South Ural State University
Faculty of service and light industry
REPORT
Subject: «Italian late Gothic»
Chelyabinsk 2008
Contents
Introduction 3
Italian late Gothic 4
Conclusion 11
Literature 12
Introduction
Italy’s contribution to Gothic great church architecture was not
commensurate with its wealth and importance during the Middle Ayes. To
some extent this was due to the cool reception accorded to the Gothic
style by the Italians but a more fundamental factor was that very few of
the numerous churches built in Italy during the Gothic period were great
churches. At the roof of both these divergences from the Northern
European pattern lay Italy’s unique inheritance from pre-inedieval
times. The sense of being the spiritual liars of die ancient Romans must
provide most of the explanation for the general reluctance to abandon
completely the concepts embodied in the basilican church type invented
in the early 4th century; and there can be little doubt that atavistic
feelings of tear and disdain towards the barbarian West were a
contributory factor in die Italians’ generally grudging response to what
was clearly recognizable as a French style. A Roman legacy which
hindered the formation of a tradition of great church architecture in
any style was the large number of towns in northern and central Italy.
After the barbarian invasions of the sell and 6th centuries the towns
shrank to a fraction of their former size, yet the great majority were
still in being when steady expansion began again in the late 10th
century.
Since virtually all towns of any consequence had had a bishop from the
4th century, most Italian dioceses were small (and consequently poor) by
comparison with the huge territorial dioceses centered on the tar tower
important Northern European towns which laid managed to continue
functioning after die collapse of die Roman Empire. In this situation it
was inevitable chat responsibility for cathedral fabrics would pass from
bishops and chapters to the city governments who were the leading powers
in medieval Italy.
Italian late Gothic
Alongside racial, political and economic factors there is one other
cultural deference which helps explain Italy’s failure to generate a
tradition of great church architecture comparable to that of Northern
Europe: the low prestige of architecture relative to the figural arts,
particularly painting. To some extent this may have been another
consequence of Italian fidelity to the basilica, in which the
architect’s contribution inevitably appeared less distinctive than that
of the painter who not only enriched but transformed the uncirculated
wall surfaces making up most of the interior elevations. When
Architecture could be regarded as little more than a support for
paintings, it is unlikely chat anyone thought it odd that painters
should assume the role of architect, and it is equally unsurprising that
the buildings designed by pander-architects owed astutely to Northern
Gothic concepts as did the tradition of monumental fresco painting which
emerged in central Italy during the late 13th century. Although Italian
sculptors when receptive to die more obviously relevant achievements of
Northerners in then» held, die buildings which they designed are not
markedly closer to Northern ideas than those designed by painters.
Despite the occasional disaster due to inadequate technical knowledge,
die practice of architecture by figural artists continued into die
Renaissance period, when it spread beyond Italy.
As in other parts of Europe, it was the Cistercians who introduced the
aliments of Gothic architecture into Italy. In their two most important
earl 13th century churches, those at Casaman (begun 1203) and its Tuscan
daughter house S. Galgano (begun 1218), the Burgundian Romanesque scheme
exemplified by Pontigny was retentively Gallicized by substituting ribs
tor the pointed-arched groins of die vaults. This was not a purely
Italian development for exactly the same revision laid achieved a wide
diffusion in later 12th century French Cistercian churches, probably
because it was viewed as a modernization which did not challenge the
ascetic traditions of the order S. Galgano seems to have exerted
important influences on the cathedral of nearby Siena, the only great
church built in Italy during the first half of the 13th century. The
Siena bay design is not a straightforward copy of the S. Galgano, but
there is no other obvious source in Tuscany for its combination of
Romanesque four-sliaft piers with Gothic crocket capitals, for its lack
of angled members to receive the diagonal ribs, or the keeled profile of
the latter.
The consistent use of round arches, the tallness of the main arcades and
the lowness of the original clear storey (replaced when the vaults were
rebuilt higher from с. 1369) can readily be understood is criticisms of
the S. Galgano scheme made by a designer whose loyalties still lay
partly with the traditional basilica form. In Tuscany by far the most
impressive basilica was the huge Romanesque cathedral of Siena’s
pro-imperial and anti-Florentine ally, Pisa, and it seems reasonable to
view the mutation of Pisa Cathedral’s zebra-striped marble cladding as a
demonstration of solidarity at a time when the bitter struggle between
the emperor and the pope was test approaching its final crisis in 1240.
Apart from its striped livery, which overpowers the three-dimensional
articulation of the bay design, the most memorable feature of Siena is
its unique hexagonal crossing. The symbolic allusion is fairly certainly
to the centralized plan of the Roman Pantheon converted in 609 into a
church dedicated to the Virgin and all Martyrs, for Siena Cathedral is
dedicated to the Virgin and tour other patron saints, some of them
martyrs. Less evident is the reasoning behind the choice of the hexagon,
whose four non-axial sides relate very awkwardly to the aisle-high
transepts. An octagon would have been the obvious choice for this first
Italian crossing to exceed the width of the main east-west vessel.
Nevertheless, Siena had no immediate sequels, for in 13th-century Italy
the cathedrals were left behind in the rush to build churches for the
mendicant orders. Many Franciscan and Dominican churches were very
large, so large in fact that a high proportion of the populace of any
town could assemble in them to hear preaching. Nevertheless, out of
respect for their founders the friars strove to keep their architecture
simpler than that of the great churches. The appearance of elementary
Gothic forms in mendicant churches should not be seen as the inevitable
response to a more advanced style for medieval Italy could often remain
remarkably impervious to outside influences. It is likely that for the
Franciscans at least Gothic acquired something of the character of an
official style its use at the ‘headquarters’ church of S. Francesco at
Assisi (1228 – c. 1239), one of the very few Italian 13th-century
buildings which bespeak direct contacts with France. Because the mid and
late 13th-century mendicants’ churches were sited in the town which so
dominated Italian life, they were far better able to perform their
involuntary role of ‘missionaries of Gothic’ than the rurally sited
Cistercian churches of the late 12th and early 13th centuries; yet by
comparison with Cistercian churches, those of the mendicants were far
less distinctive. In part this stems from the fact that the friars were
not cloistered monks but evangelizers of the towns, their churches were
not their spiritual homes in quite the way they were for the Cistercians
or other monks.
The lack of uniformity in 14th-century Italian mendicant architecture is
well illustrated by the highly contrasting churches of the Florentine
Dominicans and Franciscans, S. Maria Novella and S. Crocc. S. Maria
Novella was perhaps conceived as a modernized and marble-less version of
the nave of Siena Cathedral in which all arches are made pointed and
shafts rather than desserts receive the diagonal vault ribs; the ocular
in reproduce what existed at Siena before its heightening. Alongside the
limpid grace and poise of S. Maria Novella, S. Crocce appears less
perfectly resolved but more robust.
The wide timber-rooted central vessel, the corbelled-out walkway above
the main arcade, and perhaps also the octagonal columns, derive from the
cathedral in the papal city of Orvieto, begun in 1290, only a year or so
earlier than S. Croce, as a free adaptation of the great Early Christian
basilica of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome.
The inspiration behind the eastern parts of Florence Cathedral must have
been primarily symbolic and only secondarily architectural. The central
element, the wide octagonal crossing shielding the choir and high altar
dedicated to the Virgin, was conceived as a grander version of the Siena
crossing, performing the same function of evoking and rivaling the
Christianized Roman Pantheon, S. Maria Rotunda. The Pantheon had already
influenced the architecture of the most Roman of all Italian Romanesque
buildings, the baptistery built beside Florence Cathedral during the
rule of the fervently pro-papal Countess Matilda of Tuscany (1046–1115);
and since the baptistery ranked as the main civic church of Florence
before the completion of the cathedral, it was only natural that the
crossing of Arnolfo’s great church should resemble the city’s earlier
emulation of the Pantheon more than it does the Pantheon itself. No-one
would have thought the evocation of the circular S. Maria Rotunda was
impaired by the adoption of the baptistery’s octagonal plan, for in such
relationships the essential concept counted tor more than the exact form
taken by the architecture. There is, however, one very important
Classical architectural idea faithfully transmitted from the Pantheon
via the baptistery, named the treatment of the crossing space as a
single unsubsidized unit Siena’s crossing has shafts in the angles
indicating that it was conceived as the aggregate of six triangular
bays, whereas at Florence the octagon consists primarily of smooth,
completely unarticulated surfaces.
The stark contrast in Arnolfo’s designs between the serenity of the
masonry-vaulted octagonal sanctuary and the longitudinal movement
implicit in the wooden-roofed, multi-bay nave embodies a symbolic
distinction appropriate to the differing functions of the two parts As
in the ancient world, the dome signifies heaven and eternity, while the
much more Gothic nave, being the vestibule to the sanctuary and the part
most accessible to the laity, registers as a modern structure and a
symbol of earthly, temporal progression. This meaning is conveyed by the
existing cathedral, although since the nave is vaulted the contrast with
the octagon is less than Arnolfo intended.
The treatment of the three limbs radiating out of the north, east and
south sides of the octagon as part-octagonal apses may have been
influenced by centralized Early Christian and Byzantine churches such as
S. Lorenzo in Milan, S. Vitale in Ravenna or Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople, but once again the initial impulse must have been
iconographic more than aesthetic, for the church with apsidally ended
transepts which would have been most familiar to Florentines was Pisa
Cathedral.
Pisa’s transepts in their final, elongated town are quite unlike
Florence’s, but they derive either from the church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem or from St. Mary in the Blacliernai in Constantinople, both of
them 6th-century buildings and both no doubt familiar to the many Pisans
involved in trade with the Levant and Byzantium. Arnolfo’s cathedral
thus seems to have been specifically designed to outshine the churches
dedicated to the Virgin in the two cities which vied with Florence for
pre-eminence in Tuscany.
After its long-delayed incarnation during the late 14th and early 15th
centuries, it became the prototype of all the innumerable centralized
and quasi-centralized churches built from Renaissance times onwards.
Probably on account of the political crises which racked Florence at the
start of the 14th century, the cathedral works were abandoned after only
the west parts of the aisle walls had reached their full height.
Nevertheless, the mere possibility that Florence would be able to boast
the finest church in Tuscany had become by 1316 sufficient to spur the
Sienese into replacing the short choir of their 13th-century cathedral
with another more than twice as long.
Construction began in 1339 and progress was so rapid that when the Black
Death intervened ten years later, the nave was more than half way
towards completion. Unfortunately, the tall and slender main arcades had
begun to tilt inwards in response to lateral thrusts from the aisle
vaults, apparently because the designers had failed to use the standard.
Northern device for overcoming this problem: temporary tie beams linking
the arcades to the outer walls until the building of the clearstory
provided a loading strong enough to enable the arcades to resist aisle
vault thrusts.
In 1373 similar fiasco was averted in Florence when it was discovered
that the walls of the great campanile begun three years earlier had only
half the thickness necessary. The culprit in this case was none other
than Giotto, who had been appointed capo maestro on the strength of his
publicly acknowledged status as the greatest painter of his day.
Giotto’s design easily excelled its simple and comparatively small
precursors within the distinctively. Italian genre of tall detached bell
towers, but it showed no concern with lessening the traditionally
self-contained character of the successive stores or with finding a
convincing relationship between these and the exotic, Strasbourg – or
Freiburg-inspired lantern and spire.
That no problems of this kind ever affected Brunelleschi’s dome must
have seemed an additional recommendation to the many Renaissance and
Baroque architects who chose to emulate the energetic effect imparted to
the exterior by its Gothic ribbing and pointed profile in preference to
the more earthbound quality of the low-set domes built by the Romans.
The periodic summoning of Northern architects to Milan is a sure sign
that it the administrative council was racked by doubts as to whether
their team of locally recruited architects was capable on its own of
building a great cathedral in the Northern manner.
Since a project of this kind had never before been attempted in Italy,
such doubts were probably legitimate, but the main consequence of
importing Northerners was to spark off acrimonious wrangles between them
and the Italian architects.
Conflict was inevitable, for the two groups had inherited very deferent
assumptions not only about architectural practice but also about the
status of the practitioners Whereas Northern master masons were
accustomed to the exercise of complete and unchallenged control over the
design and execution of ‘their’ buildings once agreement had been
reached with the patron, the documentary evidence for major Italian
churches like Milan and Florence reveals chief architects to have been
far less powerful and authoritative figures.
A Northern cathedral architect would have found it anomalous, not to say
intolerable, that his designs should have to compete for acceptance by
the patron with those of men who at home would have lead no say in the
design process.
From the point of view of the Milanese architects, it must have been no
less galling that the council should have demonstrated its lack of
confidence to the extent of bringing in outsiders.
Yet the Milanese possessed a clear advantage of numbers, since only a
single Northern architect was normally present at any one time, and the
competitive situation to which they were accustomed seems to have given
them the edge in polemic over their Northern rivals.
Conclusion
The Late Gothic is the bridge between the Middle Age and the
Renaissance. The new age began in the 14th century, where lawyers and
notaries imitated ancient Latin style and studied Roman archaeology. The
first of the great men who initiated the Renaissance was the Italian
poet Petrarch.
All the Northerners whose opinions on the subject were recorded agreed
tliat the structural design of Milan Cathedral was flawed. In
particular, they criticized the buttresses of the outer walls as being
too shallow to resist the thrusts from the aisle vaults, vet the
Italians were equally adamant that the buttresses were sufficient.
Neither side did more than assert the correctness of their views, and
there is no sign that anyone was capable of computing thrusts, even in
the rough-and-ready way prescribed in the earliest surviving account of
thrusts compiled by a European architect, the tract written c. 1530 by
the Spaniard Rodrigo Gil de Hontanon.
In 1400 the Parisian architect Jean Mignot declared that the buttresses
at Milan ought to be three times as deep as the piers inside were wide,
but lie gave no indication of whether this was an unvarying
rule-of-thumb or whether it was his considered estimate of the specific
needs of Milan.
The former is the more-likely, since Mignot regarded as absolute errors
the many things at Milan which were at variance with the long
established practices of the northern French lodges; for him there was
no question of making allowances for the difference of milieu.
Literature
1. Cristopher Wilson. The Gothic Cathedral
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