| Alberti (Book VII, ch. 3, 113-114v) suggested that the temple should be so beautiful that nothing more decorous could ever be devised. He recommended that the architect must bejewel with care every part of the temple so that the visitor “would start with awe for his admiration at all the noble things, and could scarcely restrain himself from exclaiming that what he saw was undoubtedly worthy of God”. The suggestions of Alberti imply that the Christian temple aims to have direct impact as an artistic symbol. Initially, the viewer perceives the temple independently from its religious signification. The admiration of its sophisticated architecture removes all doubts about its validity as a sign of the supernatural. The visual-spatial properties of the temple aim to affect everyone, both the "initiated" and the uninitiated". Accordingly, the task of the architect is to produce admiration, through the arrangment of space, and the use of ornament..Alberti recommends that the temple must be “bejeweled with care in every part so that nothing more decorous could ever be devised”. In the interior the decoration and perforation of the structural elements of the Christian temple makes every surface to have conchs, windows, or arcades. |
