Renaissance Archicteture

In 1934, a very young Giulio Carlo Argan wrote, for a rather provincial magazine, a fundamental text titled “Il problema del Bramante”, or “Bramante’s Problem”. Argan tried to identify the focus of Bramante’s interests and to define his particular way of making architecture. He concluded that what was systematically explored in Bramante’s work was space: for Argan, Bramante’s architecture was a spectacle of spatiality, an investigation of space developed beyond tectonic constraints and a rhetoric of space understood as the endlessly multiplied unfold- ing of artificial landscapes.
But if the substance of this architecture is space, then what kind of sense did Bramante attribute to his work on space? And, more generally, what does it mean to work on space? What kind of intellectual value does such work have? What kind of "problem" is Bramante’s problem?

Standing in the courtyard of the château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, an observant viewer notices that what appears to be brick is, in some places, actually painted plaster. Some of this is modern restoration, yet conservators have discovered that the technique of faux painting was also employed during the building's construction between 1539 and 1547. The use of paint to imitate marble architecture has a long tradition, from Pompeii to Francis I's gallery at Fontainebleau, and such duplicity is often attributed to stone's expense. But why imitate brick?

This paper examines the mutability of Saint-Germain's bricks in the context of early modern French construction and the monarchy's artistic program. It traces the lineage of brick and its replicas in France, asking where and why substitution occured. Brick solved a material dilemma: Delorme, for instance, laments the scarcity of good stone. It was also a formal choice: earlier iterations of Saint-Germain's brick-and-stone style exist in the Loire Valley and can be traced to Flanders and Florence. The introduction of imitation brick acknowledged Roman precedents; an attention to ancient technique that has attracted little attention in studies of Francis I's predilection for classicizing art.

While often called trompe l'oeil, here the objective was artifice, rather than the intent to actually deceive. This paper argues that creating illusionary brick was as prestigious as utilizing luxury materials such as marble and that the juxtaposition of true and faux brick is an instance of the French Renaissance's peculiar amalgamation of local traditions and imported influence.

Las tradicionales estructuras nervadas a compresión habían permitido levantar, sobre pilares y arcos torales, soluciones de carácter turricular como los cimborrios, que, además de proporcionar luz natural sobre las encrucijadas de los transeptos de los templos, adoptaron, en algunos casos, perfiles escalonados de muy difícil resolución desde el punto de vista constructivo. Sin embargo, estas estructuras no pudieron emplearse para la materialización de las nuevas tipologías arquitectónicas que trataron de introducirse en el contexto artístico aragonés de mediados del Quinientos, como la cúpula sobre pechinas y tambor, en esencia, porque generaban unos estados tensionales en las fábricas que podían tornarlas inseguras.
No obstante, al margen de otras vías, las cúpulas terminarán resolviéndose desde una tradición constructiva local habituada al empleo del ladrillo, la madera y el yeso, pero, sobre todo, gracias a un nuevo sistema constructivo que contemplaba la incorporación de elementos de madera en el seno de las propias fábricas.

The traditional ribbed structures had allowed to build, on pillars and chancel archs, tower-shaped solutions such as the cimborrios –lantern towers–, which provided natural light over the crossing and, in some cases, adopted stepped profiles that were very difficult to perform in building terms.
However, these structures couldn’t be used to perform the new architectonical typologies coming from Italy in the Aragonese artistic context of the middle of the 16th century, such as the dome on pendentives and drum, essentially because they generated such tensions in the constructions that could make them unsafe.
In any case, besides some other solutions, the domes were finally executed starting from the local construction tradition in brick, wood and plaster but, above all, thanks to a new construction system which included wooden elements in the constructions themselves.

Dentro del actual proceso de restauración de la colegiata de Santa María la Mayor, en Calatayud, iniciada con la actualización y revisión del Plan Director en 2011, se inscribe la reciente actuación del Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España, que ha atendido a la recuperación del ábside y del cuerpo de sacristía. Elementos con una compleja historia constructiva, han sido objeto de trabajos de muy diversa naturaleza en respuesta a las patologías, también diversas, y en especial, de tipo estructural, que presentaban. Las obras y su paralelo estudio histórico y arqueológico han permitido un mejor conocimiento de la historia del edificio y facilitado la interpretación de algunos de los problemas de conservación diagnosticados.

The current restoration process of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary Major, in Calatayud, which was initiated with the updated and revised Master Plan in 2011, includes the recent intervention of the Cultural Heritage Institute of Spain in the recovery of the apse and the vestry. The elements have a complex structural history and the work carried out on them has been diverse in nature in response to their varied pathologies and, in particular, structural types. The works, and their parallel historical and archaeological study, have provided a better understanding of the history of the building and enabled the interpretation of some of the conservation problems identified.
Keywords: structural consolidation, apse, vestry, Calatayud, structural history.

The article analyzes the common architectural details of the Sieniavski-Chartoryski Palace in Medzhybizh, Ukraine, and Thurzo-Faigel Palace in Betlanovce, Slovakia. The similarity of both monuments can use for the restoration of the Sieniavski-Chartoryski Palace and investigation the history of aristocratic families in Eastern Europe in XVI century.

Il Palazzo di Domenico della Rovere in Borgo (con A. Cavallaro), Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, Roma 1999 (ma 2000, vincitore del I premio internazionale Tarquinia Cardarelli 2001) 88-240-3685-6
Part One: XVth Century

Zbog turskih nasrtaja posjednici zemljišta između Splita i Trogira grade svoje utvrde na obali mora kako bi zaštitili stanovništvo i osigurali poljodjelsku proizvodnju. Trogirski plemić Koriolan Cipiko sagradio je svoj kaštel 1481. godine. Na temelju povijesnih izvora, arhitektonske snimke, rezultata istraživanja i usporedbe sa sličnim građevinama izrađena je studija prostornog razvoja kaštela Cipiko.
Due to Ottoman advances land owners in the area between Split and Trogir built forts on the coast in order to protect people and agricultural production. A Trogir-based nobleman, Koriolan Cipiko, built a castle in 1481. Historical sources, architectural survey and comparative analysis with similar structures formed the basis for the creation of a document which shows a spatial development of Cipiko Castle.

A re-reading of the documents and an analysis of the Arco del Cavallo in Ferrara allows the author to deny definitively the attribution to Alberti, and give it instead to Nicolò Baroncelli as designer and a team of Florentine stone-masons (including the young Meo da Caprina). The author identifies a passage in Pliny’s Historia naturalis as the source for the type of arch and another passage in Aulus Gellius as the source for the very particular ghirlands, so confirming the heavily literary complexion of artistic initiatives at the time of Leonello.

It is a standard assumption of modern architectural practice that all spatial relationships on a building are mathematically definable and can be systematically described by means of two-dimensional representations generated using procedures based on quantification. It is, for instance, this assumption that makes three-dimensional computer modeling possible. This paper analyzes the historical origins of this approach to visual communication about architectural works and its first explicit articulation in the work of Leon Battista Alberti.

La escultura decorativa de aplicación arquitectónica en yeso constituye una de las manifestaciones artísticas más interesantes del Renacimiento aragonés. En este artículo pretendemos analizar tanto el marco laboral en el que se desenvolvían los profesionales que la ejecutaban como el perfil de Francisco de Santa Cruz, perfecto exponente del mazonero de aljez que desarrolla su actividad en el contexto artístico de la Zaragoza del Quinientos, de cuyos trabajos más sobresalientes también se realiza una revisión cronológica y crítica.
The ornamental sculpture of architectural application in plaster constitutes one of the most interesting artistic manifestations of the Aragonese Renaissance. In this article, we try to analyse both the labour setting where the professionals who carried it out moved, and the feature on Francisco de Santa Cruz, perfect representative of the mazonero de aljez, who developes his activity in the artistic context of Zaragoza in the sixteenth century and whose more representative works are also chronologically and critically reviewed.

Researches undertaken in Aragonese archives has resulted in the discovery of a large number of documents concerning the execution and employment of different types of designs relative to the processes of artistic creation that took place between the 15th and 17th centuries, as well as the retrieval of a significant number of the designs and drawings themselves.
The study of this material has shown the use of a specific terminology that reveals the existence of very different instruments of graphical representation that were used in two clearly differentiated contexts: on the one hand, we have “demuestras”, “muestras”, “drawings” and “designs” that relate to the commission of the work, whilst, on the other hand, there are “trazas” or the technical drawings used in relation to the execution of the project.
Our aim is to elucidate the most relevant definitions of the terms “muestra” and “traza”, based on the documentation of the 15th century. We use this century as our cornerstone because the utilisation of these terms (and the fact that they concern instruments of graphical representation for two discernibly identifiable contexts) was maintained throughout the 16th century.  Furthermore, we will also analyse the two fundamental changes that occurred during the epoch:
First, the period witnessed the appearance of a new professional profile that was rooted in the Italian principle that saw design as the basis of all arts. This notion led to the prioritisation of the creative element of the work (and its intellectual foundations) over the strictly artisanal, masonry and manual and practitioners were expected to be capable of producing “muestras” or “designs” for any kind of business or enterprise; the second significant development was the emergence of a new academic conception of architectural representation, seemingly derived from Vitruvius’s “species dispositiones”. We will examine the way in which this would come to dominate both the commission and the execution of architectural projects.

Los trabajos desarrollados en diferentes archivos aragoneses han permitido descubrir, por un lado, un gran número de referencias documentales sobre la ejecución –y el empleo– de diferentes tipos de diseños durante el proceso de creación artística entre los siglos XV y XVII, y por otro, un buen número de diseños realizados a lo largo de ese mismo periodo.
Del estudio de todo este material se desprende que el uso de una terminología específica trasluce la existencia de instrumentos de representación gráfica radicalmente distintos, “demuestras”, “muestras”, “dibujos” o “diseños” por un lado, y “trazas”, por otro, que se emplean, además, en ámbitos perfectamente diferenciados: el de la contratación y el de la ejecución.
Nuestra intención pasa por tratar de dilucidar las más relevantes acepciones de esos dos términos, “muestra” y “traza” a partir de la documentación del siglo XV, en esencia, porque su empleo, con todo lo que eso conlleva –la existencia de instrumentos de representación gráfica distintos para dos ámbitos perfectamente diferenciados– se mantiene a lo largo de todo el siglo XVI. No obstante, también trataremos de exponer los dos cambios fundamentales que se observan a lo largo del Quinientos:
Por un lado, la aparición de un nuevo perfil de profesional que, basado en el principio italiano que hacía del diseño el fundamento de todas las artes, y persiguiendo anteponer la faceta creadora de la profesión –y, por lo tanto, su fundamento intelectual– a la estrictamente gremial, artesanal y manual, se considerará capacitado para entregar “muestras” o “diseños” para cualquier tipo de empresa. Y en segundo lugar, la irrupción de una nueva concepción académica de la representación arquitectónica pretendidamente derivada de las “species dispositiones” de Vitruvio, cuyo empleo terminará imponiéndose en los dos ámbitos, el de la contratación y el de la ejecución. Veremos cómo.