First, only three types of buildings were built: churches, palazzos, and villas. The villa was meant to be a countryside residence and the palazzo as a town residence. These types are still valid in the rest of Europe, with palazzo as palace and villa often transformed as a castle.
The key features of Renaissance architecture are the use of the classical orders, mathematically precise ratios of height and width, symmetry, proportion, and harmony. Columns, pediments, arches, and domes are imaginatively used in buildings of all types.
During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Brunelleschi.
Although the evolution of Italian Renaissance art was a continuous process, it is traditionally divided into three major phases: Early, High, and Late Renaissance.
St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City (Credit: Didier Moïse / CC). Designed by Alberti, Raphael, Bramante, Michelangelo, and Bernini, St Peter's Basilica was perhaps the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture.
The main characteristics of Renaissance architecture are in fact the sensitivity towards the ancient past, the resumption of classical orders, the clear articulation in the plans and elevations, as well as the proportions between the individual parts of the buildings.
Renaissance art, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man.
As in the Classical period, proportion was the most important factor of beauty; Renaissance architects found a harmony between human proportions and buildings. This concern for proportion resulted in clear, easily comprehended space and mass, which distinguishes the Renaissance style from the more complex Gothic.
The Renaissance style deliberately eschewed the complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of Gothic structures. Instead, Renaissance architects placed emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry, and regularity of parts as demonstrated in classical Roman architecture.
Renaissance Architecture is a style of architecture that emerged in early 15th-century Florence, Italy. Ushering in a revival of ancient Greek and Roman Classical architectural forms, it supplanted the prevailing Gothic medieval aesthetic.
(1) A reverent revival of Classical Greek/Roman art forms and styles; (2) A faith in the nobility of Man (Humanism); (3) The mastery of illusionistic painting techniques, maximizing 'depth' in a picture, including: linear perspective, foreshortening and, later, quadratura; and (4) The naturalistic realism of its faces ...
High Renaissance architecture reflected ideal, mathematical ratios and proportions; featured the use of columns, domes, and arches; and supported a sense of intellectual calm and personal harmony.
The Renaissance began in Italy, where there was always a residue of Classical feeling in architecture. A Gothic building such as the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence was characterized by a large round arch instead of the usual Gothic pointed arch and preserved the simplicity and monumentality of Classical architecture.
What are the elements and principles of Renaissance art? Naturalism, Classical Humanism, perspective drawing, and the development of oil painting were key elements in the art of the Italian Renaissance.
General Characteristics
An equally important feature of Renaissance art was its naturalism. In sculpture, this was evident in the increase of contemporary subjects, together with a more naturalistic handling of proportions, drapery, anatomy, and perspective.
Romanesque architecture is characterized by towering round arches, massive stone and brickwork, small windows, thick walls, and a propensity for housing art and sculpture depicting biblical scenes.
Answer and Explanation: Renaissance architecture made more use of Roman and Greek models that Medieval architecture. This included the use of symmetry, columns, and domes. One of the most important works of Renaissance architecture is the dome in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy.
Italy's architecture spans almost 3,500 years, from Etruscan and Ancient Roman architecture to Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau, Fascist, and Italian modern and contemporary architecture.
Classical orders and architectural elements such as columns, pilasters, pediments, entablatures, arches, and domes form the vocabulary of Renaissance buildings. Vitruvius' writings also influenced the Renaissance definition of beauty in architecture.
Mona Lisa:
The painting Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most famous and recognized paintings in history. Unarguably it is the most discussed painting because of the enigmatic smile.
I learnt much later that they were actually names of four of the greatest Italian Renaissance artists—Leonardo da Vinci, Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardic, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni.
Soon after the commencement of the Pazzi Chapel, Brunelleschi began a central-plan church, that of Santa Maria degli Angeli (begun 1434) at Florence, which was never completed. It was very important because it was the first central-plan church of the Renaissance, the type of plan which dominates Renaissance thinking.
High Renaissance Art (1490s-1527)
Three great masters–Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael–dominated the period known as the High Renaissance, which lasted roughly from the early 1490s until the sack of Rome by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1527.
Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the Baroque are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between the various arts.
High Renaissance art, which flourished for about 35 years, from the early 1490s to 1527, when Rome was sacked by imperial troops, revolved around three towering figures: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), and Raphael (1483–1520).