By Kenneth Bartlett, PhD, University of Toronto
During the Italian Renaissance, the history of ancient Rome proudly remained at the forefront of popular culture. Its presence was increasingly regarded as an intellectual heritage to be mined for contemporary use.
The Italian Renaissance: Learning from Ancient Buildings
The glory of the ancient past was a model for emulation and a golden age to be recovered so that its wisdom could be applied to the circumstances of Italy in the second half of the 14th century.
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The discovery of particular texts had enormous implications. When the works of Vitruvius were rediscovered, there was an explosion of interest in ancient buildings. Vitruvius wrote an extremely important volume, De architectura libri decem (Ten Books on Architecture). Vitruvius, an architect at the time of Augustus—actually one of Augustus’s official architects—talked about ancient buildings in a significant way: Not only practically but also abstractly, about the role that buildings play in our lives.
Those who discovered the texts after 1415 realized they could apply these principles to the building of their own buildings—not just copying ancient buildings, following the model that archaeology had revealed to them, or following what Vitruvius said you should do, but taking the inspiration and the essence and applying them to buildings that suited their reality. Just the way ancient text could be applied to the conditions of contemporary Italians in the 15th century, so ancient buildings could be reduced to an essence—a set of principles and ideas—that could be applied to the needs of 15th-century Italians, which were quite different from the needs of 1st-century Romans.
This is a transcript from the video series The Italian Renaissance. Watch it now, on The Great Courses.
The implications of Vitruvius became huge. His influence can see in the most simplistic ways: The three Vitruvian orders of architecture—Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic—began to appear, much like they do, for example, the facade of the Colosseum. But other aspects began to develop.
In particular, we can see in the career of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) how these ideas could be distilled into a set of principles that could apply to the conditions of the Italian world.
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A Great Universal Man
(Image: By Florentine School//Public domain)
Alberti was an architect, a great uomo universale—a great universal man. He was an athlete, he wrote in Latin and in the vernacular, and was artistic. Alberti was a sculptor and a theorist in painting. His book on the theory of painting takes the idea of linear perspective and turns it into a formula that others could apply. He was the most remarkable human being. Even among all those accomplishments, he also wrote a book on architecture that is, in many ways, a crib from Vitruvius.
The book can be considered highly derivative, but Alberti’s purpose was quite different: To take an ancient text and apply it to the needs of his own time. Thus, Alberti wrote De re aedificatoria, or On Building. Not only did he write a theoretical treatise on architecture, but he then proceeded to construct buildings. In particular, in Florence, he designed the facade of the Palazzo Rucellai from 1452 to 1470, in which the Vitruvian orders appear and the ideas of ancient buildings were made useful to a Florentine palace for a wealthy merchant.
He designed the Church of Sant’Andrea in Mantua from 1470 through 1476—taking the model almost of a Roman triumphal arch and applying it to the facade of a Christian church. It was he who designed the facade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, that church by the railway station, which is the first thing many tourists see as they walk toward the center of the city.
Alberti even tried to build a pagan temple for one of the more curious figures of the Italian Renaissance, Sigismondo Malatesta; this building is known as the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a building he started in 1450 but never completed.
Learn more: From Santa Maria Novella to San Lorenzo
Designing for the Modern Roman
Alberti was not just an antiquarian, only interested in ancient buildings because they were beautiful or because he was curious. He was interested in ancient buildings for what they could tell him about the buildings he was designing and considering for his own time—what was useful, what was decorative, what was appropriate—and what was not. This idea of decorum infuses every idea of Renaissance thought. In the application of architecture and the vocabulary of classical architecture to Renaissance design, decorum became important because it had to be useful and appropriate.
Discovering the Art of Antiquity
Discoveries of ancient sculpture and bronzes changed the world as well. There was a resurgence, after a hiatus of 1,000 years, portrait busts and marble being produced in Florence. Mino da Fiesole (1429-1484) resurrected with great skill and sensitivity the head-and-shoulders busts of individuals—modeled, of course, on those Roman busts so often seen in museums. Lorenzo Laurana, who died in 1502, did the same for female portrait busts. Those serene and elegant images of women from his own time began to appear as reflections of ideal beauty. They aren’t copies of ancient statues at all but are the infusion of ancient spirit into contemporary marble.
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Among the veneration of ancient art is the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, one of the most important of all statues because it’s the only full-sized equestrian bronze to survive from antiquity. All the others were melted down soon after the collapse of Rome to make weapons, doors, or bells. But it survived because it was universally believed to be the first Christian emperor, Emperor Constantine—one doesn’t melt down Christian emperors. It was placed in front of St. John Lateran until Michelangelo moved it to the Capitoline Hill where it sat many years, serving as a reminder of Christianity and the victory of the cross—that is, Constantine’s adoption of Christianity for the empire, rather than of imperial splendor.
Powerful Statues for Powerful Men
But what did our Renaissance sculptors do with it? Did they use it as an example of the victory of Christianity over paganism, of Constantine’s defeat of his pagan half-brother, Maxentius, at the Milvian Bridge in AD 312?
No. They used it as an inspiration for other equestrian bronzes of secular individuals who, like Roman emperors, could control and command. The most famous was Donatello’s Gattamelata, the condottiere of the Honeyed Cat, what Gattamelata means in Italian. It’s placed in the piazza of Sant’Antonio in Padua and was cast between 1445 and 1450.
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This extraordinary piece of bronze casting—a triumph of both a wonderful sculpture and a remarkable moment in engineering—indicates that Donatello desired to do what that ancient sculptor had done with Marcus Aurelius, but couldn’t. In the figure of Marcus Aurelius, one leg of the horse has risen, so there are only three legs on the plinth.
The entire enormous weight of that bronze statue is being supported on just three horse’s hooves. Donatello couldn’t do it; he had to have the fourth leg raised but resting on a cannonball to distribute the weight equally on all four legs. But it took just a generation or two until Andrea Verrocchio managed to reproduce the feet of the ancients. His image of another condottiere captain, Colleoni, stands in the Piazza San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. He was able to distribute that weight on three legs.
What we see in these two bronze sculptures is not just the desire to reproduce the past and to acquire it, but the desire to infuse the present with the spirit of the past. These sculptures took the model of Marcus Aurelius and used it in a way that gave dignity, power, and authority to these two mercenary captains—associating them with Roman emperors and using the art of the bronze caster to create something that would last as long as Marcus Aurelius.
Donatello broke new ground similarly with another statue that became iconic in more ways than one. Between 1430 and 1435, he cast his David. David was the first freestanding male nude sculpture since antiquity, a genre not practiced at all during the Christian Middle Ages because of the ambiguous attitude toward the nude human body. Donatello not only produced this wonderful object—this splendidly elegant, beautiful piece of bronze—not only reproducing the form of the Old Testament hero but producing the spirit of ancient sculpture.
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Creating Ideal Beauty
That statue, which you can see in the Bargello in Florence, demonstrates such perfection and a sense of perfect fluidity, naturalness, and ideal male beauty. Donatello captured the ancient spirit as well as its form. In that elegant figure of David, Donatello broke through the wall that separated the appreciation of the perfect nude body from the Christian fear of the flesh.
Donatello started a movement; he was soon after followed by another David. Verrocchio created a David from 1473 to 1475—this one partly clothed, but still in the spirit of ancient sculpture. Finally, we have the David of Michelangelo—that 17-foot-tall, ideal figure that is so perfect it goes beyond the rules of correct anatomy.
The Symbol of the Florentine Republic
With the figures of David, we have not just classical statues being made in the Renaissance and not just a new form of sculpture in the round of the nude male figure, but we have an icon. Because David had become the symbol of the Florentine republic, it had become the model of the beset hero, chosen by God or by history, or by nature, to do great things.
Florentines saw themselves as David. They saw themselves as a chosen people. The figure of David, then, is not just one of beauty—it’s almost one of propaganda. It’s a reflection of a community spirit in marble or bronze.
Common Questions About the Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance was a period during the 14th to 17th centuries where culture reached great heights of craftsmanship and meaning. It was the expansion of civilization from the dark, violent middle ages into a modern society with advancements in all arts and sciences.
The Italian Renaissance was brought to an end by the French invasion and the proceeding Italian Wars.
The Italian Renaissance is largely thought to have begun by the efforts and patronage of the Medici Family and other rich backers in Florence, Italy.
France and England were engaged in the Hundred Years’ War. But Italy had the glory of ancient Rome and Greece and all the culture that it had spawned, as well as a wealthy merchant class, very rich cities, and of course, the education that came with the Moors.
