The complex panorama of the Mediterranean area in the fourteenth century compelled Venice to modify its economic patterns. The city started to pay attention to the Italian mainland, developing its agriculture and other industries. But the Veneto was marshy and needed to be drained and improved. The Venetian and mainland aristocracy gradually abandoned commerce for agriculture and land reclamation. Andrea Palladio built many villas for them from which they could administer their estates, transforming the marshes of the Veneto into sites for the villas. Those villas became the perfect place for retirement and contemplation.

This thesis relates the aspirations (examined in political treatises, literary programs and scientific treaties) of Pope Urban VIIIth with the allegorical spaciality of the architecture of Francesco Borromini. The projects initiated under the patronage of the Pope are particularly related to the Pope's election. Urban's personal impressa, the Angelic Sun is an emblem of this election, a reborn sun, a second personal birth and the elevation of the Angelic Pope (the leader of the age of the Holy Spirit). This is allegorically a metamorphosis like the re-birth of Daphne into Laurel; the Tree of Aeneas and Rome and the principal Barberini impressa. As a dynastic emblem the Laurel unites the cosmic territories of the sun and the moon, the traditional emblems of cosmic kingship and world domination. The metaphysical marriage to Rome (coronation and marriage are ritually linked, like the union of the sun and the moon) metaphorically appropriates the capacity of giving birth through construction, to a new city, an intellectual city in the image of Urban, the threshold for spirit. The architecture 'contains' this intellectual body (city), a dynastic emblem of the Angelic Pope.

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Leon Battista Alberti's church of Sant' Andrea in Mantua has been closely studied by many Renaissance scholars in relation to its layout, dimensions, proportions, chronology, style and aesthetics, as well as earning its place in both Alberti's corpus and the sweep of Renaissance architecture. The thesis investigates how eloquence is embodied in the sequential repetition of the triumphal arch motif between inside and outside. This thesis it is based on extensive and critical review of historical and theoretical literature. It marks a close examination of Sant?Andrea and to lesser extent San Francesco in Rimini, revisiting key ideas, texts and words. The principal finding of the thesis is that Alberti?s concept of respondeo, as developed in De Re Aedificatoria is the key to understanding the triumphal arch motif and its repetition in the interior. The thesis also comprehensively outlines the variety of contexts in which repondeo can be understood. This term, correlated to the passing of time and to rhetorical-based Albertian terms as decorum and convenio, means a 'sensitive suitability' between parts. The analysis of the triumphal arch motif of Sant?Andrea suggests that formalism has played a more important role in Alberti's design for this church than previously believed. This is by the motif's rigorous outline changing between the interior nave and the exterior fa??ade according to the observer's different visual perceptions. The rhetorical structure of the triumphal arch, in the way that it moves became from two to three dimensions in the fa??ade, seeks familiarity with the city's surrounding environment to establish simultaneity of actions. In this way, by joining the historical-religious point of references to a strategy of perception, the triumphal arch achieves public consensus. This rhetorical program is addressed especially by the patron of the church of Sant' Andrea Ludovico Gonzaga II also the ruler of Mantua with popular aspects of his public representations.

Leon Battista Alberti's church of Sant' Andrea in Mantua has been closely studied by many Renaissance scholars in relation to its layout, dimensions, proportions, chronology, style and aesthetics, as well as earning its place in both Alberti's corpus and the sweep of Renaissance architecture. The thesis investigates how eloquence is embodied in the sequential repetition of the triumphal arch motif between inside and outside. This thesis it is based on extensive and critical review of historical and theoretical literature. It marks a close examination of Sant?Andrea and to lesser extent San Francesco in Rimini, revisiting key ideas, texts and words. The principal finding of the thesis is that Alberti?s concept of respondeo, as developed in De Re Aedificatoria is the key to understanding the triumphal arch motif and its repetition in the interior. The thesis also comprehensively outlines the variety of contexts in which repondeo can be understood. This term, correlated to the passing of time and to rhetorical-based Albertian terms as decorum and convenio, means a 'sensitive suitability' between parts. The analysis of the triumphal arch motif of Sant?Andrea suggests that formalism has played a more important role in Alberti's design for this church than previously believed. This is by the motif's rigorous outline changing between the interior nave and the exterior fa??ade according to the observer's different visual perceptions. The rhetorical structure of the triumphal arch, in the way that it moves became from two to three dimensions in the fa??ade, seeks familiarity with the city's surrounding environment to establish simultaneity of actions. In this way, by joining the historical-religious point of references to a strategy of perception, the triumphal arch achieves public consensus. This rhetorical program is addressed especially by the patron of the church of Sant' Andrea Ludovico Gonzaga II also the ruler of Mantua with popular aspects of his public representations.