Domestic Architecture - filippo brunelleschi biography

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  Domestic Architecture  



The great new palaces looked like imposing cubes of carfully worked pietra forte ashlars. "Florence is the city of rustication" (J. Burckhardt, 1878). The ground floor was blocky in form, with enormously heavy walls and small windows with iron grates. The presence of a porticoed court around which the life of the house revolved and which illuminated the internal rooms was fundamental. The design of the facade became something to entrust to the most outstanding architects. Great attention to design ensured a new grandeur thanks in part to the introduction of ornamental motives taken from the classical world. The carefully designed stone facing was also adopted on the upper floors, replacing the rubblework so common in the Middle Ages, or at the most covering the rubblework with plaster.

The custom of simulating the regular ashlar work in sgraffito on the plaster, later extended to include rich decorations (putti, garlands, mythological scenes), was introduced between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, and quickly spread. Some of the most interesting still extant examples of the first half of the century (more or less restored) are, in chronological order: the facade on Via Maggio of Palazzo Ridolfi; the facades on the courtyard of the Palazzo Da Uzzano-Capponi, in Via de' Bardi; the facades on Via Ginori and on the courtyard of Palazzo Gerini; the facade on Via Michelangelo Buonarroti of Palazzo Lapi; the facade on Borgo S. Croce and on the courtyard of Palazzo Spinelli. The use of sgraffiti in religious architecture was rare, but did exist as witnessed by the facades of the large cloister of S. Croce, possibly hy Bernardo Rossellino and Brunelleschian in its general architectural lines. It must in any case he recalled that the principles of Brunelleschi and Alberti tended to eliminate wall decoration. Moreover the pictorial cycles of the period when present are to be found in old churches. According to Alberti, courtyards, cloisters and porticoes were the only places suitable for this type of decoration.



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