Architectural Design and the Emergence of a Modern Notion of History: The Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Renaissance Rome

FAIN: FT-278925-21

Carla L. Keyvanian
Auburn University (Auburn, AL 36849-0001)

Research and writing of a book on the architectural history of the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome.

My project is a book manuscript investigating the relationship between architecture and historical understanding in 15th-century Italy that focuses on a monumental public hospital built in Rome. Its architect is unknown, the architecture not in line with current views about Renaissance architecture and its significance has gone undetected. I have identified the architect as one of the most important of his generation, leader of a group of vanguard humanists who collaborated on the design. I argue they manifested in that design their idea of architecture and its relation to new notions of history. My book inserts the hospital in the canon of Renaissance architecture; shows how architectural languages can provide evidence about intellectual contexts where written documents stop short; and examines the phenomenon of architects advancing history-writing methods, thereby contributing to our understanding of the genesis of architectural history and the discipline of history.