<P> In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient classical buildings . With rediscovered knowledge from the 1st - century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics, Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that emulated and improved on classical forms . His major feat of engineering was building the dome of the Florence Cathedral . Another building demonstrating this style is the church of St. Andrew in Mantua, built by Alberti . The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, combining the skills of Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno . </P> <P> During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system . The Roman orders types of columns are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite . These can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a wall in the form of pilasters . One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421--1440) by Brunelleschi . Arches, semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental, are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals . There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch . Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental . Renaissance vaults do not have ribs; they are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault, which is frequently rectangular . </P> <P> Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired antiquity and kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past . Nicola Pisano (c. 1220--c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible . His Annunciation, from the Baptistry at Pisa, demonstrates that classical models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement </P> <P> The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of more widely distributed ideas . In the first period of the Italian Renaissance, humanists favoured the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics, and their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe . Writing around 1450, Nicholas Cusanus anticipated the heliocentric worldview of Copernicus, but in a philosophical fashion . </P>

Who rediscovered and popularized the use of perspective in the renaissance