Renaissance architects were familiar to oval schemes for they studied the amphitheaters in Rome and Verona. Architects as Baldassare Peruzzi (1481 - 1536) and his pupil Sebastiano Serlio (1475 - 1536) studied ancient monuments and in the first of his 7 books Serlio describes some basic constructions to design oval shapes.

In his fifth book [i]Le diverse Forme dei Tepli Sacri[/i] Serlio draws a desing of his own for an oval church that looks like an elongated version of the Pantheon.