S. Andrea Commentary
"...[The] avowed architectural aim, to schematize in the spatial form of the church the immanent, harmonious order of the world, found majestic realization in Alberti's own church of Sant' Andrea in Mantua. This was his final architectural work... and it carries out these theoretical ideas with perfect artistic clarity."
— Joan Gadol. Leon Battista Alberti, Universal Man of the Early Renaissance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. p135.
"On the faade, [Ablerti] combined two of his favorite ancient images—the pedimented temple front (pilasters, entablature, trabeation, and triangular pediment) and the triadic triumphal arch (arched central section and lower portals on either side). The height of the faade equals its width, but the barrel vault of the nave reached well above the apex of the pediment, which was also surmounted by a large canopy over the nave window. Alberti therefore disassociated the faade from the body of the church by turning it into an independent narthex one bay deep (which Michelangelo would do in 1516 in his model for the faade of S. Lorenzo) with its own system of coffered barrel vaults and a design combining the image of a triumphal arch with that of a Classical temple front."