The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct nineteenth-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of sixteenth-century Italian architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and Neoclassicism, were synthesized with picturesque aesthetics. The style of architecture that was thus created, though also characterized as "Neo-Renaissance", was essentially of its own time. "The backward look transforms its object," Siegfried Giedion wrote of historicist architectural styles; "every spectator at every period—at every moment, indeed—inevitably transforms the past according to his own nature."
The Italianate style was first developed in Britain about 1802 by John Nash, with the construction of Cronkhill in Shropshire. This small country house is generally accepted to be the first Italianate villa in England, from which is derived the Italianate architecture of the late Regency and early Victorian eras.
The Italianate style was further developed and popularized by the architect Sir Charles Barry in the 1830s. Barry’s Italianate style drew heavily for its motifs on the buildings of the Italian Renaissance, this concept, sometimes at odds with Nash’s semi-rustic Italianate villas, produced what came to be accepted as the Italianate style. The style was not confined to England and was employed in varying forms, long after its decline in popularity in Britain, throughout northern Europe and the British Empire. From the late 1840s it achieved huge popularity in the United States, where it was promoted by the architect Alexander Jackson Davis.
Elements of the style
Key visual components of this style include:
- Low-pitched or flat roofs; roof is frequently hipped
- Projecting eaves supported by corbels
- Imposing cornice structures
- Pedimented windows and doors
- Arch-headed, pedimented or Serlian windows with pronounced architraves and archivolts
- Tall first floor windows suggesting a piano nobile
- Angled bay windows
- Attics with a row of awning windows between the eave brackets
- Glazed doors
- Belvedere or machicolated signorial towers
- Cupolas
- Quoins
- Loggias
- Balconies with wrought-iron railings, or Renaissance balustrading
- Balustrades concealing the roof-scapes
- About 15% of Italianate houses in the United States include a tower
Links
Incoming search terms:
- Italian Victorian Classical Building
- machicolated signorial towers