The divine sphere and its hidden projections in the Renaissance sacred space

Abstract

When the modern theories of architecture, inspired by Vitruvius, deal with the sacred, they use to attach philosophical and theological reflections which go beyond the technical instructions they are merely supposed to give. The comparison between the passages of De re aedificatoria devoted by L.B. Alberti to sacred buildings, and the notes written by Abbot Suger on the construction of gothic Basilica of St. Denis, shows the interactions between theological thought and the project. Through the relation with both a theological program and the several ways to experience the place, the architectural compositions establish a “private code” that sets the meanings for the shape of the space. The series of clues disseminated into the architectural space require to be recognised and set into a system of pertinence, in order to be understood. But only the initiated are allowed to fathom the connotations behind those articulations of the space. Then, the shape of the buildings and the terms used by theoreticians to describe them can be understood as the signs of the rising of a new theology, associated to a cultural competence looking for a break with the recent past, and relations with the antiquity.
Otherwise, the message expressed through the architecture of sacred buildings, rather than being addressed to human kind, would be directed to God, the only one who is able to comprehend the geometric proportion of cosmic harmony.