Architectural Practice in the Italian Renaissance

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IN THIS PAPER I have chosen to concentrate on the High, or as I prefer to call it, the Roman Renaissance of the first half of the sixteenth century only because I am more familiar with the sources of this period than of those that precede and follow. But I think that a proper study of Italian Renaissance practice ought to divide the field into at least three parts: first, the generation of Brunelleschi and Alberti which is documented by archival material, theoretical writing on architecture, and biography. Here one might trace the emergence of practice from the medieval guild system into the sphere of Humanism. Second, the period I shall discuss, which is not strong in theory, but which compensates by providing richer biographies, more letters and archival records, and above all, large collections of drawings-sources which are almost nonexistent for the first period. This is an age of rugged individualism in architectural practice. Finally, something should be said about the later sixteenth century when, along with the foundations of the first academies, architects begin to write about practice, while they tend to stabilize theory into law. Here architecture begins to take shape as a distinct profession, perhaps for the first time since antiquity. Leaving this more ambitious scheme to future students, my present intention is to draw from the sources at hand certain generalizations concerning the apprenticeship and training of the architect, the practice of the profession, and the process of design during the period bounded by Bramante's arrival in Rome in about 1500 and Antonio da