Abstract
This paper presents a chemical-mineralogical characterization of construction materials from medieval Renaissance buildings of Ferrara (NE Italy) to provide an insight into the nature and provenance of the raw materials used. Biagio Rossetti was an Italian architect and urbanist from the city of Ferrara. From 1483, he was the architect of the Duke of Ferrara Ercole I d’Este who in 1492 assigned him the project of enlarging the city of Ferrara. Biagio Rossetti is still famous because he designed and built many notable palaces and churches in Ferrara, e.g., the Palazzo Roverella, the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie and the renovation of the church of San Andrea. To date, only the first two historic buildings are still in use and consequently restored, while the church of San Andrea has been abandoned over the years and the remains have been subject to decay. Different kinds of samples (bricks, cotto, plaster and mortars) were collected from the three sampling sites and analyzed in X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffractometer to investigate the construction materials through the evaluation of their chemical composition, historic building activity and degradation degree. These investigations should provide knowledge useful for restoration and conservation processes.
Highlights
Ferrara was the first Renaissance city to be developed according to a complex urban plan that gave precedence to the harmonious arrangement of urban perspectives rather than to the beauty of the individual buildings and for this reason, declared a World HeritageSite by UNESCO in 1995 [1]
Selected bricks and cotto samples of the three different sampling sites and two of plaster from the San Andrea site were first prepared for X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyses, each category of samples was subjected to XRPD characterization
The chemical composition of the selected samples collected was determined by XRF
Summary
Ferrara was the first Renaissance city to be developed according to a complex urban plan that gave precedence to the harmonious arrangement of urban perspectives rather than to the beauty of the individual buildings and for this reason, declared a World HeritageSite by UNESCO in 1995 [1]. The city reached the top of Renaissance architecture and prestige with the dominion of the Estense family [2,3]. The Estense family considered the urban layout inside the first defensive walls inappropriate to represent their greatness and their dominance over the territory. This was the reason they decided to radically modify the city’s layout [4,5], changing its structure and appearance. Biagio Rossetti (1447−1516) was considered the first architect in the history of urbanism to use the advantages of modern methods: balancing humanistic principles and local traditions in the architecture [8,9,10]. In the beginning of 1492, he projected and directed the construction of the defense walls around the city of Ferrara, still well preserved today [11]
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