Editing Renaissance architecture (section)

==Mannerism==
{{main|Mannerism#Mannerist architecture}}

'''Mannerism''' in architecture was marked by widely diverging tendencies in the work of [[Michelangelo]], [[Giulio Romano (painter)|Giulio Romano]], [[Baldassare Peruzzi]] and [[Andrea Palladio]], that led to the [[Baroque architecture|Baroque style]] in which the same architectural vocabulary was used for very different rhetoric.
[[File:Palazzo_Massimo_alle_Colonne.jpg|thumb|left|[[Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne]].]]

===Peruzzi===
[[Baldassare Peruzzi]], (1481–1536), was an architect born in [[Siena]], but working in Rome, whose work bridges the [[High Renaissance]] and the Mannerist period. His [[Villa Farnesina]] of 1509 is a very regular monumental cube of two equal stories, the bays being strongly articulated by orders of pilasters. The building is unusual for its frescoed walls.<ref name=BF />

Peruzzi's most famous work is the [[Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne]] in Rome. The unusual features of this building are that its façade curves gently around a curving street. It has in its ground floor a dark central [[portico]] running parallel to the street, but as a semi enclosed space, rather than an open loggia. Above this rise three undifferentiated floors, the upper two with identical small horizontal windows in thin flat frames which contrast strangely with the deep porch, which has served, from the time of its construction, as a refuge to the city's poor.<ref name= Pevs />

[[File:Palazzo Te Mantova 1.jpg|thumb|[[Palazzo Te]], Mantua]]

===Giulio Romano===
[[Giulio Romano (painter)|Giulio Romano]] (1499–1546), was a pupil of Raphael, assisting him on various works for the Vatican. Romano was also a highly inventive designer, working for [[Frederick II, Duke of Mantua|Federico II Gonzaga]] at Mantua on the [[Palazzo Te]] (1524–1534), a project which combined his skills as architect, sculptor and painter. In this work, incorporating garden [[grotto]]es and extensive frescoes, he uses [[illusion|illusionistic effects]], surprising combinations of [[architectural form]] and texture, and the frequent use of features that seem somewhat disproportionate or out of alignment. The total effect is eerie and disturbing. Ilan Rachum cites Romano as ''"one of the first promoters of Mannerism"''.<ref name= I.R. />

===Michelangelo===
[[Michelangelo Buonarroti]] (1475–1564) was one of the creative giants whose achievements mark the High Renaissance. He excelled in each of the fields of painting, sculpture and architecture, and his achievements brought about significant changes in each area. His architectural fame lies chiefly in two buildings: the interiors of the [[Laurentian Library]] and its lobby at the monastery of San Lorenzo in Florence, and [[St Peter's Basilica]] in Rome.

St. Peter's was "the greatest creation of the Renaissance",<ref name=BF /> and a great number of architects contributed their skills to it. But at its completion, there was more of Michelangelo's design than of any other architect, before or after him.

[[File:Petersdom von Engelsburg gesehen.jpg|thumb|St Peter's Basilica]]

==== St. Peter's ====
The plan that was accepted at the laying of the foundation stone in 1506 was that by [[Bramante]]. Various changes in plan occurred in the series of architects that succeeded him, but Michelangelo, when he took over the project in 1546, reverted to Bramante's [[Cross-in-square|Greek-cross]] plan and redesigned the piers, the walls and the dome, giving the lower weight-bearing members massive proportions and eliminating the encircling aisles from the chancel and identical transept arms. [[Helen Gardner (art historian)|Helen Gardner]] says: "Michelangelo, with a few strokes of the pen, converted its snowflake complexity into a massive, cohesive unity."<ref name= "Gardner" />

Michelangelo's dome was a masterpiece of design using two masonry shells, one within the other and crowned by a massive [[roof lantern]] supported, as at Florence, on ribs. For the exterior of the building he designed a [[giant order]] which defines every external bay, the whole lot being held together by a wide cornice which runs unbroken like a rippling ribbon around the entire building.

There is a wooden model of the dome, showing its outer shell as hemispherical. When Michelangelo died in 1564, the building had reached the height of the drum. The architect who succeeded Michelangelo was [[Giacomo della Porta]]. The dome, as built, has a much steeper projection than the dome of the model. It is generally presumed that it was della Porta who made this change to the design, to lessen the outward thrust. But, in fact it is unknown who it was that made this change, and it is equally possible and a stylistic likelihood that the person who decided upon the more dynamic outline was Michelangelo himself at some time during the years that he supervised the project.{{NoteTag|Pevsner and Gardener suggest that Michelangelo began with the idea of a pointed dome, as in Florence, then in his old age reverted to the lower silhouette, and that della Porta stuck to Michelangelo's original concept. Mignacca, on the other hand, suggests that the pointed dome was Michelangelo's final, and brilliant, solution to the apparent visual tension within the building.}}

[[File:Biblioteca medicea laurenziana, vestibolo e scala di michelangelo, 07.jpg|thumb|left|The vestibule of the Laurentian Library]]

====Laurentian Library====
Michelangelo was at his most Mannerist in the design of the vestibule of the [[Laurentian Library]], also built by him to house the [[House of Medici|Medici]] collection of books at the convent of [[San Lorenzo, Florence]], the same San Lorenzo's at which [[Filippo Brunelleschi|Brunelleschi]] had recast church architecture into a Classical mold and established clear formula for the use of [[Classical orders]] and their various components.

Michelangelo takes all Brunelleschi's components and bends them to his will. The Library is upstairs. It is a long low building with an ornate wooden ceiling, a matching floor and crowded with corrals finished by his successors to Michelangelo's design. But it is a light room, the natural lighting streaming through a long row of windows that appear positively crammed between the order of pilasters that march along the wall. The vestibule, on the other hand, is tall, taller than it is wide and is crowded by a large staircase that pours out of the library in what [[Nikolaus Pevsner]] refers to as a "flow of lava", and bursts in three directions when it meets the balustrade of the landing. It is an intimidating staircase, made all the more so because the rise of the stairs at the center is steeper than at the two sides, fitting only eight steps into the space of nine.

The space is crowded and it is to be expected that the wall spaces would be divided by pilasters of low projection. But Michelangelo has chosen to use paired columns, which, instead of standing out boldly from the wall, he has sunk deep into recesses within the wall itself. In the Basilica di San Lorenzo nearby, Brunelleschi used little scrolling console [[Bracket (architecture)|bracket]]s to break the strongly horizontal line of the course above the arcade. Michelangelo has borrowed Brunelleschi's motifs and stood each pair of sunken columns on a pair of twin console brackets. Pevsner says the "Laurenziana [...] reveals Mannerism in its most sublime [[architectural form]]".<ref name= Pevs /><ref>Ludwig Goldscheider, ''Michelangelo'', 1964, Phaidon.</ref>
[[File:Church of the Gesù, Rome crop.jpg|thumb|left|Il Gesù, designed by Giacomo della Porta, 1568-84]]

===Giacomo della Porta===
[[Giacomo della Porta]], ({{Circa|1533}}–1602), was famous as the architect who made the dome of St. Peter's Basilica a reality. The change in outline between the dome as it appears in the model and the dome as it was built, has brought about speculation as to whether the changes originated with della Porta or with Michelangelo himself.

Della Porta spent nearly all his working life in Rome, designing villas, palazzi and churches in the Mannerist style. One of his most famous works is the façade of the [[Church of the Gesù]], a project that he inherited from his teacher [[Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola]]. Most characteristics of the original design are maintained, subtly transformed to give more weight to the central section, where della Porta uses, among other motifs, a low triangular [[pediment]] overlaid on a segmental one above the main door. The upper storey and its pediment give the impression of compressing the lower one. The center section, like that of Sant'Andrea at Mantua, is based on the [[triumphal arch]], but has two clear horizontal divisions like [[Santa Maria Novella]]. <sup>See Alberti above.</sup> The problem of linking the aisles to the [[nave]] is solved using Alberti's scrolls, in contrast to Vignola's solution which provided much smaller brackets and four statues to stand above the paired pilasters, visually weighing down the corners of the building. The influence of the design may be seen in Baroque churches throughout Europe.

===Andrea Palladio===
[[Andrea Palladio]], (1508–80), "the most influential architect of the whole Renaissance",<ref name= BF /> was, as a stonemason, introduced to Humanism by the poet [[Giangiorgio Trissino]]. His first major architectural commission was the rebuilding of the [[Basilica Palladiana]] at [[Vicenza]], in the [[Veneto]] where he was to work most of his life.<ref name= I.R. />
[[File:Larotonda2009.JPG|thumb|[[Villa Capra "La Rotonda"]]]]
Palladio was to transform the architectural style of both palaces and churches by taking a different perspective on the notion of Classicism. While the architects of Florence and Rome looked to structures like the [[Colosseum]] and the [[Arch of Constantine]] to provide formulae, Palladio looked to classical temples with their simple [[peristyle]] form. When he used the triumphal arch motif of a large arched opening with lower square-topped opening on either side, he invariably applied it on a small scale, such as windows, rather than on a large scale as Alberti used it at Sant'Andrea's. This Ancient Roman motif<ref>described by the architectural writer [[Sebastiano Serlio]] (1475–1554) in ''Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva''</ref> is often referred to as the Palladian Arch.

The best known of Palladio's domestic buildings is [[Villa Capra]], otherwise known as "La Rotonda", a centrally planned house with a domed central hall and four identical façades, each with a temple-like portico like that of the [[Pantheon, Rome]].<ref>Manfred Wundram, Thomas Pape, Paolo Marton, ''Andrea Palladio'', Taschen, {{ISBN|3-8228-0271-9}}</ref> At the [[Villa Cornaro]], the projecting portico of the north façade and recessed loggia of the garden façade are of two [[Classical order|ordered]] stories, the upper forming a balcony.<ref>Branco Mitrovic and Stephen R. Wassell, ''Andrea Palladio: Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese'' (New York: Acanthus Press, 2006, {{ISBN|0-926494-36-8}}</ref>

Like Alberti, della Porta and others, in the designing of a church façade, Palladio was confronted by the problem of visually linking the aisles to the nave while maintaining and defining the structure of the building. Palladio's solution was entirely different from that employed by della Porta. At the [[church of San Giorgio Maggiore]] in Venice he overlays a tall temple, its columns raised on high plinths, over another low wide temple façade, its columns rising from the basements and its narrow lintel and pilasters appearing behind the giant order of the central nave.<ref name=BF />