Sunday, February 18, 2018

Tara on Itallian Renaissance Architecture


Italian Arts & Architecture: Leon Battista Alberti & Lorenzo Ghiberti  (Tara Olivero)



                  (The “Adam and Eve” panel from the Gates of Paradise - Ghiberti, 1452)


Leon Battista Alberti

Leon Battista Alberti, born in 1404 in Genoa, Italy, was a humanist and a Renaissance man; he earned a doctorate in law, studied mathematics and natural sciences, became a playwright, and involved himself in painting and the arts, among other areas of interest. He entered minor holy orders in 1432 and served as a papal servant for most of the rest of his life, with his duties taking him around Italy. He composed a number of treatises, including Della Pittura (On Painting), De Sculptura (On Sculpture), and De re Aedificatoria (On Architecture). Originally published in Latin, Alberti translated Della Pittura and De re Aedificatoria into Italian and re-printed them for a larger circulation. Della Pittura served as an avenue to explain and teach about linear perspective, but it is Alberti’s treatise On Architecture, divided into ten books and officially published in 1485, which has had the greatest lasting impact.

Alberti became interested in architecture in the 1440s and, like Brunelleschi, appreciated and was inspired by ancient Roman architecture as well as the theories of Vitruvius. He also admired the achievements of contemporary architects from Florence, as well as the style of architecture that began emphasizing a more humanist outlook. According to On Architecture, all architecture in a city must work together in order for a city to be unified. Strength, utility, and beauty should be the most important components of architecture, and the harmony of a structure is dependent upon its proportions, which Alberti called concinnitas. This harmony should also mirror nature’s physical laws, as Brunelleschi and Vitruvius believed. Alberti also placed great significance on the use of columns as one of the principal ornamental, rather than structural, elements of architecture. Other popular elements of his designs included triumphal arches and temple fronts, (both inspired by Roman buildings), dim lighting, and windows placed higher up on the walls in order to inspire more pious thoughts through a view of the sky rather than the city. As an architect, Alberti did not concern himself with the execution of his designs but instead preferred to study and write about the theory of architecture. However, some of his creations do exist in physical format: he designed the architecture of the Church of Sant’Andrea in Mantua (1470) as well as the facades for the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimani (1450) and the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (1470).

The latter is one of the greatest examples of Florentine Renaissance architecture. The medieval architecture of the Santa Maria Novella, a convent from the 1300s, already possessed some Gothic features in its building before Alberti added the facade. Mostly bare, the original facade included six tombs of noble citizens, which were immovable, as well as two immovable and arguably unattractive doors. Under Alberti’s design, these elements were harmonized with Renaissance design by enclosing the tombs with more rounded arches, and by replicating their green-and-white marbled pattern throughout the rest of the structure. A sense of harmony also shines through in the geometrical pattern, as the facade is covered with symmetrical geometrical shapes like circles, triangles, and squares, all of which were governed by simple proportions.

Ancient Greek and Roman elements are evident throughout the design: the upper level of the facade includes a temple front (columns holding up a triangular pediment) and the lower level is a form of triumphal arch (arches divided by columns). The facade’s lower level contains two larger pillars, between which sit four ornamental columns decorated with the family emblem of Giovanni Rucellai, the sponsor of the updated facade. There is a large arched portal between the two central columns. The astronomer and cartographer Ignazio Danti was commissioned for other ornamental components: the right side of the facade is a marble astronomical dial, and on the left is a bronze equinoctial armillary. The upper level contains four half-pillars and a large circular window, which was part of the original facade and was kept in Alberti’s design, brought into harmony by surrounding circular decorations. A triangle sits atop the wall, marked with the Dominican symbol of the sun. As a whole, the design of the facade is considered a masterpiece because it is aesthetically pleasing while also seamlessly merging medieval and Renaissance architectural elements.

Lorenzo Ghiberti

Born in Pelago, Italy, in 1378, Lorenzo Ghiberti trained in goldsmithing and painting in his youth. He quickly rose to prominence with his work in bronze, especially when he chose to submit designs for the northern doors of the Florence Baptistery (or Baptistery of St. John), a competition sponsored by the city of Florence in 1401. The two top contenders were Filippo Brunelleschi and Ghiberti. While Brunelleschi worked on his designs in secret, Ghiberti allowed any member of the public to visit his studio, see his work in progress, and give feedback. Because he was able to adjust his designs to suit popular demand, and because his bronze craftsmanship was superior to Brunelleschi’s, he won the commission. The 28 total panels of the doors, most of them focused on the life of Christ in the New Testament, were finished over twenty years later, in 1424.

They were such a success that Ghiberti was commissioned to design the doors for the east facade of the Baptistery, which were intended to portray the Old Testament. Ghiberti took 27 years to design and complete the 17-foot-tall eastern doors, which were scaled down from 28 panels to just 10 larger panels instead. In one, known as the “Adam and Eve” panel, Ghiberti combined four events from the Adam and Eve portions of the Bible into one singular panel. The size of the onlooking angels signifies the differentiation of the four events, as does the groupings of characters in different areas of the panel. Before Ghiberti’s work, the tradition was to only include one specific episode per artistic panel, so these panels significantly shifted the way that narratives could be told. In the “Jacob and Esau” panel, Ghiberti utilized a vanishing point, which was very much a Renaissance advancement, with this clear incorporation of perspective helping achieve greater realism of depth. The “David” panel, showing David battling Goliath, is also one of the more well-known panels.

In terms of craft and materials, bronze was more expensive than marble and far more difficult to cast. Ghiberti would use wax representations to create clay reliefs that he would then use to guide the bronze. Once the bronze panels were out of their molds, he was able to use his training as a goldsmith to hammer, carve, and polish the reliefs. To achieve a golden polish, he combined gold dust with mercury and painted the mixture across the finished reliefs. The panels were heated to burn off the mercury and leave only the gold, which was an incredibly dangerous method but, arguably, aesthetically effective. Most interestingly, when the doors were removed for conservation in the 1990s, conservators realized that the doors were each cast as a single three-ton piece of bronze, instead of creating smaller bronze pieces and molding them together. No one is quite sure how he managed to accomplish this feat, as he did not explain his technique in his autobiography.

The sides of the doors, along the edges of the panels, are framed by 20 prophets and 24 sculpted heads. The eastern doors were finally completed by 1452 and were later called the “Gates of Paradise” by Michelangelo. These doors, which brought realism, emotion, and artistic technique to the stories of the Bible, served as one of the lasting icons of Renaissance art.

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