Character of Renaissance Architecture is Charles Herbert Moore’s critical study of the architecture that revived classical forms in Italy and spread across Europe from the fifteenth century. Moore examines the principles, ornament, and structural ideas of the Renaissance, from Brunelleschi and Alberti through the High Renaissance and the Baroque that followed.
A scholar in the tradition influenced by Ruskin, Moore brings a discriminating and sometimes severe judgment to his subject, weighing Renaissance achievement against the medieval Gothic he admired. His analysis attends closely to the relationship between structure and decoration. Thoughtful and well-illustrated, the book offers a serious critical perspective on one of the central movements in the history of Western architecture and the debates it has provoked.