Italianate vs Renaissance Revival
Renaissance Revival is the cross-discipline counterpart of Italianate — shares the palazzo source and bracketed cornices, but is more archaeologically correct and monumental.
Italianate
A romantic Victorian-era style evoking the informal villas of rural Italy — deep bracketed eaves, tall narrow windows, and an asymmetrical tower.
- Widely overhanging eaves on prominent paired decorative brackets
- Tall, narrow windows, often round-arched, with elaborate crowns
- Asymmetrical massing with a cupola, belvedere, or off-center tower
- Low-pitched or flat roofline rather than a steep gable
- Quoins, belt courses, and bracketed porch and door hoods
Renaissance Revival
A 19th-century revival drawing on the palaces and civic buildings of the Italian and French Renaissance — symmetry, classical orders, and dignified masonry façades for libraries, banks, and mansions.
- Symmetrical, horizontally banded façade with distinct storey treatments
- Rusticated ground floor supporting smoother dressed-stone upper storeys
- Round-arched and pedimented windows with aedicular surrounds
- Bold, deeply projecting bracketed cornice capping the composition
- Restrained classical detailing from Italian/French Renaissance precedent
At a glance
| Italianate | Renaissance Revival | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1840–1885 | 1840–1920 |
| Discipline | Architecture | Architecture |
| Region | United Kingdom, United States, Australia | United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany |
| Family | Victorian | Revival |
| Formal traits | bracketed, arched-windows, towered, low-roof | symmetrical, rusticated, arched-windows, heavy-cornice |
More comparisons
Advertisement