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A. Architectural typeThe two monumental ancient architectural forms, the O. and the formally similar pyramid, only underwent systematic symbolic interpretation in the Renaissance. It was also only in this period that they began to be built in Europe. The O.s surviving from Antiquity were made in Egypt, Ethiopia and Assyria, and some were transported from Egypt to Rome from the reign of Augustus. There were pyramids in Ancient Egypt, and occasionally in Rome as funerary monuments (Pyramid of Cestiu…

A. Greek literature A.1. Access to Greek The rediscovery of Greek literature in Italy necessarily began  ab ovo. The division of the two halves of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity had led not only to the gradual disappearance of Greek texts (partly because they were not copied to minuscule manuscripts to replace papyrus and parchment majuscule texts in scriptura continua), but also to a declining knowledge of Greek as a literary language, although sporadic interest in Greek did persist in the West under certain conditions and at certain centres [3]. It remained a firm linguistic …

A. Introduction The Renaissance theatre building long remained an unfulfilled promise. Although architectural theorists of the early Renaissance had made thorough studies of ancient T. on the basis of the treatise by the Roman architect Vitruvius, it was not until the 1580s that purpose-built, permanent theatres began to be built in Italy. Like baths, mausolea, villas and aqueducts, theatres were an ancient architectural typology for which there was, at first, no socially established us…

A. Problems and contextsEuropean A. of the 15th and 16th cents. can only be properly understood in the context of the Renaissance, as a movement of general renewal and, in the context of Humanism, a movement of erudition and education, built on a knowledge of classical texts. At issue, therefore, are not so much the internal systems that characterized the A. of the period, in terms of material and structural manufacturing techniques, building typologies, the development of a formal repertoire and t…

A. Concept and usage The concept of A. in Renaissance architecture covered a far wider spectrum of formal matters and theoretical considerations than in modern terminology (which confines it to "decoration on the surface of an object"). The Latin terms ornamentum and  ornatus ('ornament', 'that which is adorned', 'the ornate'; Italian from 15th cent. ornamento, French from 16th cent. ornemens; German from 16th cent.  Ornament, Zierungen), used throughout the sources, denote very varied forms of decoration in Renaissance architecture and also have wide-rangin…

A. Principles and challenges Ancient bridges were visible to later eras as sections of roads constructed with great architectural sophistication and as aqueducts conducting water across impassable terrain. Like ancient roads, many bridges remained in use after Antiquity, some even to this day (e.g. Pons Fabricius/Ponte dei Quattro Capi and Pons Aelius/Ponte Sant'Angelo in Rome, others at Salamanca, Cordoba and Merida). Furthermore, even ancient authors already regarded the Roman Empire's …

A. IntroductionThe modern history of reflection on European architecture begins in the early Renaissance. The fact that an independent theoretical discipline developed alongside the technical and artisanal practice of building and the professionalization of the builder's occupation lends early modern European architecture a unique cultural character. It also distinguishes it from architectural creativity outside Europe, for instance in Asia, Africa and South America, where despite the outstanding…

A. Definition and building type The word 'palace' and its cognates in the various languages of Europe, which were used synonymously with other terms (Italian palazzo with  casa; French  palais with  hôtel; German Palast/Pallas overlapping with  Burg,  Schloss,  Residenz, Kastell) is derived from the name of the Palatine Hill ( mons Palatinus) in Rome, which under the late Republic became the preferred residential area for the wealthy urban elite (e.g. House of Augustus), and where from the 1st cent. AD the palaces of the Roman Emperors were b…

1. Concept 1.1. Broad and strict working definitionThe consideration of architecture, the most general possible definition of the substance and function of architectural theory, was documented throughout the early modern period as an increasingly systematic written and pictorial historical transmission of rationales and doctrines of architecture. Architectural theory seeks to integrate artisanal, technical, political, social, and aesthetic categories of building into a methodical system of principles t…

1. ConceptIn its broadest sense, the word “monument” denotes any vehicle of recollection or preservation across the entire spectrum of historical relics, the documentary or memorial value of which need not have been intended at the time, but may have been declared or bestowed at a later date. Intentionally designed monuments, on the other hand, belong to the artistic form of architectural and sculptural design, employed to preserve the memory or people or events. Typical monuments range from colu…

1. Definition Classical order, a technical term in architecture, denotes the load-bearing system comprising the vertical element of the column and the horizontal entablature above, which together form a colonnade. In terms of structures, the system is found in façades and interior divisions. In early modern architectural theory, the sources use a wider variety of terms, and it is not always exactly clear what is meant.  In addition to the term “order,” which was current from the 16th century on (cf. Latin  ordo, Italian ordine, French ordre, German Ordnung), English had the sy…

The generic architectural term “mausoleum” denotes a representational funerary structure, and the word is still chiefly used in this sense today (Tomb). Other meanings were also current in the early modern period, falling largely into disuse as the phenomenon they described disappeared. A mausoleum, for instance, was also an ephemeral funerary edifice (Latin castrum doloris, “castle of grief”), and the term formed the basis for the literary genre of funerary panegyric. It also referred to reliquaries of saints (Italian arca).The original “Mausoleum” (Latin mausoleum, from the …

1. Definition Patronage in scholarship, science, and the arts is the financial support and encouragement offered by individual patrons or institutions to practitioners. The quintessential patron in Greco-Roman antiquity was Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, the friend and advisor to the Emperor Augustus in the 1st century BCE who operated as patron of a circle of poets that included Horace. Maecenas’ name has entered many European languages (but not English) as a common noun with the sense of “patron” or “sponsor” (German  Mäzen; French  mécène; Czech  mecenáš), and in derivatives wit…

A. Church architecture and the ancient tradition As a building type, Christian C. stands in a remarkably complex and conflicted relationship with ancient architecture. The adoption of ancient building types and their adaptation to new requirements, as practised in other architectural fields (e.g. Bridge architecture; Theater architecture), could only take place in conditions of glaring ideological and objectual or structural discrepancies. Since the late Roman Empire, Christianity…

A. ConceptThere was no equivalent in the terminologies of earlier eras for the concept of UA, which was developed in the 19th cent. There was, however, an idea in existence from Antiquity of a planned conception of the key elements of urban design (e.g. streets, squares, blocks, individual buildings, parks and water facilities) that reflected social and aesthetic concerns, emerging in conjunction with the phenomenon of the town as a feature of settlement geography distinct, for instance, from ind…

1. Definition und BegriffT. ist eine Übersetzung des lat. Begriffs arcus triumphalis (vgl. ital. arco di trionfo, franz. arc de triomphe, engl. triumphal arch). Als T. wird der Bautypus eines meist freistehenden denkmalhaften Bogenbaus nach röm.-antiken Vorbildern bezeichnet. Er besteht in der Grundform aus zwei Mauerpfeilern, zwischen denen der Tordurchgang mit tonnengewölbten Arkaden überspannt wird. In der Antike überwogen die eintorigen Anlagen (z. B. Titusbogen am Forum Romanum, gestiftet 70 n. Chr., der älteste erhaltene stadtröm. T.), während in der späteren R…

1. Begriff und DefinitionDer dt. Begriff S. wird synonym zu dem Lehnwort Statue (lat./ital. statua, engl./franz. statue) für eine spezielle Gattung des Denkmals verwendet: die vollplastische, v. a. aus Stein oder Bronze angefertigte Darstellung eines Menschen in der Form einer Freifigur auf einem Sockel oder in der architektonischen Rahmung einer Wandnische (Plastik). Darstellungswürdig waren in der Nz. Gestalten der antiken Mythologie und der christl. Überlieferung sowie histor. Personen. Meist bezieht sich der Begriff auf eine stehende Einzel…

M. bezeichnet als architektonischer Gattungsbegriff einen repräsentativen Grabbau und wird bis heute hauptsächlich in diesem Sinn benutzt (Grabmal). Weitere Bedeutungen waren in der Nz. verbreitet und gerieten mit dem Verschwinden des jeweiligen Phänomens weitgehend in Vergessenheit: So wurde M. für einen ephemer errichteten Funeralapparat (lat. castrum doloris, »Trauergerüst«) verwendet; von ihm wurde die Bezeichnung für die lit. Gattung der Toten-Panegyrik abgeleitet; darüber hinaus war das Wort auch für Reliquienschreine von Heiligen (ital. arca) gebräuchlich. M. (…

1. DefinitionDer Begriff M. (abgeleitet von Gaius Maecenas, der im 1. Jh. v. Chr. unter Kaiser Augustus als Förderer eines Dichterkreises, darunter Horaz, wirkte) bezeichnet Personen(gruppen) oder Institutionen, die als finanzielle und ideelle Förderer der Wissenschaften oder Künste hervortreten.In der Nz. war die histor. Gestalt des Maecenas neben antiken Quellen durch mehrere Biographien des 17. Jh.s bekannt (u. a. Johann H. Meibom, 1653) [1]. Das dt. Lehnwort M. (Mecenat, Mäcen) ist im 16. Jh. in der Hauptbedeutung »Schutzherr« nachweisbar und verbre…

1. BegriffUnter D. versteht man im weitesten Sinn Erinnerungszeichen im gesamten Umfang histor. Reliktüberlieferung, deren dokumentarischer oder memorialer Zeugniswert ursprünglich nicht beabsichtigt sein muss, sondern auch nachträglich deklariert werden kann. Beim intentional gestalteten D. handelt es sich hingegen um die Kunstform einer architektonisch-plastischen Anlage, die die Erinnerung an Personen oder Ereignisse tradiert, wobei die typologische Breite der Monumente von Säule und Pyramide über das Standbild bis zum Bauwerk und zur Stadtanlage reicht. …