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In the Image and Likeness of God By Michael S. Rose |
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The human body informed the arrangement, scale, hierarchy, and proportion of new church architecture
during the Renaissance.
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In Italy, the Gothic style never really took hold. In a land built on classical antiquity, Gothic was seen as outlandish, alien, and un-Italian. Consequently, Gothic architecture was increasingly regarded with contempt. In fact, the 15th-century Italian architect Filarete (1400-69) once declared: “A curse on those who thought of such rubbish! Only barbarians can have brought it into Italy.”
In the next century, these “barbarians” were called “Goths” after the Germanic tribes that had sacked Rome 1,000 years earlier. Alberti used the term “Gothic” as a synonym for “crude” when writing of the architecture we know by the same name, and a few years later Vasari referred to the Gothic as forms to be avoided, calling them “monstrous and barbarous.”
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