I believe that most people would recognize the Renaissance
as the golden age of art. The revival of
civilization after several hundred years of Dark Age is like a light, at last,
at the end of the tunnel. But I must
admit that every time I hear the word ‘Renaissance’, I always think of the
paintings and sculptures but not much of the architecture of the period, so now
let’s look deeper into the architecture of the Renaissance.
We can say that it all started from the Crusades, the Great
War to reclaim the Holy Land of Jerusalem.
Crusaders from Western Europe needed to travel eastward, and while doing
so, they found themselves fascinated with the civilization of the past, like
the Eastern Roman Empire. After the war,
they brought back those inspirations along with ancient texts, and distributed
it. People of this period started to pay
more attention to education, thus a lot of intellectuals were born, like
schools, universities. Books were more
common, since printing press was invented.
People of Renaissance also developed the strong believe of
human capability, and this took a huge part in art and architecture. There was a study of human scale and
proportion, the ‘anthropomorphism’,
as clearly seen in Leonardo Da Vinci’s work, ‘the Vitruvian Man’. Human body can be drawn related to simple
geometrical shapes, namely circle and square, and people of Renaissance use
this to create arts and architectures, which, once more, pleasing to the
eyes. Influences from Roman Architecture
can be seen. Domes, arches, columns, and
basilica plans were used once again, as we can see in St. Peter’s Basilica.
I found that I really like the feel of Renaissance, and the
belief of Humanity. After years of
living in darkness, revival of flourishing art and architecture must have felt
really great. They used inspiration of
the Romans, even Greeks, and integrated their newfound knowledge of human
proportion into it to produce even better work of their own. This was indeed the golden age.
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