The Tempietto, the embodiment of the Renaissance mastery of classical architecture and its Christian reinvention, was also the pre-eminent commission of the Catholic kings, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, in papal Rome. This groundbreaking book situates Bramante's time-honored memorial dedicated to Saint Peter and the origins of the Roman Catholic Church at the center of a coordinated program of the arts exalting Spain's leadership in the quest for Christian hegemony. The innovations in form and iconography that made the Tempietto an authoritative model for Western architecture were fortified in legacy monuments created by the popes in Rome and the kings in Spain from the later Renaissance to the present day. New photographs expressly taken for this study capture comprehensive views and focused details of this exemplar of Renaissance art and statecraft.

A revelatory account of the complex and evolving relationship of Renaissance architects to classical antiquity Focusing on the work of architects such as Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo, this extensively illustrated volume explores how the understanding of the antique changed over the course of the Renaissance. David Hemsoll reveals the ways in which significant differences in imitative strategy distinguished the period's leading architects from each other and argues for a more nuanced understanding of the widely accepted trope--first articulated by Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century--that Renaissance architecture evolved through a linear step-by-step assimilation of antiquity. Offering an in-depth examination of the complex, sometimes contradictory, and often contentious ways that Renaissance architects approached the antique, this meticulously researched study brings to life a cacophony of voices and opinions that have been lost in the simplified Vasarian narrative and presents a fresh and comprehensive account of Renaissance architecture in both Florence and Rome.

Alexis R. Culotta explores how the Renaissance master’s recombination of visual sources ultimately served as a springboard for artistic innovation for his close associates as they collaborated in the years following Raphael’s death.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) - writer, painter and sculptor, mathematician and, most famously, architectural theorist and architect - came closer than anyone to the Renaissance ideal of the 'complete man'. Recognised by his contemporaries as an extraordinary person, he helped to shape, through his writings and his practical example in the arts, the way in which the natural and artificial world was perceived and represented during the Renaissance.

Sebastiano Serlio was the most important architectural writer and theorist of the sixteenth century. The author of the first wide-ranging illustrated book on architecture, he produced a complete set of model designs as well as practical solutions for everyday design problems. This volume, the second in a two-volume series of Serlio's entire works, presents the previously unpublished sixth book, the seventh book, and, as well as The Extraordinary Book of Doors, his little-known Castrametation of the Romans, each of which demonstrates Serlio's sophisticated design theories. This is the first translation of Serlio's later works and the first time that the long lost sixth volume has been united with its companion works and restored to its intended position. The book also includes an introduction and notes by translators Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks that demonstrate Serlio's significance within the history of architecture and the importance of these neglected texts to our understanding of Serlio's work.

This book examines the development of Roman temple architecture from its earliest history in the sixth century BC to the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century AD. John Stamper analyzes the temples' formal qualities, the public spaces in which they were located and, most importantly, the authority of precedent in their designs. He also traces Rome's temple architecture as it evolved over time and how it accommodated changing political and religious contexts, as well as the affects of new stylistic influences.