French gothic architects rose through guilds in italy

French gothic architects rose through guilds
 In Italy the architects didn’t necessarily come from building crafts
Architects in Italy
 Florence: architects= craftsmen; not always builders
 Unusual: entrust major public buildings to painter (Giotto)

 Entrusting construction of large towering structure to someone good at surface appearance
Stone, Wood, and Pride
 Florence: sculptor- builders = local tradition
 Sculptor made palazzo Vecchio
 Arnulfo Di Cambio: new cathedral; design enlarged
 Church of Florence Cathedral expanded the design of a church twice, work continued following
large design, but dome design caused problems
 Crossing dome design = established, but unfinished
 Enlarged dome was supposed to be enormous
 Problem= too big to build; civic embarrassment
From Jewelry to Building
 Filippo Brunelleschi: (1377-1446) goldsmith, sculptor, painter
 Model: won competition to build the dome; got the job in 1420 (said he could build it without
the wooden centering)
 Main innovations were in domes interior structure
 Interlocking ribs to support two separate shells
 Innovations: masonry techniques, shell and rib structure, hoists
Brunelleschi’s Dome
 sixteen years later: the dome was complete
 shared responsibility and building with many others, but creative role helped to keep him
famous for this building
 creativity, engineering, construction management
 his decision to go to Rome redirected his career
 education? Studying ruins of ancient Rome
 pantheon dome was huge! And it must have convinced him that there had to be a way to
building the Florence dome
All’antica architecture
 Brunelleschi: became major architect in Florence
 Designed the orphanage in Florence that set the bar for the urban area, designed other
churches, while still managing the dome project
 Busy professional
 Considered an architect
 Major shift: undisputed design credit as individual
 Expertise was in different fields pulled from fields that masons didn’t know
 Early education and artistic training made home different
 He matches Vitruvius idea of an architect closer than gothic architects
 Renaissance: rebirth of antiquity in culture
 Helped to start All’antica (ancient style) = roman revival design
The Renaissance Project
 Revive ancient style architecture after 1000 years?
 What did ancient architecture look like? Much of it in ruins
 Had to dig out old buildings and try and reconstruct them
 Is ancient architecture right for contemporary needs?
 New Christian Italy did they want to copy pagan roman architecture
Leone Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
 Architect needs understanding of past architecture

 University educated lawyer, clergyman
 Papal bureaucrat, wrote Latin documents
 Multinational institution was church, so by using Latin unified it and its history
 Professional author and intellectual
 Published a lot in Latin
 Humanist (cutting edge library geek on one topic)
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