San Andrea, Mantua, Italy


Related people
Jeffrey Squire (photographer)
Leon Battista Alberti (was created by)
Date
1470-1476
Description
"San Andrea was designed only two years before Alberti died: the building was not even begun until 1472, and Alberti's ideas were carried out by an assistant, but much of the church was not completed until the eighteenth century and the present aspect of the facade is as Alberti intended it only as far as the pediment. The plan is of the more traditional Latin cross type which had already been used by Brunelleschi in his two Florentine churches, but with one essential difference. In Brunelleschi's churches the aisles are separated from the naves only by slender columns, and when one stands in the nave or the aisles the main axial direction is towards the altar at the east end. In San Andrea there are no aisles but a series of alternating large and small spaces opening off the nave at right angles to it. The larger spaces are used as chapels, and, standing in the nave, the spectator therefore has two axial directions, one of which consists of a small-large-small rhythm running laterally down the nave walls and the other longitudinal, which is concentrated towards the east end, is provided by the tunnel-like character of the nave itself." --Murray, Peter. Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Schocken Books. 59-60.
Style/Period
15th Century (1400 - 1499 CE)
Renaissance