Palazzo Rucellai

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Palazzo Rucellai.

Palazzo Rucellai is a Renaissance palace in Florence, Italy, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed by Bernardo Rossellino. Its splendid facade was one of the first announcing the new ideas of Renaissance architecture based on pilasters, entablatures in proportional relationship to each other. The rusticated masonry creates an impression of strength, especially on the ground floor, which contained storerooms. The three stories of its facade have different classical orders, as in the Colosseum in Rome, but with the Tuscan order at the base, an Alberti original in place of Ionic order at the second level, and a very simplified Corinthian order at the higher level. There are double windows on the upper storeys combined arches with highly articulated voussoirs that spring from pilaster to pilaster. The basic floor had business purposes and was flanked by benches for customers on the facade. The second floor was the living floor and the third floor the sleeping floor. A fourth "hidden" floor under the roof was for servants and has nearly no windows and is thus quite dark inside.

The palace is built around a central court, with the design adapted from Brunelleschi's forms in the loggia of the Foundling Hospital. It is unlikely that Alberti was responsible for this aspect of the palace. Across the street there is the Rucellai Loggia which was built as backdrop of family celebrations and weddings.

There is no documentary evidence that the palace and loggia were actually designed by Alberti, the confirmation coming from Giorgio Vasari in his Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (or, in English, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) from 1568.^[1]