Renaissance

On this cast

• RusticationHuge stones with deep joints and rough, cushioned faces on the ground floor. The house looks like a fortress at street level.
• Street benchA stone bench along the base, where visitors and clients waited for the family.
• Kneeling windowA barred window raised on two brackets, like a figure kneeling on its knees. A Florentine invention.
• Tethering ringsIron rings for tying up horses and holding torches.
• Rusticated archThe entrance is a perfect semicircle of wedge-shaped stones (voussoirs) locked by a bigger keystone.
• String courseA horizontal moulding marking each floor. The façade is read as stacked layers, each with its own order.
• Smooth ashlarUpper floors are built in finer, flatter stone: rough below, refined above.
• Superimposed ordersFlat pilasters divide the bays, a different order on each floor: the plainest at the bottom, Corinthian at the top, as on the Colosseum.
• Aedicule windowA window framed like a tiny temple front: two colonnettes, an entablature and a pediment.
• Alternating pedimentsTriangular and segmental (curved) pediments take turns along the row. Rhythm, borrowed from Rome.
• Coat of armsThe family stemma on the corner, here with the six balls (palle) of the Medici.
• Biforate windowTwo round-headed lights under a single arch, with a small round oculus between them.
• Crowning corniceA massive overhang that closes the whole block like the cornice of a temple: dentils, egg-and-dart, brackets.

How to spot it from the street

1. Flat front split into floors by string courses
2. Rusticated ground floor, smoother stone above
3. Round-arched or pedimented windows in a steady row
4. A huge crowning cornice

Where it came from

In Florence Filippo Brunelleschi designed the Foundling Hospital loggia (begun 1419) and the dome of the cathedral, and Leon Battista Alberti wrote the first great treatise since Vitruvius. Their buildings are calm and legible. Every part is in proportion to every other, and the classical orders return, now applied to churches and private palaces.

The palazzo is the type to learn. Its stacked floors are divided by string courses. The ground floor is rough with rustication, the upper floors get finer, and a massive cornice closes the block. Windows line up in a strict rhythm, and on the grander palaces each one wears a little pediment.