The Influences of Italian Architecture on Our World Today
Think of Italian architecture, and one is likely to think of St. Peter's and the Vatican in Rome, the works of architecture that represent the Italian Renaissance in its fullest senses of harmony and balance of line and form. However, the influence of Renaissance architecture did not begin and end with the Renaissance period of the 15th century. Rather the influence of Italian Renaissance architecture can still be seen in many of the modern styles and rules of architecture today. The Renaissance heralded development of "a new architecture" from the 15th to the 16th centuries "that was the first 'modern' architecture. When we look at Renaissance buildings, they look familiar, almost as if they were built one hundred years ago." (Hooker, 1996) For example, a simple wander through the city of Washington, D.C. will reveal tall, pale marble columns that harkens back to Renaissance or ancient Italy in both their shapely domed and colonnaded forms, as well as their details of stone faces and facades. The architects of the Renaissance derived their architecture in part from a revived interest in Roman and Greek ruins, and they sought to improve upon these classical designs in a way that glorified the public space of the cities of the Hi
In addition, to symmetry, the principles of Renaissance architecture hold that "the various parts of the architectural whole must be congruous or harmonious with one another-in architectural theory this was called dispositio, or disposition." (Hooker, 1996) Even modern architecture that flaunts the conventions of symmetry and disposition, such as the modern architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, do so self-consciously. In other words, once the Renaissance reintroduced these classical principles, architects would forever after be grappling, working for and against, these artistic norms. It is true that in the 1530's, particularly in the work of Michelangelo, architects began to use dissymmetrical elements and incongruous mixtures of architectural elements, called mannerist architecture after a similar phenomenon in Renaissance painting. "The Mannerists, however, never fully abandoned Vitruvius [and the principles of classical symmetry and spirit]. Mannerist buildings are still very proportioned and rigidly designed-they don't present, however, a serenely symmetrical surface but rather draw our attention to their very use of architectural elements." (Hooker, 1996) gh Renaissance. "In the Renaissance, architecture was seen as the supreme art...it also represented the highest artistic achievement a human being could attain. (Hooker, 1996) The focus of Italian architecture was on the creation of open, well-lit, a
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