ABSTRACT
In rejecting the Gothic style of architecture during the quattrocento, northern and central Italy were the first regions in the world to re-adopt Classicism in building design. From this, it was but a short step to the rediscovery and careful study of the most important Roman treatise on architecture and town planning: Vitruvius’s De architectura, written in about 27 BC and recovered from a monastery in St Gallen, Switzerland in 1416. In the quattrocentro, as in the later Middle Ages, the government of Florence was alone among the sovereign authorities of Italy in delegating responsibility for construction of major public buildings to the guilds, rather than assuming this role itself. The re-emergence of both classical architecture and town planning in the 15th century not only helped governments achieve these ends but also provided a firm foundation for the further development of the genre in the cinquecento in which Classicism was transmogrified into Mannerism and, in turn, into Baroque by 1600.
