Palazzo Rucellai

Palazzo Rucellai is a fifteenth-century palace in Florence, Italy, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino. Its splendid facade was one of the first to announce the new ideas of Renaissance architecture based on pilasters and entablatures in proportional relationship to each other, in a design that probably owed a great deal to Alberti's studies of Roman architecture, particularly the Colosseum, but which is also full of originality.

The rusticated masonry creates an impression of strength, particularly at the ground floor, which contained storerooms. The three storeys of the facade have different classical orders, as in the Colosseum, but with the Tuscan order at the base, an Alberti original in place of Ionic order at the second level, and a very simplified Corinthian order at the top level. Double windows at the upper storeys combine with arches with highly articulated voussoirs that spring from pilaster to pilaster.

The ground floor was for business (the Rucellai family were powerful bankers) and was flanked by benches running along the street facade. The second storey (the "piano nobile") was the main formal reception floor and the third storey the private family and sleeping quarters. A fourth "hidden" floor under the roof was for servants; with almost no windows, it is quite dark inside.

The palace is built around a central court, to a design that may have been adapted from Brunelleschi's loggia at his Foundling Hospital. Set in front of the palace and at right angles to it is the Rucellai Loggia, which was used for family celebrations, weddings, and as a public meeting place. The two buildings together, and the open space between them, form one of the most refined urban compositions of the Italian Renaissance.

Whilst there is a wealth of circumstantial and stylistic evidence to demonstrate that Giovanni Rucellai commissioned the design from Alberti, the only written documentary evidence is in Giorgio Vasari's "Le Vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori" (or, in English, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) from 1568. [Vasari, Le Vite, ed. Milanesi, II, pp. 541-542.]

ee also

Giovanni Rucellai

References

*cite book|title=Great Architecture of the World|first=John Julius |last=Norwich|pages= p. 150