This project revises our understanding of the character and development of Renaissance architecture in Italy from 1420 to 1540 through the critical lens of architectural materiality. It argues that the choice, manipulation, and placement of building materials were an essential vehicle through which builders expressed meaning and evoked antiquity. By focusing on the Renaissance column and wall, my project breaks down a series of examples syntactically into their component material parts to understand shifts in materiality over time in and across Tuscany, Lombardy, Venice, and Rome. It also specifically scrutinizes a series of central issues: the monolithic column, semi-monolithic construction, the materiality of the Orders, stone façades, rustication, marble revetment, fictive painting, spoliation, and materiality in the age of printing. By methodically addressing the question of how materials and concepts of materiality shaped Italian Renaissance architecture, my dissertation establishes a means of more fully understanding the Renaissance built environment.