Heritage: Architecture

By researching into Pietro Lorenzetti and his brother I know that they were from the late 1200’s to the middle 1300’s. This helps me look into what the architecture would be like at this time.

At the time of Pietro, the most common style of architecture was Gothic. The Gothic Architecture originated in France and spread to Italy, influencing the design of most of the modern buildings and house of the time. Even though this was the style of the time the Italian architects wanted to uphold some of the traditions as. they did not mimic the vertical style of the Gothic architecture, mainly the horizontal and detail.

Exterior

An example of a large Gothic Italian building would be the Florence Cathedral also known as the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. This building began construction in 1296 and clearly shows the Gothic style in the amount of detail to the exterior walls of the building and the unique shape of the building. It is also clear that they did uphold traditions as there are no unique aspects to the buildings vertically. They simply are tall and in proportion, rarely with ‘spiked’ roofs.

This research helps me identify what buildings would have been in Italy at this point intimate, however, these would be considered modern buildings. It is very unlikely that Pietro lived in a brand new modern home building considering he was an artist and needed a workshop to be able to work. It seems more likely that Pietro would have converted an existing building to benefit him.

Before the Gothic style swept through Italy the style of the architecture was Romanesque all the way throughout the Byzantine time period starting all the way back in 800 AD. The Pisa Cathedral serves as a good example of the Romanesque style and a good contrast to how the Gothic cathedrals were designed. The Romanesque style is very clear and obvious, it originated from Rome, and that is shown just from the design of the building itself. The first thing that I notice about this style is that the buildings are very polished, being mainly white with little detail. The buildings have unique shapes indeed but the exterior detail mainly consists of repeated patterns including pillars and windows.

Interior

The interior of the Florence Cathedral is actually quite simple considering it is of the Gothic style.  The Gothic interior style mainly consists of large arches and pillars that are repeated around the entirety of the building. The detail in this building is shown in the pillars as the stone has been chiselled and engraved into acanthas leaves. These engravings were extremely common in the Gothic style as most pillars contained this detail.  The supports are clearly made out of stone as are the arches. Even tho it has minimal detail the style is still unique as the arches are used as outlines for the roof gives depth to the building rather than it looking like it just has a slanted roof.

The Romanesque interior style is quite similar to the Gothic but is actually more detailed. The pillars are very similar in that they are engraved around the top near the arches however there are a couple of the differences in the style that I can notice. The first is the use of space. Compared to the Gothic style the Romanesque has more pillars which seem to act more as decoration rather than support. The ceiling is also decorated with paintings which is obviously different from the Gothic style as there ceilings where plain and white.

Sienna

Finalizing in my exterior research I looked on google maps at modern day Sienna as some old Gothic buildings would still be standing. This was not as helpful I was hoping as the majority of the buildings that I found looked very modern and plain. However some information that I did find useful is that all the buildings seemed very close together with small alleyways in-between. Even tho we are focusing on the interior this information helps as if we decided to include a balcony there will need to be some exterior detail.