Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture. Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities. The style was carried to Spain, France, Germany, England, Russia and other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact.

Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts, as demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples remained. Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches and aediculae replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.

Historiography

The word "Renaissance" derives from the term rinascita, which means rebirth, first appeared in Giorgio Vasari's Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1550).

Although the term Renaissance was used first by the French historian Jules Michelet, it was given its more lasting definition from the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose book Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, 1860 (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860, English translation, by SGC Middlemore, in 2 vols., London, 1878) was influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance. The folio of measured drawings Édifices de Rome moderne; ou, Recueil des palais, maisons, églises, couvents et autres monuments (The Buildings of Modern Rome), first published in 1840 by Paul Letarouilly, also played an important part in the revival of interest in this period. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, (New York: Harper and Row, 1960) The Renaissance style was recognized by contemporaries in the term "all'antica", or "in the ancient manner" (of the Romans).

Principal phases

Historians often divide the Renaissance in Italy into three phases. Whereas art historians might talk of an Early Renaissance period, in which they include developments in 14th-century painting and sculpture, this is usually not the case in architectural history. The bleak economic conditions of the late 14th century did not produce buildings that are considered to be part of the Renaissance. As a result, the word Renaissance among architectural historians usually applies to the period 1400 to , or later in the case of non-Italian Renaissances.

Historians often use the following designations:
 Quattrocento ()
During the Quattrocento, sometimes known as the Early Renaissance, concepts of architectural order were explored and rules were formulated. The study of classical antiquity led in particular to the adoption of Classical detail and ornamentation. Space, as an element of architecture, was used differently than it was in the Middle Ages. Space was organised by proportional logic, its form and rhythm subject to geometry, rather than being created by intuition as in Medieval buildings. The prime example of this is the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446).

 High Renaissance ()
During the High Renaissance, concepts derived from classical antiquity were developed and used with greater confidence. The most representative architect is Donato Bramante (1444–1514), who expanded the applicability of classical architecture to contemporary buildings. His Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio (1503) was directly inspired by circular Roman temples. He was, however, hardly a slave to the classical forms and it was his style that was to dominate Italian architecture in the 16th century.

 Mannerism ()

During the Mannerist period, architects experimented with using architectural forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships. The Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer and more imaginative rhythms. The best known architect associated with the Mannerist style was Michelangelo (1475–1564), who frequently used the giant order in his architecture, a large pilaster that stretches from the bottom to the top of a façade. He used this in his design for the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. Prior to the 20th century, the term Mannerism had negative connotations, but it is now used to describe the historical period in more general non-judgemental terms.

 From Renaissance to Baroque
As the new style of architecture spread out from Italy, most other European countries developed a sort of Proto-Renaissance style, before the construction of fully formulated Renaissance buildings. Each country in turn then grafted its own architectural traditions to the new style, so that Renaissance buildings across Europe are diversified by region. Within Italy the evolution of Renaissance architecture into Mannerism, with widely diverging tendencies in the work of Michelangelo and Giulio Romano and Andrea Palladio, led to the Baroque style in which the same architectural vocabulary was used for very different rhetoric. Outside Italy, Baroque architecture was more widespread and fully developed than the Renaissance style, with significant buildings as far afield as Mexico and the Philippines.

History

Development in Italy

Italy of the 15th century, and the city of Florence
in particular, was home to the Renaissance. It is in Florence that the new architectural style had its beginning, not slowly evolving in the way that Gothic grew out of Romanesque, but consciously brought to being by particular architects who sought to revive the order of a past "Golden Age". The scholarly approach to the architecture of the ancient coincided with the general revival of learning. A number of factors were influential in bringing this about.

Architectural

Italian architects had always preferred forms that were clearly defined and structural members that expressed their purpose. Many Tuscan Romanesque buildings demonstrate these characteristics, as seen in the Florence Baptistery and Pisa Cathedral.

Italy had never fully adopted the Gothic style of architecture. Apart from Milan Cathedral, (influenced by French Rayonnant Gothic), few Italian churches show the emphasis on vertical, the clustered shafts, ornate tracery and complex ribbed vaulting that characterise Gothic in other parts of Europe.

The presence, particularly in Rome, of ancient architectural remains showing the ordered Classical style provided an inspiration to artists at a time when philosophy was also turning towards the Classical.

Political

In the 15th century, Florence, Venice and Naples extended their power through much of the area that surrounded them, making the movement of artists possible. This enabled Florence to have significant artistic influence in Milan, and through Milan, France.

In 1377, the return of the Pope from the Avignon Papacy and the re-establishment of the Papal court in Rome, brought wealth and importance to that city, as well as a renewal in the importance of the Pope in Italy, which was further strengthened by the Council of Constance in 1417. Successive Popes, especially Julius II, 1503–13, sought to extend the Pope's temporal power throughout Italy.

Commercial

In the early Renaissance, Venice controlled sea trade over goods from the East. The large towns of Northern Italy were prosperous through trade with the rest of Europe, Genoa providing a seaport for the goods of France and Spain; Milan and Turin being centres of overland trade, and maintaining substantial metalworking industries. Trade brought wool from England to Florence, ideally located on the river for the production of fine cloth, the industry on which its wealth was founded. By dominating Pisa, Florence gained a seaport, and also maintained dominance of Genoa. In this commercial climate, one family in particular turned their attention from trade to the lucrative business of money-lending. The Medici became the chief bankers to the princes of Europe, becoming virtually princes themselves as they did so, by reason of both wealth and influence.
Along the trade routes, and thus offered some protection by commercial interest, moved not only goods but also artists, scientists and philosophers.

Religious

The return of the Pope Gregory XI from Avignon in September 1377 and the resultant new emphasis on Rome as the center of Christian spirituality, brought about a surge in the building of churches in Rome such as had not taken place for nearly a thousand years. This commenced in the mid 15th century and gained momentum in the 16th century, reaching its peak in the Baroque period. The construction of the Sistine Chapel with its uniquely important decorations and the entire rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, one of Christendom's most significant churches, were part of this process.

In the wealthy Republic of Florence, the impetus for church-building was more civic than spiritual. The unfinished state of the enormous Florence Cathedral dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary did no honour to the city under her patronage. However, as the technology and finance were found to complete it, the rising dome did credit not only to the Virgin Mary, its architect and the Church but also to the Signoria, the Guilds and the sectors of the city from which the manpower to construct it was drawn. The dome inspired further religious works in Florence.

Philosophic

The development of printed books, the rediscovery of ancient writings, the expanding of political and trade contacts and the exploration of the world all increased knowledge and the desire for education.

The reading of philosophies that were not based on Christian theology led to the development of humanism through which it was clear that while God had established and maintained order in the Universe, it was the role of Man to establish and maintain order in Society.

Civil

Through humanism, civic pride and the promotion of civil peace and order were seen as the marks of citizenship. This led to the building of structures such as Brunelleschi's Hospital of the Innocents with its elegant colonnade forming a link between the charitable building and the public square, and the Laurentian Library where the collection of books established by the Medici family could be consulted by scholars.

Some major ecclesiastical building works were also commissioned, not by the church, but by guilds representing the wealth and power of the city. Brunelleschi's dome at Florence Cathedral, more than any other building, belonged to the populace because the construction of each of the eight segments was achieved by a different  quarter of the city.

Patronage

As in the Platonic academy of Athens, it was seen by those of Humanist understanding that those people who had the benefit of wealth and education ought to promote the pursuit of learning and the creation of that which was beautiful. To this end, wealthy families—the Medici of Florence, the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Farnese in Rome, the Sforzas in Milan—gathered around them people of learning and ability, promoting the skills and creating employment for the most talented artists and architects of their day.

Rise of architectural theory

During the Renaissance, architecture became not only a question of practice, but also a matter for theoretical discussion. Printing played a large role in the dissemination of ideas.
 The first treatise on architecture was De re aedificatoria ("On the Subject of Building") by Leon Battista Alberti in 1450. It was to some degree dependent on Vitruvius's De architectura, a manuscript of which was discovered in 1414 in a library in Switzerland. De re aedificatoria in 1485 became the first printed book on architecture.
 Sebastiano Serlio (1475 – c. 1554) produced the next important text, the first volume of which appeared in Venice in 1537; it was entitled Regole generali d'architettura ("General Rules of Architecture"). It is known as Serlio's "Fourth Book" since it was the fourth in Serlio's original plan of a treatise in seven books. In all, five books were published.
 In 1570, Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) published I quattro libri dell'architettura ("The Four Books of Architecture") in Venice. This book was widely printed and responsible to a great degree for spreading the ideas of the Renaissance through Europe. All these books were intended to be read and studied not only by architects, but also by patrons.

Spread of the Renaissance in Italy

In the 15th century the courts of certain other Italian states became centres for spreading of Renaissance philosophy, art and architecture.

In Mantua at the court of the Gonzaga, Alberti designed two churches, the Basilica of Sant'Andrea and San Sebastiano.

Urbino was an important centre with the ancient Ducal Palace being extended for Federico da Montefeltro in the mid 15th century. The Duke employed Luciano Laurana from Dalmatia, renowned for his expertise at fortification. The design incorporates much of the earlier medieval building and includes an unusual turreted three-storeyed façade. Laurana was assisted by Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Later parts of the building are clearly Florentine in style, particularly the inner courtyard, but it is not known who the designer was.

Ferrara, under the Este, was expanded in the late 15th century, with several new palaces being built such as the Palazzo dei Diamanti and Palazzo Schifanoia for Borso d'Este.

In Milan, under the Visconti, the Certosa di Pavia was completed, and then later under the Sforza, the Castello Sforzesco was built.

Venetian Renaissance architecture developed a particularly distinctive character because of local conditions. San Zaccaria received its Renaissance façade at the hands of Antonio Gambello and Mauro Codussi, begun in the 1480s. Giovanni Maria Falconetto, the Veronese architect-sculptor, introduced Renaissance architecture to Padua with the Loggia Cornaro in the garden of Alvise Cornaro.

In southern Italy, Renaissance masters were called to Naples by Alfonso V of Aragon after his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples. The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in that city are the Cappella Caracciolo, attributed to Bramante, and the Palazzo Orsini di Gravina, built by Gabriele d'Angelo between 1513 and 1549.

Characteristics

The Classical orders were analysed and reconstructed to serve new purposes. While the obvious distinguishing features of Classical Roman architecture were adopted by Renaissance architects, the forms and purposes of buildings had changed over time, as had the structure of cities. Among the earliest buildings of the reborn Classicism were the type of churches that the Romans had never constructed. Neither were there models for the type of large city dwellings required by wealthy merchants of the 15th century. Conversely, there was no call for enormous sporting fixtures and public bath houses such as the Romans had built.

Plan
The plans of Renaissance buildings have a square, symmetrical appearance in which proportions are usually based on a module. Within a church, the module is often the width of an aisle. The need to integrate the design of the plan with the façade was introduced as an issue in the work of Filippo Brunelleschi, but he was never able to carry this aspect of his work into fruition. The first building to demonstrate this was St. Andrea in Mantua by Alberti. The development of the plan in secular architecture was to take place in the 16th century and culminated with the work of Palladio.

Façade
Façades are symmetrical around their vertical axis. Church façades are generally surmounted by a pediment and organised by a system of pilasters, arches and entablatures. The columns and windows show a progression towards the centre. One of the first true Renaissance façades was the Cathedral of Pienza (1459–62), which has been attributed to the Florentine architect Bernardo Gambarelli (known as Rossellino) with Alberti perhaps having some responsibility in its design as well.

Domestic buildings are often surmounted by a cornice. There is a regular repetition of openings on each floor, and the centrally placed door is marked by a feature such as a balcony, or rusticated surround. An early and much copied prototype was the façade for the Palazzo Rucellai (1446 and 1451) in Florence with its three registers of pilasters.

Columns and pilasters
Roman and Greek orders of columns are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. The orders can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a wall in the form of pilasters. During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Brunelleschi.

Arches
Arches are semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental. Arches are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental scale at the St. Andrea in Mantua.

Vaults
Vaults do not have ribs. They are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault which is frequently rectangular. The barrel vault is returned to architectural vocabulary as at the St. Andrea in Mantua.

Domes

The dome is used frequently, both as a very large structural feature that is visible from the exterior, and also as a means of roofing smaller spaces where they are only visible internally. After the success of the dome in Brunelleschi's design for the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and its use in Bramante's plan for St. Peter's Basilica (1506) in Rome, the dome became an indispensable element in church architecture and later even for secular architecture, such as Palladio's Villa Rotonda.

Ceilings
Roofs are fitted with flat or coffered ceilings. They are not left open as in Medieval architecture. They are frequently painted or decorated.

Doors
Doors usually have square lintels. They may be set with in an arch or surmounted by a triangular or segmental pediment.
Openings that do not have doors are usually arched and frequently have a large or decorative keystone.

Windows
Windows may be paired and set within a semi-circular arch. They may have square lintels and triangular or segmental pediments, which are often used alternately. Emblematic in this respect is the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, begun in 1517.

In the Mannerist period the Palladian arch was employed, using a motif of a high semi-circular topped opening flanked with two lower square-topped openings. Windows are used to bring light into the building and in domestic architecture, to give views. Stained glass, although sometimes present, is not a feature.

Walls
External walls are generally constructed of brick, rendered, or faced with stone in highly finished ashlar masonry, laid in straight courses. The corners of buildings are often emphasized by rusticated quoins. Basements and ground floors were often rusticated, as at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi (1444–1460) in Florence. Internal walls are smoothly plastered and surfaced with lime wash. For more formal spaces, internal surfaces are decorated with frescoes.

Details
Courses, mouldings and all decorative details are carved with great precision. Studying and mastering the details of the ancient Romans was one of the important aspects of Renaissance theory. The different orders each required different sets of details. Some architects were stricter in their use of classical details than others, but there was also a good deal of innovation in solving problems, especially at corners. Mouldings stand out around doors and windows rather than being recessed, as in Gothic architecture. Sculptured figures may be set in niches or placed on plinths. They are not integral to the building as in Medieval architecture.

Early Renaissance

The leading architects of the Early Renaissance or Quattrocento were Brunelleschi, Michelozzo and Alberti.

Brunelleschi

The person generally credited with bringing about the Renaissance view of architecture is Filippo Brunelleschi, (1377–1446). The underlying feature of the work of Brunelleschi was "order".

In the early 15th century, Brunelleschi began to look at the world to see what the rules were that governed one's way of seeing. He observed that the way one sees regular structures such as the Florence Baptistery and the tiled pavement surrounding it follows a mathematical order – linear perspective.

The buildings remaining among the ruins of ancient Rome appeared to respect a simple mathematical order in the way that Gothic buildings did not. One incontrovertible rule governed all Ancient Roman architecture – a semi-circular arch is exactly twice as wide as it is high. A fixed proportion with implications of such magnitude occurred nowhere in Gothic architecture. A Gothic pointed arch could be extended upwards or flattened to any proportion that suited the location. Arches of differing angles frequently occurred within the same structure. No set rules of proportion applied.

From the observation of the architecture of Rome came a desire for symmetry and careful proportion in which the form and composition of the building as a whole and all its subsidiary details have fixed relationships, each section in proportion to the next, and the architectural features serving to define exactly what those rules of proportion are. Brunelleschi gained the support of a number of wealthy Florentine patrons, including the Silk Guild and Cosimo de' Medici.

Florence Cathedral
Brunelleschi's first major architectural commission was for the enormous brick dome which covers the central space of Florence's cathedral, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in the 14th century but left unroofed. While often described as the first building of the Renaissance, Brunelleschi's daring design utilises the pointed Gothic arch and Gothic ribs that were apparently planned by Arnolfo. It seems certain, however, that while stylistically Gothic, in keeping with the building it surmounts, the dome is in fact structurally influenced by the great dome of Ancient Rome, which Brunelleschi could hardly have ignored in seeking a solution. This is the dome of the Pantheon, a circular temple, now a church.

Inside the Pantheon's single-shell concrete dome is coffering which greatly decreases the weight. The vertical partitions of the coffering effectively serve as ribs, although this feature does not dominate visually. At the apex of the Pantheon's dome is an opening, 8 meters across. Brunelleschi was aware that a dome of enormous proportion could in fact be engineered without a keystone. The dome in Florence is supported by the eight large ribs and sixteen more internal ones holding a brick shell, with the bricks arranged in a herringbone manner. Although the techniques employed are different, in practice, both domes comprise a thick network of ribs supporting very much lighter and thinner infilling. And both have a large opening at the top.

San Lorenzo
The new architectural philosophy of the Renaissance is best demonstrated in the churches of San Lorenzo, and Santo Spirito in Florence. Designed by Brunelleschi in about 1425 and 1428 respectively, both have the shape of the Latin cross. Each has a modular plan, each portion being a multiple of the square bay of the aisle. This same formula controlled also the vertical dimensions. In the case of Santo Spirito, which is entirely regular in plan, transepts and chancel are identical, while the nave is an extended version of these. In 1434 Brunelleschi designed the first Renaissance centrally planned building, Santa Maria degli Angeli of Florence. It is composed of a central octagon surrounded by a circuit of eight smaller chapels. From this date onwards numerous churches were built in variations of these designs.

Michelozzo
Michelozzo Michelozzi (1396–1472), was another architect under patronage of the Medici family, his most famous work being the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, which he was commissioned to design for Cosimo de' Medici in 1444. A decade later he built the Villa Medici at Fiesole. Among his other works for Cosimo are the library at the Convent of San Marco, Florence. He went into exile in Venice for a time with his patron. He was one of the first architects to work in the Renaissance style outside Italy, building a palace at Dubrovnik.

The Palazzo Medici Riccardi is Classical in the details of its pedimented windows and recessed doors, but, unlike the works of Brunelleschi and Alberti, there are no classical orders of columns in evidence. Instead, Michelozzo has respected the Florentine liking for rusticated stone. He has seemingly created three orders out of the three defined rusticated levels, the whole being surmounted by an enormous Roman-style cornice which juts out over the street by 2.5 meters.

Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti, born in Genoa (1402–1472), was an important Humanist theoretician and designer whose book on architecture De re Aedificatoria was to have lasting effect. An aspect of Renaissance humanism was an emphasis of the anatomy of nature, in particular the human form, a science first studied by the Ancient Greeks. Humanism made man the measure of things. Alberti perceived the architect as a person with great social responsibilities.

He designed a number of buildings, but unlike Brunelleschi, he did not see himself as a builder in a practical sense and so left the supervision of the work to others. Miraculously, one of his greatest designs, that of the Basilica of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, was brought to completion with its character essentially intact. Not so the Church of San Francesco in Rimini, a rebuilding of a Gothic structure, which, like Sant'Andrea, was to have a façade reminiscent of a Roman triumphal arch. This was left sadly incomplete.

Sant'Andrea is an extremely dynamic building both without and within. Its triumphal façade is marked by extreme contrasts. The projection of the order of pilasters that define the architectural elements, but are essentially non-functional, is very shallow. This contrasts with the gaping deeply recessed arch which makes a huge portico before the main door. The size of this arch is in direct contrast to the two low square-topped openings that frame it. The light and shade play dramatically over the surface of the building because of the shallowness of its mouldings and the depth of its porch. In the interior Alberti has dispensed with the traditional nave and aisles. Instead there is a slow and majestic progression of alternating tall arches and low square doorways, repeating the "triumphal arch" motif of the façade.

Two of Alberti's best known buildings are in Florence, the Palazzo Rucellai and at Santa Maria Novella. For the palace, Alberti applied the classical orders of columns to the façade on the three levels, 1446–51. At Santa Maria Novella he was commissioned to finish the decoration of the façade. He completed the design in 1456 but the work was not finished until 1470.

The lower section of the building had Gothic niches and typical polychrome marble decoration. There was a large ocular window in the end of the nave which had to be taken into account. Alberti simply respected what was already in place, and the Florentine tradition for polychrome that was well established at the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the most revered building in the city. The decoration, being mainly polychrome marble, is mostly very flat in nature, but a sort of order is established by the regular compartments and the circular motifs which repeat the shape of the round window. For the first time, Alberti linked the lower roofs of the aisles to nave using two large scrolls. These were to become a standard Renaissance device for solving the problem of different roof heights and bridge the space between horizontal and vertical surfaces.

High Renaissance

In the late 15th century and early 16th century, architects such as Bramante, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and others showed a mastery of the revived style and ability to apply it to buildings such as churches and city palazzo which were quite different from the structures of ancient times. The style became more decorated and ornamental, statuary, domes and cupolas becoming very evident.
The architectural period is known as the "High Renaissance" and coincides with the age of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Bramante
Donato Bramante, (1444–1514), was born in Urbino and turned from painting to architecture, finding his first important patronage under Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, for whom he produced a number of buildings over 20 years. After the fall of Milan to the French in 1499, Bramante travelled to Rome where he achieved great success under papal patronage.

Bramante's finest architectural achievement in Milan is his addition of crossing and choir to the abbey church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Milan). This is a brick structure, the form of which owes much to the Northern Italian tradition of square domed baptisteries. The new building is almost centrally planned, except that, because of the site, the chancel extends further than the transept arms. The hemispherical dome, of approximately 20 metres across, rises up hidden inside an octagonal drum pierced at the upper level with arched classical openings. The whole exterior has delineated details decorated with the local terracotta ornamentation.
From 1488 to 1492 he worked for Ascanio Sforza on the cathedral of Pavia, on which he imposed a central plan scheme and built some apses and the crypt, inspired by the thermal baths of the Roman age.

In Rome Bramante created what has been described as "a perfect architectural gem", the Tempietto in the Cloister of San Pietro in Montorio. This small circular temple marks the spot where St Peter was martyred and is thus the most sacred site in Rome. The building adapts the style apparent in the remains of the Temple of Vesta, the most sacred site of Ancient Rome. It is enclosed by and in spatial contrast with the cloister which surrounds it. As approached from the cloister, as in the picture above, it is seen framed by an arch and columns, the shape of which are echoed in its free-standing form.

Bramante went on to work at the Vatican, where he designed the Cortile del Belvedere. In 1506 his design for Pope Julius II's rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica was selected, and the foundation stone laid. After Bramante's death and many changes of plan, Michelangelo, as chief architect, reverted to something closer to Bramante's original proposal.

Sangallo
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1485–1546) was one of a family of military engineers. His uncle, Giuliano da Sangallo was one of those who submitted a plan for the rebuilding of St Peter's and was briefly a co-director of the project, with Raphael.

Antonio da Sangallo also submitted a plan for St Peter's and became the chief architect after the death of Raphael, to be succeeded himself by Michelangelo.

His fame does not rest upon his association with St Peter's but in his building of the Farnese Palace, "the grandest palace of this period", started in 1530. The impression of grandness lies in part in its sheer size, (56 m long by 29.5 meters high) and in its lofty location overlooking a broad piazza. Unusually for such a large and luxurious house of the time, it was built principally of stuccoed brick, rather than of stone. Against the smooth pink-washed walls the stone quoins of the corners, the massive rusticated portal and the repetition of finely detailed windows produce an elegant effect. The upper of the three equally sized floors was added by Michelangelo. The travertine for its architectural details came not from a quarry, but from the Colosseum.

Raphael
Raphael (1483–1520), born in Urbino, trained under Perugino in Perugia before moving to Florence, was for a time the chief architect for St. Peter's, working in conjunction with Antonio Sangallo. He also designed a number of buildings, most of which were finished by others. His single most influential work is the Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence with its two stories of strongly articulated windows of a "tabernacle" type, each set around with ordered pilasters, cornice and alternate arched and triangular pediments.

Mannerism

Mannerism in architecture was marked by widely diverging tendencies in the work of Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Baldassare Peruzzi and Andrea Palladio, that led to the Baroque style in which the same architectural vocabulary was used for very different rhetoric.

Peruzzi
Baldassare Peruzzi, (1481–1536), was an architect born in Siena, but working in Rome, whose work bridges the High Renaissance and the Mannerist period.
His Villa Farnesina of 1509 is a very regular monumental cube of two equal stories, the bays being strongly articulated by orders of pilasters. The building is unusual for its frescoed walls.

Peruzzi's most famous work is the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome. The unusual features of this building are that its façade curves gently around a curving street. It has in its ground floor a dark central portico running parallel to the street, but as a semi enclosed space, rather than an open loggia. Above this rise three undifferentiated floors, the upper two with identical small horizontal windows in thin flat frames which contrast strangely with the deep porch, which has served, from the time of its construction, as a refuge to the city's poor.

Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano (1499–1546), was a pupil of Raphael, assisting him on various works for the Vatican. Romano was also a highly inventive designer, working for Federico II Gonzaga at Mantua on the Palazzo Te (1524–1534), a project which combined his skills as architect, sculptor and painter. In this work, incorporating garden grottoes and extensive frescoes, he uses illusionistic effects, surprising combinations of architectural form and texture, and the frequent use of features that seem somewhat disproportionate or out of alignment. The total effect is eerie and disturbing. Ilan Rachum cites Romano as "one of the first promoters of Mannerism".

Michelangelo
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was one of the creative giants whose achievements mark the High Renaissance. He excelled in each of the fields of painting, sculpture and architecture, and his achievements brought about significant changes in each area. His architectural fame lies chiefly in two buildings: the interiors of the Laurentian Library and its lobby at the monastery of San Lorenzo in Florence, and St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

St. Peter's was "the greatest creation of the Renaissance", and a great number of architects contributed their skills to it. But at its completion, there was more of Michelangelo's design than of any other architect, before or after him.

St. Peter's
The plan that was accepted at the laying of the foundation stone in 1506 was that by Bramante. Various changes in plan occurred in the series of architects that succeeded him, but Michelangelo, when he took over the project in 1546, reverted to Bramante's Greek-cross plan and redesigned the piers, the walls and the dome, giving the lower weight-bearing members massive proportions and eliminating the encircling aisles from the chancel and identical transept arms. Helen Gardner says: "Michelangelo, with a few strokes of the pen, converted its snowflake complexity into a massive, cohesive unity."

Michelangelo's dome was a masterpiece of design using two masonry shells, one within the other and crowned by a massive roof lantern supported, as at Florence, on ribs. For the exterior of the building he designed a giant order which defines every external bay, the whole lot being held together by a wide cornice which runs unbroken like a rippling ribbon around the entire building.

There is a wooden model of the dome, showing its outer shell as hemispherical. When Michelangelo died in 1564, the building had reached the height of the drum. The architect who succeeded Michelangelo was Giacomo della Porta. The dome, as built, has a much steeper projection than the dome of the model. It is generally presumed that it was della Porta who made this change to the design, to lessen the outward thrust. But, in fact it is unknown who it was that made this change, and it is equally possible and a stylistic likelihood that the person who decided upon the more dynamic outline was Michelangelo himself at some time during the years that he supervised the project.

Laurentian Library
Michelangelo was at his most Mannerist in the design of the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, also built by him to house the Medici collection of books at the convent of San Lorenzo in Florence, the same San Lorenzo's at which Brunelleschi had recast church architecture into a Classical mold and established clear formula for the use of Classical orders and their various components.

Michelangelo takes all Brunelleschi's components and bends them to his will. The Library is upstairs. It is a long low building with an ornate wooden ceiling, a matching floor and crowded with corrals finished by his successors to Michelangelo's design. But it is a light room, the natural lighting streaming through a long row of windows that appear positively crammed between the order of pilasters that march along the wall. The vestibule, on the other hand, is tall, taller than it is wide and is crowded by a large staircase that pours out of the library in what Nikolaus Pevsner refers to as a "flow of lava", and bursts in three directions when it meets the balustrade of the landing. It is an intimidating staircase, made all the more so because the rise of the stairs at the center is steeper than at the two sides, fitting only eight steps into the space of nine.

The space is crowded and it is to be expected that the wall spaces would be divided by pilasters of low projection. But Michelangelo has chosen to use paired columns, which, instead of standing out boldly from the wall, he has sunk deep into recesses within the wall itself. In the Basilica di San Lorenzo nearby, Brunelleschi used little scrolling console brackets to break the strongly horizontal line of the course above the arcade. Michelangelo has borrowed Brunelleschi's motifs and stood each pair of sunken columns on a pair of twin console brackets. Pevsner says the "Laurenziana [...] reveals Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form".

Giacomo della Porta
Giacomo della Porta, (–1602), was famous as the architect who made the dome of St. Peter's Basilica a reality. The change in outline between the dome as it appears in the model and the dome as it was built, has brought about speculation as to whether the changes originated with della Porta or with Michelangelo himself.

Della Porta spent nearly all his working life in Rome, designing villas, palazzi and churches in the Mannerist style. One of his most famous works is the façade of the Church of the Gesù, a project that he inherited from his teacher Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola. Most characteristics of the original design are maintained, subtly transformed to give more weight to the central section, where della Porta uses, among other motifs, a low triangular pediment overlaid on a segmental one above the main door. The upper storey and its pediment give the impression of compressing the lower one. The center section, like that of Sant'Andrea at Mantua, is based on the triumphal arch, but has two clear horizontal divisions like Santa Maria Novella. See Alberti above. The problem of linking the aisles to the nave is solved using Alberti's scrolls, in contrast to Vignola's solution which provided much smaller brackets and four statues to stand above the paired pilasters, visually weighing down the corners of the building. The influence of the design may be seen in Baroque churches throughout Europe.

Andrea Palladio
Andrea Palladio, (1508–80), "the most influential architect of the whole Renaissance", was, as a stonemason, introduced to Humanism by the poet Giangiorgio Trissino. His first major architectural commission was the rebuilding of the Basilica Palladiana at Vicenza, in the Veneto where he was to work most of his life.

Palladio was to transform the architectural style of both palaces and churches by taking a different perspective on the notion of Classicism. While the architects of Florence and Rome looked to structures like the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine to provide formulae, Palladio looked to classical temples with their simple peristyle form. When he used the triumphal arch motif of a large arched opening with lower square-topped opening on either side, he invariably applied it on a small scale, such as windows, rather than on a large scale as Alberti used it at Sant'Andrea's. This Ancient Roman motif is often referred to as the Palladian Arch.

The best known of Palladio's domestic buildings is Villa Capra, otherwise known as "La Rotonda", a centrally planned house with a domed central hall and four identical façades, each with a temple-like portico like that of the Pantheon in Rome. At the Villa Cornaro, the projecting portico of the north façade and recessed loggia of the garden façade are of two ordered stories, the upper forming a balcony.

Like Alberti, della Porta and others, in the designing of a church façade, Palladio was confronted by the problem of visually linking the aisles to the nave while maintaining and defining the structure of the building. Palladio's solution was entirely different from that employed by della Porta. At the church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice he overlays a tall temple, its columns raised on high plinths, over another low wide temple façade, its columns rising from the basements and its narrow lintel and pilasters appearing behind the giant order of the central nave.

Progression from Early Renaissance through to Baroque

In Italy, there appears to be a seamless progression from Early Renaissance architecture through the High Renaissance and Mannerism to the Baroque style. Pevsner comments about the vestibule of the Laurentian Library that it "has often been said that the motifs of the walls show Michelangelo as the father of the Baroque".

While continuity may be the case in Italy, it was not necessarily the case elsewhere. The adoption of the Renaissance style of architecture was slower in some areas than in others, as may be seen in England, for example. Indeed, as Pope Julius II was having the Old St. Peter's Basilica demolished to make way for the new, Henry VII of England was adding a glorious new chapel in the Perpendicular Gothic style to Westminster Abbey.

Likewise, the style that was to become known as Baroque evolved in Italy in the early 17th century, at about the time that the first fully Renaissance buildings were constructed at Greenwich and Whitehall in England, after a prolonged period of experimentation with Classical motifs applied to local architectural forms, or conversely, the adoption of Renaissance structural forms in the broadest sense with an absence of the formulae that governed their use. While the English were just discovering what the rules of Classicism were, the Italians were experimenting with methods of breaking them. In England, following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the architectural climate changed, and taste moved in the direction of the Baroque. Rather than evolving, as it did in Italy, it arrived fully fledged.

In a similar way, in many parts of Europe that had few purely classical and ordered buildings like Brunelleschi's Santo Spirito and Michelozzo's Medici Riccardi Palace, Baroque architecture appeared almost unheralded, on the heels of a sort of Proto-Renaissance local style. The spread of the Baroque and its replacement of traditional and more conservative Renaissance architecture was particularly apparent in the building of churches as part of the Counter Reformation.

Spread in Europe

The 16th century saw the economic and political ascendancy of France and Spain, and then later of England, Germany, Poland and Russia and the Low Countries. The result was that these places began to import the Renaissance style as indicators of their new cultural position. This also meant that it was not until about 1500 and later that signs of Renaissance architectural style began to appear outside Italy.

Though Italian architects were highly sought after, such as Sebastiano Serlio in France, Aristotile Fioravanti in Russia, and Francesco Fiorentino in Poland, soon, non-Italians were studying Italian architecture and translating it into their own idiom. These included Philibert de l'Orme (1510–1570) in France, Juan Bautista de Toledo (died: 1567) in Spain, Inigo Jones (1573–1652) in England and Elias Holl (1573–1646) in Germany.

Books or ornament prints with engraved illustrations demonstrating plans and ornament were very important in spreading Renaissance styles in Northern Europe, with among the most important authors being Androuet du Cerceau in France, and Hans Vredeman de Vries in the Netherlands, and Wendel Dietterlin, author of Architectura (1593–94) in Germany.

Baltic States

The Renaissance arrived late in what is today Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the so-called Baltic States, and did not make a great imprint architecturally. It was a politically tumultuous time, marked by the decline of the State of the Teutonic Order and the Livonian War.

In Estonia, artistic influences came from Dutch, Swedish and Polish sources. The building of the Brotherhood of the Blackheads in Tallinn with a façade designed by Arent Passer, is the only truly Renaissance building in the country that has survived more or less intact. Significantly for these troubled times, the only other examples are purely military buildings, such as the Fat Margaret cannon tower, also in Tallinn.

Latvian Renaissance architecture was influenced by Polish-Lithuanian and Dutch style, with Mannerism following from Gothic without intermediaries. St. John's Church in the Latvian capital of Riga is an example of an earlier Gothic church which was reconstructed in 1587–89 by the Dutch architect Gert Freze (Joris Phraeze). The prime example of Renaissance architecture in Latvia is the heavily decorated House of the Blackheads, rebuilt from an earlier Medieval structure into its present Mannerist forms as late as 1619–25 by the architects A. and L. Jansen. It was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt during the 1990s.

Lithuania meanwhile formed a large dual state with Poland, known as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Renaissance influences grew stronger during the reign of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus. The Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania (destroyed in 1801, a copy built in 2002–2009) show Italian influences. Several architects of Italian origin were active in the country, including Bernardino Zanobi de Gianotis, Giovanni Cini and Giovanni Maria Mosca.

Bohemia

The Renaissance style first appeared in the Crown of Bohemia in the 1490s. Bohemia together with its incorporated lands, especially Moravia, thus ranked among the areas of the Holy Roman Empire with the earliest known examples of the Renaissance architecture.

The lands of the Bohemian Crown were never part of the ancient Roman Empire, thus they missed their own ancient classical heritage and had to be dependent on the primarily Italian models. As well as in other Central European countries the Gothic style kept its position especially in the church architecture. The traditional Gothic architecture was considered timeless and therefore able to express the sacredness. The Renaissance architecture coexisted with the Gothic style in Bohemia and Moravia until the late 16th century (e. g. the residential part of a palace was built in the modern Renaissance style but its chapel was designed with Gothic elements). The façades of Czech Renaissance buildings were often decorated with sgraffito (figural or ornamental).

During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor and Bohemian King Rudolph II, the city of Prague became one of the most important European centers of the late Renaissance art (so-called Mannerism). Nevertheless, not many architecturally significant buildings have been preserved from that time.

Croatia

In the 15th century, Croatia was divided into three states: the northern and central part of Croatia and Slavonia were in union with the Kingdom of Hungary, while Dalmatia, with the exception of independent Dubrovnik, was under the rule of the Venetian Republic. The Cathedral of St James in Šibenik, was begun in 1441 in the Gothic style by Giorgio da Sebenico (Juraj Dalmatinac). Its unusual construction does not use mortar, the stone blocks, pilasters and ribs being bonded with joints and slots in the way that was usual in wooden constructions. In 1477 the work was unfinished, and continued under Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino, who respected the mode of construction and the plan of the former architect, but continued the work which includes the upper windows, the vaults and the dome, in the Renaissance style. The combination of a high barrel vault with lower half-barrel vaults over the aisles the gives the façade its distinctive trefoil shape, the first of this type in the region. The cathedral was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001.

England

After some first efforts by kings and courtiers, most now vanished, like Henry VII's Richmond Palace (), Henry VIII's Nonsuch Palace, and the first Somerset House in London, a local style of Renaissance architecture emerged in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, much influenced by the Low countries where among other features it acquired versions of the Dutch gable, and Flemish strapwork in geometric designs adorning the walls. The new style tended to manifest itself in large square tall prodigy houses such as Longleat House.

The first great exponent of classicizing Italian Renaissance architecture in England was Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who had studied architecture in Italy where the influence of Palladio was very strong. Jones returned to England full of enthusiasm for the new movement and immediately began to design such buildings as the Queen's House at Greenwich in 1616 and the Banqueting House at Whitehall three years later. These works, with their clean lines, and symmetry were revolutionary in a country still enamoured with mullion windows, crenellations and turrets.

France

During the early years of the 16th century the French were involved in wars in northern Italy, bringing back to France not just the Renaissance art treasures as their war booty, but also stylistic ideas. In the Loire Valley a wave of building was carried and many Renaissance châteaux appeared at this time, the earliest example being the Château d'Amboise () in which Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years. The style became dominant under Francis I (See Châteaux of the Loire Valley).

Germany

The Renaissance in Germany was inspired first by German philosophers and artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Johannes Reuchlin who visited Italy. Important early examples of this period are especially the Landshut Residence, the Castle in Heidelberg, Johannisburg Palace in Aschaffenburg, Schloss Weilburg, the City Hall and Fugger Houses in Augsburg and St. Michael in Munich. A particular form of Renaissance architecture in Germany is the Weser Renaissance, with prominent examples such as the City Hall of Bremen and the Juleum in Helmstedt.

In July 1567 the city council of Cologne approved a design in the Renaissance style by Wilhelm Vernukken for a two storied loggia for Cologne City Hall. St Michael in Munich is the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps. It was built by Duke William V of Bavaria between 1583 and 1597 as a spiritual center for the Counter Reformation and was inspired by the Church of il Gesù in Rome. The architect is unknown. Many examples of Brick Renaissance buildings can be found in Hanseatic old towns, such as Stralsund, Wismar, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Friedrichstadt and Stade. Notable German Renaissance architects include Friedrich Sustris, Benedikt Rejt, Abraham van den Blocke, Elias Holl and Hans Krumpper.

Hungary

One of the earliest places to be influenced by the Renaissance style of architecture was the Kingdom of Hungary. The style appeared following the marriage of King Matthias Corvinus and Beatrice of Naples in 1476. Many Italian artists, craftsmen and masons arrived at Buda with the new queen. Important remains of the Early Renaissance summer palace of King Matthias can be found in Visegrád. The Ottoman conquest of Hungary after 1526 cut short the development of Renaissance architecture in the country and destroyed its most famous examples. Today, the only completely preserved work of Hungarian Renaissance architecture is the Bakócz Chapel (commissioned by the Hungarian cardinal Tamás Bakócz), now part of the Esztergom Basilica.

Habsburg Netherlands

As in painting, Renaissance architecture took some time to reach the Habsburg Netherlands and did not entirely supplant the Gothic elements. An architect directly influenced by the Italian masters was Cornelis Floris de Vriendt, who designed the city hall of Antwerp, finished in 1564. The style is sometimes called the Flemish-Italian Renaissance style and is also known as the Floris style. In this style the overall structure was similar to that of late-Gothic buildings, but with larger windows and much florid decoration and detailing in the Renaissance styles. This style became widely influential across Northern Europe, for example in Elizabethan architecture, and is part of the wider movement of Northern Mannerism.

Dutch Republic

In the early 17th century Dutch Republic, Hendrick de Keyser played an important role in developing the "Amsterdam Renaissance" style, which has local characteristics including the prevalence of tall narrow town-houses, the trapgevel or Dutch gable and the employment of decorative triangular pediments over doors and windows in which the apex rises much more steeply than in most other Renaissance architecture, but in keeping with the profile of the gable. Carved stone details are often of low profile, in strapwork resembling leatherwork, a stylistic feature originating in the School of Fontainebleau. This feature was exported to England.

Poland

Polish Renaissance architecture is divided into three periods:
The first period (1500–50) is the so-called "Italian" as most of Renaissance buildings of this time were designed by Italian architects, mainly from Florence, including Francesco Fiorentino and Bartolomeo Berrecci. Renowned architects from Southern Europe became sought-after during the reign of Sigismund I the Old and his Italian-born wife, Queen Bona Sforza. Notable examples from this period include Wawel Castle Courtyard and Sigismund's Chapel.

In the second period (1550–1600), Renaissance architecture became more common, with the beginnings of Mannerist and under the influence of the Netherlands, particularly in northern Poland and Pomerania, but also in parts of Lesser Poland. Buildings of this kind include the Cloth Hall in Kraków and city halls of Tarnów and Sandomierz. The most famous example is the 16th-century Poznań Town Hall, designed by Giovanni Battista di Quadro.

In the third period (1600–50), the rising power of sponsored Jesuits and Counter Reformation gave impetus to the development of Mannerist architecture and Baroque. Most notable example of this period is Kalwaria Zebrzydowska park, mannerist architectural and park landscape complex and pilgrimage park, which consists Basilica of St. Mary and 42 chapels modelled and named after the places in Jerusalem and Holy Land. This is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Another great example from this period is Krasiczyn Castle, which is an palazzo in fortezza with a unique sgraffito wall decorations, whose total area is about 7000 square meters.

Portugal

As in Spain, the adoption of the Renaissance style in Portugal was gradual. The so-called Manueline style (–1535) married Renaissance elements to Gothic structures with the superficial application of exuberant ornament similar to the Isabelline Gothic of Spain. Examples of Manueline include the Belém Tower, a defensive building of Gothic form decorated with Renaissance-style loggias, and the Jerónimos Monastery, with Renaissance ornaments decorating portals, columns and cloisters.

The first "pure" Renaissance structures appear under King John III, like the Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Conceição in Tomar (1532–40), the Porta Especiosa of Coimbra Cathedral and the Graça Church at Évora (–1540), as well as the cloisters of the Cathedral of Viseu (–1534) and Convent of Christ in Tomar (John III Cloisters, 1557–1591). The Lisbon buildings of São Roque Church (1565–87) and the Mannerist Monastery of São Vicente de Fora (1582–1629), strongly influenced religious architecture in both Portugal and its colonies in the next centuries.

Russia

Prince Ivan III introduced Renaissance architecture to Russia by inviting a number of architects from Italy, who brought new construction techniques and some Renaissance style elements with them, while in general following the traditional designs of the Russian architecture. In 1475 the Bolognese architect Aristotele Fioravanti came to rebuild the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, damaged in an earthquake. Fioravanti was given the 12th-century Vladimir Cathedral as a model, and produced a design combining traditional Russian style with a Renaissance sense of spaciousness, proportion and symmetry.

In 1485, Ivan III commissioned the building of a royal Terem Palace within the Kremlin, with Aloisio da Milano being the architect of the first three floors. Aloisio da Milano, as well as the other Italian architects, also greatly contributed to the construction of the Kremlin walls and towers. The small banqueting hall of the Russian Tsars, called the Palace of Facets because of its facetted upper story, is the work of two Italians, Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario, and shows a more Italian style.

In 1505, an Italian known in Russia as Aleviz Novyi built twelve churches for Ivan III, including the Cathedral of the Archangel, a building remarkable for the successful blending of Russian tradition, Orthodox requirements and Renaissance style.

Scandinavia

The Renaissance architecture that found its way to Scandinavia was influenced by the Flemish architecture, and included high gables and a castle air as demonstrated in the architecture of Frederiksborg Palace. Consequently, much of the Neo-Renaissance to be found in the Scandinavian countries is derived from this source.

In Denmark, Renaissance architecture thrived during the reigns of Frederick II and especially Christian IV. Inspired by the French castles of the times, Flemish architects designed masterpieces such as Kronborg Castle in Helsingør and Frederiksborg Palace in Hillerød. The Frederiksborg Palace (1602–1620) is the largest Renaissance palace in Scandinavia.

Elsewhere in Sweden, with Gustav Vasa's seizure of power and the onset of the Protestant reformation, church construction and aristocratic building projects came to a near standstill. During this time period, several magnificent so-called "Vasa castles" appeared. They were erected at strategic locations to control the country as well as to accommodate the travelling royal court. Gripsholm Castle, Kalmar Castle and Vadstena Castle are known for their fusion of medieval elements with Renaissance architecture.

The architecture of Norway was influenced partly by the occurrence of the plague during the Renaissance era. After the Black Death, monumental construction in Norway came to a standstill. There are few examples of Renaissance architecture in Norway, the most prominent being renovations to the medieval Rosenkrantz Tower in Bergen, Barony Rosendal in Hardanger, and the contemporary Austrat manor near Trondheim, and parts of Akershus Fortress.

There is little evidence of Renaissance influence in Finnish architecture.

Spain

In Spain, Renaissance began to be grafted to Gothic forms in the last decades of the 15th century. The new style is called Plateresque, because of the extremely decorated façade, that brought to the mind the decorative motifs of the intricately detailed work of silversmiths, the Plateros. Classical orders and candelabra motifs (a candelieri) combined freely. As decades passed, the Gothic influence disappeared and the research of an orthodox classicism reached high levels. Although Plateresco is a commonly used term to define most of the architectural production of the late 15th and first half of 16th century, some architects acquired a more sober personal style, like Diego Siloe, and Andrés de Vandelvira in Andalusia, and Alonso de Covarrubias and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón in Castile. This phase of Spanish Renaissance is called Purism. From the mid-sixteenth century, under such architects as Pedro Machuca, Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera there was a closer adherence to the art of ancient Rome, sometimes anticipating Mannerism, examples of which include the palace of Charles V in Granada and the Escorial. This Herrerian style or arquitectura herreriana of architecture was developed during the last third of the 16th century under the reign of Philip II (1556–1598), and continued in force in the 17th century, but transformed by the Baroque style of the time.

Spread in the Colonial Americas

Bolivia
Renaissance architecture spread to Colonial Bolivia, with examples being the Church of Curahuara de Carangas built between 1587 and 1608 known as the "Sistine Chapel of the Andes" by the Bolivians for its rich Mannerist decoration in its interior; and the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana built between 1601 and 1619 designed by the Spanish architect Francisco Jiménez de Siguenza.

Brazil
The best-known examples of the Renaissance architecture in the Colonial Brazil are the Mannerist Cathedral Basilica of Salvador built between 1657 and 1746 and the Franciscan Convent of Santo Antônio in João Pessoa built between 1634 and 1779.

Dominican Republic
The House of the Five Medallions is a historic house built in 1540, located in Santo Domingo, this preserves a Plateresque Renaissance façade.

Ecuador
The large Basilica of San Francisco in Quito, built between 1535 and 1650, is of Mannerist Renaissance style.

Mexico
A notable example of Renaissance architecture in Colonial Mexico is the Cathedral of Mérida, Yucatán, one of the oldest cathedrals in the Americas, built between 1562 and 1598 and designed by Pedro de Aulestia and Juan Miguel de Agüero.

Peru
Several of the churches of the city of Cusco were begun during the Renaissance period, including Cusco Cathedral, (1539). Many others are Baroque in style.

Legacy

Many styles of Late Renaissance and Mannerist architecture transitioned fairly easily in local styles of Baroque architecture; in other areas the change was more abrupt. Baroque and Neoclassical architecture dominated the later 17th and the 18th century in most areas, and persisted well into the 19th century in many places and individual buildings.

During the 19th century there was a conscious revival of the style in Renaissance Revival architecture, that paralleled the Gothic Revival. Whereas the Gothic style was perceived by architectural theorists as being the most appropriate style for Church building, the Renaissance palazzo was a good model for urban secular buildings requiring an appearance of dignity and reliability such as banks, gentlemen's clubs and apartment blocks. Buildings that sought to impress, such as the Paris Opera, were often of a more Mannerist or Baroque style. Architects of factories, office blocks and department stores continued to use the Renaissance palazzo form into the 20th century, in Mediterranean Revival Style architecture with an Italian Renaissance emphasis.

Many of the concepts and forms of Renaissance architecture can be traced through subsequent architectural movements—from Renaissance to High-Renaissance, to Mannerism, to Baroque (or Rococo), to Neo-Classicism, and to Eclecticism. While Renaissance style and motifs were largely purged from Modernism, they have been reasserted in some Postmodern architecture. The influence of Renaissance architecture can still be seen in many of the modern styles and rules of architecture today.

See also

 List of Renaissance structures

Notes

References

Bibliography

 Christy Anderson. Renaissance Architecture. Oxford 2013.
 Sir Banister Fletcher; Cruickshank, Dan, Sir Banister Fletcher's a History of Architecture, Architectural Press, 20th edition, 1996 (first published 1896). .
 Tadeusz Broniewski, Historia architektury dla wszystkich Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, 1990
 Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante, London: Thames and Hudson, 1977.
 Harald Busch, Bernd Lohse, Hans Weigert, Baukunst der Renaissance in Europa. Von Spätgotik bis zum Manierismus, Frankfurt af Main, 1960
 Trewin Cropplestone, World Architecture, 1963, Hamlyn. ISBN unknown
 Giovanni Fanelli, Brunelleschi, 1980, Becocci editore Firenze. ISBN unknown
 Christopher Luitpold Frommel, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance, London: Thames and Hudson, 2007.
 Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages, 5th edition, Harcourt, Brace and World, inc.,
 Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Studia nad dziejami kultury artystycznej późnego renesansu w Polsce, Toruń 1962
 Ludwig Goldscheider, Michelangelo, 1964, Phaidon,
 J.R.Hale, Renaissance Europe, 1480–1520, 1971, Fontana
 Arnold Hauser, Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origins of Modern Art, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965,
 Brigitte Hintzen-Bohlen, Jurgen Sorges, Rome and the Vatican City, Konemann,
 Janson, H.W., Anthony F. Janson, History of Art, 1997, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc..
 Marion Kaminski, Art and Architecture of Venice, 1999, Könemann,
 Wilfried Koch, Style w architekturze, Warsaw 1996,
 Andrew Martindale, Man and the Renaissance, 1966, Paul Hamlyn, ISBN
 Anne Mueller von der Haegen, Ruth Strasser, Art and Architecture of Tuscany, 2000, Konemann,
 Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Pelican, 1964,
 Ilan Rachum, The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1979, Octopus,
 Joseph Rykwert, Leonis Baptiste Alberti, Architectural Design, Vol 49 No 5–6, Holland St, London
 Howard Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings, London: Zwemmer, 1993,
 John Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530–1830, 1977 ed., Pelican,
 Paolo Villa: Giardino Giusti 1993–94, pdf with maps and 200 photos
 Robert Erich Wolf and Ronald Millen, Renaissance and Mannerist Art, 1968, Harry N. Abrams, ISBN not known
 Manfred Wundram, Thomas Pape, Paolo Marton, Andrea Palladio, Taschen,

Further reading
 Alberti, Leon Battista. 1988. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykwert. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 Anderson, Christy. 2013. Renaissance Architecture. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
 Buddensieg, Tilmann. 1976. "Criticism of Ancient Architecture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." In Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500–1700, 335–348. Edited by R. R. Bolgar. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
 Hart, Vaughan, and Peter Hicks, eds. 1998. Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Architectural Treatise in the Renaissance. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
 Jokilehto, Jukka. 2017. A History of Architectural Conservation. 2d ed. New York: Routledge.
 Koortbojian, Michael. 2011. "Renaissance Spolia and Renaissance Antiquity (One Neighborhood, Three Cases)." In Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture, from Constantine to Sherrie Levine. Edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 149–165. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
 Serlio, Sebastiano. 1996–2001. Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. 2 vols. Translated by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
 Smith, Christine. 1992. Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence 1400–1470. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
 Waters, Michael J. 2012. "A Renaissance Without Order Ornament, Single-Sheet Engravings, and the Mutability of Architectural Prints." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71:488–523.
 Tafuri, Manfredo. 2006. Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects. New Haven: Yale University Press.
 Wittkower, Rudolf. 1971. Architectural Principles In the Age of Humanism. New York: Norton.
 Yerkes, Carolyn. 2017. Drawing after Architecture: Renaissance Architectural Drawings and their Reception. Venice: Marsilio.

External links

 Renaissance Architecture in Great Buildings Online
 Architecture in the Classical Tradition

Architectural history
Architectural styles
European architecture
Architecture in Italy
Architecture
15th-century architecture
16th-century architecture
17th-century architecture

Renaissance architecture


The Second Brotherhood () was an uprising in the central regions of the Kingdom of Valencia of Habsburg Spain in 1693.  The protesters named themselves agermanats after the germanies ("brotherhoods") or guilds of Valencia who had revolted in 1519 in the Revolt of the Brotherhoods, but the two revolts are quite different in their supporters and the social context in which they occurred.  Rather than a revolt by middle-class guildsmen, the Second Brotherhood was a peasant revolt against high rents on farmland and crops.  Additionally, the Second Brotherhood was resolved far faster and far more peaceably than the violence of the 1519 revolt in both the rebels' actions and the government's subsequent repression.

Background
One of the major causes behind the first revolt was public distrust and hatred of the Moriscos. However, at the beginning of the 17th century King Phillip III expelled them all. This removed the original motive for a revolt, but wrecked the economy of Valencia for two generations.  Only by late 17th century was the area beginning to recover economically. Still, this return to prosperity brought several revolts by peasants concerned with their lack of benefit from the growing wealth of their lords. These included revolts in Horta (Huerta) in 1663, Valldigna in 1672, and Camp de Morvedre in 1689.

Rent protests and peasant discontent
At the beginning of 1693 the Duke of Gandía and other noblemen went to Madrid in order to complain of the reluctance of its vassals to pay Sunday rents.  They also complained of Fèlix Vilanova, who had already participated as an instigator of the revolt at Camp de Morvedre in 1689.  Felix seemed to be provoking the peasants of the Marina Comarque by telling its noblemen that there were some documents and ancient privileges which exempted the peasants from paying them rents.

After a violent clash between protesters and the police in Pedreguer, the viceroy proposed to create a board of lawyers in Valencia where the legal arguments could be set forth.  In this board the protesters alleged certain rights granted by James I and his successors, but they were not accepted for lack of documentary evidence. The protesters then asked directly for a complete cessation of the rents.  The demand was made by Francesc Garcia, a well-to-do farmer and one of the main leaders of the protest movement, together with Feliu Rubio i Bartomeu Pelegrí.

As May arrived, the peasants refused to pay the rents due. In Carlet, the vassals of the Earl of Carlet refused to pay.  For the second time, the troops of the viceroy had to intervene to bring the protesters to heel. Discontent spread.

March of the protesters, and battle
In Vilallonga, in the Duchy of Gandia, four farmers who refused to split their crop with their lord were detained. This was the last provocation and the uprising began. The day after, three thousand men marched on the city of Gandia and the four persons under arrest were freed without any violence. This liberation, probably unexpected, encouraged to the rebels to continue their march and travel towards Valencia, where they would ask for justice to the viceroy. For effect, they improvised an army and formed battalions, organized by the well-to-do farmer of Muro d'Alcoi, Josep Navarro.

The viceroy, however, had been warned. He ordered the Governor of Xàtiva to join him in Gandia with an army of four hundred men on horseback, four hundred more on foot, and two pieces of artillery. They met him at Albaida, where they sought to join battle with the rebels whose force comprised the militias of Xàtiva, Algemesí, and Carcaixent.

The combat between both forces (1,397 armed men with artillery, against 1,500 practically unarmed peasants) took place on July 15 in Setla de Nunyes, near Muro d'Alcoi. The battle lasted two hours, and no more than fifteen people died – all of them agermanat rebels.

Aftermath and repression
In the following weeks to the battle, cavalry squadrons restored order.  Josep Navarro was executed as the leader of the army on February 29, 1694, and another twenty-five participants were condemned to galleys.  Francesc Garcia, the most important leader of the rebels, was not captured.  The most important leaders of the revolution were well-to-do peasants, while the enraged mass of people who followed were of the poorer social classes.

The Second Brotherhood reinforced the power of the state, and reinforced the centralization of government that had slowly happened over time.  The noblemen saw again that they needed the help and protection of the royal forces, and that standing up for local rights would be unwise.  The same disputes over rent amounts would continue to be argued, though generally in the judiciary.  The Kingdom of Valencia would only last less than twenty years as an officially independent entity, as all Spain was formally unified after the War of the Spanish Succession in which Valencia and Aragon chose the losing side.

See also
 Revolt of the Barretinas, a similar revolt in Catalonia from 1687–1689

References

Rebellions in Spain
Conflicts in 1693
17th-century rebellions
1693 in Spain
Revolt of the Brotherhoods
Peasant revolts

Second Brotherhood


Las Juanas is a Mexican telenovela created Bernardo Romero Pereiro, based on the 1997 Colombian telenovela of the same name written by the same creator. The series originally aired from September 6, 2004 to March 4, 2005.

It stars Fernando Luján, Margarita Sanz, Ana Serradilla, Martha Higareda, Paola Núñez, Claudia Álvarez, Vanessa Cato, and Andrés Palacios.

Plot
"Las Juanas" is the story of five sisters in a forgotten little town reminiscent of Gabriel García Marquez's hundred years of solitude; headed by Juana Valentina (Ana Serradilla), a brave dreamer who, upon her mother's death, discovers the true identity of her father, Calixto Matamoros (Fernando Luján).  Juana Valentina decides to go in search of her father and discovers that not only was she an illegitimate child, she was not the only one, as her father's romantic adventures included four other women (in addition to his wife) with whom he also procreated other daughters. This strange twist of fate places Juana Valentina in the Calixto household where she meets Álvaro (Andrés Palacios), whom she falls madly in love with at first sight, until she discovers the possibility that he is her half brother, which seems to impede their love forever. While we wait for fate to reveal the truth, Juana Valentina meets her sisters: Juana Micaela (Paola Núñez), Juana Carolina (Martha Higareda), Juana Martina and Juana Prudencia (Claudia Álvarez).  Not only do these women garner more than one stolen glance in town for their great beauty and charms, they come together to create a new family, under the protection of Calixto himself, forever bound by the ties of blood that joins them. Each one will find their love and destiny in the little town of Tierra Caliente.

Cast

Main
 Fernando Luján as Calixto Matamoros
 Margarita Sanz as Doña Gallardo de Matamoros
 Ana Serradilla as Juana Valentina
 Martha Higareda as Juana Carolina
 Paola Núñez as Juana Micaela
 Claudia Álvarez as Juana Prudencia
 Vanessa Cato as Juana Martina
 Andrés Palacios as Juan Álvaro

Recurring
 Carmen Beato as Carlota
 José Carlos Rodríguez as Carmelo
 Alma Rosa Añorve as Guillermina
 Juan Pablo Medina as Eliseo
 Guillermo Iván as Miguel
 Cynthia Vázquez as Clara Mercedes
 Jean Duverger as Todomundo
 Faisy as Gualberto
 Andrés Montiel as Gabriel Gallardo
 Alejandro Barrios as Rodrigo
 Maribel Rodríguez as Gertrudis

References

External links

2004 telenovelas
TV Azteca telenovelas
2004 Mexican television series debuts
2005 Mexican television series endings
Television shows set in Mexico
Mexican television series based on Colombian television series
Spanish-language telenovelas

Las Juanas (Mexican TV series)


Nine species of vulture can be found living in India, but most are now in danger of extinction after a rapid and major population collapse in recent decades. In the early 1980s, three species of Gyps vultures (the white-rumped vulture, the long-billed vulture and the slender-billed vulture) had a combined estimated population of 40 million in South Asia, while in 2017 the total population numbered only 19,000 (6,000, 12,000, and 1,000 respectively).

With a loss of over 99% of all the population of vultures, the Indian vulture crisis represents the sharpest decline of any animal in the given period. A major contributing factor in declining populations of vultures is believed to be the widespread use of drugs such as diclofenac, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) once commonly given to livestock. The drug is believed to have been passed onto the vultures through the flesh of dead cattle who were given diclofenac in their last days of life, which then causes kidney failure in vultures. Data modelling revealed that a tiny proportion (about 0.8%) of livestock carcasses containing diclofenac can cause significant crash in vulture populations.

Without vultures, a large number of animal carcasses were left to rot, posing a serious risk to human health by providing a potential breeding ground for infectious germs and proliferation of pests such as rats. The loss of vultures also resulted in a substantial increase in the population of feral dogs, whose bites are the most common cause of human rabies. The feral dog population in India increased by least 5 million, resulting in over 38 million additional dog bites and more than 47,000 extra deaths from rabies, costing $34 billion in economic impact.

Veterinary usage of diclofenac has been banned in India since 2006. Meloxicam, another NSAID, which was rapidly metabolized and harmless to vultures, was suggested as an acceptable substitute for diclofenac. In addition, various conservation schemes are in place to help recover the vulture population. The population is recovering slowly and the decline has been significantly arrested in India, Pakistan and Nepal following a strict ban on the drugs causing harm to the vultures.

History
Vultures in India live in communities and are generally very dependent on human activities. The Hindu religion, which represents 80% of the country's population, is particularly favorable to vultures. Cows are considered sacred by majority of Hindus, so cow meat is generally not consumed. This results in the cow's corpse being left to be fed on by vultures. Of the estimated 500 million cattle in India, only 4% were destined for consumption by humans as meat. Vultures constituted the natural animal disposal system, processing carcasses and nearly 15,000 vultures have been observed at the carcass depositories in capital New Delhi.

Decline
In the 1990s, a decrease in the number of vultures was noted by Vibhu Prakash of the Bombay Natural History Society, who had monitored vulture populations at Keoladeo National Park. As the decline accelerated, the international scientific community attempted to investigate the cause of such decline. However, it was not easy to examine this issue because vultures could not legally be killed for scientific study in India, and freshly dead animals had become extremely rare, a situation exacerbated by the extremely hot weather in India where temperatures before the monsoon routinely exceed . In 2002, National Geographic reported that scientists were "not sure" of the reason for the 95% population decline. Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of London found that the usual suspects of pesticide poisoning, industrial pollutants or bacteria did not show anything abnormal in the vultures he could examine, and suspected a new type of toxin exposure.

Causes
In 2003, after research on the possible viral causes of the decline, the culprit was discovered by Dr. Lindsay Oaks and his team at The Peregrine Fund to be diclofenac. Diclofenac is a common anti-inflammatory drug administered to livestock and is used to treat the symptoms of inflammation, fevers and/or pain associated with disease or wounds. It was widely used in India beginning in the 1990s. The drug is fatal to vultures, however, and a vulture gets exposed to a mortal dose of diclofenac on eating from the carcass of an animal that had been treated with diclofenac recently. A simulation model demonstrated that if only 1% of carcasses were contaminated by diclofenac, Indian vulture populations would fall by between 60% and 90% annually, and a study of carcasses showed that about 10% were contaminated.

A genus of vultures called Gyps was the most affected by diclofenac. The population of the white-rumped vulture (Gyps bengalensis) fell 99.7% between 1993 and 2002. The populations of the Indian vulture (Gyps indicus) and the slender-billed vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) fell 97.4%. The percentages differ slightly because the white-rumped vulture is more sensitive to diclofenac than the other two species, but all three were in danger of extinction. Two other species of Gyps, the Himalayan vulture (Gyps himalayensis) and the Eurasian griffon (Gyps fulvus) were less affected, the Eurasian griffon because it only winters in India and has a much smaller initial population, and the Himalayan vulture, with a similarly small population, because it is exclusively mountain-dwelling.

Consequences
By removing all carrion, vultures had helped decrease pollution, spread of diseases, and suppressed undesirable mammalian scavengers. The sudden collapse of the natural animal disposal system in India has had multiple consequences negatively impacting public health. A vulture's metabolism is a true "dead-end" for pathogens, but dogs and rats become carriers of the pathogens. Without vultures, a large number of animal carcasses were left to rot posing a serious risk to human health by providing a potential breeding ground for infectious germs and proliferation of pests such as rats.

The diseases carried by these mammals from rotting carcasses are indirectly responsible for thousands of human deaths. The carcasses formerly eaten by vultures rot in village fields also contaminating water sources. The loss of vultures also resulted in a substantial increase in the population of feral dogs, whose bites are the most common cause of human rabies. The feral dog population in India increased by least 5 million, resulting in over 38 million additional dog bites and more than 47,000 extra deaths from rabies, costing $34 billion in economic impact. On average, it was estimated that human mortality rates increased by more than 4% during the period of 2000 to 2005, when vulture population reached the lowest levels.

The people of Parsi community in India leave the dead bodies exposed in high towers called Towers of Silence in order for the vultures to feed. Due to the decline in vulture population, they have been forced to drop these ancient customs for reasons of hygiene, since now bodies take six months to disappear.

Reaction

Diclofenac regulation
Following the findings on diclofenac, the drug was banned for veterinary use in India on March 11, 2006; Nepal followed suit in August and Pakistan in October. Bangladesh banned it in 2010. A replacement drug was quickly developed and proposed after tests on vultures in captivity: Meloxicam. Meloxicam, another NSAID was rapidly metabolized and harmless to vultures was suggested as an acceptable substitute for diclofenac. Pharmaceutical companies were encouraged to the increase in the production of meloxicam aimed at reducing the cost down to diclofenac's own levels to make it more suitable for use. In 2015, Government of India ordered the vial size of the drugs to be reduced to 3ml to reduce the dosage administered to cattle.

Some other drugs developed as alternatives to diclofenac — aceclofenac, ketoprofen and nimesulide — have also been shown to be toxic to vultures. Diclofenac for human use was still being diverted into veterinary uses through illegal sale of multidose vials intended for humans for use in cattle in 2011. The ban was strengthened by the ban of vials larger than a single human dose (3 ml) in 2015, but vials were still manufactured illegally. While the ban on diclofenac has been successful in Nepal and Bangladesh, it is still widely available in India. A study published in 2020 showed that meloxicam was the most common veterinary NSAID in Nepal in 2017 (89.9%). Although diclofenac was almost entirely absent from pharmacies in Bangladesh, there was a higher proportion of sales of ketoprofen compared to meloxicam in 2018, despite the partial ban on ketoprofen by the Bangladeshi government in 2016. In 2021, tolfenamic acid was identified as another alternative that is safe for vultures.

Despite the vulture crisis, diclofenac remains available in other countries including many in Europe. It was controversially approved for veterinary use in Spain in 2013 and continues to be available, despite Spain being home to around 90% of the European vulture population and an independent simulation showing that the drug could reduce the population of vultures by 1–8% annually. Spain's medicine agency presented simulations suggesting that the number of deaths would be quite small. New sanitary regulation laws regarding animal carcass disposal in Spain also reduce the amount of available food for vultures while adding to costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite this regulation of Indian access to diclofenac, vultures have continued to die of diclofenac poisoning. In a study of corpses collected between 2011 and 2014, 14 out of 29 white-backed vultures and 9 out of 12 Himalayan griffon had high enough levels of diclofenac in their kidney tissue that it is likely diclofenac poisoning was their cause of death. Nevertheless, there are indications that the diclofenac ban has decreased the speed of decline.

Conservation
Captive-breeding programmes for the Indian vulture were started to help recover its numbers. As the vultures are long lived, slow breeding and notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, the programmes are expected to take longer. The captive-bred birds will be released to the wild when the environment is clear of diclofenac.

In 2002, the Parsis had asked the International Centre for Birds of Prey for assistance with vulture breeding.

In 2014, Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction programme was announced to start releasing captive-bred birds into the wild by 2016. In 2016, Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore released captive bred vultures into the wild as part of Asia's first vulture re-introduction program. Small numbers of birds have bred across peninsular India, in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Three more breeding centers have been set up in the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Madhya Pradesh in addition to four smaller facilities in collaboration with zoos.

In 2020, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of Government of India has launched a Vulture Action Plan 2020-25. It aims to step up conservation measures and set up a mechanism to ensure that toxic drugs other than diclofenac are also banned for veterinary use.

See also
 African vulture crisis
 Critically Endangered

Notes

References

External links
Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction
Vulture Rescue
The Peregrine Fund - Asian Vulture Crisis
Bombay Natural History Society - Vulture Program

Endangered animals
Environmental disasters in India
Birds of India
Birds and humans

Indian vulture crisis


Richard Meighen (died 1641) was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/41, and was a member of the syndicate that issued the Second Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays in 1632.

Life and career
Meighen came from a family with strong connections to Shrewsbury School; his father, John Meighen (son of a Richard Meighen who was a tanner in Shrewsbury), was named headmaster in 1583 and continued in the post for a remarkable 52 years, until his death in September 1635. Several members of the Meighen family (including at least two named Richard) attended the school as students. Meighen the publisher maintained a lifelong connection with the school, and published works relating to it.

Meighen was active as a publisher during the years 1615 to 1641; his shops, as his title pages specify, were "under St. Clement's Church" in the Strand, and "next to the Middle Temple, in Fleet Street." He started his career on a prestigious note, acting as William Stansby's sales agent when Stansby printed and published the first Jonson folio in 1616. Like many stationers of his era, Meighen concentrated on publishing and selling books, and commissioned printers to print the works he published. His first edition of William Slater's Palae-Albion: The History of Great Britain (1621), for example, was printed by Stansby — though Meighen also worked with most of the printers of his generation.

Drama

While he issued a wide range of works of various types — including an edition of John Stow's Annals in 1631 — Meighen's volumes of drama are his most significant works, judged in retrospect. Meighen appears to have been only a minor partner in the 1632 Shakespeare Second Folio (he'd obtained the rights to The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1630); but he was a prime mover of the 1640/41 Jonson volume, which collected most of the post-1616 plays, masques, and miscellaneous works of the poet/dramatist. In publishing this volume, Meighen collaborated with Philip Chetwinde, who would publish the Shakespeare Third Folio of 1663/64. William Stansby, the printer/publisher of the first Jonson folio, also printed the second.

In addition to the Shakespeare and Jonson folios, Meighen published a number of plays in single editions, including:
 the first quarto of the anonymous Swetnam the Woman Hater Arraigned by Women (1620);
 the second and third editions of John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, 1629 (printed by Thomas Cotes) and 1634 (printed by Augustine Matthews) respectively;
 the second quarto of Thomas Middleton's Michaelmas Term (1630);
 the second quarto of Middleton's The Phoenix (also 1630);
 the second quarto of Barten Holyday's Technogamia (also 1630);
 the first quarto of Shackerley Marmion's  A Fine Companion (1633), printed by Augustine Matthews;
 the first quartos of Sir William Davenant's The Triumphs of the Prince D'Amour, The Wits, and The Platonick Lovers (all 1636).

Meighen published posthumous first editions of the three plays of Thomas Goffe — The Raging Turk (1631),  The Courageous Turk (1632), and Orestes (1633). In 1628, he issued A Recantation of an Ill-Led Life, the memoir of the minor dramatist John Clavell. He also printed his share of the popular and ephemeral literature of his era, like Thomas Harper's The True History of the Tragic Loves of Hippolito and Isabella (1633).

His modern reputation as a publisher is mixed; critics do not rank him highly in terms of the quality of the texts he produced. In particular, the second Jonson folio has been condemned for its poor printing and organizational confusion.

Post mortem
Early in 1641 Meighen entered into a partnership with three other stationers for the purpose of publishing law books; but he died before the planned partnership could produce any results. His widow, Mercy Meighen, received a court grant of the right to administer her late husband's estate on March 21, 1642 (new style). Mercy Meighen (died 1654) continued her late husband's business, entering a partnership with stationer Gabriell Bedell in November 1646.

Yet another Richard Meighen, a son of Richard and Mercy Meighen, continued in the publishing business; he issued Three Excellent Tragedies, a collected edition of Goffe's plays, in 1656.

References

Publishers (people) from London
1641 deaths
Year of birth unknown

Richard Meighen


The River Rhiw ( meaning 'slope river' or 'stream river') is a short river in the north of Powys in Wales. Two headwater tributaries both named Afon Rhiw flow east to join at Dwyrhiew and then continue in a generally easterly direction to join the River Severn east of Berriew ( 'mouth of the Rhiw'). The northern Rhiw emerges from Llyn y Bugail (Welsh: 'lake of the shepherd') on Mynydd Waun Fawr whilst the southern Rhiw rises near Mynydd Dwyriw. The combined river flows past the hamlets of New Mills (), Manafon and Pant-y-ffridd, accompanied by the B4390 road all the way to Berriew. Other tributaries include the Nant Wtre-wen, Crygnant, Nant y Llyn Mawr and Dolgar Brook. It is bridged and forded at numerous points, one of which is an aqueduct carrying the Montgomery Canal over it at Berriew. At the eastern end of the river is Glansevern Hall and gardens.

Etymology
The Welsh word rhiw means 'slope' in which case it would be 'slope river' but it is suggested that it may be derived from a British word riu meaning stream. The modern anglicised name Berriew is derived from Aberriw ('aber' + mutated 'rhiw' signifying 'mouth of the Rhiw')

References

River Rhiw

River Rhiw