Pazzi Chapel - Google Slides

So the Posse Chapel is our next piece by a really famous artist, architect, Bruno Leschi, Filippo Bruno Leschi. And I'm sure you're familiar with one of his pieces, which I will reveal at the end of the slideshow. But for our College Board, their piece that they want you to know is, again, the Posse Chapel. And so these two images are your College Board images, one on the left showing you the entrance and exterior view, and then the one on the right is the interior of the space. So starting off with context, we always with architecture wanna start off with where we are. And so again, we're in Florence, which is typical of the early Italian Renaissance. A lot of the great cultural kind of accomplishments are in the city state of Florence. This space is, the Posse Chapel is actually functioning as what's called a chapter house. And a chapter house will be one of your vocab terms. And it's just a basic definition is like a meeting room for monks. They might meet, discuss business, or teach other monks. There are kind of a number of things you could do that meet that kind of definition of a meeting room. But that's the basic definition of what this space is. It is attached to a larger religious space, Basilica de Santa Croce. And you can see that building a little bit on your left. So it's called the Posse Chapel because of the family who is the patron. And like many patrons of this time period, they are a wealthy kind of more merchant-based family, and probably second only to the Medici's or right up there with the Medici's. And they use art, especially like religious architecture, to show their faith, that's part one, but also to make their own mark on the city and therefore show their power. So that would be the second part of that construction. And this building is attributed to Bruno Leschi overall. There's some kind of debate about what of the design is his and what is maybe part of his apprentice and or workshop. Other artists who came in and finished it after Bruno Leschi died because he died before the piece was completed. So there is a lot of debate about that. Moving on to content, we're just gonna kind of take it step by step. And I've included also a floor plan image of the interior of the chapel so you could see the geometry in full force. But what you're looking at straight on is the portico, this front kind of entrance porch-like transitionary space between the outdoor world and then the interior more religious space. And it's always a comment that this particular portico looks a lot like a Roman triumphant arch. We talked about that when we talked about the Forum of Trajan. And so that's what I wanted you to really kind of look at first and foremost. The portico have these great classical Corinthian columns. You've got the post and lintel doorway kind of leading into the space that is right above that post and lintel doorway. You have a small pediment, got a big rounded arch there, and then very much just like, they almost look like coffers in a way to either side of the arch, but these geometry-based squares, simple, no real ornamentation or sculptural work. It just feels incredibly Roman when looking at this. And one of the things that people say in terms of, the portico was added on after Brunelleschi's death. Those who say that is because the portico and that front facade seems to kind of overpower the dome that you can see above and overshadow the rest of the chapel. And so that's one of the reasons why people believe that that was an add-on later. But again, we're not certain. Now, the second thing you see, and I have a blue arrow pointing to it and it has to do with your new vocab term, which is cloister. And a cloister, you're gonna find in reference cloisters when you're talking about monasteries, churches, college campuses and buildings perhaps, but it is a covered walkway in one of those kinds of spaces. And it is open on one side, usually with a lot of arches, which you can see like this arcade of arches, and then a solid wall on the opposite side, which definitely you have here. So our Pazzi Chapel kind of runs perpendicular to the cloister of the church. Now, clearly this space has a dome and the circular dome is covering a square space in the building, the chapel itself. But you can see in the lower floor plan that the chapel has a rectangular shape. It's a rectangular form and it has a circular dome covering it. So it has the same kind of feel and just on a really, really, really, really fraction of the scale as maybe like the Hagia Sophia in some ways where it's covered with a dome, but that circular dome isn't resting upon a square or rectangular base. So while this building is rectangular, it is so geometrically minded and the circular dome is resting upon like basically a square space within the building that you are looking at really essentially planned or feeling building, and that is key. And you wanna write that down, absolutely, that this is a centrally planned building, yet it is not circular, but you still have that, again, that domed circular space that is above, hovering above then a more square space within the interior. And then just to compensate for the ends of that rectangle then, since the dome is not covering up the entire rectangle, just the square space in the center, you've got these two kind of barrel-vaulted ends. And that's what I'm pointing to with the second blue arrow is one of those barrel-vaulted ends just to then completely cover the entire chapel space with a vault. So dome covers the center square of the interior, making it feel like a centrally planned space. And then the two ends that are not covered by the dome have this more half-mooned barrel-vaulted space. I'm gonna get into Pietra Serena when we look at the interior. It means serene stone, so I'll point that out once we get to that. But one, you know, a couple buzzwords for Brunelleschi, harmony, everything in the space is going to relate to each other. You know, the design is going to be united either through shapes, you know, or some kind of overriding design principle, and it's usually geometry. Giving Brunelleschi's work a very rational reason, kind of analytical type of approach. It's very ordered, it's very balanced. Harmony, geometry, those are some of the buzzwords that you want to use for a Brunelleschi piece. Now here is the interior, and you can, you know, looking up in the dome, you see it's very much like the Hagia Sophia in terms of windows at the base of the dome. You also have an oculus in the center, so if you're thinking a little bit of the Pantheon as well, you are absolutely spot on. And the pendentives, remember pendentives, those inverted triangles that transition a circular dome onto a more square or rectangular base. You have roundels, these round medallion-like images in the pendentives, and those are roundels with terracotta sculptures of the evangelists. And those terracotta sculptures are glazed, and I think I talk about that in the next slide. I'm not sure, I'll look, and if not, I'll come back to this one. But this is a great image that shows you the Corinthian palisters, very like Roman-based design. You have the arch-topped decorative lines on the walls. You know, those almost like, they look like faux arch windows because they're not windows at all, they're just decorative. See the rounded arches, you can see the barrel vault with the coffers. It is an incredibly Roman-rational uniform interior where, again, talking about geometry, geometry and mathematics, when you're using that inside a religious space, you wanna talk about in an essay about how that use in architecture is revealing the divinity of God, that divine nature of the heavens, and it's connecting you to that here on Earth. So that would be an incredibly important explanation for the geometry in the design, mathematics in the design. We talked about that with the Pantheon. You could talk about it with the Parthenon, the modules of any like Gothic or Romanesque cathedral. You see it often in religious spaces, especially here in the Renaissance when we're so guided by the mathematical principles and rational design that comes from, let's say, a Greece and a Rome. Ah, there we go. There are your beautiful terracotta roundels, and the glaze I was talking to you about that's used for the first time, glaze, just giving it a glossy finish. And so it really kind of gleams in the ceiling and really stands out and gives it that sense of reflection which would make then the evangelist scene kind of otherworldly. And I just remind you of the windows and the oculus in the dome. And this image can also show you that great Pietra Serena that was in a couple of slides ago, which means just this greenish gray stone that's used in decoration. Pietra Serena, serene stone. So the decoration isn't over the top and distracting and kind of produces any feeling of energy, excitement, or like anxiety in any way. Serene, it's just calming color. The shapes and the geometry is very rational. It's soothing. It all works together to create this space that is very, again, serene and full of divine, kind of an experience of the divine. And then here is the image that Bruno Leschi is so well-known for, not the building itself. This is the Florence Duomo, very famous Florence Cathedral. What Bruno Leschi is well, well known for is the dome design. The dome itself was kind of a puzzle that no one could figure out how to cover this building in a dome that was extremely wide, yet they wanted it extremely sloping. And it was just a architectural nightmare that Bruno Leschi solved. And so this is probably his most famous piece, but he has buildings in and around Florence that just really cement his legacy as just an extraordinary architect. But we will also be talking about him as the really inventor of and the promoter of one-point perspective in painting, which I will kind of hold off on until we get to some of those paintings where it is used. So again, this is the Pazzi Chapel by architect Bruno Leschi.