Mannerist architecture
Mannerist architecture was characterized by visual trickery and unexpected elements that challenged the renaissance norms. Flemish artists, many of whom had traveled to Italy and were influenced by Mannerist developments there, were responsible for the spread of Mannerist trends into Europe north of the Alps, including into the realm of architecture. During the period, architects experimented with using architectural forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships. The Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer and more imaginative rhythms. The best known architect associated with the Mannerist style, and a pioneer at the Laurentian Library, was Michelangelo (1475–1564). He is credited with inventing the giant order, a large pilaster that stretches from the bottom to the top of a façade. He used this in his design for the Campidoglio in Rome.
Prior to the 20th century, the term Mannerism had negative connotations, but it is now used to describe the historical period in more general non-judgmental terms. Mannerist architecture has also been used to describe a trend in the 1960s and 1970s that involved breaking the norms of modernist architecture while at the same time recognizing their existence. Defining mannerist in this context, architect and author Robert Venturi wrote “Mannerism for architecture of our time that acknowledges conventional order rather than original expression but breaks the conventional order to accommodate complexity and contradiction and thereby engages ambiguity unambiguously.”
Historical context
Around the middle of the sixteenth century the political foundations of the Florentine society that had been at the base of the Renaissance were lost; also the conception of the cosmos was revolutionized, while the divisions matured within the Church became the symbol of a disintegration of a unified and absolute world. In the artistic field, the sense of doubt and the consequent alienation of the individual found expression in Mannerism.
Mannerism developed in Italy and influenced the architecture of much of Europe. It is therefore useful to outline the historical context of the continent.
The end of the fifteenth century saw the development of the great monarchies, in Spain, France and England; in 1493 Maximilian I of Habsburg became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, while Russia found political unity under Ivan III. Later, with the rise to the French throne of Francis I and the coronation of Charles V of Habsburg, the European scenarios underwent a radical change, with the annexation to Germany of Germany and other territories, such as Milan, Naples and thesouth of Italy.
In Italy, in 1527 the sack of Rome was recorded by lansquenets; this event is generally considered the starting date of Mannerism. Many artists were forced to leave Rome, moving to Florence and Venice. In Florence, the events of 1527 favored the expulsion of the Medici; the rebellion was tamed only with a long siege, between 1529 and 1530, which re-established the family to lead the city. Venice, on the other hand, was the most important arsenal in Italy and a leading cultural center, thanks to the wide diffusion of publishing activity.
Later, in 1542, Pope Paul III restored the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which preceded the convocation of the Council of Trent a few years later. The counter-reformist climate led to the formation of the Society of Jesus by Ignatius of Loyola (1534), which also had considerable influence in the artistic field, directing religious architecture towards the Baroque style.
Features of Mannerist architecture
Mannerism rejects the balance and harmony of classical architecture, concentrating rather on the contrast between norm and derogation, nature and artifice, sign and undergrowth.
In this way the load loses its weight, while the support does not support anything (for example in the prospect of the late Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila in Rome, by Raffaello Sanzio, where the semi-columns of the ground floor are placed in correspondence of the niches of the first floor); the perspective flight does not end in a focal point, as in the Baroque, but ends in nothingness; the vertical structures take on excessive dimensions and give the complex a disturbing “oscillating” balance. If in Renaissance architecturefactories often denounce their internal conformation even outside (through for example the highlighting of string courses, extrados and soffits), Mannerist works generally move away from this tendency, concealing their basic structure.
From the decorative point of view, the phenomenon of the grotesque, a pictorial subject of the Roman age, was rediscovered at the end of the 15th century during some archaeological excavations. These paintings, centered on fantastic and irrational representations, came back into vogue during Mannerism (for example in the decorations of Palazzo Te) and, although sporadically, influenced the same architecture; this is evident in the bizarre openings on the front of Palazzo Zuccari in Rome and in the Giardino Orsini (known as Parco dei Mostri) in Bomarzo. Other influences, especially related to zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and phytomorphic themes, can be found in the vestments of buildings such as the Casina di Pius IV in the Vatican by Pirro Ligorio, the Palazzo Marino and the façade of the church of Santa Maria near San Celso di Galeazzo Alessi. Milan.
Diffusion
The Mannerist style, initially conceived in Rome and Florence, spread rapidly in northern Italy and then in the rest of Italy and Europe, where the most genuine principles of Italian art of the XV and XVI centuries were almost never fully understood, and Renaissance architecture manifested itself predominantly in its Mannerist variant.
Giulio Romano, with his Palazzo Te in Mantua, introduced Mannerism in the Val Padana, while Michele Sanmicheli transformed Verona in the wake of this new current, creating a series of palaces under the direct influence of the first and of the Roman Classicism. Other influences are also recorded in Southern Italy, for example in the Chapel of Monte di Pietà in Naples, by Giovan Battista Cavagna.
Sebastiano Serlio, author of an important architectural treatise, contributed to its diffusion; he also worked in the so-called School of Fontainebleau, which became the main Mannerist center in France. His seven books of architecture, published between 1537 and 1551 in irregular order, were widely distributed and were a source of inspiration for the French classicists.
From the early sixteenth century the mannerist spirit spread also in Spain as a reaction to the late national Gothic. Instead, England and Germany only turned to Mannerism in the seventeenth century with artists such as Inigo Jones and Elias Holl.
Architecture
Mannerist architecture was characterized by visual trickery and unexpected elements that challenged the renaissance norms. Flemish artists, many of whom had traveled to Italy and were influenced by Mannerist developments there, were responsible for the spread of Mannerist trends into Europe north of the Alps, including into the realm of architecture. During the period, architects experimented with using architectural forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships. The Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer and more imaginative rhythms. The best known architect associated with the Mannerist style, and a pioneer at the Laurentian Library, was Michelangelo (1475–1564). He is credited with inventing the giant order, a large pilaster that stretches from the bottom to the top of a façade. He used this in his design for the Campidoglio in Rome.
Prior to the 20th century, the term Mannerism had negative connotations, but it is now used to describe the historical period in more general non-judgmental terms. Mannerist architecture has also been used to describe a trend in the 1960s and 1970s that involved breaking the norms of modernist architecture while at the same time recognizing their existence. Defining mannerist in this context, architect and author Robert Venturi wrote “Mannerism for architecture of our time that acknowledges conventional order rather than original expression but breaks the conventional order to accommodate complexity and contradiction and thereby engages ambiguity unambiguously.”
Among the architects who stood out in Italy are Andrea Palladio, Giulio Romano, Antonio da Sangallo, Giacomo della Porta and Jacopo Vignola. Of all of them, Palladio, the most influential architect of Mannerism and what has been studied most in the history of Western architecture, was perhaps also the most classicist among the Mannerists, as can be seen in his masterpiece Villa Rotonda, but nevertheless introduced significant variations in the classic canon, and its large series of villasaristocratic displays of an extraordinary variety of schemes of distribution of elements and organization of space. He and his contemporaries deconstruct the canon by playing with illusions of perspective, alteration in structural rhythms, distortion of the functionality of certain elements, and sensitive flexibility in the proportions of volumetry, and his interpretation of classicism was compared to the evolution of Platonic idealism to the artistotelic empiricism.
In other European countries the classical tradition was mixed with local roots, derived from the Gothic and the Romanesque, giving rise to Portugal, for example, the Manueline, with its maximum monument in the Jeronimos Monastery, where Gothic remains the most influential important, and leaving marks also in its colonies of Brazil and India. In Spain he created the Plateresque, a unique case of a mixture between classical, Gothic and Moorish influences, with significant examples at the University of Salamanca, inChurch of Santo Estêvão also in Salamanca, in the University of Alcalá de Henares and in several buildings in the American colonies of Mexico and Peru. The end of the century would see in Spain a resumption of classicism, with abandonment of decorative excesses and adoption of greater austerity.
In France, the classicism was immediately welcomed with enthusiasm from the fifteenth century, producing many architectural monuments of great value as the Castle of Chambord, the Chateau de Fontainebleau, and parts of the Louvre Palace, which perform a Mannerist fact summary, associating medieval features to those of the Renaissance. Likewise in the Netherlands a very peculiar palatial style of architecture was formed, compact, very decorated and with a high frontispiece, where the City Hall of Antwerp is a typical example. In other countries the Frederiksborg Palace in Denmark is significant; in Poland the City Hall of Poznań and Zamość; parts of Heidelberg Castle in Germany; the Wollaton Hall, the Hardwick Hall, the Burghley House and Longleat in England, just to name a handful. Finally some additional names of Mannerist architects: Bernardo Morando, Michele Sanmichele, Philibert Delorme, Cornelis Floris de Vriendt, Bernardo Buontalenti, Giovanni Battista di Quadro and Robert Smythson.
Main works
Italy
The starting point of Mannerist architecture is the Villa Farnesina in Rome, built by Baldassarre Peruzzi around 1509. It has a “U” plan, with two wings that enclose a median part in which, on the lower level, a portico opens with five round arches. The articulation of the facade, adorned with pilasters and angular ashlar, is still classical, but the friezerichly decorated, which runs to the top of the building, already highlights a change in tastes. Moreover, in a room on the upper floor, Peruzzi himself painted some colonnades and landscapes, in order to expand the architectural space.
However, Peruzzi’s masterpiece is to be found in Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, dating back to 1532. The structure is inserted in a lot of irregularly shaped ground, in the shape of an “L”. The façade is curvilinear and has an architraved porticowith freely spaced columns, whose depth contrasts with the upper register of the front; unusual are the frames that decorate the windows of the upper floors, leaning against a wall decorated with flat ashlar. The shape of the porticoes of the courtyard is also unusual: they are formed by two overlapping loggias, closed at the top by a third floor opened by rectangular windows as wide as the underlying column. All these solutions, partly influenced by the asymmetries of the lot, show a prevalence of the exception on the norm and place Palazzo Massimo among the most interesting factories of Mannerist architecture.
A similar judgment can be expressed for the famous Palazzo Te in Mantua, built by Giulio Romano in the decade between 1525 and 1534. The building is a square-shaped building, with a square courtyard at the center; the main entrance is resolved with a loggia, where round arches and serlianes are repeated. The front overlooks a garden bordered on the opposite side by a large semicircular exedra. These elements refer to the classic code, but the rustic character of the building (orderand bugnato are no longer on two distinct levels, but they are joined in a single element in the side facades) approaching the work to the canons of Mannerist architecture. Moreover, Giulio Romano applied the serlianas also in the depth of the portico, transforming two-dimensional openings into spatial elements.
Rustic features also have two other Mantuan buildings designed by Giulio Romano: the house of the same architect and the courtyard of the Cavallerizza in the Palazzo Ducale. In the first case the rustication extends up to the top of the building, while the architectural order gives way to a series of pillars on which all-round arches are set. The two floors of the house are subdivided by a string-course line which, at the entrance, forms a tympanum that interrupts the horizontal line of the same line. The courtyard of the Cavallerizza is still set on two orders, but the rustic walls are characterized, in the upper part, by extravagant twisted semi-columns.
The relationship between nature (bugnato) and artifice (columns), which in some works by Giulio Romano dissolves to merge the two elements into a single wall structure, finds further examples in some Venetian palaces made by Michele Sanmicheli, Andrea Palladio and Jacopo Sansovino. At the Sanmicheli is the Palazzo Pompei, built in Verona in the early decades of the sixteenth century. The layout of the façade, on two orders, refers to the elevation of the Casa di Raffaello, designed by Bramante (1508, today destroyed), albeit with some important differences aimed at accentuating, in the lower register, the full ones on the empty spaces; instead, on the second floor, instead of the windows created by Bramante in the House of Raphael, Sanmicheli introduced a loggia of great expressive power.
Still of the Sanmicheli is the Palazzo Canossa, always raised in Verona around the 1930s of the same century, where the rustic elements and those of artifice reach a greater integration. Another work of the architect is the nearby Palazzo Bevilacqua, characterized by a rustic facing on the ground floor and by large arched openings in the upper register, which alternate with smaller windows contained in the space of the intercolonnum.
Among the works of Palladio it is worth mentioning the palaces of Thiene (around 1545), Barbaran da Porto and Valmarana (1565), in whose relationship between nature and artifice it is possible to grasp the Mannerist component of the Palladian style.
This component emerges with greater vigor in the suburban residences erected by the architect from Vicenza and in particular in the Villa Serego in Santa Sofia di Pedemonte and in the Villa Barbaro in Maser. The first was built around 1565 and has a closed courtyard (at least in the original design) and rustic columns, made of blocks of limestone just sketched and superimposed to create irregular stacks. A few years later, the Villa Barbaro is inserted along the slight slope of a hill. If in most of the Palladian villasthe actual residence is often preceded by the environments dedicated to agricultural work, here this relationship is reversed and the manor house precedes the working environments; on the back there is a large exedra, which refers to the nymphaeum of the Roman villas.
Civil architecture still offers important examples in some Venetian palaces, whose predominant features were theorized by Sebastiano Serlio in his Seven Books of Architecture. In Serlio’s drawings, as well as in Sansovino’s works, the masonry of the façades is lightened with large openings, where the architectural orders are not only used as decorative objects, but also as supporting elements. To this type belong buildings such as Palazzo Corner (1532), designed by Sansovino, fusing together the Florentine-Roman scheme (evident in the presence of the internal courtyard) with the Venetian one (presence of a central hall in correspondence of the atrium of access, from which the various interior rooms depart). Moreover, the articulation of the façade, in which the voids over the floods prevail, anticipates the design of the Libreria Marciana (1537), still raised by Sansovino to delimit the square next to the Basilica of San Marco. In fact, the prospect of the Marciana Library is arranged on two orders: the first is based on the Roman model, with columns supporting architraves and round openings; the second, in which the Mannerist style is more evident, is instead constituted by serliane framed by columns that support a richly decorated frieze.
Also of the Sansovino is the Palazzo della Zecca (about 1537), built precisely in adherence to the aforementioned bookshop. The facade layout is innovative: the portico on the ground floor holds a loggia formed by ringed columns, surmounted by a double architrave; the last floor, later added to a probable project by the same architect, continues the theme of the channeled columns, interspersed with large windows with triangular tympanums.
However, the works of artists such as Sansovino and Palladio could hardly be described as Mannerist in the same way as those made by the aforementioned Giulio Romano or Michelangelo Buonarroti, the two main exponents of the current. In the analysis of Michelangelo’s architecture some Florentine factories are particularly significant, such as the New Sacristy (completed in 1534) and the Laurentian Medicea Library (designed in 1523). Compared to the previous examples, where generally the attention of the designer is focused on plan and façade surfaces, the Sacristy Nuova of Florencelooks like an overgrowth designed to host sculptures. It rises up near the basilica of San Lorenzo and is specular compared to the Old Sacristy designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, of which he takes the plant. Michelangelo elaborated freely the forms adopted in the Old Sacristy, depriving them of Brunelleschi’s harmony. For example, above the access portals, he built straight trabeations supported by large shelves, with shallow niches surmounted by unusual gables carved in the lower part.
In the Biblioteca Laurenziana, built along the cloister of the same basilica, it had to take account of the pre-existing conditions. The project was solved by creating two adjacent areas: the atrium, with a reduced surface and characterized by a high ceiling, and the reading room, located on a higher floor. The atrium walls are configured as facades facing the inside, with blind niches and recessed columns (in order to reinforce the wall); instead, the reading room, reachable through a staircase that expands downwards (performed by Bartolomeo Ammannati), is a brighter environment, with smaller vertical dimensions, but much more extended in length, so as to overturn the spatial effect.
Returning to Rome, Michelangelo took care of the reconstruction of the basilica of San Pietro in the Vatican and the arrangement of Piazza del Campidoglio (1546). For the basilica he rejected the design of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and returned to the original centralized plan, canceling however the perfect balance studied by Bramante: through a porticoed façade he gave a main direction to the whole building and then, after demolishing parts already made by his predecessors, he still strengthened the pillars supporting the dome, away from the delicate proportions of Bramante.
Instead, in the Piazza del Campidoglio, once again he had to take account of the pre-existing buildings; therefore, he conceived a space of trapezoidal shape, delimited, towards the Forum, from the Palazzo Senatorio and, along the inclined sides, from the Palazzo Nuovo and from the specular one of the Conservatories. One of his last works was the Porta Pia (1562), to which he dedicated many sketches in which complex and particular shapes were revealed that inspired many Mannerist architects.
Other Tuscan artists of the sixteenth century produced Mannerist factories, relying above all on the definition of detailed works; an example is the external staircase of the Villa medicea of Artimino, by Bernardo Buontalenti. Instead, a particular case is the Palazzo degli Uffizi, by Giorgio Vasari (1560), of which, in addition to the search for details and details, there is also the high urban value: in fact, the complex is inserted between Palazzo Vecchio and the Arnoup to form a closed corridor, towards the river, through a serliana. The reports are based on the repetition of a span module; nevertheless, it is evident that the Uffizi are not only conceived as planes of facades, but also in spatial terms.
A fusion between Classicist and Mannerist themes can be felt in the architecture of Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, who in 1550 created a small Roman church along the Via Flaminia (Sant’Andrea on the Via Flaminia), with an elliptical plan contained within a rectangle. In 1551, also in Rome, he built Villa Giulia, to which Michelangelo, Vasari and Bartolomeo Ammannati (the latter also author of the enlargement of Palazzo Pitti in Florence) worked; particularity of the building is the contrast between the exterior, of regular shapes, and the interior, open towards the garden, of a semicircular shape.
Later, in 1558, Vignola resumed a fortalice begun by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger a few decades earlier, turning it into one of the happiest expressions of the current mannerist: the Palazzo Farnese, in Caprarola. The exterior has a pentagonal plan and follows the perimeter of the original fortress; inside, a circular courtyard opens up, formed by two overlaid loggias. Along the main side of the villa there are two rooms with a circular plan, intended respectively to accommodate a spiral staircase and a chapel, while outside the complex is preceded by a square of trapezoidal shape. The ambiguity of the building is mainly played on the binomial fortress-residence; furthermore, while the external surfaces appear flat, because they have no relevant projections, the internal courtyard surprises with its shape and its deep spatial articulation.
The most famous work of Vignola, however, remains the Church of the Gesù in Rome, begun in 1568 and destined to “have an influence perhaps more extensive than any other church built in the last four hundred years”. Here the architect merged the centralized Renaissance schemes with the longitudinal medieval ones. It is a scheme not completely new to the culture of the time. Vignola, in the conception of interior space, was inspired by Sant’Andrea, by Leon Battista Alberti, but without giving the lateral chapels the renaissance autonomy of the Albertian church; the nave assumed greater importance, while the chapels were reduced to simple side openings. The lavish decoration of the church dates back to the Baroque era and later the façade (1577), designed by Giacomo Della Porta; the church, on the other hand, belongs to the Mannerist period, that is, “it lacks equilibrium right up to all the high Renaissance and the explosive energy of the Baroque”.
France
The Italian Mannerism profoundly influenced the architecture of the French castles, but initially limited itself to the only decorative apparatus. For example, between 1515 and 1524, Francesco I started the renovation and expansion of the Castle of Blois, where they were made of cross windows (typical of the Italian fifteenth century) and mansard style mansards. The soaring roof of the castle still refers to the medieval models and the French tradition, as well as the structure of the external staircase, which was however decorated according to the Renaissance taste.
Under the same Francis I, starting from 1528, work began on the expansion of the Castle of Fontainebleau, which led to the construction of the Porte Dorée, the buildings around the Cour du Cheval Blanc and the tunnel of union between a pre-existing tower and the buildings of the Cour du Cheval Blanc. The configuration of Porte Dorée, with its three overlapping lodges, refers to the Palazzo Ducale d ‘ Urbino, but the front of the Francesco I Gallery appears more renaissance. Here, a portico with rustic pillars, formed by the alternation of major and minor arches, it supports the upper registers, where regular windows open, aligned with the major arches, and, higher up, numerous windows surmounted byarched gables. However, strongly inclined roofs still refer to the French tradition.
Likewise, the Château of Chambord presents a marked contrast between factory buildings and roofs. It was built between 1519 and 1547 by Domenico da Cortona, an Italian architect formed under the guidance of Giuliano da Sangallo. The complex, entirely surrounded by a moat, is rectangular, with four circular towers at the corners, a large central courtyard and, along the main side, a square-shaped dungeon, still bordered by four circular towers. The dungeon is the heart of the entire castle and is served by a circular double spiral staircase, inspired by an idea by Leonardo da Vinci, so that those who descend do not meet those who climb.
Another Italian, the aforementioned Sebastiano Serlio, lent his work in the Castle of Ancy-le-Franc, where he introduced, around a square-shaped courtyard, the enclosed buildings, on each corner, from towers also to plant square. This model, inspired by a Neapolitan palace by Giuliano da Maiano (the Villa di Poggioreale, now disappeared), had considerable success in suburban residences; it is a scheme certainly not designed by Serlio, but that the architect contributed to affirm, thanks to the wide disclosure of his treatise. The internal fronts of the courtyard recall the theme of the niches and the twin pillars already adopted by Bramantein the Belvedere in the Vatican.
The Cour Carrée of the Louvre, commissioned by Francesco I in place of the pre-existing medieval castle, can be traced back to this scheme. The works, entrusted to Pierre Lescot, were started in 1546; the initial project involved the construction of a two-story building, to which an attic was added during construction. The lower register is marked by a double system of arches and architraves; the upper floor is articulated through columns and windows with alternating triangular and arched gables; the attic is enriched with decorations by Jean Goujon which give the Cour Carrée a decidedly mannerist style.
Spain
The Spain turned to mannerism with the palace of Charles V in ‘ Alhambra of Granada (1526). Designed by Pedro Machuca, he was brought forward by his son Luis until 1568, although Andrea Palladio, Galeazzo Alessi, Pellegrino Tibaldi and Vignola had been asked to intervene. The plant is a square about 60 meters on each side, with a bevelled corner; at the center there is a large circular courtyard, defined by colonnades on two orders, which anticipates the Vignola solution for Palazzo Farneseand, at the same time, refers to the court, never finished, of the Villa Madama by Raffaello Sanzio. Even the exterior, with pilasters inserted in rustic bugnato, recalls Italian style, in particular the Casa di Raffaello (Palazzo Caprini) designed by Bramante.
More impressive is the Escorial Monastery, in Madrid, built by Philip II of Spain and built between 1563 and 1584 by Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera. The plan is linked to the one carried out by Filarete for the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan (now the seat of the University of Milan): it consists of a rectangle of about 200 meters by 160, with some large courtyards and a church, inspired by the Saint Peterof Bramante, which rises on the bottom of the central courtyard. Outside, where four corner towers rise, the architecture of the monastery is rather bare, while the interior has a much more articulated volume, with the dome, the body of the church, the towers in the façade and the intersection of the roofs double-pitched.
Moreover, the model of the Filarete is also attributable to the Hospital Real of Santiago de Compostela (1501), which with its cruciform plan is inspired by the Ospedale Maggiore and the bramante cloister of Sant’Ambrogio.
England
Towards the end of the 16th century, several country houses were erected in England, in a style more oriented to “order” than to “licenses”. These include Longleat House, Wollaton Hall and Hardwick Hall.
The first was built between 1572 and 1580 in Wiltshire; it is characterized by large rectangular openings and bow – windowed foreparts, while the most Renaissance element is the entrance portal.
Also in 1580 the works of Wollaton Hall, in Nottinghamshire, began. The plan incorporates the outline of the square flanked by corner towers; in the central part of the building there is a tower with another four circular towers on the sides.
As in the Longleat House, still large windows mark the facades of the Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire (1590 – 1596). The plan is due to a rectangle with angular towers and bow windows; the top of the building, as in previous residences, is bordered by a balustrade.
The Italian influence, and in particular Palladio, is more evident in the works of Inigo Jones, where the elements that refer to the mannerism (jagged pediments, cornices with complex profiles, tombstones and decorated panels, etc.) play a secondary role compared to the research of a “solid, manageable according to the rules, manly, without affectation” architecture.
His first major work was Queen’s House in Greenwich. The plan is “H”, perhaps inspired by the Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano, with large regular windows and a loggia at the center of a long side, which is opposed, on the opposite side, a cubic room of forty feet.
Closely connected to the Queen’s House is the Banqueting House, started by Jones in 1622. Designed according to the form of a double cube, initially it was equipped with an apse, then demolished. The external façade, enclosed by a richly decorated frieze, consists of two overlapping orders in smooth bossage, with columns and pilasters framing the rectangular openings, according to a style that refers to the Palladian models.
The principle of setting up buildings according to regular spaces, in which a close relationship emerges between internal and external configuration, is also found in other factories of Inigo Jones: for example, due to the modularity of the double cube is the Queen’s Chapel (1623), while the plant of the Covent Garden church (1631) is still set on a double square.
Other countries
In Belgium one of the most significant works is to be found in the City Hall of Antwerp, which Cornelis Floris de Vriendt built between 1561 and 1566. The palace is located on the edge of a large square where they overlook late-Gothic buildings with Renaissance and Baroque details; despite the presence of a central forepart of Nordic use, the building derives from Bramante and Serlio. The façade, pierced by large openings, is set on four orders delimited by stringcourses; the front part, with round arches, is adorned by twin columns and niches.
This model was imported into several European regions, starting from the Netherlands and Germany. For example, between 1615 and 1620, Elias Holl built the Town Hall of Augsburg, with a central front enclosed by a molded tympanum; on the sides of the roofing surface there are two towers with a square plan, on which two polygonal volumes with bulbous domes are inserted.
Instead, in German religious architecture, one of the first churches linked to the Counter-Reformation was the Michaelskirche in Munich, built since 1585 on the model of the Church of the Gesù in Rome. Characterized by a mannerist façade, the interior surprises with its wide barrel vault that covers the central nave; as in the Roman basilica, also here the side chapels directly face the nave through a series of arches, but the environments that result, compared to the model of Vignola, show a greater integration with the central nave.
Source from Wikipedia