Architectural Geology of Florence, Part 17: Stone in the Service of the Tripartite Order | Medici Riccardi Palace (AD 1484), Tuscany, Italy
(Updated on April 13, 2025)
Taken from the Via de' Martelli just below its intersection with the Via de' Gori. We're looking north-northwestward at the building's eastern and southern elevations.
Once again, as I've seen in my other old slides, correctly represented colors, such as those of the Florentine family out for a bike ride, share the image's palette with what I call "phantom bluing." It likes to hang out in the shaded zones. I have not attempted to remove or alter it, in order to preserve as much geologic and architectural detail as I can. And besides, I also like that yellowish, late-afternoon glow.
Designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo and built over the span of four decades, the Medici Riccardi Palace is yet another of the city's plutocratic piles that sports an imposing Pietraforte Sandstone exterior.
One of the most dependable design features of classically derived Western architecture—and it's in everything from Ancient Greek temples to Beaux Arts skyscrapers—is the tripartite division. Using a single Graeco-Roman column as an example, there's a bottom (the base), a middle (the shaft), and a top (the capital).
To say that the architects of Renaissance Italy were profoundly influenced by Greek and Roman precedents is an understatement. So it's not surprising to find that this fancy house is constructed, in the typical tripartite way, like a three-level layer cake.
Note how the triple nature of the palace is emphasized by the different ways its single stone type, the late-Cretaceous and turbiditic Pietraforte Sandstone, has been worked.
The base features ashlar blocks that project outward to a greater or lesser extent. The joints have been chamfered to exaggerate this effect. I'd call the resulting masonry style rusticated, albeit a very rugged type thereof, rather than rock-faced. This because the projections have been produced by the beveling or chamfering of the joints mentioned just above, and not left as they came from the quarry. But here the distinction between my two italicized terms is a slim one. As it is in nature, so it is in art: there are always in-between states that do not fit our crisply rendered definitions.
Add to that the fact that masonry terms are often overtly misused, not only by architects but by masons themselves. One can find plenty of examples of incorrect usage offered on YouTube videos and in Wikipedia entries. The best antidote for all this semantic mayhem is the most authoritative source, and the one I always use in writing my books and Flickr descriptions: Cyril M. Harris's Dictionary of Architecture and Construction, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005).
But getting back to the palace itself: the Pietraforte of the middle and upper stories, separated by dentiled stringcourses, is dressed-face ashlar, with planed-off exterior surfaces.
But here we go again with the terminological mistakes. Some sources state that the stone of the upper two sections of the Medici Riccardi Palace is ashlar while that of the base isn't because it's rusticated instead. But ashlar is simply any masonry unit that is flat its sides and back so it fits together nicely with the blocks around it. Its front surface can be finely dressed, rock-faced, or rusticated, as the designer wishes. So in fact all the stone on this building's exterior is ashlar.
Having gotten the definitions down right, we can now enjoy a bit of architectural critiquing. For instance, isn't it a bit odd that the ashlar used here, especially in the middle section of the southern side, comes in different dimensions and course heights? When you're close to a window, you do have to cut the stone down so it will fit, but the weird sizes occur elsewhere as well.
When you're an architect working for the Medicis, presumably money is no object. You should be able to pay whatever it takes to get a uniform ashlar size. Was it just physically impossible to quarry enough material to exact specifications? Or was that remarkable amount of variability considered a clever bit of design?
What isn't odd, however, is where the rusticated ashlar was used, and where it wasn't. Can you imagine it being put only on the third floor, with nothing but flat surfaces below it? But perhaps that's what passes for the classical tripartite look on Bizarro World.
You'll find the other photos and descriptions of this series in my Architectural Geology of Florence album.
Architectural Geology of Florence, Part 17: Stone in the Service of the Tripartite Order | Medici Riccardi Palace (AD 1484), Tuscany, Italy
(Updated on April 13, 2025)
Taken from the Via de' Martelli just below its intersection with the Via de' Gori. We're looking north-northwestward at the building's eastern and southern elevations.
Once again, as I've seen in my other old slides, correctly represented colors, such as those of the Florentine family out for a bike ride, share the image's palette with what I call "phantom bluing." It likes to hang out in the shaded zones. I have not attempted to remove or alter it, in order to preserve as much geologic and architectural detail as I can. And besides, I also like that yellowish, late-afternoon glow.
Designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo and built over the span of four decades, the Medici Riccardi Palace is yet another of the city's plutocratic piles that sports an imposing Pietraforte Sandstone exterior.
One of the most dependable design features of classically derived Western architecture—and it's in everything from Ancient Greek temples to Beaux Arts skyscrapers—is the tripartite division. Using a single Graeco-Roman column as an example, there's a bottom (the base), a middle (the shaft), and a top (the capital).
To say that the architects of Renaissance Italy were profoundly influenced by Greek and Roman precedents is an understatement. So it's not surprising to find that this fancy house is constructed, in the typical tripartite way, like a three-level layer cake.
Note how the triple nature of the palace is emphasized by the different ways its single stone type, the late-Cretaceous and turbiditic Pietraforte Sandstone, has been worked.
The base features ashlar blocks that project outward to a greater or lesser extent. The joints have been chamfered to exaggerate this effect. I'd call the resulting masonry style rusticated, albeit a very rugged type thereof, rather than rock-faced. This because the projections have been produced by the beveling or chamfering of the joints mentioned just above, and not left as they came from the quarry. But here the distinction between my two italicized terms is a slim one. As it is in nature, so it is in art: there are always in-between states that do not fit our crisply rendered definitions.
Add to that the fact that masonry terms are often overtly misused, not only by architects but by masons themselves. One can find plenty of examples of incorrect usage offered on YouTube videos and in Wikipedia entries. The best antidote for all this semantic mayhem is the most authoritative source, and the one I always use in writing my books and Flickr descriptions: Cyril M. Harris's Dictionary of Architecture and Construction, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005).
But getting back to the palace itself: the Pietraforte of the middle and upper stories, separated by dentiled stringcourses, is dressed-face ashlar, with planed-off exterior surfaces.
But here we go again with the terminological mistakes. Some sources state that the stone of the upper two sections of the Medici Riccardi Palace is ashlar while that of the base isn't because it's rusticated instead. But ashlar is simply any masonry unit that is flat its sides and back so it fits together nicely with the blocks around it. Its front surface can be finely dressed, rock-faced, or rusticated, as the designer wishes. So in fact all the stone on this building's exterior is ashlar.
Having gotten the definitions down right, we can now enjoy a bit of architectural critiquing. For instance, isn't it a bit odd that the ashlar used here, especially in the middle section of the southern side, comes in different dimensions and course heights? When you're close to a window, you do have to cut the stone down so it will fit, but the weird sizes occur elsewhere as well.
When you're an architect working for the Medicis, presumably money is no object. You should be able to pay whatever it takes to get a uniform ashlar size. Was it just physically impossible to quarry enough material to exact specifications? Or was that remarkable amount of variability considered a clever bit of design?
What isn't odd, however, is where the rusticated ashlar was used, and where it wasn't. Can you imagine it being put only on the third floor, with nothing but flat surfaces below it? But perhaps that's what passes for the classical tripartite look on Bizarro World.
You'll find the other photos and descriptions of this series in my Architectural Geology of Florence album.