Table of Contents
Introduction
Italy offers a wide range of architectural styles. The architecture of Italy has had a significant impact on the architecture of the rest of the globe. Italy is known for its significant architectural achievements, including the construction of aqueducts, temples, and similar structures during ancient Rome, the founding of the Renaissance architectural movement in the late-14th to early 16th centuries, and being the birthplace of Palladianism, a style of construction that inspired movements such as Neoclassical architecture and influenced the designs that historians built their country houses all over the world, particularly in the United States.
Italy’s architectural style cannot be classified by period or area because of the country’s separation into small states until 1861. As a result, an extremely broad and eclectic range of architectural designs has resulted.
Furthermore, from the 19th century, the term “Italianate architecture” has been used to designate foreign buildings that were erected in an Italian style, particularly modeled on Renaissance architecture.
Many important Italian architects, such as Andrea Palladio, Giacomo Vignola, Filippo Brunelleschi, Michelangelo Buonarotti, and Raphael Sanzio, have been recognised throughout history for their work.
Giuseppe Mazzini attempted to unite Italy in the 1830s. He was a founder member of the Young Italy secret organization. The Austrians were defeated by the French and Piedmontese at Magenta and Solferino, and therefore lost Lombardy. By the end of the year, Lombardy had been introduced to Sardinia’s Piedmont-holdings.
Italy became a part of the French Empire and so absorbed the French Revolution’s principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as well as a stronger citizen participation in the political process.
The Franco-Austrian War of 1859 was the catalyst for the physical phase of Italian unification. The architects of Italy’s unification were Giuseppe Mazzini, Count Cavour, and Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Notable Historians Who Laid the Foundation for The Country of Italy
Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452–2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath who worked as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect during the High Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as one of the finest painters in history and is often regarded as the originator of the High Renaissance. His greatest masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is often recognized as the most renowned painting in the world. The Last Supper is the most widely reproduced religious picture in history, and his Vitruvian Man sketch is a cultural symbol.
He invented flying machines, a form of armored war vehicle, concentrated solar power, the additional machine, and the double hull, and was revered for his scientific genius. Because current scientific techniques in metallurgy and engineering were just in their infancy during the Renaissance, few of his plans were built or even possible during his lifetime. He made significant contributions to anatomy, civil engineering, hydrodynamics, geology, optics, and tribology, but he never published his results, and they had little to no impact on later research.
Leonardo’s touch, his large production of sketches, immersive and comprehensive drawings represent this great Architect as a visionary across the architectural community. Da Vinci’s work encompassed an incredible range of topics, with architectural concepts that would be realized centuries later contributing to his legacy, among many other mediums. Leonardo da Vinci shines beyond all others, as a Master Architect who transcends time.
Leonardo’s touch, his large production of sketches, immersive and comprehensive drawings represent this great Architect as a visionary across the architectural community. Da Vinci’s work encompassed an incredible range of topics, with architectural concepts that would be realized centuries later contributing to his legacy, among many other mediums. Leonardo da Vinci shines beyond all others, as a Master Architect who transcends time.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an architect and sculptor from Italy. He was a key player in architecture, but he was best known as the preeminent sculptor of his day, and is credited with inventing the Baroque style of art. He designed secular buildings, churches, chapels, and public squares, as well as massive works combining architecture and sculpture, particularly elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments, and a whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals, as an architect and city planner.
He would be regarded as a fitting successor to Michelangelo, considerably outshining other sculptors of his period, due to his vast technical diversity, unlimited compositional inventiveness, and sheer virtuosity in manipulating marble. His ability to combine sculpture, painting, and architecture into a cohesive conceptual and aesthetic whole has been dubbed the “union of the visual arts” by the late art historian Irving Lavin.
He also designed a broad range of ornamental art pieces, such as lamps, tables, mirrors, and even carriages.
Bernini did not construct many churches from the ground up; instead, he focused his efforts on restoring existing structures, such as the restored church of Santa Bibiana and, especially, St. Peter’s. He completed three orders for new churches in Rome and the surrounding villages. Bernini’s son, Domenico, reports that his father was truly and very pleased with the small but richly ornamented oval church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, which was completed (beginning in 1658) for the Jesuit novitiate and represents one of the rare works of his hand with which Bernini’s son, Domenico, reports that his father was truly and very pleased.
The façade and repair of the church of Santa Bibiana (1624–26) and the St. Peter’s baldachin (1624–33), the bronze columned canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, were his earliest architectural undertakings.
Sacred and secular structures, as well as their urban contexts and interiors, are among Bernini’s architectural masterpieces. He made modifications to old structures and planned new ones. The Plaza San Pietro (1656–67), the piazza and colonnades in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Basilica’s interior design are among his most well-known works. Several Roman palaces are among his secular works: after Carlo Maderno’s death, he took over the management of the building works at the Palazzo Barberini from 1630, on which he collaborated with Borromini; the Palazzo Ludovisi (now Palazzo Montecitorio, begun 1650); and the Palazzo Chigi.
Leon Batista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian Renaissance humanism author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer who embodied the polymath character. “To select out one of Leon Battista’s ‘fields’ above others as being operationally autonomous and self-sufficient is of no use at all to any effort to define Alberti’s broad investigations in the fine arts,” as James Beck has remarked.
Alberti was unconcerned with the difficulties of construction, and just a few of his large works were completed. He understood the nature of column and lintel architecture from a visual rather than structural standpoint as a designer and student of Vitruvius and ancient Roman remains, and correctly employed the Classical orders, unlike his contemporary, Brunelleschi, who used the Classical column and pilaster in a free interpretation. Alberti was concerned about the social impact of architecture, and he was well aware of the cityscape to this end.
In Rome, he was hired by Pope Nicholas V to restore the Roman aqueduct of Acqua Vergine, which had deteriorated into a simple basin planned by Alberti and was eventually swept away by the Baroque Trevi Fountain.
Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi was an Italian architect, designer, and sculptor who is today acknowledged as the first modern engineer, planner, and single construction supervisor. He is considered a founding father of Renaissance architecture. Bernini was a brilliant architect who planned and erected gorgeous tombs, altars, and chapels in addition to sculpture.
Brunelleschi was the first person in the Western world to be granted a patent in 1421. He is best known for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, an engineering feat not seen since antiquity, as well as the development of the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art, which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science.His principal surviving works can be found in Florence, Italy.
Bernini is credited with popularizing the Baroque period. Bernini was a brilliant sculptor who created some of his most famous works of art using bronze and marble.
Under the command of Urban VIII, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned to construct the building. Between 1624 and 1633, he constructed the baldachin.
Raphael Sanzio
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known by his mononym Raphael, was an Italian High Renaissance painter and architect. His paintings are acclaimed for their purity of form, ease of arrangement, and visual realization of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
He is one of the classic trio of great masters of the era, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
Raphael was the chosen architect of the new St Peter’s when Bramante died in 1514. After his death and the adoption of Michelangelo’s plan, much of his work there was altered or demolished, although a few sketches have remained. According to a critical postmortem study by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, his ideas would have rendered the cathedral much darker than the final design, with enormous piers all the way down the nave, “like an alley.”
He was the most significant architect in Rome for a brief period, working for a narrow circle around the Papacy. Julius had altered the layout of Rome’s streets, constructing numerous new thoroughfares, which he intended to be lined with magnificent palaces.
Raphael commissioned Marco Fabio Calvo to translate Vitruvius’ Four Books of Architecture into Italian, which he received in August 1514. Raphael handwrote margin annotations on it, which are conserved in the Library of Munich.
Despite the fact that Michelangelo was still his hero, Vasari began to consider Michelangelo’s influence as destructive in certain aspects, and added sections to the second edition of the Lives expressing similar sentiments.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was a High Renaissance Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. His work had a great effect on the evolution of Western art, particularly in regard to Renaissance concepts of humanism and naturalism. He was born in the Republic of Florence. Along with his opponent and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, he is frequently seen as a candidate for the title of prototypical Renaissance man.
He replaced Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica at the age of 74. After his death, he changed the plan such that the western end, as well as the dome, were completed to his specifications.
A number of Michelangelo’s architectural assignments were never completed, including the façade for Brunelleschi’s Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model built but which is still unfinished, rough brick to this day.
In 1546, Michelangelo completed the exceedingly intricate ovoid design for the Campidoglio’s pavement and began work on the Farnese Palace’s top floor. In 1547, he began work on St Peter’s Basilica, beginning with a design by Bramante and many intermediary designs by various architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante’s design, simplifying and reinforcing the design to produce a more dynamic and cohesive whole while keeping the essential form and principles.
Filippo Buonarroti
Filippo Buonarroti, Michelangelo Buonarroti’s great-grandnephew, was a Florentine official at the court of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and an archaeologist whose Etruscan studies were among the first in the area, inspiring Antonio Francesco Gori. Filippo Buonarroti studied law and had a natural enthusiasm for science from an early age.
He is well known for his groundbreaking research on the usage of gold glass vessel bottoms as burial markers in the Catacombs of Rome. Cosimo III summoned him to Tuscany in 1699 and appointed him Auditore delle Riformagioni, minister of the Pratica of Pistoia, secretary of the Florentine Pratica, and member of a newly formed a council for jurisdictional matters. In the Medici Grand Duchy, he was named a senator in 1700, which was a strictly honorary position.
Andrea Palladio
Andrea Palladio was an architect in the Venetian Republic during the Renaissance. Palladio is widely regarded as one of the most significant men in the history of architecture, having been influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, particularly Vitruvius. He was most renowned for his rural residences and villas, though he also created cathedrals and palaces. His theories, which were encapsulated in the architectural book The Four Books of Architecture, brought him widespread acclaim.
The city of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto are part of a World Heritage Site entitled City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, which includes 23 structures created by Palladio and 24 Palladian villas in the Veneto.
Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola
In the Mannerist era, he is often regarded as Rome’s most influential architect. Giacomo Barozzi, often known as Vignola, was a prominent Italian architect of the 16th century Mannerism period. The Villa Farnese in Caprarola and the Jesuits’ Church of the Gesù in Rome are two of his greatest works. Vignola, Serlio, and Palladio are the three architects that popularised the Italian Renaissance style in Western Europe. In the Mannerist era, he is often regarded as Rome’s most influential architect.
Giacomo Barozzi was born near Modena in the town of Vignola (Emilia-Romagna).
In Bologna, he began his architectural career by painting and creating perspective templates for inlay artists to support himself. In 1536, he went to Rome for the first time to create measured drawings of Roman temples with the intention of publishing an illustrated Vitruvius.
In Bologna, he designed the Palazzo Bocchi. He afterward relocated to Rome. He worked for Pope Julius III here, and after his death, he was adopted by the Farnese papal family, where he worked with Michelangelo, who greatly affected his style.
The main courtyard of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, which was previously the monastery of the Church of Santi Domenico e Sisto, is generally assigned to Vignola but was completed after his death. Pilasters with Tuscan style decoration that rise from high plinths support ten arches on the long sides and seven on the short sides. The lower and higher levels are separated by a simple frieze with smooth triglyphs and metopes.
His ideas for completing the front of San Petronio, Bologna, are among his unbuilt architectural works. Vignola’s designs, together with those of Baldassare Peruzzi, Giulio Romano, Andrea Palladio, and others, provided material for a 2001 exhibition.
