Architectural Character

Early Period (1494-1589 or 16th Century) Classical Period (1589-1715 or 17th Century) Late Period (18th Century)

1494 1589 or 16th Century

 The Special Character of this transitional period lies in the combination of Gothic and Renaissance features to form a picturesque ensemble.to classic While in Italy, a return forms took place, In France there was a period of transition, during which Renaissance details were grafted on to such Gothic features as flying buttresses and pinnacles.

 St. Eustache, Paris planned like a five-aisled mediaeval church with apsidal end, high roofs, window tracery flying buttress, pinnacles and deeplyrecessed portals, all clothed with Renaissance details.

 In Italy the principal buildings were erected in towns as palaces for Popes, prelates and nobles; while the principal buildings in France were castles in the country round Paris and on the Loire for the King and his courtiers. In Italy the influence of ancient Rome is apparent in the classical treatment of detail and ornament, while the influence of traditional Gothic craftsmanship was more pronounced in France. In Italy the predominant characteristics are stateliness and a tendency to classical horizontally, but in France the salient features are picturesqueness and a tendency to Gothic verticality. Early buildings of the period in Italy were principally churches, while in France the chateaux for the nobility are the early buildings are sufficient churches of the middle ages already existed.

Chateaux
A castle or imposing country residence of nobility in old France. Now, any French country estate.

Renaissance Chateau Near Tours

1589 1715 or 17th Century

 Dignity, Sobriety, and Masculine quality of its foremost buildings. Resulting from the subordination of plan. Composition and Detail of the unity of the whole. Charity and Simplicity with which the elements were used. Ornament, though somewhat coarse. Vigorous. Reasonably restrained.

 In the earlier part of the period brick is much favoured as a building material, usually in conjunction with stone or stuccco used for 'quoins and dressings and for 'chaines which in lieu of pilasters, rise vertically between the string-mouldings and cornice so as to form wall-panels; These often having central framed ornaments or niches or being in filled with patterned brickwork.

Quoins
-In masonry a hard stone or brick used, with similar ones, to reinforce an external corner or edge of a wall or the like; often distinguished decoratively from adjacent masonry; may be imitated in non-load bearing materials.

Chaines
- (chain) vertical strips of rusticated masonry rising between the horizontal stringmouldings and cornice of a building, and so dividing the facades into bays or panels.
Windows grew increasingly large, and ride up into the steep roofs as dormers, while stone mullions and transoms tend to give place to wood. There is much play with rustication, on the Orders themselves when these appear; sometimes the orders enframe dormers, as well as the windows aligned vertically below. Roofs at first mostly are steep and treated in separate pavilion units, and the 'Mansard roof of two different slopes is popular, but as the period develops, unified pitched roofs or flat roofs become increasingly common.

Dormer
- A window in a sloping roof usually that of a sleeping-apartment.

Mullion
- Vertical members dividing windows into different numbers of lights.

Transom
- The horizontal divisions or crossbars of windows.

Mansard
- A roof having a double slope on all four sides; the lower slope being much steeper, and flatter upper portion named after mansart. Also known as a gambrel roof.

Place Des Vosges, Paris

The Opera House, Cologne

The Orders figure much more frequently in the second half of the period, normally superimposed in the typical French manner, but with a little recourse to the giant order. The orders become much more strictly classical in proportions and detail than formerly, and this relatively simplicity of exterior design accentuates the contrast with interior decoration, which is brilliantly profuse in fanciful scrolls, nymphs, wreaths, and shells carried cut in stucco and 'papier mache. Forms of ornament also consistently applied to furniture and fittings. This was the great age of Renaissance architecture in

Scroll
-An ornament consisting of a spirally wound band, either as a running ornament or as a terminal, like the volutes of the ionic capital or the scrolls on consoles and modillions.

Nymphaeum
-A room decorated with plants, sculpture and fountains (often decorated with nymphs) and intended for relaxation.

Nymphs
-Any group of minor nature goddesses represented as beautiful maidens living in rivers, mountains and trees.

Wreath
-A twisted band, garland, or chaplet, representing flowers, fruits, leaves often used in decoration.

Papier-mache
- A material composed principally of paper; usualy prepared by pulping a mass of paper (sometimes glue is added) to a dough-like consistently and molding to a desired form.

Maison Milsand, Dijon: Upper Part of Facade

Church of Saint Andrew's at the Quirinal

 The Church of Saint Andrew's is a Roman Catholic titular church in Rome, Italy, built for of the Jesuit seminary on the Quirinal Hill. The church of Sant'Andrea, an important example of Roman Baroque architecture, was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini with Giovanni de'Rossi. Bernini received the commission in 1658 and the church was constructed by 1661, although the interior decoration was not finished until 1670. The site previously accommodated a 16th century church, Sant'Andrea a Montecavallo. Commissioned by former Cardinal Camillo Francesco Maria Pamphili, with the approval of Pope Alexander VII, Sant'Andrea was the third Jesuit church constructed in Rome, after the Church of the Ges and Sant'Ignazio.