Monday, February 8, 1999

Announcements:

• the mid-term will be held in class on February 17th
• we will be responsible for the images covered through the end of Monday's lecture

• Donato Bramante
• centralized plan
• referring back to the past (antiquity)
• humanity of his design

• Bramante was commissioned by Pope Julius II
• Old St. Peter's had a basilica design
• had fallen into disrepair
• was the mother church for Catholicism
• Bramante's plan
• immense by comparison to Old St. Peter's
• centralized plan (Greek cross)
• suggests circular form
• **the design was never fully realized, not built to those specifications
• see Cardosso's Coin of St. Peter's
• was based on Bramante's design
• it is used as a point of reference: as though it had been completed to Bramante's specifications
• see also, Sta. Maria della Consolazione, by Bramante in Todi, c. 1508
• similar to what Bramante's St. Peter's would have looked like
• Dome is inspired by Pantheon (Rome, 118-125 AD)
• Bramante hoped to surpass the ancient model
• Julius II encouraged Bramante to use such Roman imperial inspirations
St. Peter's, Michelangelo, Rome, 1546-64

Exterior

• Michelangelo takes over plan
• now challenged in architecture genre (after mastering so many others)
• under Michelangelo, St. Peter's took on the look it has today
• he retained the centralized plan design, but simplified and clarified Bramante's original concept
• did away with scallops
• enlarged the piers and load-bearing walls
• added a frontal portico
• dome unified by columns at base (like a girdle)
• holds visually and architecturally
• same visual effect with piers (pilasters) on first level
• Michelangelo's dome is more soaring than Bramante had designed
• a more vertical feel
• Bramante's seems to sag in comparison
• more concerned with coverage than height
• Michelangelo was inspired by Brunelleschi's dome (Florence Cathedral, see previous notes)
• incorporating the past: classical and antiquity
• uses alternating rounded and pointed pediments on clerestory around base of dome
Interior
• inspriation from antiquity:
• Roman barrel vaults
• Roman arches (arcade)
• Roman dome over center
• Light
• filled with light from clerestory
• seems as though dome is floating
• Textbook example of application of these ideas
Tomb of Pope Julius II (including Moses, "The Dying Slave," "The Rebellious Slave")
• in conjunction with St. Peter's
• Michelangelo's design
• rich, dramatic
• construction was stopped
• only the bottom tier was completed
• **many ideas re-emerge on Sistine Chapel ceiling
• Figures:
• "Moses" 1513-16
• horns due to mistranslation of biblical text
• "Dying Slave"  1513-16
• sensuous
• spiritual state
• "Rebellious Slave" 1513-16
• spiritual state
• human form as way to express allegory

• Andrea Palladio (1508-80)
• Venetian
• closer (time-wise) to Mannerism
• work uses Alberti's ideas
• used classical architecture in innovative ways
• appealed to spirit of classical while using it to solve contemporary problems
• stressed low horizontal line
• rational; almost mathematical approach
• Palladio's work, especially, influenced American Architecture (federal buildings, etc.)
S. Giorgio Maggiore, Palladio, Venice, 1565
• addressed design problems
• classical temple facade front with elongated basilican shape
• two temple fronts; almost superimposed
• one with strong vertical
• one with strong horizontal
Villa Rotunda, Palladio, Vicenza, c. 1567-70
• domestic/secular architecture
• four identical facades
• dome
• centralized plan
• ionic order columns
• inspired by classical Roman and Etruscan (earlier)
• platform on which it sits is Etruscan influence
• dome is Roman influence

• trend in Renaissance art
• synonym: maniera
• artificiality instead of naturalism

1. Coincides with time of unrest in Europe
        a. Lutheran Reformation
2. Crises within artistic progress
        a. sense that progress stopped at end of Renaissance
        b. feeling that all questions of naturalism had been answered
        c. attempt to do something innovative after the High Renaissance
        d. deliberately disharmonious
        e. overly complex figures/poses
        f. often refers back to a text; makes it more confusing
 
FOUR DESCRIPTIVE WORDS::

• artificiality
• ornamentation
• expressionism
• disharmony