contributed the development of the conventions of
diplomacy, and in science an increased reliance on observation. Although the
Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and
political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the
contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who
inspired the term “Renaissance man.”

Historical Perspectives On The Renaissance

The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and in line with general
skepticism of discrete periodizations there has been much debate among historians
reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the Renaissance and individual culture
heroes as “Renaissance men,” questioning the usefulness of “Renaissance” as a
term and as a historical delineation.

Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural
advance from the Middle Ages, seeing it instead as a period of pessimism and
nostalgia for classical antiquity, while social and economic historians, especially of
the longue durée (long-term) have focused on the continuity between the two eras,
which are linked, as Panofsky observed, “by a thousand ties.”

The word “Renaissance,” whose literal translation from French into English is
“Rebirth,” appears in English writing from the 1830s. The word occurs in Jules
Michelet’s 1855 work, Histoire de France. The word “Renaissance” has also been
extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian
Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.

the unpopular opinion that the Renaissance is overrated in how important it was to
world history or even European history. Although it did have a relevance to how
Europeans came to view themselves, it had relatively little impact on European
development in general. The Renaissance, socially, only impacted at most a
percent of the total population, with the most change occurring in the lives of
artisans and the wealthy elite of Italian city-states. The average person was not
affected due to non-existent rise in literacy rates. The political relationships
between the various aristocratic factions of Europe did not change as a result of the
Renaissance but rather due to the increasing centralization of power in monarchies
(The conclusion of the Hundred Year`s War, the unification of Castille and
Aragon, the rise of the Hapsburgs). Any intellectual thought that was conducted
during the era were re-derivations of ancient Greek and Roman thought. The
change in European culture in the time period should be attributed to the
Reformation (and the following century of religious war and discontent) and the
creation of the printing press, with the following enlightenment occurring due to
this newfound ability to communicate thought.

The reason for European dominance in this period was due in greater part to the
economic conditions in Europe at the time. The collapse of the Byzantine Empire
and the subsequent reduction of access to the silk road caused the state-sponsoring
of trade missions to Africa and Asia in the hope for an alternative to the silk road.
The initiatives by the Spanish and Portuguese caused for a shift in the balance of
power that proved an incentive for other European powers to counter.
Reformations in banking and financing that corresponded to this rapid expansion to
trade allowed for the relatively rapid development of political and social
institutions. The more matured forms of government thus now had resources to
devote to the intellectual thought and the arts during the modern enlightenment
(This trend is seen most distinctly after the Thirty Year`s War, distinctly separate
from the Renaissance).

2ND ANS :

Filippo Brunelleschi, architect and engineer who was one of the pioneers of early
Renaissance Architecture in Italy.

Brunelleschi was the second of three sons of Ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi, a
Florentine notary of some distinction, and Giuliana Spini. After training as a
goldsmith and sculptor, he applied for registration in the Arte della Seta and in
1401 was designated a master.

While still in the early phase of his architectural career, Brunelleschi rediscovered
the principles of linear perspective construction known to the Greeks and Romans
but buried along with many other aspects of ancient civilization during the
European Middle Ages.

Solving complex problems of engineering and statics was another facet of

Brunelleschi’s wide-ranging abilities. The machines that Brunelleschi invented for
the construction of the soaring dome of the Duomo and its lantern and his scheme
for the construction itself represent his greatest feats of technological creativity.
The cathedral was begun in 1296; during the 14th century the nave was completed
and work started on the complex octagon of the east end. By 1418 construction
had reached the stage at which the technical problems of constructing a vault above
the enormous dimensions of the octagon had to be solved. These problems had
involved previous generations of cathedral architects in bitter disputes. It was
Brunelleschi who worked out a successful method to vault the dome, invented the
machinery necessary to carry it out, and designed the structure’s crowning lantern
and its lateral semi circular structures. He was named chief architect of the dome
project in 1420 and remained in that office until his death. In 1418 the cathedral
officials announced a prize for models presenting technical devices for the
construction of the dome, which had been designed in the late Gothic period as an
eight-sided vault of pointed curvature without exterior support. Brunelleschi, along
with many others submitted a model. In 1420 a decision was reached in favour of
Brunelleschi’s model, which demonstrated that the dome could be constructed
without the traditional armature, or wooden skeletal framework, by placing the
brickwork in herringbone patterns between a framework of stone beams. This
construction technique had been evolved by the ancient Romans and had possibly
been first observed by Brunelleschi on his supposed trip to Rome with his friend
the sculptor Donatello, when both of these giants of early Renaissance art are
believed to have studied classical sculpture and architecture. In 1420
Brunelleschi’s dome was begun; in 1436 the completed structure was consecrated,
and, in the same year, his design for its lantern was approved. The imagination and
the engineering calculations that led to the successful construction of the dome
established Brunelleschi’s fame.Mid-20th-century criticism modified the earlier
approach to Brunelleschi’s buildings as the foundations of Renaissance
architecture. They are now understood in the context of the influence on him of the
classical elements in 11th- and 12th-century Tuscan Romanesque and
proto-Renaissance buildings such as San Miniato al Monte. Brunelleschi,
therefore, is seen as an artist still profoundly dependent on local forms of
architecture and construction but with a vision of art and science that was based on
the humanistic concept of the ideal. This is borne out by his first major
architectural commission, the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Although the entrance of
the hospital is composed of many novel features, morphologically it still is related
to traditions of Italian Romanesque and late Gothic architecture. The truly
revolutionary aspects of the building proceed from Brunelleschi’s intuitive sense of
the formal principles of the classical art of ancient times. The Innocenti facade
offered a new look in Florentine architecture and a marked contrast to the medieval
buildings that preceded it. Its lingering late-medieval echoes were at lower level to
the new style that provided the facade with its antique air: a wall delicately
articulated with classical detail such as Corinthian capitals, pilasters, tondi, and
friezes, modular construction, geometric proportions, and symmetrical planning.By
the early 1420s Brunelleschi was the most prominent architect in Florence. At this
time the powerful and influential Medici family commissioned him to design the
sacristy of San Lorenzo known as the Old Sacristy, to distinguish it from
Michelangelo’s “new” 16th-century sacristy in the same church and the Basilica of
San Lorenzo itself. Work was begun in 1421. The sacristy was completed by 1428.
Construction on the basilica was halted at that time but began again in 1441 and
lasted into the 1460s.The San Lorenzo structures are considered keystones of the
early Renaissancearchitectural style. In form the church did not depart from the
traditional basilican church with central aisle, side aisles, and a semicircular
projection at the end of the central aisle. What Brunelleschi added to the traditional
format was a new vocabulary using his own interpretation of antique designs for
the capitals, friezes, pilasters and columns. Further, his design of the church as a
whole was one of unusual regularity, where the separate parts of the church
logically corresponded to each other and created a profound visual and intellectual
harmony.

Brunelleschi designed the Old Sacristy as a cube vaulted with a hemispherical

dome. The structural and decorative units that describe the architectural surface of
the walls of the Old Sacristy and of the basilica proper are of particular elegance
and restraint characteristic of Brunelleschi’s work at this time.About 1429 another
wealthy and influential Florentine family, the Pazzi, commissioned Brunelleschi to
design a chapel adjacent to the monastic Church of Santa Croce that was intended
to be a place of assembly for monks to conduct business. Work probably did not
begin before 1442; the building still was not complete in 1457. Brunelleschi used
mathematical modules and geometric formulas for the plan and elevation of the
Pazzi Chapel, as he had in San Lorenzo, but he arranged the space in a more
complex and sophisticated manner in the later building. A hemispherical dome
covers a central square, which is extended on either side so that the square forms
the centre of a rectangle. The minor spacious compartment, opening off a third side
of the main square, is a corresponding square apse covered by a dome and
containing the altar. The creamy wall surface of the Pazzi Chapel is marked off in
geometric patterns by dark gray stone. The clarity, coolness, and elegance for
which Brunelleschi’s architecture is noted are seen in this small, harmoniously
proportioned chapel.Another example of Brunelleschi’s experiments with central
planning is one of his most enigmatic buildings, Santa Maria degli Angeli, built for
the Camaldolese monastery in Florence. It was begun in 1434 but left incomplete
in 1437 remaining in an unfinished state until the 1930s, when it was completed in
a controversial manner. The building was planned as a central octagon with a
16-sided exterior. A chapel opened on each of the eight sides of the interior
octagon, terminating in a deeply recessed apse at the end. Eight niches were cut
into alternate facets of the exterior walls. Santa Maria degli Angeli was
Brunelleschi’s most revolutionary design. It represented a perfectly centralized
structure, more formally consistent than the Old Sacristy.

Brunelleschi’s Church of Santo Spirito in Florence was designed either in 1428 or

1434. Work on the church was begun in 1436 and proceeded through the 1480s. A
basilican church with a centrally planned eastern end, Santo Spirito is ringed by
semicircular chapels opening off the dome-vaulted side aisles, the transept, and the
apse. These chapels accounted for a unique aspect of the design, for the exterior
walls of the church were meant to conform to the shape of the chapels in a
sequential series of curves. After Brunelleschi died, however, the protruding round
chapels were walled over with the flat conventional exterior now visible. Rather
than creating its walls as flat surfaces onto which are pressed thin pilasters, a style
perfected in San Lorenzo and the Pazzi Chapel, Brunelleschi designed Santo
Spirito with a feeling for its weight, gravity, and plasticity. The building, therefore,
can be associated stylistically with Santa Maria degli Angeli, and also with the four
semicircular tribunes above the sacristies of the Duomo. Brunelleschi’s model for
these tribunes was approved in 1439; the first one was completed in 1445, and the
remaining three were finished in the 1460s. They are composed of deeply concave
semicircular niches crowned with a shell device and separated by thick walls to
which have been applied Corinthian half columns with projecting entablatures. In
form and in mood, the tribunes were closer to monumental antique architecture
than anything constructed in Florence up to that time, and they foreshadowed the
strong profiles and massive grandeur of the buildings of Leon Battista Alberti and
Donato Bramante (1444–1514).Brunelleschi’s role as architect of residential
buildings is difficult to assess, although Manetti relates that he was summoned
from far and wide to design palaces. No documentary evidence exists for the
houses and palaces with which biographers and scholars have credited him, the
most significant of which are the Pitti Palace, a rejected plan for the Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi, and the Palazzo Bardi-Busini. Each of these palaces contains
novel features that are tempting to attribute to Brunelleschi’s inventiveness, but
definitive proof of his influence or authorship has not been offered.

The manifold architectural abilities of Brunelleschi also are attested to by his

military architecture, some of which is partially extant. He is associated with the
building and rebuilding of fortifications in Pisa, Rencine, Vicopisano, Staggia,
Castellina, Rimini, and Pesaro. In 1430 he was involved in a plan to convert the
city of Lucca into an island by building a dam and deflecting the Arno River.

Brunelleschi was active through the early 1440s and probably continued to be until
shortly before his death. He died in Florence and was buried in the Duomo.
3RD ANS :

[15:27, 27/04/2020] Bijoy Isaac: Andrea Palladio

Babe Ruth was one of the greatest superstars of baseball, setting the bar for the
sport for decades. Elvis Presley did more for rock 'n' roll than nearly any other
individual person. Oprah Winfrey is…well…Oprah. She's one of the most
important media figures in the world. In every area of achievement, there are a few
people who really define that field.

In architecture, one of those people is Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Based in

Veneto, Italy, Palladio was one of the leading architects of the 16th century.
However, his legacy reached far beyond his own lifetime. Palladio was one of the
most influential figures in the history of Western architecture. He was an absolute
superstar.

Style

So, what made Andrea Palladio so important? Palladio was living and working
during the Italian Renaissance, a time in which people looked back to the
accomplishments of ancient Greece and Rome as the foundations of Western
culture. People of the Renaissance read the philosophies and ideas of classical
antiquity and sought to build upon them. Palladio's role in this was translating
classical ideas of architecture into buildings of the 16th century.

This was not an easy task. The surviving buildings of ancient Greece and Rome
were mostly temples, used for worshipping pagan deities. To make these designs
relevant to 16th-century Christian Italy, it was necessary to adopt the artistic
philosophy of antiquity while leaving the pagan element behind. Palladio
accomplished this by adopting the ideology of ancient architecture, while not
necessarily committing to the strict orders of classical architecture. Specifically,
Palladio focused on capturing the cool, rational logic of classical architecture
through idealized mathematical ratios and geometric forms. His works helped
translate classical building styles into non-pagan buildings, representing a
synthesis of ancient traditions with Renaissance needs. His works and drawings
were compiled into a collection called The Four Books of Architecture, which was
published during his lifetime and set the standard for using classical elements in
modern architecture. It's one of the most influential books in architecture history.

San Giorgio Maggiore

Let's take a look at some of Palladio's greatest works. As with any great architect
of the Italian Renaissance, some of Palladio's finest work was in designing
churches. Let's start with San Giorgio Maggiore, located in Venice, Italy. Built
from 1560 to 1580, the facade of this church is modeled on a classical temple,
complete with columns and triangular pediment. However, Palladio presented an
innovative take on this ancient composition, and actually overlaid two facades on
top of each other. There are two implied pediments: a wider, lower section and a
taller, narrower one. This creates an interplay of shapes and depth, creating some
fascinating shadows that fill the niches and curves of the geometrically-ordered
facade.

[15:27, 27/04/2020] Bijoy Isaac: Andrea Palladio gave the Basilica in Vicenza two
styles of classical columns: Doric on the lower portion and Ionic on the upper
portion.

Originally, the Basilica was a 15th century Gothic building that served as the town
hall for Vicenza in northeast Italy. It is in the famous Piazza dei Signori and at one
time contained shops on the lower floors. When the old building collapsed, Andrea
Palladio won the commission to design a reconstruction. The transformation was
begun in 1549 but completed in 1617 after Palladio's death.

Palladio created a stunning transformation, covering the old Gothic facade with
marble columns and porticos modeled after the Classical architecture of ancient
Rome. The enormous project consumed much of Palladio's life, and the Basilica
was not finished until thirty years after the architect's death.

Centuries later, the rows of open arches on Palladio's Basilica inspired what came
to be known as the Palladian window.

"This classicizing tendency reached its climax in the work of Palladio....It was this
bay design which gave rise to the term 'Palladian arch' or 'Palladian motif,' and has
been used ever since for an arched opening supported on columns and flanked by
two narrow square-headed openings of the same height as the columns....All of his
work was characterized by the use of the orders and similar ancient Roman details
expressed with considerable power, severity, and restraint."—Professor Talbot
Hamlin, FAIA

The building today, with its famous arches, is known as the Basilica Palladiana

[15:27, 27/04/2020] Bijoy Isaac: Il Redentore

Also in Venice is Il Redentore, commissioned to bring divine intervention during

an outbreak of the plague. It was built between 1576 and 1591, and again shows
strong classical influence. This facade is centralized and flat, compressing
architectural elements from multiple classical orders into a single plane while still
implying the depth of the actual church. The interior is actually modeled on a
Roman bath, emphasizing its narrow form with Roman arches and columns.
Palladio's churches played with classical elements but in a strictly Christian way
and according to tastes of the 16th century. The large dome and cruciform plan are
purely Renaissance.