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San Sebastiano, Mantova 1460 [work begun]

Sant'Andrea, Mantova 1472 [work begun]

San Miniato al Monte, Firenze 1207

Santa Maria Novella, Firenze 1456—1470 [facade completed]

Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini 1450—1468 [work begun]

Five Facades Compared—to the same scale

These are four Alberti church designs that use San Miniato al Monte as inspiration, primarily in the concept of temple front versus portico.

Drawings are by Robert Tavernor, from On Alberti and the Art of Building.

Photos have been modified by Richard Bosch, to reduce perspective foreshortening.

A face of God temple set on top of a Roman portico, with no pretense of structural continuity.

Alberti maintains the temple set on top of the portico parti, but more convincingly by introducing: an immense entablature; some semblance of structural continuity at the middle columns; and with a hierarchy of the three doors, the center derived from the Pantheon, of course.

The temple has slid down to the ground and the Roman portico is now layered into its background. The Roman Arch of Augustus, also in Rimini, influenced the treatment.

According to Rudolf Wittkower, this was intended to be a relatively simple temple front with a broken pediment and a rhythmic vestige of the portico.

Quintessential temple front—pediment intact— but the Roman portico has become a...triumphal arch.

Ben Skála Wikipedia

Tobabi1 Wikimedia

Tobabi1 Wikimedia

Rudolf Wittkower