Character of Renaissance ArchitectureMoore, Charles Herbert
History
Character of Renaissance Architecture
Moore, Charles Herbert
Architecture, Renaissance
When in the year 1503 Pope Julius II came to the papal chair, the
architect Bramante had recently settled in Rome. Born in Urbino, he
had spent his early manhood in the North of Italy, where he had come
under the influence of the Florentine architect Alberti at Mantua, and
of the early Renaissance masters at Milan and elsewhere. Under these
influences he had acquired a style that was peculiar to the North at
that time. But since coming to Rome he had begun to form a new manner
under the more direct influence of the Roman antique,[36] and he soon
developed a style in which the ancient Roman forms were reproduced with
stricter conformity to the ancient usage, and with smaller admixture of
mediæval features than had before prevailed.
An early work in Rome in which he exhibits this more rigorous classic
tendency is the small building known as the Tempietto in the cloister
of San Pietro in Montorio. It consists of a circular cella with shallow
pilasters, surrounded by a colonnade of the Roman Doric order, and
surmounted by a hemispherical dome on a high drum. It is thus in form
like a Roman temple of Vesta with its dome raised out of the abutting
drum and set upon its top without abutment. A glance at Figures 21
and 22, a part section and part elevation of the temple of Vesta at
Tivoli, and an elevation of the Tempietto, respectively,[37] will show
how great a change Bramante made in the adjustment of the vault to
the supporting drum, while it will show also the essential likeness
in other points between the two monuments. In Figure 21 it will be
seen that the vault is well abutted by the roof of the portico, and by
stepped rings of masonry over the haunch, while in Figure 22 the drum
is raised high above the encircling portico, and the vault is sprung
from its top, and has no abutting rings. The architect appears to have
realized that such a scheme would be unsafe on a large scale, for in
the one which he prepared for the dome of St. Peter’s he took care, as
we shall see, to provide strong abutment.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Temple of Vesta, Tivoli, from
Serlio.]
The Tempietto is but a modified copy of an ancient model, and in no
true sense an original design. The changes wrought by the copyist are
not of a creative kind consistent with true principles of building.
The pilasters, and the balustrade with which the order of the portico
is crowned, are superfluous, and the work as a whole shows little
of Bramante’s real ability as an architect. Such merit as it has is
primarily due to the ancient model which he would have done better to
have reproduced more exactly.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--San Pietro in Montorio, from
Serlio.]
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