The Art of Building

 

The notion that architecture is the art of building was implied by Alberti in the first published treatise on the theory of architecture, De re aedificatoria (1485; Eng. trans., Ten Books on Architecture, 1955); for, although he was a layman writing for other lay scholars, he rejected, by his title, the idea that architecture was simply applied mathematics, as had been claimed by Vitruvius. The specific denotation of architecture as "the art of building," however, seems to be a French tradition, deriving perhaps from the medieval status of master masons, as understood by the 16th-century architect Philibert Delorme. This definition occurs in most French treatises published before 1750; and, although the humanistic and antiquarian aspects of fine building were rarely questioned after the Renaissance, the distinction between "architecture" and "building" never had any appreciable significance before Renaissance ideas succumbed to the combined assault of "aesthetics" and the Gothic Revival movement.

The History of Western Architecture

The Renaissance

The concept of the Renaissance, whose goal was the rebirth or re-creation of ancient classical culture, originated in Florence in the early 15th century and thence spread throughout most of the Italian peninsula; by the end of the 16th century the new style pervaded almost all of Europe, gradually replacing the Gothic style of the late Middle Ages. It encouraged a revival of naturalism, seen in Italian 15th-century painting and sculpture, and of classical forms and ornament in architecture, such as the column and round arch, the tunnel vault, and the dome.