Italian Renaissance, Lombard Renaissance architecture

Italian Renaissance

The art of the Italian Renaissance, which systematically emulated ancient art, was created in the second half of the 15th century by outstanding Florentine artists such as the architect Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello, or the painter Masaccio. By the middle of the century the new style reached other great cultural centres of Italy, including Rome, Naples, Venice and Lombardy, where characteristic local variants arose. The new style first appeared outside Italy in the 1470-1480s, in King Matthias' court, but by the 1490s its influence reached most European countries. The classical phase of the Renaissance came to an end with the sack of Rome in 1527.

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Lombard Renaissance architecture

The Renaissance, born in Central Italy, had a special variant in the middle of the 15th century in the North-Italian Lombardy, in the territory of the principality of Milan, which was characterised by decorativeness and a mixture of Renaissance and Gothic elements. The most important figure of early Lombard Renaissance architecture and theory of architecture was Antonio Averlino (Filarete), (ca. 1400 - 1469), who worked for the Milanese princes, the Sforzas, and whose treatise on architecture was translated into Latin for King Matthias by Antonio Bonfini. The most characteristic master of the decorative style of the Lombard Renaissance was Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, whose main works are the Colleoni chapel in Bergamo (1470-1473) and the facade of the Certosa of Pavia (1473-1499). The greatest architect of the high Renaissance, Donato Bramante (around 1444-1514), also created his first works in Milan in the 1480s and 1490s.

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