Mathematical Beauty in Renaissance Architecture

Abstract

Many buildings throughout the Renaissance were perceived as beautiful, and remain to be seen as so. Leon Battista Alberti defines beauty as “that reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse” and specifies that “the three principal components of the whole theory [of beauty] into which we inquire are number [numerus], what we might call outline [finitio] and position [collocatio]”. Beauty, as defined by these terms, comes from both underlying geometries and numerical relationships. The design theory of both Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio exemplify proportional and geometrical beauty. The architecture of both Alberti and Palladio support Plato’s belief that “those arts which are founded on numbers, geometry and the other mathematical disciplines, have greatness and in this lies the dignity of architecture”. Their theories were detailed in the treatises they wrote, and brought to physical form in the design of the Santa Maria Novella facade (see Image 1), and Villa Rotunda (Image 2) , which exude beauty due to their strong geometric and numeric relationships.