Italian religious architecture of the late Cinquecento is marked by an innovative interpretation of the canon of the central plan that generates a new type of Baroque church: the elongated central space. By building oval churches covered with oval domes, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1573) introduced a new pattern into the architectural shape grammar. The geometry of the oval figure gracefully combines the theoretical concept of cosmic centrality and the pragmatic necessities of liturgical linearity. However it raises a number of design problems for which architects devised various and inventive solutions. The comparison of various churches dating back to no later than the end of the Seicento, highlights the diversity of all the projects. Although every church is unique in its layout, design, features and decoration, all oval churches propose similar challenges to their designer, the most important of which are the choice of the geometrical pattern, the dome, and the façade. Keywords Oval churches Á Italian baroque Á Religious architecture Á Central space Introduction: the Concept of Centrality Sacred architecture of the Italian Renaissance is marked by the dissemination of a special kind of building: the centrally planned church. The morphological features of the centrally planned church are quite simple and therefore recognizable. They differ from other models such as the basilica type or Latin cross type in the sense that the inner space does not expand longitudinally but & Sylvie Duvernoy
Abstract. Leonardo's mathematical notes bear witness to a work in progress and allow us to look directly into the mind of the writer. In Leonardo we find two of the three fundamental classical geometric problems: the duplication of the cube and the quadrature of the circle. While Leonardo is extremely familiar with two-dimensional geometry problems, and proposes playful graphic exercises of adding and subtracting polygonal surfaces of all kinds, he is still unable to solve the problem of the duplication of the cube. Numerous pages testify of the attempt to rise above planar geometry and reach the realm of the third dimension, but Leonardo always bumps against the limits of quantity calculation possibilities of his age.
The many frescoes showing the Last Supper of Jesus and the Apostles painted in Florence in the Renaissance have already been studied at length by art historians. However they have never been analyzed and investigated from the point of view of the relationship between art and perspective science, and the relationship between the shape of the room that they decorate and the shape of the space that they depict. Perspective science was being mathematically codified and put into written words by Piero della Francesca in the very days in which Domenico Ghirlandaio painted two frescoes in the convents of San Marco and Ognissanti. We can thus consider Ghirlandaio's paintings as being pioneering art works that mark a turning point in this artistic genre, and we will try to understand how and to what extent he mastered the trompe l'oeil effects that he produced.
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