Architect, Renaissance

Abstract

In Renaissance Europe, the role of the architect was unfixed. Unlike painting, sculpture, and metalwork, where there were organized systems of apprenticeship, for the architect there was no established curriculum of training or standard mode of practice. Every one of the period’s leading architects – individuals like Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Donato Bramante, and Michelangelo Buonarroti – assumed a different role, both in relation to his patrons and in the technical and design work he undertook. As reflected in contemporary commentaries and municipal records, the appellation “architetto” was inconsistently used to refer to a range of individuals involved with the building process – from patrons to construction administrators to material suppliers – even when they were not necessarily involved in building design.

Beginning in the fifteenth-century, learned practitioners became increasingly vocal about the need to elevate the status of architecture. Spurred by the rediscovery of Vitruvius’ recondite De Architectura, architecture was recast an intellectual endeavor, requiring science, math, and innate talent (ingegno), and as such, was said to belong within the realm of the liberal arts (artes liberales). Distinct from the anonymous master masons and building supervisors of the medieval period, the Renaissance architect was to assume the position as authorial, supremely learned master in the art of building. This new conception of the architect was articulated in a series of architectural treatises – those of Leon Battista Alberti, Antonio Averlino “Filarete,” Francesco di Giorgio, and Andrea Palladio, among others – which taking various forms, sought to structure the modern profession.