03 — ARTWORK
Exterior view
- MEDIUM
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- TYPE
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PALETTE
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- 1122 × 1544 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
Following the Villaa residence in the country (in Italy); villas acquired palace-like characteristics from the Renaissance onwards. Lante, c. 1522-23 Giulio took up the commission from a Roman patricianoriginally a member of the ancient Roman nobility; from the Middle Ages onwards a term for a noble, wealthy citizen., Cristoforo Stati, to construct an urban palazzoPalaces: large urban dwellings, 'palazzo' in Italian carries no regal connotations. Alberti described the palace as a city in little, and, like cities, Italian Renaissance palaces vary in type according to differences of climate, tradition and social structure. On to these regional stocks were grafted new architectural strains, reflecting theoretical reinterpretations of antiquity and individually influential examples. The atrium and peristyle house described by Vitruvius and now known from Pompeii did not survive antiquity, and much of the interest of Renaissance designs lies in creative misunderstandings of Vitruvius's text. Medieval palace architecture probably inherited the insula type of ancient apartment house, related to the modest strip dwellings which never disappeared from Italian cities. In Florence a merchant palace developed from fortified beginnings, with vaulted shop openings on the ground floor, and the main apartments above, reached by internal stone staircases opening from an inner court. Renaissance developments regularized without changing the essential type, although large cloister-like courtyards were introduced, while shops came to be thought undignified. At Michelozzo's Medici Palace (1444) a square arcaded courtyard with axial entrance lies behind a façade of graduated rustication, with biforate windows, a classical cornice replacing the traditional wooden overhang. The apartments on the 'piano nobile' formed interconnecting suites of rooms of diminishing size and increasing privacy. The classical orders which Alberti introduced to the façade of the Palazzo Rucellai (c.1453) were not taken up by the conservative Florentines, who continued to build variations on the Medici Palace (Palazzo Pitti; Palazzo Strozzi). In the 16th century rustication was reduced to quoins and voussoirs, and large windows appeared on the ground floor, 'kneeling' on elongated volutes. At Urbino the Ducal Palace (1465) reflected Alberti's recommendations for the princely palace, and was in turn influential on late 15th century palaces in Rome (e.g. the Cancelleria). A harmonious Florentine courtyard and ample staircase replace the embattled spaces of medieval seigneurial castles, of which vestiges remain only in the towers flanking the balconies of the duke's private apartments, designed as a scholarly retreat. In the absence of a merchant class or a cultured nobility in 15th century Rome, the architectural pace was set by the papal court. Papal incentives to build, and large households, meant less compact plans for cardinals' palaces, often built next to their titular churches. Renaissance forms appear in the unfinished courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia (1460s), with its arcade system derived from the nearby Theatre of Marcellus, and in the delicately ordered stonework of the Cancelleria (1485). In the 16th century vestigial corner towers and shops disappear from cardinals' palaces, and Antonio da Sangallo's Palazzo Farnese (1516) introduces symmetrical planning and Vitrivuan elements, like the colonnaded vestibule, behind a sober Florentine façade, enlivened by Michelangelo's cornice. A smaller palace type supplied the needs of an enlarged papal bureaucracy, more ambitious for display than for domestic accommodation. Bramante's 'House of Raphael' sets the façade style not only for this new type, but also for Renaissance houses all over Europe. Raphael and Peruzzi made ingenious use of difficult sites (Palazzo da Brescia; Palazzo Massimi), and their sophisticated façades flattered the architectural pretensions of patron and pope (e.g. Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila). Movement of patrons and architects, especially after the Sack of Rome, meant a diffusion of Roman forms to central and northern Italy, where Sanmicheli's palaces in Verona, and Palladio's in Vicenza, adapted Roman types to suit local conditions. Palladio's 4-columned atrium is a Vitruvian solution to the traditionally wide Veneto entrance hall, and his plan for the Palazzo da Porto-Festa contains explicit references to Vitruvius's House of the Greeks. In Venice, defended by its lagoon and a stable political system, the hereditary aristocracy built palaces open to trade and festivity on the Grand Canal. The traditional Venetian palace has a tripartite structure: long central halls above entrance vestibules used for unloading merchandise are lit on the canal façade by clusters of glazed windows (rare elsewhere), and at the back from small courts with external staircases (as in the Ca' d'Oro). Codussi's palaces introduced biforate windows and a grid of classical orders into the system, while Sansovino's Palazzo Cornaro retains vestiges of the Venetian type (small courtyard; tripartite façade) despite its Bramantesque coupled orders and licentious window surrounds. Other cities, like Genoa, evolved influential types. Through engravings and the illustrated treatises, Italian Renaissance ideas of palace planning, originally evolved in response to specific conditions, came to be applied all over Europe. facing the Piazza Sant'Eustachio. In contrast to the villa commissions with their concern for beauty of setting and explicit ancient prototypes, here Giulio was faced with the conversion of the site of several smaller houses into one unified structure, with the inclusion of income-producing shops at the street-level. The resulting Palazzo Stati Maccarani (now the Palazzo di Brazza) is a massive three-storey building surrounding an interior courtyard, with five bays composing its principal façadethe front or principal face of a building, especially one elaborately constructed; a blind façade is a façade that is purely decorative and does not relate to the structure of the building..
The shops on the ground-floor are marked with dynamic, rusticated keystones and voussoirsthe wdge-shaped stones forming an arch or rib. that burst out in the shape of a fan over the flat-arched entrances. The energy that explodes from the expansive forms and rusticated blocks of the lowest floor leads into a much more restrained piano nobileThe main floor of a building, usually above the ground floor, containing the public rooms., with its paired pilasters and shallow aediculae framing the windows in stately niches. In the uppermost floor the vigorous physicality that sweeps the ground-level has become completely enervated; even the doubled pilasters, here without architraves, bases and pedestals, almost sink into the wall, merely echoing the articulation of the façade below. The refined effect of the third storey is that of a ghostly grid, in very low reliefA sculptural work in which all or part projects from the flat surface. There are three basic forms: low relief (bas-relief, basso rilievo), in which figures project less than half their depth from the background; medium relief (mezzo-rilievo), in which figures are seen half round; and high relief (alto rilievo), in which figures are almost detached from their background..
The Palazzo Stati Maccarani provides a clear measure of the rapidity with which Giulio came into his own in architectural design. Although essentially the palazzo fits into the line of development pioneered by Donato Bramante and developed by Raphael, Giulio's variation establishes a different dialogue among the architectural forms, animates them with the tension of contrast and provides a kind of commentary on architectural practice by calling attention to it through the manipulation of its vocabulary.
The photo shows the building from the northeast.
OTHER WORKS BY GIULIO ROMANO
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r0579a019ee2235,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Exterior view by GIULIO ROMANO},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-13},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/giulio-romano-re56a65c28482fc/exterior-view-r0579a019ee2235},
urldate = {2026-09-13},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-13. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.