Florentine scholar and architect Leon-Batista Alberti, who, says Milizia, is justly regarded as one of the principal restorers of the architecture of antiquity.[1] His chief designs in church architecture are found in Santa Maria Novella of Florence, in San Francesco of Rimini, and in Sant' Andrea of Mantua. The first two of these are mediæval structures in which Alberti's work is confined to the remodelling of the exteriors, but the last was wholly designed by him, though the work was not completed within his lifetime, and the dome over the crossing is the work of another architect of a later time.
How much Alberti did to the façade of Santa Maria Novella, the part of the building to which his work is confined is not very clear. Vasari speaks vaguely as if the whole front were by him,[2] but from a foot-note by Milanesi it would appear that he merely completed a part which had been left unfinished by an older architect, and the work remaining by the older architect is said to include all below the first cornice except the central portal, which is attributed to Alberti. Milizia says[3] that although it is common to attribute the whole façade to Alberti, it has too much Gothic character to be entirely by him, and that therefore a part of it may, with more probability of correctness, be assigned to Giovanni Bettini, an older architect; but he adds that the central portal is undoubtedly by Alberti.
An examination of the monument itself would seem to show that the part below the first entablature, with exception of the great Corinthian columns and the central portal,, is mediæval work (Fig. 17). The whole Corinthian order, with the angle pilasters and the pedestals on which the order is raised, look like neo-classic work, and are probably by Alberti. This order is wholly different in character from mediæval design, and quite foreign to the mixture of Pisan Romanesque and Italian Gothic features of the distinctly mediæval part with which it is associated. The columns of the order are, however, of mediæval proportions, being eleven or twelve diameters in height, and they are built of small stones in a common mediæval manner. But these proportions were necessitated by the older work to which the order had to be adjusted, and the small masonry of which they are composed makes them harmonize with the older
