(gentle piano music)
- [Dr. Zucker] We're in the piazza just in front
of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
We're looking at a facade that was redesigned by Alberti,
the great Renaissance architect.
- [Dr. Harris] Santa Maria Novella is an important
Gothic church here in Florence.
- [Dr. Zucker] One of the two mendicant churches
in the city.
- [Dr. Harris] By that we mean churches founded
by the begging orders,
the orders of monks who begged for a living.
The Dominicans and the Franciscans.
Santa Maria Novella is a Dominican church.
Now Alberti is coming here is the mid 15th century
and his patron is Giovanni Rucellai
for whom he also designed a palace just a few blocks away.
Rucellai inherited the patronage rights to this church
but he inherited it from a family
that had already begun to design the facade.
- [Dr. Zucker] Alberti had some serious problems here
because he was a classicist.
That is he wanted his architecture
to conform to what he believed to be the ideals
of classical beauty.
Which were based on perfect geometry
and rational order and proportion.
- [Dr. Harris] Copying of the rules of architecture
handed down from ancient Rome
via the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.
- [Dr. Zucker] The problem is that this was a Gothic church
and Gothic is anything but orderly.
- [Dr. Harris] So he took this Gothic church
and on it put a classical facade
that also recalls the Romanesque tradition of Italy.
Specifically the Baptistery of Florence
and also the church of San Miniato al Monte
which is just outside the center of the city of Florence.
- [Dr. Zucker] We can see that especially in the linear
geometric patterns that we see.
The alternating of the white marble and this green stone.
So Alberti had an issue.
Not only was he dealing with a Gothic church
but there was a preexisting facade
that was only partially complete.
We're not sure how much of it was there
but we think that a number of tombs had already
been put in place of which six remain.
- [Dr. Harris] As modern viewers
we hardly recognize that those niches are in fact, tombs.
But that's what they are.
- [Dr Zucker] Just above them we see those Gothic arches
which we also think predate Alberti.
- [Dr. Harris] What Alberti does with this lower story
is that he frames it.
On each end he gives us a column accompanied by a pier.
The column has a Corinthian capital
and in the center he gives us a doorway
modeled on the Pantheon.
So what had been there before was a small doorway
and Alberti gives us a magnificent entryway.
- [Dr. Zucker] In fact it's easy to picture
what that original doorway would have looked like
because two earlier doorways still exist.
- [Dr. Harris] He defines the edges of the building for us.
He defines the center with pilasters
with Corinthian capitals,
a coffered vault over the entrance.
We see these references
to ancient Roman architecture.
But we also see a references at the top
to an ancient Greek temple front.
- [Dr. Zucker] It is clearly a temple front.
We have a pediment just like we would expect to see
on the Parthenon in ancient Greece.
We see squared attached columns,
pilasters supporting it.
That Greek temple front caused a problem for Alberti.
If you look at the four pilasters
that support the pediment above it
those four pilasters are not aligned
with pilasters below them
as would be appropriate in a classical building.
- [Dr. Harris] Of course Alberti
was all about following the rules of classical architecture.
- [Dr. Zucker] What he does is he wants to distract us.
- [Dr Harris] He does that really well.
He creates this attic zone
and he fills it with this decorative pattern of squares.
- [Dr. Zucker] With pattern circles within them.
It creates a zone of isolation
between the top and the bottom.
- [Dr. Harris] There is a sense of rigor
and geometric order here.
Aside from that one deviation.
In fact the whole facade fits into a square.
- [Dr. Zucker] That square can be sub-divided
into additional squares.
If you look at the bottom zone of the church
you see that you have two of those squares.
Then above that a single centered square.
- [Dr. Harris] He's got yet another problem to solve
which is that he's got this very tall nave inside the church
and then the shorter aisles on either side.
So how to unify those two.
He comes up with an ingenious solution
and that is to use these S-shaped scrolls
to unify the top and bottom stories.
- [Dr. Zucker] Now he hadn't invented
the idea of the scroll.
This time he's borrowing it
from the lantern of Brunelleschi's Dome
which is just a couple of blocks away.
- [Dr. Harris] Then he also puts a rosette
inside that scroll and so it echos the round window
in the center of the building
and that roundel is also repeated above
in the pediment where we see a child's face
in the middle of a sunburst.
Communicating the idea of the resurrection
of the afterlife.
- [Dr. Zucker] Least we forget who was paying
for all of this.
Just below that sun we see
Giovanni Rucellai's name as patron.
- [Dr. Harris] We also see his family insignia
in the wind-blown sails that decorate the freeze.
- [Dr. Zucker] Those sails are meant
to references the idea that he hoped
that through his faith he might sail to salvation.
- [Dr. Harris] The Rucellai were a very wealthy family
in Florence, but the Rucellai were not as wealthy
and powerful as the Medici family.
We see the Medici crest, the diamond with three feathers
emerging from it right over
the central doorway of the church.
- [Dr. Zucker] So we can see expression
of the Rucellai's loyalty to the Medici here.
- [Dr. Harris] It's so easy to walk by this church
and miss all of this.
But the 15th century is alive here
in Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
(upbeat piano music)