Save
Save chapter to my Bookmarks
Cite
Cite this chapter
Print this chapter
Share
Share a link to this chapter
Free
Chapter 1. Planned Streets and Urban Renewal in Renaissance Italy
Fabrizio Nevola
Description: Street Life in Renaissance Italy
Street Life in Renaissance Italy
Antonio Averlino, known as ‘il Filarete’, wrote the Trattato di architettura (c.1460–64) in the form of a dialogue between an architect and his patron – prince, addressing it...
Author
Fabrizio Nevola
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2020 Fabrizio Nevola
Related print edition pages: pp.29-65
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00290.1
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22181
Chapter subject tags:Architecture, Renaissance--ItalyUrban ecology (Sociology)City planning--Italy--HistoryAlberti, Leon Battista, 1404-1472Public spaces--ItalyUrban renewal--ItalyCity and town life--ItalyPictorial maps, Renaissance
View chapters with similar subject tags
Chapter images ()
Loading image navigation...
No image index could be found for this publication.
Close this Panel
Show previous images Show next images
Chapter 1. Planned Streets and Urban Renewal in Renaissance Italy
‘This is the arrangement that I want: first I shall make a piazza in the centre of the city, and I want it to be 150 braccia wide and 300 long. And so that your Lordship will understand me better, I shall draw it for you on this sheet of paper, notwithstanding that it is on such a small scale that it isn’t possible to show it exactly as it should be. But that which cannot be shown to scale in a drawing, I shall describe in such a way that you can understand it [. . .].’
‘The streets: from each gate one street will come to the piazza, and so too from each corner there will be a main street; and, on account of the fact that the city is large, each of the streets that leads to a gate is 1,500 braccia long and will be interrupted by a piazza 160 by 80 braccia. On the two piazzas facing east, wood and hay will be sold, as also on those facing west; on the two facing north, oil and other products will be sold, and on those facing south, they will sell wine and grain; and on each of these piazzas there will be a butcher or two, as is deemed necessary; and around these piazzas all the artists will be housed. And on the piazzas placed on those streets that lead to the towers – that is, the ones that don’t lead to gates – I shall locate a religious order on each, of preachers, minors, enclosed and the other orders. And on each piazza there will be a parish church.’
‘And I plan that all the streets will have sufficient gradient that water will drain from the central piazza along drainage channels all the way to the gates; and all subsidiary streets that don’t line up to the gates will also be inclined in such a way that all the water will drain as far as the gates. And I also intend there to be porticoes lining all the main streets.’
‘And how wide will the streets be?’
‘Forty braccia, and the others will be 20. And as the site is rich in water, I shall bring it to various parts of the city, especially to the central piazza, where I shall make a reservoir in the centre ordered in such a way that, when you wish to clean the streets, it will be possible to open this so that so much water is released that all the streets and piazzas will be cleaned and kept in good order. And above this reservoir I shall arrange a beautiful display.’1Filarete, 1972, pp. 165–7 (Book VI).
Antonio Averlino, known as ‘il Filarete’, wrote the Trattato di architettura (c. 1460–64) in the form of a dialogue between an architect and his patron–prince, addressing it to his then patron, Francesco Sforza, the ruler of Milan.2Welch, 1995, pp. 120ff. The text is presented as a description of a new city, to be built from scratch, and dedicated to its patron by the adoption of the name Sforzinda; using this device, Filarete was able to outline all the aspects of the city, presenting his patron with a full description of its infrastructure, fortifications and a vast array of secular and religious buildings, providing somewhat grandiose dimensions that verge on the fantastical. Although there seems to be little question that Sforzinda was ever intended to be built, the treatise – which circulated in various manuscript copies (including a Latin translation produced for Matthias Corvinus in 1488) – was influential in providing the first instance of Renaissance architectural theory directed towards the definition of a complete urban project.3Beltramini, 2001.
Certainly, the best-known aspect of the treatise is the schematic plan of the city, created for the autograph manuscript copy, which, after he returned from Milan to Florence, Filarete presented to Piero de’ Medici in 1465 (fig. 8). Here, Sforzinda is shown inscribed in a circle, its exterior walls defined by an eight-pointed star created by two intersecting squares; the points of the star are marked by defensive towers, and on the inside corners are positioned the eight city gates. As the passage above describes, the city adopts a rigorously symmetrical and radial plan, with a central piazza, from which streets arranged like spokes lead out to the gates; around the central piazza are distributed the cathedral and the ruler’s palace, while adjacent piazzas are intended for markets and other city offices.4Filarete, 1972, pp. 165–7 (Book VI); Pierotti, 1995, p. 122. The long, wide main streets are interrupted outside the city centre by district piazzas, which provide facilities for local markets, as well as being the sites identified for parish churches. Interestingly, the architect also went into considerable detail about how the streets would be kept clean, imagining a large cistern concealed beneath the main square and covered by an ingenious fountain; water would run from the cistern along channels beside all the streets, which would be designed with a sufficient gradient for the water and waste to flow out of the city through the gates. Moreover, there is some indication that Filarete envisaged a hierarchy of streets: the main streets are given as 40 braccia wide, and the secondary streets are half that width, while the sense of splendour and decorum given by these wide axes would be reinforced by their being lined with porticoes.
~
Description: Design for a new city, from Tratatto di architettura by Filarete
8. Antonio Averlino, known as ‘il Filarete’, ‘Sforzinda’, design for a new city, from Tratatto di architettura, c. 1460–64, dedicated to Francesco Sforza of Milan, autograph manuscript, presented to Piero de’ Medici in 1465, Ms. Magliabechiano II, I, 140, fol. 43r, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence.
Urban renewal and the transformation of the streets
While Filarete’s long treatise naturally addresses much else, the discussion of Sforzinda’s streets serves to highlight issues to do with the scale of the new, planned city, and underlines a series of concerns that arise repeatedly in the deliberations and executed plans for the improvement of many Italian cities from the middle of the fifteenth century. As this chapter will show, while it was virtually impossible to create a city ex novo, the numerous interventions that transformed urban centres throughout the peninsula operated at an urban scale, so that streets, their size, width, cleanliness and splendour, were key factors that rulers and city government authorities sought to correct and improve. Nevertheless, with only occasional exceptions, these built exercises in urban renewal brought about gradual change to the pre-existing city fabric by addressing specific streets and areas, thus revealing what urban historian Spiro Kostof described as the ‘urban process’ at work.5Kostof, 1992, pp. 245ff.
It is, at least to some degree, a recognition of the infinite variety of city forms and the range of strategies available for shaping and adapting these that inform Leon Battista Alberti’s comments on streets in his treatise De re aedificatoria (‘On the art of building’):
When the road reaches a city, and that city is renowned and powerful, the streets are better straight and very wide, to add to its dignity and majesty. But with the settlement of a fortified town the entrances will be made safer if the road does not lead directly to the gate, but runs to the right or the left along the wall, and preferably even directly under the battlements. Within the town itself it is better if the roads are not straight, but meandering gently like a river flowing now here, now there, from one bank to the other. For apart form the fact that the longer the road seems, the greater the apparent size of the town, no doubt it will be of great benefit in terms of appearance and practical convenience, while catering to the requirements of changing circumstances. And it is no trifle that visitors at every step meet yet another façade, or that the entrance to and the view from every house should face directly onto the street; and while elsewhere too much openness will be disagreeable and unhealthy, here the large scale is welcome.6Alberti, 1991, p. 106 (Book IV, ch. 5). The treatise was first presented to Pope Nicholas V in 1450, and subsequently went through various drafts before appearing in its first printed edition in 1486 (fourteen years after Alberti’s death).
Alberti’s remarks on the arrangement of streets in the city are surprisingly summary and pragmatic. The key principle that governs his approach to main streets is that their scale should be appropriate to the dimensions of the city itself – straight and wide roads are well suited to large and important centres – while he is keen to underline that non-axial distribution of streets brings numerous benefits for both residents and visitors. Within the city, Alberti acknowledges some hierarchy of streets, those leading to the main secular and religious buildings being singled out for special comment, though his main proviso is that streets should be ‘properly paved and thoroughly clean’.7Ibid., pp. 261–2 (Book VIII, ch. 6). Significantly, he comments on the relationship between the street and the façades of the buildings that line them, recognising that the street is the principal urban stage on which buildings are observed by passers-by, and conversely that the goings-on in the public sphere can be watched by the residents from their houses. This is a fundamental observation, which marks the recognition of a conscious dialogue between the public realm and domestic space.
Alberti’s comments are a warning that it would be a mistake, in a discussion of the Renaissance street, to focus primarily or exclusively on examples where the sort of axial symmetries and order envisaged by Filarete were achieved in built form. While there are numerous examples, increasingly common from the end of the fifteenth century, of regularised, straight streets, defined architecturally and socially by some degree of homogeneity in the buildings that line them, the reality in the majority of cases was closer to Alberti’s observations: a combination of straight axes and sinuous routes. Despite a long-standing debate around whether it is appropriate to speak of ‘urbanism’ – a term that captures a sense of the science of urban design perhaps better suited to describing the large-scale, city-wide interventions initiated by such reformers as Baron Haussmann in Paris in the nineteenth century – it is nevertheless an inescapable fact that urban planning was actively pursued, with significant effects on the built city fabric, in earlier periods.8Kostof, 1991, pp. 43–52; ‘no city [. . .] can be said to be unplanned’ (p. 52). The urban street was perhaps the most significant element that was actively used to transform cities in Italy through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; interventions ranged from the authoritarian prescriptions of autocratic princes to more negotiated transformations enforced by the government institutions of the city republics.9On the ‘ideal city’, see, for example, Sciolla, 1975; see also Calabi, 2001, pp. 115–27, for the parallels between the idealised plan of Sforzinda and Milan. As Zeynep Çelik, Diane Favro and Richard Ingersoll have argued:
ideology is always present in plans for streets, but authority is often forced to compromise because of the multiplicity of actors in the urban process, and the desired ideological program can easily be muffled. The design of most streets is determined by a series of negotiations involving patrons, technical experts and governmental agents.10Çelik, Favro and Ingersoll, 1994a, p. 5.
It is not possible to provide a survey of all the interventions by means of which streets identified as key sites for urban renewal were transformed by various authorities during the period. However, streets can be understood as a distinct unit within the urban fabric, and as such they were subjected to various types of improvement policies and campaigns, often overseen by dedicated teams of officials, which resulted in the creation and remodelling of the streets themselves.
Although the scale and scope of Filarete’s urban imaginings – like those of other theorists such as Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who similarly proposed symmetrically laid-out new towns for his employer, Duke Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino (fig. 9) – did not leave a physical trace, the account of Sforzinda captures the rhetorical power of urbanism as an expression of governance. In this respect, treatises describing ideal urban forms bear a resemblance to the use of urban processional rituals, increasingly employed by rulers as a mode of visually articulating authority on a city scale. As numerous studies have shown, the paradigm of the ‘ceremonial city’ is especially evident in the Renaissance revival of the classical triumphal procession, in which the network of streets was employed to create a tight narrative of authority exercised on the city. Such processions reveal the relationship between the active pursuit of policies that regularised street networks and the adoption of these routes for performative spectacles.
~
Description: Designs for new towns, Trattati di architettura by Francesco di Giorgio Martini
9. Francesco di Giorgio Martini, designs for new towns, Trattati di architettura, Ms. Magliabechiano, II, I, 141, fol. 29v, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence.
‘spacious streets [. . .] long and straight’: Authority, street design and urban renewal
The overall impression made by a city on outside visitors was not formed as a result of the impressive effect of single monumental secular or religious buildings, but rather tended to derive from a combination of the overall qualities of the architectural fabric and other environmental factors.11For an introduction to how cities were described by outsiders, see the collected essays in Nevola, Bardati and Renzulli, 2012. Such impressions might change in relation to the perspective of the viewer, but also according to the season and other variables.
A case in point is the comments made about Mantua in 1459–60, when the city was host to numerous important visitors, who gathered for the papal council held there by Pius II Piccolomini. Arriving in the summer of 1459 to be the guest of Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga in Mantua for more than six months, Pope Pius II did not profess himself unreservedly fond of the city. He described the island city on the Mincio (fig. 10) in his Commentarii, reporting that ‘there are many splendid houses and palaces fit for kings; [but] the inhabitants are unfortunately troubled by dust in the summer and mud in the winter.’12Piccolomini, 1984, p. 412 (II.43). While acknowledging the need for suitable secular and monastic accommodation to house the many visitors to the city, he nonetheless also reported that there was unrest among the cardinals, who complained that ‘the place was marshy and unhealthy; the heat was intense [. . .] very many were catching fever; nothing was to be heard except the frogs.’13Ady, 1913, p. 169; cited in Burns, 1981, p. 28, though he attributes this opinion to the pope as opposed to the reluctant cardinals. See also Piccolomini, 1984, p. 428 (III.2). By September, when the council had fully convened, things appear to have improved: the Sienese ambassadors at the papal court in Mantua, Niccoló Severini and Lodovico Peltoni, noted in their correspondence with the city council in Siena: ‘we advise your excellencies that Mantua today is adorned with prelates and lords, ambassadors and many courtiers, and it is a beautiful Mantua, and in addition there are many large, beautiful and dignified residences. There is an abundance of all things.’14ASS, Concistoro, 1995, fol. 56 (Carteggio, 25 September 1459). These comments were intended to warn the Sienese of the need to prepare their city for the pope’s return, to ensure that it would compare well with Mantua. For an extensive discussion of the papal sojourn in Siena, see Nevola, 2006b. For discussion of the expenditure involved in hosting the council, see Chambers, 2003. Soon after the conclusion of the council, in January 1460, an agent of Marquis Ludovico in Venice reported a conversation he had had with the papal ambassador, who
greatly praised Your Lordship and Mantua [. . .] saying that apart from the mud there was no city in the world more adapted or convenient for the Papal court [. . .] I replied to him that Your Excellency had begun paving the piazza and wanted to go on to do the rest of the city.15As reported by Carlo Brugnolo (30 December 1460); quoted from Burns, 1981, p. 28; Burns, 1998, p. 163 n. 180.
~
Description: Urbis Mantua descriptio by Bertazzolo, Gabriele
10. Gabriele Bertazzolo, ‘Urbis Mantua descriptio’, 1628, engraving, Biblioteca Teresiana, Mantua. (Compass north is at the foot of the map.)
As this selection of comments makes clear, the season evidently had a considerable influence on how livable the city was perceived to be, with summer heat, dust, frogs, malarial infection, poor air quality and winter mud overshadowing the architecture, however magnificent. The pope’s observations regarding dust and mud directly addressed the city’s infrastructure and the impossibility of dealing with seasonal changes as they affected the unpaved streets; significantly, it was precisely this shortcoming that was countered through urban renewal plans, undertaken almost immediately after the council’s departure.
As is widely recognised, the city of Mantua was extensively renewed from 1460, and the plans that were put into effect by the patron-cum-amateur-architect marquis owed much to conversations he had had with the pope and with Leon Battista Alberti, who also sojourned in the city as a member of the papal court.16Burns, 1998, pp. 142–4. A primary focus of Gonzaga attention was the sequence of piazzas south of the family’s residential court complex on piazza San Pietro (today piazza Sordello), the central civic and commercial spaces around the Broletto and piazza delle Erbe that were flanked by the Palazzo del Podestá, and the site of what was to become the vast new basilica of Sant’Andrea (figs 11 and 12).17Calzona, 1991, pp. 3–38. Following advice perhaps provided by Alberti, the piazza delle Erbe was regularised, with porticoes running continuously along the ground floor of the Palazzo della Ragione, faced by similar arcades along the west side of the street abutting the flank of Alberti’s Sant’Andrea.18Ibid., pp. 8–9 (referring to a letter of 1 April 1461 from Bartolomeo Bonatto); see also Chapter 4. In addition to reordering the piazza, a well-documented campaign was undertaken to pave these central areas, ‘to improve and make Your Excellency’s city more magnificent’, as one merchant described the work in May 1461.19Calzona, 1991, pp. 14–18, for the paving campaign 1460–61; and p. 18, for a letter (dated 30 May 1461, doc. 87) from Zohanfilippo da Concorezzo, owner of the richly decorated shop on the corner of piazza delle Erbe and piazza Mantegna. Expenses were subsidised by frontagers, as Zohanfilippo accepted these liabilities in the same letter.
~
Description: The Gonzaga Victory over the Bonacolsi in 1328 by Morone, Domenico
11. Piazza San Pietro (now piazza Sordello), Mantua, as the site depicted in Domenico Morone, The Gonzaga Victory over the Bonacolsi in 1328, 1494, oil on canvas, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.
~
Description: Piazza delle Erbe by Unknown
12. Piazza delle Erbe, Mantua, with the Torre dell’Orologio (left) and the loggia masking the flank of the church of Sant’Andrea (right, foreground).
Significantly, however, the paving plans extended well beyond the civic and commercial centre to include a number of streets that led southwards to the site of the new church of San Sebastiano, also designed by Alberti. While the execution of the Sant’Andrea project was much delayed by complex negotiations with the Benedictines who officiated the original church, ground was broken for the new church of San Sebastiano as soon as the papal court had left, perhaps as an ex voto to the saint who had protected the council from any outbreaks of plague.20For the proposal that the church may have been built as a vote of thanks for the avoidance of any outbreaks of plague, see Burns, 1998, p. 145. The site for the church on the south-west periphery of Mantua did much to extend the influence of the Gonzaga over the small city, much as plans to pave the civic centre expressed their good government through the provision of infrastructure and amenities.21Calzona, 1991, p. 19 and n. 76, 35. For the asse gonzaghesco, see also Carpeggiani, 1994, pp. 182–3. Moreover, by creating paved streets that linked the political and commercial centre in the north-east of the city to the area around San Sebastiano, a real impression of scale was created. Correspondence from the city engineer, Antonio d’Arezzo, writing to Ludovico in August 1461, underlined precisely this aspect of the street-paving campaign: ‘the said street is now beginning to emerge as it is intended to be, and [. . .] your citizens – both small and great – like this a great deal, because they can see it to be a magnificent work.’22Ferlisi, 2002, p. 297; from ASMn, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2395 (Antonio d’Arezzo to Ludovico II, 11 August 1461).
While individual architectural projects – both those of the Gonzaga and those of the courtier families – participated in the overall renewal of the small city, it is significant that infrastructural elements contributed to binding the process together into the coherent whole that citizens and visitors alike could perceive.23For courtiers’ patronage, see Ferlisi, 2002. Thus, when the marquis’ son, the recently appointed Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, returned to Mantua in January 1464, he is described as having taken a walk through the renewed city centre:
the route he took was along the street through the town to see those new buildings [. . .] and he wanted to walk along the street to the piazza [delle Erbe] to see the shop of Zuliano de Lanzino and another across the street from it, both of which he very much liked, as he did the porticoes of the cloth shops and the embellishment to the new palazzo [del Podestá] which he turned back twice to admire.24Calzona, 2003, p. 578.
Such attention to streets, paving, porticoes and shops underlined the civic benefits of Gonzaga munificence, which is also recorded through a remarkable set of inscriptions that survive in various parts of the city to record the role of the Gonzaga in advancing urban improvement. The earliest dated surviving inscription appears on the corner of the house of Andrea Mantegna, opposite the church of San Sebastiano, and records the munificence to him as court artist of his employer, Ludovico Gonzaga, who had provided the site on which his residence was built from 1476 (figs 14 and 13).25A valuable guide to inscriptions on buildings, which have been largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, is Signorini, 2010, p. 93. This inscription reads: ‘Super fundo a di(vo) L(odovico) Prin(cipe) Op(timo) dono dato [. . .] haec fecit fundamenta.’ The house was paired with the church, which was still under construction, and the two buildings served to give definition to the edges of the street, which led towards the southern perimeter of Mantua; the area was further embellished in the subsequent decades with Francesco II’s late-fifteenth-century Palazzo San Sebastiano, and beyond it the Palazzo Te, designed by Giulio Romano for Federico II from 1525. An elaborately inscribed candlestick pilaster, dated 1481, marks the edge of another newly built palace, Palazzo Arrivabene, on the crossroads of a wide street leading from the centre towards the church of San Francesco; its location served to give prominence to the palace and to emphasise the width of the street (fig. 15).26For Arrivabene, see Signorini, 2010, pp. 46–7 (entry 21); on the palace, about which very little is known, see Chambers, 1984, esp. pp. 415–16. Another inscription, of 1496, records Francesco Gonzaga’s intervention in restoring the bridge of San Francesco sul Rio, on the western edge of the city (fig. 16).27Signorini, 2010, p. 57. The inscription reads: ‘Invictissimo Francisco Gonzaga IIII altero Camillo imperante restituta [. . .]’ on behalf of the humanist Battista Fiera. Since the church of San Francesco housed a significant commemorative chapel and tombs of the Gonzaga family, the extension of infrastructure improvements to this district is a logical counterpart to developments around San Sebastiano; the renovation of the bridge not only provided definition to the city’s western perimeter, but also underscored Gonzaga commitment to the renewal of the city as a whole.
~
Description: Inscription, on the corner of the house of Andrea Mantegna by Unknown
13. Inscription, 1476, on the corner of the house of Andrea Mantegna, Mantua. It reads: ‘On a site given to him as a gift by the Lord Lodovico, most excellent prince, in the year of our Lord 1476, Andrea Mantegna built this from the foundations, 15 November.’
~
Description: The church of San Sebastiano by Alberti, Leon Battista
14. The church of San Sebastiano, Mantua, from 1460, with the house of Andrea Mantegna (left).
~
Description: Palazzo Arrivabene by Unknown
15. Palazzo Arrivabene, Mantua. A candlestick pilaster, dated 1481, adorns the corner of the building, recording its construction.
~
Description: Inscription, on the bridge of San Francesco sul Rio by Unknown
16. Inscription, 1496, on the bridge of San Francesco sul Rio, Mantua. It commemorates the restoration of the bridge by Francesco Gonzaga.
Additional research is needed to document and map such stone inscriptions; an initial survey suggests a higher incidence close to the city centre, but a relatively regular distribution along streets radiating out towards the urban edge (fig. 17).28Ibid., pp. 18–19, map; see further discussion in Chapter 5. In this respect, these markers – which tend to appear on the corners of buildings at the most prominent intersections, where they could most easily be seen – provide a subtle trace of the expansion of the small city along laid-out streets radiating from the centre. This was a long-term project, enacted over at least two centuries, so that in 1588 a Venetian ambassador was able to comment of Mantua that it was ‘most pleasing for the great quantity of great and beautiful palaces, and above all for the spacious streets, which are marvellously long and straight’.29Burns, 1981, p. 33, as reported by Francesco Contarini, 1588, cited in Alberi, 1841, p. 367. The example of Mantua is interesting precisely because the public spaces of streets and public-facing amenities, such as piazzas, porticoes and shops, emerge as significant means by which the Gonzaga rulers expressed their munificence and just rule, a message that was reinforced through inscriptions and heraldic devices signalling their patronage throughout the city’s fabric.
~
Description: Urbis Mantua descriptio, detail by Bertazzolo, Gabriele
17. The sites of stone inscriptions in Mantua, c. 1470–1570 (manipulated version of figure 10, with annotations by Luca Brunke). (Compass north is at the foot of the map.)
This process of urban renewal was far from unique, however, and its like is documented in many other centres throughout the fifteenth century. Indeed, so much was the fifteenth century a period of large-scale urban renewal throughout the peninsula that Leon Battista Alberti could ask in his treatise on architecture: ‘how many cities, which as children we saw all built of wood, have now been turned into marble?’30Alberti, 1991, p. 257 (Book V, ch. 5). Although Alberti’s question is a somewhat heavy-handed reference to Suetonius’ comments about the transformation of Rome by the emperor Augustus, it nonetheless captures something of the energy with which change was perceptibly altering the built form of cities throughout the Italian peninsula during the period.
Nor was such a process limited to cities ruled by signori. We can observe many of the strategies promoted by the Gonzaga in Mantua operating in the transformation of the urban core, particularly the main streets, of the independent city republic of Siena.31Discussed further in Nevola, 2007, pp. 91–113. Writing less than a decade after Siena’s conquest by the troops of Emperor Charles V (1555) and its transfer to Medici control (1557), the city’s new governor, Agnolo Niccolini, wrote to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici in January 1564 regarding maintenance of the streets.32Donati, 2013.
When I was in Florence I reminded Your Excellency, in the name of these Gentlemen [the citizens of Siena], that there was a need to repave the streets of this city, which are for the most part in disrepair [. . .] And I told you that here the custom is, as is also recorded in the written statutes, that the materials – that is, the bricks – should be paid for by the owners of the houses that front onto the streets, while the labour of the workers should be paid for from the public purse [. . .] the process of beautification will start from the main street, which is called the strada Romana, then [proceed to] the street that leads to the cathedral, and subsequently to the other most used streets.33ASF, Mediceo Principato, 503, fol. 185 (Agnolo Niccolini to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, 19 January 1563/4).
Years of war had left their mark on Siena’s infrastructure, with the brick-paved streets damaged and uneven; Niccolini’s correspondence goes on to describe local paving practices – still visible in the paving of the piazza del Campo (fig. 18) – of laying large bricks (mezzane) in a herring-bone pattern, which was susceptible to damage if it was not maintained, as the bricks could easily slip out of place.34ASF, Mediceo Principato, 1871, fol. 84 (Agnolo Niccolini to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, 9 August 1565). What is remarkable about the governor’s correspondence with the duke is that it establishes the continuation of the traditional cost-sharing strategy for urban improvement and maintenance; the charge was split between residents and the public authorities, in spite of the city’s loss of independence. Duke Cosimo affirmed his support for this approach, stating his wish that the work be undertaken ‘for the beautification and benefit of the city and the utility of all residents’.35ASF, Mediceo Principato, 219, fol. 267 (Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici [in Pietrasanta] to Agnolo Niccolini, 3 February 1563/4). In so doing, he established a direct line of continuity from Siena’s civic past, in which the collective benefits of public spending on infrastructure and amenities were often described in terms of this very formulation of public good, defined in terms of beauty and utility, a viewpoint that was most famously expressed in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco cycle for the Sala della Pace in the city hall (see fig. 1).
~
Description: Piazza del Campo, Siena by Pazzini-Carli e Figli
18. Piazza del Campo, Siena, showing the characteristic pattern of paving dating back at least to the 16th century, engraving by Pazzini-Carli e Figli in Guido Mucci, Nuova guida della città di Siena per gli amatori delle belle-arti (Siena, 1822), pp. 74–5.
Spreading outwards from the central market square – the piazza del Campo – to the city’s main streets, the paving project, initiated on the grounds of aesthetics and hygiene, was enforced by government policies established through legislative measures dating from as early as 1262.36Zdekauer, 1897, dist. III, rubric 47. For a selection of documents on the piazza del Campo, see Nevola, 2009b, pp. 261–4. For a more extended account of the longue durée civic policies for urban improvement, see Nevola, 2020. From at least 1290, a group of building professionals called the viarii (from via, ‘street’) had officiated over the management and maintenance of the streets; within the walls, they had a particular remit to ensure that the main streets were paved, and to attempt to limit the filth and dirt that secondary, unpaved streets brought into the city centre.37Balestracci and Piccinni, 1977, pp. 41ff., quoting the first statute collection, ASS, Viarii, 1, r. cxxii, fol. 23. For further discussion of the work of the office, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 13–18. Numerous interventions throughout the fourteenth century sought to widen streets, to provide greater access to light, and where possible to correct the alignment of building façades to create more regular pathways. All these modifications, which actively affirmed rights over the public realm, were understood to express most clearly a pervasive sense of the ‘order and rule of the entire city’.38Balestracci and Piccinni, 1977, p. 45, focuses on the improvement of the streets, citing ASS, Consiglio Generale, 160, fol. 37 (22 December 1357); see also Ciampoli and Szabó, 1992. Streets and public spaces were thus an important location for the demonstration of civic values and the ideals of the bene comune, and within the framework of the rights and duties of citizenship the principle was established that residents who benefited from street improvements should participate in meeting the associated costs.39Balestracci and Piccinni, 1977, p. 48, citing ASS, Consiglio Generale, 143, fol. 32 (23 October 1349). On citizens’ obligation to contribute to the enactment of public policy, see Bortolotti, 1983, pp. 43–6.
These policies, already well established by 1309, were reaffirmed throughout the fifteenth century in both legislation and enacted polices for the maintenance of streets, as well as for the day-to-day activity and costs associated with street cleaning.40For the renewed powers and duties of the viarii, see ASS, Statuto di Siena, 47, fol. 140 (23 September 1415); ASS, Statuto di Siena, 2, fol. 286r–v (17 February 1443/4): ASS, Consiglio Generale, 231, fol. 268 (9 March 1466/7). During the first half of the fifteenth century, a new government office – the petroni – was established to identify properties in poor repair that were ‘causing great damage and shame to the city’, and was invested with powers to enforce repair or threaten expropriation.41Nevola, 2007, pp. 51–3; see also Turrini, 1997, pp. 43–81. ASS, Biccherna, 1060, fol. 2r–v (18 April 1444) for the enabling legislation: the volume records over 200 derelict buildings identified in the period 1448–1500. The significant principle revealed by the activity of the petroni is a shift from the maintenance of the open spaces of streets and piazzas to a more all-encompassing vision of the city as shaped by the collective effect of private property as well as the city’s public spaces and monuments. Thus, the maintenance of everyday housing stock came also to be considered an indicator of the city’s prosperity and good government; thanks to the work of the petroni, a large number of houses and palaces, as well as the public spaces around them (all too often occupied by rubble and building materials) were cleared up at their owners’ expense.
There is some evidence to suggest that the policies enforced by the petroni may have been directly connected with plans to beautify the city around the time that the Council of Pavia, officiated by Pope Martin V (r. 1417–31), was relocated to Siena (from 1423), although more broadly they gave expression to the government’s growing concern for the appearance of the city as a whole.42Nevola, 2007, p. 51; Turrini, 1997, pp. 43–81. After the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, throughout the fifteenth century Siena increasingly became a transit point for pilgrims and elite travellers of all sorts (emperors, kings, popes and ambassadors, as well as merchants) on their way to and from the Eternal City.43Numerous processions and visits to Siena are discussed in Nevola, 2007; Provedi, 1791, remains a valuable source. These travellers, users of one of the most significant pilgrimage routes of pre-modern Europe, the Francigena, were increasingly understood by the Sienese authorities to be instrumental in communicating the fame and identity of the city abroad, and it was at least in part for their benefit that many of the fifteenth-century urban improvement policies were introduced and enforced. It is, indeed, surprising to note the frequency with which the enabling legislation and decisions of the city’s government offices refer not just to the declared aim of beautifying the city, but also to outside visitors (no less than local residents) as the intended beneficiaries of those improvements. The most compelling evidence of an active policy in favour of areas of the city that were most visible to the eyes of outsiders is the fact that the majority of interventions were focused along the main artery that cuts through the city from the Porta Camollia in the north to the Porta Romana in the south. This central thoroughfare, the urban section of the via Francigena, known in Siena as the strada Romana, emerged through the latter part of the fifteenth century as the priority for government-led urban improvements, spearheaded by the appropriately named ufficiali sopra l’ornato della cittá (‘officials in charge of the city’s beauty’), a new government office whose title identified their city-scale improvement remit.44For extended discussion of the work of the ornato, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 91–145; see also Pertici, 1995. Hub, 2012, pp. 71–2, following Braunfels, 1951, pp. 40, 96–7, proposes precedents for such activity managed through the tax office of the Biccherna.
The ornato was an office of nine men, whose main purpose was to enforce policies for the improvement of the urban fabric and, in particular, to encourage (and to some extent oblige) private property owners to renew their properties following certain criteria of ornato (‘beauty’ or ‘decorum’). Established in 1458, perhaps on the advice of Pope Pius II Piccolomini, their task was ‘to work incessantly and oblige all citizens without exception to improve the civic image [honore publico] and renew the city’s appearance by appropriate and beautiful works’.45ASS, Concistoro, 2125, fol. 39 (18 December 1465); for the office’s enabling legislation, see ASS, Statuto di Siena, 40, fol. 137 (11 October 1458); Nevola, 2007, pp. 98–100. This they appear to have done for over a quarter century, notably directing their energies to the removal of ‘jetties’ or overhanging balconies that projected out from the façades of buildings above street level. The ornato had no budget, but they could appeal to the government on behalf of property owners in order to secure partial subsidies for the building interventions that they recommended. Although the subsidies the ornato was able to leverage were fairly small, their activity is well documented through large numbers of recommendations approved by Siena’s great council that aimed to increase beauty (ornato) and counteract the shame (vergogna) derived from buildings left in a state of disrepair.46For the demolition of overhangs, see ASS, Consiglio Generale (e.g. Deliberazioni, 231, fol. 100 (116), 26 March 1466).
Under the aegis of the ornato officials, a concerted policy was pursued for the renovation of housing stock along the city’s most prominent streets – the strada Romana and via di Città; it ensured that jetties, balconies and other wooden appendages were removed from house façades, and the appearance of the streets was improved with brick-built houses, as well as many new, elegant palaces.47For a detailed treatment, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 91–145. The spatial implications of this policy are clear (fig. 19). Where, previously, the primary focus of government policy on urban beautification had been on the civic centrepiece of the piazza del Campo and its religious counterpart around the cathedral, the work of the ornato extended the government’s remit to the shaping of the built form of the primary artery that cut through the city, connecting the centre to its principal gates. There can be little doubt that the ornato pinpointed the strada Romana, with a spike in their activity in the 1460s primarily directed at the demolition of overhangs.48For a table based only on documented cases in ASS, Concistoro, 2125, see Nevola, 2007, p. 209. Numerous other cases can be traced from the Consiglio Generale and other records. This activity was supplemented with a series of zoning provisions, which altered the commercial makeup of the street, by discouraging tradesmen involved in noisy or dirty industries (such as pan-makers, butchers and tanners) from working along the strada, and providing incentives for luxury retailers (such as goldsmiths and wool and silk merchants) to locate their shops there.49For additional evidence and examples, see Nevola, 2006a. So, through offices such as the ornato and the petroni, Siena’s government was able to enforce the duty of citizens to initiate and finance an extensive process of urban renewal along the city’s principal thoroughfares.
~
Description: Map of Siena by de Angel, Yanel; Brunke, Luca
19. Map of Siena, showing the interventions carried out by the ufficiali sopra l’ornato della città, 1431–80 (map by Yanel de Angel and Luca Brunke).
‘convenience and ornament’: Porticoes and new streets
In Siena a case can be made that the pretext of removing medieval jetties and balconies was the catalyst for urban renewal, leading to the creation of a regularised streetscape of façades lining the main routes through the city. But in some other cities of northern Italy, urban renewal proceeded by addition as opposed to subtraction. In Bologna, for example, a conscious policy of managing public space through the creation of porticoes that lined many of the city’s squares and central streets was long established, but it was more comprehensively enforced from the 1400s.50Bocchi, 1993b; Corrain, 2013. The arcaded porticoes that border the city’s streets are a distinctive feature of Bologna to the present day (fig. 20). Statutes from as early as the thirteenth century had encouraged their construction and maintenance, and more than three centuries later the statutes of 1567 acknowledged the ‘convenience and ornament’ provided by porticoes, and required the replacement of wooden piers with more elegant brick or stone arcades.51Corrain, 2013, p. 374. A real turning point for the policy of promoting porticoes occurred in 1407, when the city’s ruling authorities – possibly with subsidies from the banker’s guild – oversaw the erection of a portico along the entirety of the east side of the central piazza Maggiore, a unified arcading system that masked the narrow commercial streets extending eastward, the via degli Orefici and via Clavature (fig. 21).52Tuttle, 2011, pp. 22, 217–18, followed by Corrain, 2013, p. 375; see also Tamborrino, 1997, p. 425, with some differences of opinion from Tuttle’s chronology. As part of these same plans, the piazza was paved in brick and stone, creating a significantly grander and cleaner central public space, onto which the church of San Petronio and the main government buildings faced.53Tuttle, 2011, p. 22, for the paving of the piazza, overseen by the papal legate Baldassare Cossa, whom Tuttle describes as taking a ‘conciliatory’ stance in relation to Bologna’s local government institutions. These interventions to beautify the central civic piazza followed closely on the brief period of Visconti control of the city (1402–3), during which the piazza had been stripped of its civic functions; they can thus be understood as a conscious purpose to reassert the city’s autonomy through improvements to its political and commercial core.54Ibid., p. 20, for Leonardo Malaspina’s use of ten iron gates (rastelli), erected at all openings to the piazza Maggiore, to create a Visconti citadel (22 June 1403). On chains and gates used to control movement in the city see Chapter 3. The Loggia dei Banchi, as the portico was called, was paid for in part through subsidies provided by the frontagers along the street, and (as Richard Tuttle has argued) stands as an important precedent for the use of arcading to regularise central public spaces, as in the well-known later examples at Vigevano and Ascoli Piceno, but also in cities throughout northern Italy.55Ibid., p. 217, for frontagers’ contribution, and p. 23 for discussion of piazza Maggiore as a prototype for the use of porticoes to regularise the piazza; the loggia was later redeveloped as part of Vignola’s Loggia dei Banchi project (from 1565). See also Lotz, 1977; Schofield, 1992–3.
~
Description: Case Serracchioli by Unknown
20. Case Serracchioli, 13th century (remodelled 1924), at the intersection of via Santo Stefano and piazza della Mercanzia, Bologna.
~
Description: Piazza Maggiore by Unknown
21. Piazza Maggiore, Bologna.
While the central piazza Maggiore remained a major focus of building activity through much of the fifteenth century – with the construction of the new Palazzo del Podestà in the 1480s, for example – there is evidence of growing attention being given to improving Bologna’s streets.56Clarke, 1999, pp. 406–7; Tuttle, 2011, pp. 23–5. Just as in Mantua, a stated aim of improvements that began in 1462 was to ‘clear the city of stinking mud’, an objective to be achieved by extending drainage and sewerage systems and paving the streets.57Clarke, 1999, p. 404, citing the chronicler Cherubino Ghirardacci. However, it is also evident that the beautification resulting from these public-hygiene measures was directed at the streets that were most prominent, especially the major axes radiating from the centre to the city’s main gates.
A key figure in this process was Giovanni II Bentivoglio, Bologna’s leading citizen from 1462 and acknowledged signore from 1480. It is perhaps not surprising that considerable attention was paid to improving the strada San Donato (now via Zamboni), a straight street leading north-east from Porta Ravegnana in the centre; it was on this street that the Bentivoglio family properties were concentrated, and the vast new Palazzo Bentivoglio was erected facing a new piazza, itself paved and lined with porticoes (fig. 22).58For an interpretation of the palace that plays down its seigneurial ambitions, see Clarke, 1999, pp. 402–3. For discussion of the Palazzo Strazzaroli at Porta Ravegnana as a built tribute to the Bentivoglio palace, see Tamborrino, 1997, pp. 421–5. Adjacent to the palace and flanking the street along one side, the late-thirteenth-century church of San Giacomo Maggiore was already the focus of Bentivoglio family patronage, as it was the site of their family chapel. In order to link the palace with the church, from 1477 Giovanni II oversaw the building of a portico along the street, using arcading similar to that on his palace.59Clarke, 1999, p. 405; Tamborrino, 1997, p. 424. Over the following decade this portico was extended further towards the centre, and although the palace was demolished in 1507 as a powerful sign of the end of Bentivoglio ascendancy after the reconquest of Bologna by Pope Julius II, the portico at San Giacomo survives (fig. 23), as do the arcades on the piazza. Clearly, these interventions dignified the residential enclave of the city’s leading citizen, whose ambitions were made clear in a classicising inscription added to the strada San Donato portico: ‘Bologna glitters under Giovanni Bentivoglio just as Rome shone under Caesar.’60As reported by Ghirardacci in 1492; Tuttle, 2011, p. 25. For the inscription on the portico describing Bentivoglio as ‘Senatus Bononiensis Princeps’, see also Clarke, 1999, pp. 401, 406.
~
Description: Site of the Palazzo Bentivoglio, now piazza Verdi by Unknown
22. Site of the Palazzo Bentivoglio (dem. 1507; now piazza Verdi), Bologna, with the church of San Giacomo Maggiore.
~
Description: Portico by Pagno di Lapo Portigiani
23. Portico, begun 1477, flanking the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, via Zamboni, Bologna.
Giovanni II’s involvement in urban improvements was not limited to the area around his palace, however, and, in spite of a carefully conducted campaign of damnatio memoriae following the end of the Bentivoglio signoria, there is visual and documentary evidence for his promotion of urban renewal activities elsewhere in the city. A rare surviving capital on via Galliera contains a portrait roundel of Giovanni and the inscription DIV IO[HANNES] B[ENTIVOLUS] P[ATER] P[ATRIAE], and also attests the street’s widening and the addition of porticoes.61Clarke, 1999, p. 401. Documents record Bentivoglio’s active involvement in promoting the demolition of wooden overhanging structures that invaded the streets, widespread paving campaigns and the removal of shop counters (banchi) from the central piazza.62Tamborrino, 1997, p. 424. Perhaps most significant of all was the creation of a grand new central axis running from the centre (by the north-east edge of the Palazzo Comunale) west to the paved piazza San Francesco.63Tuttle, 2011, pp. 31–4. This ambitious project, begun in 1496, required a major demolition campaign, which essentially reopened the original route of the Roman decumanus, facilitating movement from a quadrivium of existing roads converging on piazza San Francesco from a westerly direction and channelling it into a new, wide, straight street, leading eastwards to the centre, which was named the via Imperialis in honour both of its ambitions and Bentivoglio’s allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor.64For imperial honours awarded by Emperor Maximilian, see Tuttle, 2011, pp. 26, 32. The new street was aligned with the via Mercato di Mezzo, the central commercial street, which was itself widened through the demolition of wooden overhangs and porticoes; it connected to a new piazza running along the northern side of the Palazzo Comunale, to which most market activities were relocated from the piazza Maggiore.65Ibid. Almost all traces of this intervention were lost with the widening of via Ugo Bassi in 1925–30, although it can be seen in early maps, such as that in the Sala Bologna (Biblioteca Comunale Archiginnasio, Bologna, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Raccolta piante e vedute della città di Bologna, Cartella 2, no. 18) or Mitelli, 1692. That Giovanni II was the principal promoter of this grandiose project was clear to a local chronicler, who commented that ‘Zoanne Bentivogli caused the street to be made, as he is always eager to make Bologna beautiful.’66Tuttle, 2011, pp. 26, 32, citing an unnamed chronicler.
Viewed in isolation, it is possible to see the San Giacomo portico on strada San Donato as part of a localised urban improvement around the familial enclave of the Bentivoglio, and the via Imperialis as a grandiose means of relocating commercial activity away from the piazza Maggiore, in order to transform the piazza into a representational civic space expressive of Bentivoglio’s control of the city.67Clarke, 1999, pp. 402–3, for the familial significance of the palace area, and pp. 409–11; for dynastic ambitions of later projects around piazza Maggiore, see also Tuttle, 2011, pp. 27–4. Certainly, it would seem that as Giovanni II’s power grew so did the means by which it was articulated on an urban scale. Nonetheless, together with the works undertaken on via Galliera and other main city arteries, and the construction of new porticoes throughout the city in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Bentivoglio’s changes to the urban landscape pursued long-established and far-reaching ambitions that are attested from as early as 1412, when the Loggia dei Banchi was completed. As Bologna was a relatively large walled city, with a medieval centre overlaid on the earlier Roman grid, changes to the urban fabric were inevitably gradual. While interventions such as the creation of the via Imperialis stand out as decisive and transformative, it is the cumulative effect of grand and minor alterations to the existing fabric that really changed the city, by extending civic control over the public spaces of the central piazza to the main streets that radiated from that piazza to the city gates.
This increased attention to the network of streets was a common feature of urban renewal in many Italian cities at this period, though it is significant that in Bologna the local characteristic of lining street fronts with porticoes was actively promoted and can clearly be understood as a unifying element of the city’s architecture, and part of its collective image. In his 1560 account of Bologna, Pietro Lamo, in his description of the Bentivoglio residential enclave, recorded the ‘arcaded ground floor loggia, which serves as a public portico supported on columns’, and numerous visitors to the city identified its extensive network of public porticoes as one of its most distinctive characteristics.68Corrain, 2013, p. 375, cites Pietro Lamo, Graticola di Bologna: gli edifice e le opera d’arte della città nel 1560. ed. G. Roversi (Bologna: Atesa, 1977), p. 40, describing the remodelling of the strada San Donato in Bologna near the Bentivoglio palace; Corrain, 2013, pp. 376 ff., gives many examples of visitors’ accounts of porticoes. As Alberti observed, porticoes provided shade in the summer months and, more importantly, protection from rain during the rest of the year; they were not unique to Bologna, however, and they were widely deployed as part of urban renewal campaigns in cities throughout northern Italy, especially in the Po valley.69Alberti, 1991, p. 263. See further discussion in Chapter 4.
The process of widening main streets by the removal of projecting balconies and other temporary features (as in Siena), and straightening them by demolition and the construction of new palaces and façades was the principal means by which cities were gradually transformed through the Renaissance. Writing about the plans of King Alfonso of Naples in the late fifteenth century to reorder his city, the humanist Pietro Summonte reported that the king intended to ‘extend all the main streets in straight lines from wall to wall, removing all projections [. . .] and then to lay out transversely, also in straight lines, the cross streets from one end of the city to the other’.70For Pietro Summonte’s 1524 account, quoted from Nicolini, 1925, see Hersey, 1969, pp. 94–5. The plans remained largely unexecuted, but it is interesting to note that Summonte describes how this rationalised layout not only sought to revive the classical grid arrangement of the ancient city, but might serve a practical function by making use of the natural slope of streets towards the sea to facilitate cleaning, and had military and defensive benefits in view of the growing importance of ballistics in town planning.
The Terra Nova of Ferrara – now usually known as the Addizione Erculea in deference to its patron, Duke Ercole d’Este (r. 1471–1505) – stands out from the preceding examples for the bold decision to extend the pre-existing city, more than doubling the walled enclosure by the addition of a whole new district to the north of the ducal residence around the Castello Estense (or Castello Vecchio).71The first full treatment of the Addizione is Zevi, 1997, whose principal thesis has been widely challenged – for example, in Folin, 1997; Tuohy, 1996. Here, the grand vision of axial streets aligned to city gates described by Summonte in relation to Naples was given built expression, although the vast project took decades to complete and to this day the northern part of the city contains considerable areas of unbuilt land. While there is some evidence that plans for this northern extension may have originated in the 1470s, the real impetus to build a new set of walls that would enclose a number of previously suburban buildings, including the Este villa or palace of Belfiore and the churches of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Certosa, came only with Ercole’s humiliating defeat by the Venetians in the war of Ferrara (1482–4), when the city had come under direct attack.72For earlier evidence of plans to extend the city, see Folin, 1997, p. 373; Tuohy, 1996, p. 124, describes Venetian occupation of these buildings in 1483 during the war with Ferrara. As detailed court accounts show, funds were assembled from 1486, and from 1492 these were deployed to fortify the new perimeter with walls and three new gates.73For a detailed treatment of the overall building campaign and a gazetteer of the numerous new buildings, see Tuohy, 1996, pp. 124–41, and gazetteer. A woodcut view of the city shows the new walls in place enclosing a vast and as yet un-urbanised area, with Duke Ercole and his entourage in the background, conducting one of the almost daily tours of inspection that he made from 1492, while the foreground is filled with the densely packed city facing the Po (fig. 24).74No clear explanation has been put forward for the 1490 date on some versions of the print, which appears to contradict the chronology of the Addizione; the Biblioteca Estense dates the print to 1499, which matches more closely the standing architecture.
~
Description: View of the city of Ferrara from the south by Unknown
24. Unknown draughtsman, view of the city of Ferrara from the south, 1499–1505(?), woodcut, Ms. Alfa.f.3.17, fol. 285, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena.
What the woodcut also shows is an idealised vision of the axial alignment created between the city’s now central piazza – the large open paved area between the monumental Romanesque cathedral (right) and the ducal residential complex of the Castello Estense and Palazzo del Corte (left) – and the new Porta degli Angeli at the top of the print. While not absolutely accurate in topographical terms, as there is a slight eastwards adjustment to the axis in the new part of the city, the print effectively conveys one of the most symbolically significant aspects of the Addizione project, which was to place the ducal residence at the heart of the city, so that the main streets converged around the castle complex. The print is also a reminder that Ercole’s architectural concerns were not limited to the new district that takes his name. During the first decade of his long reign, the duke supported a series of interventions that transformed the central precinct, reducing the disorderly concentration of shops and market stalls around the main square, while at the same time unifying the ducal residence by creating a connecting building (the via Coperta) between the castle and the Palazzo del Corte.75Folin, 1997, pp. 364–7; Tuohy, 1996, pp. 53–62. These plans aimed to make a dignified setting for the ducal residential complex by reordering the public spaces around it – in particular, by banishing livestock, trades such as those of butchers and manure sellers, and other insalubrious activities that created what one chronicler described as a ‘stomach-churning’ stench.76For the chronicler Ugo Caleffini’s comments regarding the smell created by butchers and livestock, see Tuohy, 1996, p. 61; see also Folin, 1997, p. 365. Nevertheless, although some trades were zoned out of the city centre, new shops were provided around the central piazza, where even the ducal residence was furnished with a ‘very beautiful and magnificent loggia’ that housed shops facing towards the cathedral.77The loggia was built in 1492–3, see Folin, 1997, p. 366. For further discussion of shops on the piazza, see Chapter 4.
Thus, in common with many of the urban improvement campaigns of the period, hygiene and decorum motivated changes to the central square, where the city’s commercial activity was showcased in purpose-built arcaded shops.78As emerges clearly from the examples above; for multiple examples, see also the essays collected in Calabi, 1997. By contrast, the Addizione Erculea was initiated largely for military and defensive purposes, but the vast scale of the enterprise resulted in perhaps the most significant set piece of urban design of the fifteenth century, as new streets were laid out to be occupied with numerous grand palaces. The wide central axis of the new district is via degli Angeli, which cuts a straight route from the Castello Estense to the newly built Porta degli Angeli (fig. 25); it is intersected by the via dei Prioni, another new straight street that linked two other new gates, Porta San Benedetto (west) and Porta San Giovanni Battista (east). This central crossroads naturally emerged as the most important location in the new district, and it was here that some of the first palaces were constructed, including one built by the duke’s doctor, Francesco da Castello (now Palazzo Prosperi-Sacrati), and the magnificent Palazzo dei Diamanti, whose faceted stone dressing was a tribute to Ercole d’Este’s heraldic diamond device (fig. 26).79Tuohy, 1996, pp. 129–33; Palazzo dei Diamanti was built for Sigismondo d’Este, an illegitimate son of one of the duke’s many brothers. The street was 16 metres wide, and included pavements on both sides; Adams and Nusssdorfer, 1994, p. 216. The paved via degli Angeli was the first to be occupied by new palaces, most of them built by courtiers and leading merchants as opposed to the local aristocratic elite, suggesting, perhaps, that participation in the duke’s urban project was something of an obligation for those with strong patronage ties to the duke.80The distinction between participants in the project is made in Folin, 1997, p. 375–6; Tuohy, 1996, pp. 132–3. Built in a relatively short period of time, during the final decade of Ercole’s reign, the austere, brick-built, classicising architecture creates a harmonious whole, bound together in an elegant way by the recurring use of candlestick pilasters, which articulate the corners of many of the buildings.81Discussed further in Chapter 6.
~
Description: Map of Ferrara by Google Earth; Brunke, Luca
25. Map of Ferrara, showing the medieval city and the main areas of 15th-century expansion (Google Earth, with additional cartography and annotations by Luca Brunke).
~
Description: Palazzo dei Diamanti by Rossetti, Biagio
26. Biagio Rossetti, Palazzo dei Diamanti, from 1493, via degli Angeli (now corso Ercole I d’Este), Ferrara.
Much the same can be said for the piazza Nuova – also on the via dei Prioni, two blocks east from the via degli Angeli intersection – a vast new open space, framed by arcaded buildings that were to give the piazza a uniform appearance.82Kehl, 1998, p. 251. For jousts and other activities, see Folin, 1997, pp. 374–5; for detailed construction phases of the piazza, see Tuohy, 1996, pp. 132–4, 339–41. The western side of the piazza was occupied by a large palace erected by the Strozzi (resident in Ferrara after their exile from Florence), while the court official Giovanni Stancaro built a house on the south-eastern corner, and another arcaded structure (perhaps a granary) originally closed off the northern side. Although the piazza was referred to as a market square in documents of 1494, little commercial activity seems to have relocated here; instead, the large rectangular arcaded space, which was evidently intended to resemble a classical hippodrome, was used for jousts and other courtly equestrian spectacles. Building accounts indicate that the arcaded piazza was to have as its central focus a tall column topped with an equestrian monument of Ercole, though a city view of 1598 shows the column in situ but on the ground, and the intended monument was never completed.83For work on the column (1498–9), see Tuohy, 1996, pp. 340–41; for identification of the 1598 map view, see Folin, 1997, p. 376. The column that can be seen today was erected in the 17th century, and was topped with a sculpture of the poet Ariosto in 1833.
The grand scale on which Ferrara was extended transformed the city, refortifying it, placing the ducal precinct at the centre, and creating a series of wide new streets that ordered the Terra Nova district, with a large piazza intended for commercial and ceremonial functions and numerous newly founded religious institutions. Rebalancing the city to place the Este fortified residence at the centre opened up vast tracts of land for urbanisation by courtiers and allies, thus articulating in built form the status and prestige of Duke Ercole d’Este. In these respects, the Addizione Erculea could be said to achieve in built form some of the ambitions of the paper architecture of the Quattrocento theorists Filarete and Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Described by Jacob Burckhardt as ‘the first really modern city in Europe’, and by Ludwig Heydenreich as ‘the first systematic piece of town-planning in the whole Quattrocento’, Ferrara appears to embody the coming together of theory and practice.84Burckhardt, 1937, p. 27; Heydenreich, 1996, p. 120. Certainly, if we view city plans such as Filarete’s famous drawing of Sforzinda (see fig. 8) as articulating the ambitions of princely patrons, there are parallels to be drawn between Ferrara and the ‘ideal city’.85Adams and Nussdorfer, 1994, p. 220. Parallels can be drawn with the renewal of Milan, discussed in Chapter 3. Ercole’s reordering of the city’s central spaces in such a way that they more obviously reflected the magnificence of the ducal residence, while consigning noisy and smelly trades to purpose-built piazzas and workshops behind the palace and away from view, conforms with Filarete’s advice, but equally can be compared with zoning practices enforced in many cities during this period. The proposals of Francesco di Giorgio Martini are rather more instructive, with their greater attention to fortification and the foundation of well-defended towns and cities, whose centralised layouts were expressive of the authority of the ruler, while at the same time providing stronger defences by placing the palace at the centre of the city.86On the relation between city plan and the authority of rulers, see Adams, 1993, pp. 129–30. Clearly, military considerations were a key concern addressed by the Terra Nova extension to Ferrara, as manifested by the city fortifications and the re-centring of the ducal residence, so it is perhaps not surprising to observe parallels with the advice that Francesco was formulating in the final decades of the fifteenth century for the Montefeltro dukes of Urbino, and for the king of Naples.87Such concerns are further explored in Chapter 3, which considers the function of city streets in the exercise of government authority and control, though the example of Ferrara shows that concerns with splendour and decorum were rarely divorced from the more practical concerns with trade and defence.
The most complex example of Renaissance urban design, and the use of street improvements as a strategy for urban renewal and an instrument for the articulation of power and authority is the city of Rome. Here, after a period of neglect that ended with the Council of Constance (1414–18) and the resulting return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome in 1420 under Pope Martin V Colonna, the street network was radically transformed over the course of about a century.88For a summary, see Frommel, 1986; Tafuri, 1992, reveals the complexity of this process. The degree to which the city stood in need of maintenance is conveyed clearly in a papal bull (Etsi in cunctarum orbis) issued soon after the pope’s return in 1425, which claimed that:
Many inhabitants of Rome [. . .] have been throwing and illicitly hiding [animal] entrails, viscera, heads, feet, bones, blood and skins, besides rotten meat and fish, refuse, excrement, and other fetid and rotting cadavers into the streets [. . .] and have dared boldly and sacrilegiously to usurp, ruin, and reduce to their own use streets, alleys, piazzas, public and private places both ecclesiastical and profane.89Bull of 29 March 1425, Lanciani, 1975, vol. 1, pp. 11ff”; translation as quoted in Partridge, 1996, p. 19.
The bull emphatically and repeatedly addresses the theme of hygiene and the need to restore a degree of order and cleanliness to the streets, and also singles out for special comment the extent to which the public realm had been eroded by private interests. This is the background for the concerted effort, supported by dedicated officials, to reassert control and to renew the city’s fabric. The bull re-established the office of the magistri viarum, who were charged with street maintenance; the significance of the task assigned to them was confirmed a quarter of a century later, when Pope Nicholas V reissued the statutes of the maestri di strada, increasing their powers to intervene on a range of issues to do with construction and urban planning.90Ait, 1991; Re, 1920; Verdi, 1997; the first archival volume, ASR, Presidenza di Strade, 1, is lost and hence Re’s account and documentary appendix are fundamental for the early history of the institution. These powers were further extended during the pontificate of Sixtus IV, whose bull of June 1480 (Et si cunctarum civitatum) established legislation that facilitated the expropriation of property in order to make available to elite patrons of significant new palaces larger plots of land for their building projects.91Re, 1920, pp. 32–6, 46–9.
The restoration of the papacy to Rome resulted in the affirmation of St Peter’s and the Vatican complex as the primary residence of the pope, favoured in part over the Lateran (the seat of the Bishop of Rome) as it was somewhat removed from the main residential and commercial core of the city and the centre of local government on the Capitoline. With the pope’s return there followed the rapid growth of the papal court and administration; the composition of the city of Rome was transformed and the population grew rapidly.92For the changing city of Rome, see most recently McCahill, 2013; Partner, 1990. Across the Tiber from the Vatican, a complex network of medieval streets, which pre-dated the numerous papal interventions of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was most easily navigated by its three major axes: the via Lata (now the via del Corso) entered the city from the north at Porta del Popolo, and the two east–west axes, the via Peregrinorum and via Papalis, linked the Vatican precinct to the Lateran, passing by various landmarks and piazzas (fig. 27).93On these and other streets in the ceremonial life of Rome, see Fagiolo, 1997a, with numerous essays, including Fagiolo, 1997b; on the ritual and processional uses of streets, see Ingersoll, 1985. These streets cut through the abitato – the lived-in core of Rome built during the Middle Ages – and thus were lined with residential properties of varied social status. The routes also eased and rationalised the movement of outsiders through the city, so service industries and luxury retail naturally concentrated around these thoroughfares, where pilgrims and other visitors would notice them.94The issues of commerce, streets and palaces are considered in Chapter 4. Modigliani, 1998; Vaquero Piñeiro, 1999; Vaquero Piñeiro, 2007. While the provision of amenity for the growing city – with its large population of foreigners and a high concentration of mobile elites attached to the entourages of the cardinals who resided in Rome as well as to the papal court – was a major concern, the creation of new streets also became a significant means by which the pontiffs marked the city fabric with a lasting legacy of byways whose names echoed those of their patrons.
~
Description: Nuova pianta di Roma by Nolli, Giovanni Battista
27. Map of Rome showing the main streets, overlaid on G. B. Nolli, ‘Nuova pianta di Roma’, etching, 1748, Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University Library (additional cartography by Luca Brunke).
Although Martin V recognised the need to reorder the city of Rome, papal finances and authority were too weak to make much real progress, so that as late as c. 1450, the Florentine humanist and bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci could still comment that ‘Rome had become, in the absence of the pope, a place of cowherds’, reporting that sheep and cattle pastured where previously merchants had worked, and suggesting that only the intervention of the pope and his court could set things right.95Bisticci, 1970, p. 2; these comments apply to the period before Martin V, but particularly to Eugenius IV Condulmer’s troubled pontificate, during which he was absent from Rome for long periods of time. It was under Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447–55) that the first active steps were taken to create order around the Vatican precinct, the chosen residence of the papacy, almost a separate centre (the Borgo) and divided from most of the rest of Rome by the Tiber; the direction of the city’s gaze was now focused on the seat of the popes across the river, which was linked to the abitato by the bridge of Sant’Angelo.96The main accounts of this process are Burroughs, 1990; Magnuson, 1958; Tafuri, 1992, pp. 33–50; Westfall, 1974. Lively scholarly debate continues around the interpretation of the description of Nicholas’ plans for the Borgo, reported in Giannozzo Manetti’s posthumous biography of the pope. Almost certainly the plans remained just that, but even the idea of creating three parallel streets between St Peter’s and Castel Sant’Angelo was highly innovative; it may have been proposed by Leon Battista Alberti, who dedicated the first version of his treatise on architecture to the pope.97Fiore, 2005b; Frommel, 1986, p. 42; Tafuri, 1992, pp. 49–50, 62–7. Manetti’s account suggests a hierarchical arrangement of the streets, with the central one wider and intended for more elite residences. As so often occurred in Rome, however, the brevity of the pontiff’s reign cut short this scheme, and his successors looked to other projects to enhance their prestige and leave their mark on the city for posterity.
Somewhat piecemeal interventions worked towards the improvement of the Vatican precinct; Pius II’s benediction loggia (c. 1460), erected to face towards the somewhat reordered piazza in front of the Constantinian basilica of St Peter’s, stands out as one of the more significant interventions in the area.98Rubinstein, 1968, p. 227 and n. 37 (documents in ASR, Camerale 1: Fabbriche, 1503, fol. 71v (6 April 1462)). For the stair, see also Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1541. Pius’ extensive architectural patronage was more visible outside the papal capital, however – most notably in the extensive remodelling of his birthplace, Corsignano, as Pienza.99From an extensive bibliography, see Adams, 1998; Mack, 1987. His successors looked to other parts of the city to leave their mark: the Venetian pope Paul II largely directed his attention to the axis of the via Lata, which led from the Porta del Popolo south to his monumental residence of Palazzo San Marco at the foot of the Capitoline.100Frommel, 1998a, pp. 385–90. 1475 was a jubilee year, and such occasions, which resulted in considerable increase in the flow of pilgrimage traffic to and through the city, often led to improvements in the city’s infrastructure. In this instance, legislation under the pontificate of Sixtus IV altered the city in significant ways.101Benzi, 1990; various essays in Benzi, 2000, including Vaquero Piñeiro, 2000; Frommel, 1986, p. 48. Measures passed in 1473 and 1480 facilitated institutional and private interventions for the beautification and improvement of the city, and the pope actively promoted the restoration of forty churches and the construction of seven new ones, including the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, immediately adjacent to the Porta del Popolo, the principal entrance to the city from the north. The church’s position marked this important nodal point, where the via Flaminia (the approach road from the north) turned into the via Lata (the straight route to the city centre), and was a significant site of patronage for the pope and his associates (fig. 27).102Tafuri, 1992, p. 107 and n. 66, suggested that the original plans may have made the church the focus of the new street, the via Sistina, which cut from the Canale di Ponte to piazza Nicosia (Porto di Ripa Grande), a project that was completed only in the 16th century. For use of a version of this route in papal processions, see Nevola, 2008.
This attention to the visibility of papal interventions within the city’s fabric is especially clear in the pope’s patronage of the vast pilgrimage hospital of Santo Spirito, close to the Tiber, off the via Lungara in the Vatican Borgo; this hinge location between the city and the Vatican precinct, where pilgrims visiting the tomb of St Peter arrived after crossing the river, underlined the function of the hospital in the service of travellers and gave prominence to the papal patronage, which was emblazoned and inscribed on the hospital’s exterior walls and windows (fig. 28).103Howe, 2005. However, it was not buildings alone that enabled Sixtus to claim to be the urbis restaurator, but also his special attention to the city’s thoroughfares. As Manfredo Tafuri and others have noted, Sixtus significantly revised the street network, initiating the via Sistina, which cuts from the piazza di Ponte, on the abitato side of the Ponte Sant’Angelo, along the Tiber towards the north (the Porto di Ripetta), and the via della Lungara, a new street linking the Vatican south to Trastevere and the port there (Porto di Ripa Grande).104Tafuri, 1992, p. 107; see also Tafuri, 1984b, p. 82. These streets eased the movement of visitors to the Vatican, but also, significantly, connected the papal Borgo with the city’s two river ports, ensuring access to supplies, but also asserting papal authority over Rome’s trade. In addition to these streets on either side of the Tiber, Sixtus also commissioned a grand new bridge – the Ponte Sisto (fig. 29), which still bears his name – a vital new piece of infrastructure that eased everyday movement and pilgrim traffic through the city, as its prominent inscription declares:
Sixtus IV, the pope, for the use of the people of Rome and the multitude of pilgrims that will participate in the jubilee, restored this bridge that was justly called ‘broken’ and rebuilt it from the foundations up, at great expense and with great care, and wished that it be renamed Sistine.105The Latin original is transcribed in Forcella, 1879, p. 54.
With these new streets and the bridge, but also, of course, through the extensive direct and indirect patronage of secular and religious architecture, Sixtus’ pontificate marked a step change in the built fabric of Rome, the widespread use of the papal insignia and inscriptions serving to hammer home the scale and distributed presence of these interventions on an urban scale.106Clarke, 2003, pp. 227–32; Weiss, 1969. Sixtus appears to have established the significant precedent of making the foundation of new streets a papal prerogative; while not all popes created new streets in Rome, many of them did, and their ambitious projects left a mark that is still legible in the city’s street layout and names.107This is a narrative thread running through Tafuri, 1984b, and Frommel, 1986. This chapter does not attempt a survey of all of Rome’s new streets, but a number are discussed elsewhere in this book. Some of the significant examples are: Sixtus IV, via Sistina and Lungaretta; Alexander VI, via Alessandrina; Julius II, via Giulia; Leo X, via Leonina (from 1513, Ripetta) and plans for piazza Navona; Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, via Baullari (planned 1515; executed 1535 by Farnese as Pope Paul III).
~
Description: Archiospedale Apostolico di S. Spirito in Sassia by Falda, Giovanni Battista
28. Giovanni Battista Falda, ‘Archiospedale Apostolico di S. Spirito in Sassia’, engraving, from II nuovo teatro delle fabriche, et edificii, in prospettiva di Roma moderna [. . .], published by Giovanni Iacomo Rossi, 3 vols. (Rome, 1665), vol. 1, pl. 29, Brown University, Providence, RI.
~
Description: Veduta di Ponte Sisto / Vue du Pont Sixte by Barbault, Jean
29. Jean Barbault, ‘Veduta di Ponte Sisto / Vue du Pont Sixte’, engraving from Les plus beaux edifices de Rome moderne (Rome, 1763), following p. 66, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome.
It was Pope Alexander VI Borgia, however (r. 1492–1503), who brought together street design and architectural patronage in a single project, the via Alessandrina – an early example of the palace street that created a monumental and regularised ceremonial axis, lined to a significant degree with elite residences. Again, as occurred in the pontificate of Sixtus IV, it was a jubilee year (1500) that served as the important catalyst for the creation of the new street, plans for which were set in motion by Alexander in the latter part of 1498.108A detailed analysis and documents are provided in Petrucci, 1997; p. 35 refers to the decision made in the Papal Consistory (26 November 1498). See also Ingersoll, 1985, pp. 146–8; Howe, 1992. Cardinal Raffaele Riario was appointed as superintendent for the ‘nova via fienda ad palatium’ (the ‘new street to be built to the [Vatican] palace’) on 20 February 1499; by April work on the new street was under way, and it was opened as part of official celebrations that started the jubilee on 24 December that same year.109Petrucci, 1997, pp. 35–6. This seemingly rapid progress is somewhat deceptive; the street was not created from scratch, but instead was formed by renovating a pre-existing route by cutting back house fronts, carrying out some demolitions and constructing a number of larger-scale new palaces. Various building projects on what was to become the via Alessandrina are documented from soon after the pope’s accession, and specific mention of the street was made as early as 1496.110Palazzo Soderini was complete by 1493 (see Lowe, 1991), while in 1496 Adriano Castellesi mentioned the ‘Via Alexandrina’ in a request for building materials (Petrucci, 1997, p. 35). Nicholas V’s plans had anticipated a plan for parallel streets leading through the Borgo to St Peter’s, and it is perhaps hardly surprising that the main access streets to the Vatican should have been subject to improvements throughout the second half of the fifteenth century.111For documents pertaining to improvements to the street before 1498, see appendix to Petrucci, 1997, pp. 73–6. In this respect, then, the Borgia pope harnessed and coordinated ongoing efforts to reorder the area, which included the piazza Scossacavalli, and took credit for this by applying his name to the street, just in time for the jubilee-year pilgrims to take notice.
That the improvement of the appearance of this axis to the Vatican was a primary concern is reaffirmed in a papal bull of 1500, which required frontagers along via Alessandrina to renew their palace façades within two months on pain of expropriation; these rules further imposed a minimum height requirement for façades of 7 canne (about 15 metres), although it is unclear whether either rule was firmly applied by the magistri viarum.112Ibid., p. 40. Etsi universis, the papal bull of 1500, renewed many of the measures for palace patrons introduced by Sixtus IV; the street is further described in Fauno, 1548, p. 155. By this time, palaces built by cardinals Castellesi, Soderini and della Rovere framed the piazza Scossacavalli, and these were later joined by Palazzo Caprini, constructed for the Bishop of Viterbo, Adriano Caprini (later the residence of Raphael) and completed around 1510 (fig. 30).113Bruschi, 1969, pp. 1040–46; Bruschi, 1989; Tafuri, 1984a; see also Petrucci, 1997, pp. 41–2. Alexander seems equally to have had an eye to the defensive value of straight streets, and the via Alessandrina can be understood as part of his wider campaign to make the Castel Sant’Angelo into a fortified protective bastion, set at the entrance to the Vatican precinct and connected to the papal palace by well-ordered thoroughfares that could be easily controlled.114The military functions of street design are more closely examined in Chapter 3. The pope’s death in 1503 significantly slowed progress on the newly regularised street, though his successor, Julius II (r. 1503–13), ordered its paving in 1505. In fact, a number of the more significant palaces that eventually lined the street – including the palaces of curial officials Jacopo da Brescia and Giovanni Battista Branconio dell’Aquila – were not constructed until the pontificate of Leo X (r. 1513–21), when new impetus seems to have been given to the street project.
~
Description: Palazzo Caprini by Lafréry, Antoine
30. Antoine Lafréry, ‘Palazzo Caprini’, 1549, engraving reproduced in Speculum Romanae magnificenliae (Rome, 1574?), pl. 118, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome.
‘sumptuous and excessive building work’: Resisting urban renewal
That the development of the via Alessandrina spanned a number of decades on either side of the pontificate for which it is named illustrates the degree to which the ‘urban process’ was gradual; while policies and patrons might provide the stimulus or catalyst for change, the final realisation of such plans tended to require time and some degree of collective participation in the endeavour. Moreover, it is all too easy to associate the documentary and material traces of a street renewal project, and to link it back to the point of inception without interrogating the circumstances of its subsequent development and completion.115For the future-proofing of street development projects, see Chapter 4. In this respect, via Giulia in Rome is exemplary; as its name clearly implies, the street is closely associated with the patronage of Pope Julius II, and, although its initial design can firmly be attributed to the papal architect Donato Bramante, its present form is the result of centuries of interventions (fig. 31).116The authoritative account is Salerno, Spezzaferro and Tafuri, 1973; see also Butters and Pagliara, 2009. To some extent, at least, the time lapse between its design and completion can be accounted for by well-motivated resistance to the plans, brought to bear by a number of citizens.
~
Description: Via Giulia by Bramante, Donato
31. Via Giulia, Rome.
Pope Julius’ plan was for a ‘wide and straight street’, as the humanist Egidius of Viterbo, vicar general of the Augustinians, noted, and the ambitious project to impose order on the abitato is rather grandly proclaimed in a classicising inscription on a building at the northern end of the via dei Banchi (fig. 32): Julius is said to have ‘embellished the city of Rome, which at the time was more like a squatter’s settlement than a properly planned city’.117Tafuri, 1973, p. 67 (quotation from Egidius), and p. 56 (for the inscription affixed by the maestri di strada Domenico Massimo and Girolamo Pichi); for references to Livy in the inscription, see also Temple, 2011, pp. 34–5. Described by Manfredo Tafuri as a cutting-edge new street, via Giulia was part of a wider papal project to rebalance the city away from the civic focus around the Capitoline (where markets were held well into the mid-fifteenth century) towards the Tiber, the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo, in line with papacy’s growing power over the city.118This adjustment in the topographies of power in Rome is central to Salerno, Spezzaferro and Tafuri, 1973; for via Giulia as ‘asse urbano all’avanguardia’, see Tafuri, 1973, p. 77. The via Giulia project centred on a focal building, the massive new Palazzo dei Tribunali, which was intended to house, under one roof, all the tribunals of the city – both ecclesiastical and secular; it was planned to relocate there a number of administrative offices that had hitherto been housed on the Capitol, where, as civic institutions independent of the papacy, they held out against the move.119Butters and Pagliara, 2009; Temple, 2011, ch. 3. For the wider conflicts of Julius with the Romani cives, see Burroughs, 1990; Cafà, 2010, pp. 442–3. The project was fiercely opposed by many Roman citizens, including a number from the city’s oldest noble families (the romani cives), which led to an uprising.120Cafa, 2010, p. 442; Spezzaferro, 1973, pp. 61–2; Tafuri, 1973, pp. 71–3; Tafuri, 1984b. The surviving fragment of the Tribunali building on via Giulia (fig. 33) is an eloquent testimony to Julius’ failed ambitions to take control of these legislative prerogatives: the abandonment of the building project coincided with the establishment of a pax romana in August 1511, through which the pope reached terms with the elite Roman families prominent in the civic government.
~
Description: Inscription, at the northern end of via dei Banchi, Rome by Unknown
32. Inscription, 1512, at the northern end of via dei Banchi, Rome, commemorating the improvement of city streets under the aegis of Pope Julius II.
~
Description: Palazzo Tribunali, base, via Giulia by Bramante, Donato
33. The base of Palazzo Tribunali, via Giulia, Rome. Work on Pope Julius Il’s ambitious building project was halted in 1511.
Although the Tribunali centralised administrative complex – which, incidentally, adopted an ostentatiously defensive design, resembling as much a castle as an urban palace – was abandoned, the via Giulia nonetheless emerged as an important palace street, developed through incremental acts of private patronage, which, over the centuries that followed, lined its absolutely straight course with palaces and churches.121Detailed account in Tafuri, 1973, including pl. V (a valuable coloured chronological survey of the street, revealing how little of the architecture pre-dates 1527); and in catalogue entries forming Part II of Salerno, Spezzaferro and Tafuri, 1973. Even so, the demands placed on citizens through ‘forced participation’ in large-scale building campaigns of this sort can be understood to have been politically motivated, as the citizen and nobleman Marco Antonio Altieri commented:
the sumptuous and excessive building work, and the universal ornament of citizens, contribute to the glory only of princes [. . . but for Roman citizens,] being short of funds, credit and will, by making the supreme effort to build, through pomp and ornament, we all come closer to our terrible and ultimate end.122Altieri, 1873, p. 17; also cited in Spezzaferro, 1973, p. 59. For Altieri, see Kolsky, 1987.
Altieri voices a resistance to building projects that articulated the power and ambitions of ‘princes’ – in this case the papacy – whose urban-scale interventions might run counter to the interests of other constituencies.123The specific context for Altieri’s comments was the refashioning of the street layout around via delle Botteghe Oscure, close to the Capitoline; see Spezzaferro, 1973, p. 59.
Palace streets were, indeed, a powerful means by which rulers and city governments were able to harness investment by individual patrons in architectural renewal to create a collective impact on urban space that was significantly greater than the sum of the individual parts. Streets such as the via Maggio (Florence), via del Capitano (Siena), the strada Nuova (Genoa) and the via degli Angeli (Ferrara), as well as main streets in many other cities, including Parma, Piacenza, Perugia and Vicenza, were all renewed during the sixteenth century, usually in a classicising style that created unified streetscapes expressive of the shared identity of powerful elites and ruling groups.124These examples and others are discussed in Chapter 4. Nonetheless, in many of these cities there is also evidence that there was resistance to change of this scale, often from families outside the ruling groups, but also from disenfranchised minorities and even from active participants in renewal plans who could ill afford the building costs. Zoning restrictions aimed at concentrating luxury trades along prominent streets tended to push those who practised malodorous trades, such as fishmongers, butchers and shoemakers, out to more peripheral areas, while quite careful measures were implemented to prescribe the areas where prostitutes were permitted to operate; resistance to these measures is frequently documented.125For additional examples of the zoning of butchers see Chapter 4; for prostitutes, see Chapter 3. So, in Milan, repeated attempts from the mid-fifteenth century to clear the butchers from around the cathedral square so as to create ‘a wide opening that is beautiful to behold’ proved hard to enforce, as commercial interests appear to have prevailed over these aesthetic considerations.126For clearance of ‘beccherie’ under Francesco Sforza to create ‘un largo bello da vedere’, see Patetta, 1997, p. 61 (18 April 1448). Similar resistance from shopkeepers resulted in multiple legislative measures to clear porticoes, loggias and other structures built around shops in the cathedral district, as well as on the main axis connecting it to the Castello Sforzesco, though these were largely unsuccessful, as repeated attempts are documented throughout the second half of the fifteenth century.1271472, aimed at clearing the coperto dei Figini, as well as ordinances of 1457, 1466, 1471, 1490 and 1497; 30 July 1480, to remove overhanging structures described as ‘riati et foppe’; and 15 May 1493, concerning ‘lobie e baltresche’; ibid., p. 63.
Active patrons could also prove reluctant participants in urban renewal campaigns; for instance, a remarkable correspondence from the recently elected young Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga to his father Ludovico, the Marquis of Mantua, documents the demands placed on him to participate in multiple building projects commanded by Pope Pius II Piccolomini.128Chambers, 1976. While a stable residence in Rome was an obvious necessity for a prince of the church, Pius’ predilection for the rural retreat of his birthplace in south Tuscany meant that much of the papal court relocated to the small town of Corsignano for significant periods of time; Cardinal Francesco wrote in September 1462 of the forcefully conveyed expectation that he should participate in the reconstruction of the town by contributing a palace along the main street.129Ibid., pp. 28 ff., 47–9, docs 9–12. It seems that the Piccolomini pope was fairly direct in his demands that the 18-year-old cardinal should do as he requested: ‘all day this good man the pope does nothing else but say that the Cardinal of Mantua is not building this house, and that something could well happen that would make him regret not having built it.’130Ibid., p. 48, doc. 11 (2 September 1462).
At Corsignano (rebuilt and renamed Pienza), a diminutive masterpiece of urban planning was enacted in the few short years of Pius’ pontificate (1458–64) around the main piazza, where a new cathedral, city hall and Piccolomini residence were built in short order; the urban-scale impact of the project was reinforced by palaces along the small town’s main street, commissioned under a degree of duress by the Gonzaga, Borgia and Ammannati cardinals (fig. 34).131For the planning ideals that underpinned the project, see Nevola, 2009a. As has been shown, moreover, in order to make way for these magnificent new urban palaces, large numbers of properties were expropriated and the inhabitants relocated, some of them to purpose-built row-housing (the so-called case nuove) set back from the main street (fig. 35).132Adams, 1985, pp. 103–5. The contained setting of the Pienza project highlights the challenges of urban-scale renewal, showing how pressure was placed on sometimes reluctant patrons, and new construction inevitably had a human cost for displaced populations.
~
Description: Corso Rossellino by Unknown
34. Corso Rossellino, Pienza, with the palaces built by the cardinals Gonzaga and Borgia (left, foreground) and the Palazzo Piccolomini (left, background), and the bell-tower of the new city hall.
~
Description: Case nuove, rowhousing by Unknown
35. Case nuove, row-housing, Pienza.
At times, the historical record preserves well-articulated complaints about urban renewal and its effects. In Siena, just as the ornato officials used civic pride (and its opposite – shame, vergogna) as a trigger to nudge those who lived along the city’s main street to renew their houses, so petitions by many citizens document a reluctance to accede to those demands in the light of the considerable costs involved. Furthermore, in the bid to improve the appearance of the city’s main street, zoning provisions were enforced against butchers, who put up strong resistance to measures that confined them to the urban periphery, where they were out of sight of passing dignitaries and visitors, despite the fact that they had easier access to water to clean their premises.133Nevola, 2007, pp. 97–8; on the zoning of such trades, see also Chapter 4. Rather more unusual is a case of October 1513, when unknown citizens protested against a tax levied to pay for street improvements and ephemeral displays in the lead up to the visit to Siena of the recently elected Pope Leo X.134For a detailed account, see Nevola, 2011a. Chronicles report that posters were affixed around the city that bore the cryptic remark: ‘The loan will be paid, the earth will be removed, the pope will not come.’135Ibid., p. 431; Sigismondo Tizio, ‘Historiae Senenses’, BCS, Ms. B.3.12, fol. 584 (29 October 1513); also reported by Pecci, 1755, vol. 2, p. 27. The reference to clearing earth is somewhat abstruse, but seems to have had a double meaning: on one hand it suggested the likelihood of a riot occurring against the forced loan demanded of citizens to finance the visit, while, on the other, it referred to a pile of building waste that had been left on the piazza del Duomo during construction of the palace of Siena’s first citizen, Giacoppo Petrucci, which was moved to make space for one of the planned triumphal arches for the papal visit.136Shaw, 2006, points out that the phrase ‘la terra se levarà’ was commonly used to refer to public uprisings. The earth may in part have been used to fill Siena’s cathedral crypt, recently removed to reveal frescoes and architecture; see Guerrini, 2003. For via del Capitano, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 178–84. The complaint thus suggested that expensive street maintenance around the newly developed street of the city’s ruling elite might precipitate a revolt, especially in the light of the likelihood that the visit from the pope would not take place. We do not know whether the uprising ever came about, but what is certain is that Leo did not enjoy the results of the expensive preparations for his papal visit, as he took a different route to Florence.
Further north in the peninsula, the evidence from Ferrara highlights similar tensions that might accompany ambitious, urban-scale building campaigns. Duke Ercole’s northwards expansion plans (discussed earlier) almost doubled the area occupied by the city, and created a significant demand on citizens and courtiers to fill the vast area contained inside the new perimeter walls with buildings. One chronicler, Hondedio de Vitale, was openly critical of the duke’s preoccupation with building: ‘the Duke of Ferrara [. . .] does nothing other than build palaces, play music and songs, and organise jousts, riding from one place to another, caring not a jot for everyday government.’137Folin, 1997, p. 374. The account seems to be corroborated in the woodcut view of Ferrara (see fig. 24), where the duke can be seen riding out to inspect the Terra Nova site. Significant tax pressure was imposed on all citizens to contribute to construction costs, and in at least one instance appears to have resulted in a retaliatory gesture: on 28 April 1502 the town crier announced a reward of 50 ducats for information leading to the capture of the culprits who had damaged the column made ready for the central monument in the piazza Nuova.138Tuohy, 1996, pp. 339–41. As with so many of the projects discussed in this chapter, Duke Ercole’s addition to Ferrara relied on courtiers and families who benefited directly from ducal patronage to build many of the houses and palaces; few were to be constructed by the city’s established nobility, although they would have contributed through their taxes. In spite of the duke’s best efforts, a bird’s-eye view of the city in 1598 shows large areas of undeveloped land; the attempt to relocate the market to the piazza Nova failed, and the column damaged in 1502 still lay broken in the square.139Folin, 1997, p. 376; Tuohy, 1996, p. 141, describes the extension of Ferrara as ‘autocratic’.
These instances illustrate the range of documented resistance to urban-scale interventions that transformed streets and cities in Renaissance Italy. They testify to the underlying political and power struggles that inevitably accompanied the significant realignments of property and architecture involved in enacting changes to urban usage and renewal of the city environment.140Probing the tensions inherent in the dynamics of urban-scale patronage is fundamental to Tafuri’s work, including Tafuri, 1992. The discussion now turns from built architecture to the performance of ephemeral displays in public space, and explores how such displays highlighted the political aims and ambitions to which large-scale projects for street transformation sought to give permanent visual form.
Ritual use of public space: Streets, processions and authority
The improvement of existing streets and the creation of new ones was, as has been shown, a complex task, in which the will of powerful individuals often provided an essential catalyst but which might then take a considerable period to reach fruition. Urban-design interventions at the scale of the street were an effective means of articulating authority, although such projects were seldom completed during the lifetimes of their initiators. In this respect, temporary events in which city streets were the primary setting for ceremonial rituals provided a unique opportunity to showcase the intended effects of permanent changes on an urban scale. The ephemeral and ceremonial could reveal the programmatic functions of such interventions as an articulation of the power of specific individuals or ruling groups. The ritual use of public space has been the subject of extensive scholarly attention,141From a vast field, key works remain Mitchell, 1979; Mitchell, 1986; Wisch and Scott Munshower, 1990; more recently, Watanabe-O’Kelly and Simon, 2000. For a specific consideration of ritual in relation to the fashioning of urban public space, see Ingersoll, 1985; for a wider discussion of urban rituals, see Muir, 1997. so here I shall focus on a specific series of events in 1462, during which Pope Pius II Piccolomini exploited the performative potential of streets by mounting triumphal entries that charted new routes through a number of recently reordered areas of central Italian cities.
This direct relationship between urban improvements and the articulation of authority is perhaps most clearly expressed in a remarkable passage from Pope Pius Il’s autobiography, in which he recorded a ceremony he had officiated in Viterbo for the feast Corpus Christi in the summer of 1462.142Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1595 ff.; see also Ady, 1913, p. 257. During the procession, which involved an elaborate pageant and set pieces in front a number of the cardinals’ residences in the city (described in further detail below), the pope, who led the procession bearing the monstrance containing the consecrated host, encountered a group close to the Borgia residence who asked him ‘Who is this pious king?’, to which he responded ‘The powerful Lord of the world.’143Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1600–02. The double entendre on the pope’s name and proclaimed piety, but even more so the response to it, in which a second play on words, eliding the pontiff’s title and the sacramental presence of Christ, was surely intended, offer a clear insight into the ideology of papal monarchy espoused by Pius II.144Prodi, 1982, pp. 922ff; Tafuri, 1984b, p. 56; additional details in Nevola, 2008. Here, the words proclaimed by the pope, as well as the route taken by the procession, which connected a series of locations that were subject to improvements commanded by him, expressed the absolutist ambitions of the pontiff.
Some months before the Viterbo Corpus Christi, the pope officiated an elaborate procession on 11–13 April 1462 to welcome into Rome the precious relic of the head of the Apostle St Andrew, secured from Thomas Palaeologus, the exiled Despot of the Morea.145For a detailed description, see Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1494–557 (Book VIII, chs 1–2); discussed in Antoniutti, 2006; Rubinstein, 1968. Documents in Müntz, 1878–82, vol. 1, pp. 285–97. Remarkably, the ceremonial observance and processional route followed for the relic, which had been brought from the Adriatic port of Ancona by Cardinal Bessarion, imitated that usually adopted for the ingressus, the entry of an emperor or other potentate into the city of Rome. As part of a three-day ceremony, the relic was first taken to a liminal site outside the city walls by the Ponte Milvio, on the via Flaminia, the northern route into the city; here the ceremonial encounter between the pope and the relic was staged on a dais, and later a chapel was erected on the site to commemorate the event. On the second day the relic was transferred within the city walls to the church close by the northern gate, Santa Maria del Popolo, where it rested for a day after the long journey. Finally, on the third day, a triumphal procession was staged through the city streets: the route first followed the southern bank of the Tiber (later the via di Ripetta), avoiding the city centre, and then, diving into the abitato, passed the Pantheon and Sant’Eustachio to join the via Papalis; after traversing the Campo dei Fiori, it went past San Lorenzo in Damaso to the Canale di Ponte, and ‘having crossed the bridge’, proceeded beyond Castel Sant’Angelo, ‘to reach St Peter’s along the via Sancta’.146Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1536.
By organising the reception of this precious relic as if it was an honoured guest, the pope ensured that the processional route was invested with visual significance, as citizens, cardinals, and the neighbourhood of Tuscan merchants and bankers around the Canale di Ponte vied for prominence through the lavish decorations they provided along the streets.147For a detailed account, see ibid., pp. 1534–41. Much was made of the final public spectacle, which took place on the newly improved piazza in front of St Peter’s basilica, but, in fact, the bulk of Pius’ account dwells on the collective effect of the ephemeral decorations and celebrations that marked the route.148Ibid., p. 1541; Rubinstein, 1968, p. 227 and n. 37, for documents regarding the piazza, ASR, Camerale 1: Fabbriche, 1503, fol. 71v (6 April 1462). Pius records that ‘at all the crossroads and along all the streets’ choirs sang and incense burned on temporary altars, which were decorated with sculptures and paintings brought out from private homes; meanwhile the grander houses of the elite were adorned with tapestries and other textiles hung from the windows.149Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1536. That there was ‘neither piazza nor street that did not offer spectacle’ is borne out by an account by the Sienese ambassador Agostino Dati, who reported that ‘for more than two miles the street was decorated with cloth, covered with fronds and flowers [. . .] the streets were ordered with spectacles, marvellous artifice and splendid ornament.’150First quotation, ibid., p. 1540; for Agostino Dati, see Nevola, 2008, pp. 185–6, Appendix document (ASS, Concistoro, 2003, fol. 37 (14 April 1462)). What stands out from the exceptionally long account that Pius provides in Book VIII of his Epistolae et commentarii is that while, of course, the focus of the celebrations was the relic of the head of St Andrew, the pope was the protagonist, leading the procession, delivering the orations and – after the solemn display of the relic on the high altar of St Peter’s basilica – taking up a position ‘where he could be seen by everyone’ to issue his blessing upon the assembled crowds.151Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1556. In this way, the procession forged a triumphal route through the city, which anticipated some of the new streets (such as the via di Ripetta) that were to take permanent form in the decades to follow, while linking together sites of particular significance (such as the cardinals’ residences and the banking district of the pope’s Tuscan supporters), thus celebrating the pope and his patronage network as much as the holy relic itself.
A few days later, the pope left Rome for the countryside and a rest cure at the thermal baths, before taking up residence in Viterbo in preparation for the feast of Corpus Christi (16 June). Interestingly, the pope’s account of these events begins by recording that in Viterbo ‘first of all [. . .] he commanded that the main street that leads from the castle to the cathedral [. . .] should be freed of all jetties and overhangs and returned to its original splendour’, highlighting that permanent urban change was set in motion to ensure that the ‘street would be restored to a standardised width’.152Ibid., p. 1597. Documentary evidence bears this out, as sundry payments were made by the papal chancery to residents along what was to be the ceremonial route for the Corpus Christi procession, between the papal residence in the fortified Rocca and the cathedral.153For more detailed discussion and a map, see Nevola, 2008, pp. 179–82; Valtieri, 1980, citing documents 27–8 from ASR, Camerale 1: Tesoreria Segreta (Entrata Uscita), 1288, fols 104–7 (1461–2); see also Pacciani, 1985, pp. 79–80. These payments were clearly intended to provide an incentive to facilitate the rapid transformation of the streets, in a strategy comparable to that deployed by the ornato officials in Siena, discussed earlier. While the incentives were paid to the property owners responsible for alterations to the buildings, it was the college of cardinals that stepped in to pay for significant ephemeral improvements along the route, as both the pope and the local chronicler Nicola della Tuccia reported: fifteen cardinals, as well as some of the city guilds, contributed to embellishing sections of the street with hangings and temporary displays, as well as staging a number of sacre rappresentazioni (a form of miracle play or holy tableau vivant).154For a detailed account of the procession and the stages along the route, see Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1597ff.; see also Nevola, 2008, pp. 179–82; Valtieri, 1980. For a contemporary account by chronicler Nicola della Tuccia, see della Tuccia 1872, pp. 84–7. It was at one such performance, played out on the lavishly decorated space in front of the residence of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, that the encounter described above, in which the pope proclaimed his identity as ‘Lord of the world’, occurred.
Just as we might understand the expensive decorative improvements paid for by the cardinals as, in some sense at least, an act of fealty to the pontiff, so the prevailing symbolism of the procession as ceremonial triumph was reinforced by numerous arches (‘arcus multiplices’) erected along the route, the grandest of which was placed in front of the cathedral.155Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1596; the street was lined with plants and its surface covered in flowers; see also della Tuccia, 1872, p. 86. It was on this square that the procession reached its climax, with an elaborate miracle play evoking Christ’s Resurrection enacted on a complex stage, observed from an open-air altar, before which the pope was seated on his throne flanked by the cardinals on benches, while a vast crowd of onlookers spilled out of the piazza onto an open field beyond.156Della Tuccia, 1872, pp. 86–7; Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1608. Following this spectacle, as the local chronicler Nicola della Tuccia reports, the pope entered the bishop’s palace, from which he blessed the multitude (estimated at an improbable 150,000 people), promising a plenary indulgence to all those present.157Della Tuccia, 1872, p. 87; Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1610. So, just as in the St Andrew’s procession in Rome, the processional route in Viterbo explicitly marked out the main street through the city as a ceremonial axis, chosen to stage a papal triumph in which Pius II was protagonist; again, the celebrations ended with the pope performing the act of blessing the multitude.
On 21 June, a few days after Corpus Christi, as signs of plague were reported in Viterbo, the pope and his entourage of cardinals left the city, travelling north, first to the lakeside town of Bolsena, then to Monte Amiata at Abbadia San Salvatore, where they might enjoy the cool of the mountain air.158Della Tuccia, 1872, p. 87, reports that the plague outburst had claimed 2,000 lives by Christmas. It was from there that, by means of a bull issued on 13 August, the pope raised the village where he had been born (Corsignano) to a city, the seat of a new diocese with a newly built cathedral, and renamed it Pienza, the city of Pius.159Chironi, 2009, p. 41. Land purchases and construction had already begun in autumn 1459, and by the summer of 1462 many of the principal buildings were nearing completion, so that when the court moved on to Pienza the final phases of the grandiose project were carried out under the watchful eye of the pontiff (fig. 36).160Adams, 1985; detailed accounts are preserved in the ASR, Tesoreria Vaticana, partially transcribed in Mack, 1987, pp. 180–89. ASR, Camerale 1: Tesoreria Segreta (Entrata Uscita), 1288. In elevating the village of his birth, and re-founding it through extensive architectural renewal, Pius also indulged a classical fantasy that chimed with his namesake, the pious Aeneas of Virgil’s epic, who also founded a new settlement that echoed his name.161Virgil, Aeneid, Book III, 18: ‘meo nomen de nomine fingo’. For a more developed discussion of the literary classical allusions of the Pienza project, see Nevola, 2005a. More simply, the classical magnificence of the new city was plain for all to see, so that the humanist scholar and antiquarian Flavio Biondo, visiting Pienza as part of the papal party that summer, noted that the Piccolomini pope resembled the Roman emperors Septimius Severus and Marcus Aurelius, who had renewed their own cities of Leptis Magna and Rome.162Clarke, 2003, p. 1; Mack, 1987, p. 167.
~
Description: Piazza del Duomo (now Piazza Pio II) by Rossellino, Bernardo
36. Piazza del Duomo (now piazza Pio II), Pienza, with the cathedral (left) and the Palazzo Piccolomini (right).
Pius followed his act of imperial patronage by co-opting other patrons to participate in the project; during the summer of 1462, the presence of many of the cardinals in the vicinity provided ample opportunity for the pope to exert pressure on a number of them to contribute to the grand building project.163For an account of the buildings of Pienza, see Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1745–71; for details of the cardinals involved as patrons, see ibid., p. 1770. Chironi, 2009, p. 43, has argued that the elevation of Pienza to a city and diocese, and the involvement of the cardinals are to be understood in the wider political context of Pius’ relations with Siena. Papal munificence funded a residence for the canons of the cathedral and a new city hall, as well as contributing to new houses for local residents, so that it could be plausibly claimed that ‘nowhere in the city maintained its original appearance.’164Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1770. Following the consecration of the cathedral in late August, as the summer heat dissipated, a special festival on 21 September marked the completion of the new town, before the papal circus moved on. To mark the feast day of the local patron saint, Matthew, the pope ordered a town fair and a day of races (palio) held along the new city’s streets, which was the last in this remarkable sequence of elaborate ceremonial events marking the spring and summer of 1462.165Ibid., pp. 1770–77. For the intentional intertextual echo of these actions with Virgil’s description of races to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Anchises (Aeneid, Book V), see van Heck, 1991.
The bucolic festivities at Pienza are again recounted in the pope’s autobiography, which underlines how his lavish generosity increased the resources for the festivities: new livery was provided for the local councillors, and valuable prizes offered for the races, including bolts of cloth for the winners of those competed on horseback, on donkeys and on foot, while the winner of the children’s running race was to be awarded a goose.166Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1772–3. Marquees were erected outside the city gates, and a rich meal was provided to the gathered locals and rustics, with thirty oxen and various other animals consumed at one sitting; there followed the fair with its stalls, and entertainments that culminated in the races along Pienza’s main street, described in some detail in an account that carefully records the prowess of those who won each race. In contrast to the urban ceremonials in Rome and Viterbo, however, the pope and cardinals kept an elevated distance. Pius’ account concludes with the statement that ‘the pope looked on from a very high window, in the company of his cardinals and not without pleasure, though not neglecting in the meantime to attend to the affairs of state.’167Ibid., p. 1776. So, then, we can interpret the urban renewal of Pienza as an act of papal bounty bestowed on the small centre as an expression of his elevated status, which in turn gave physical shape to the dynamics of patronage that revealed the dependence of a number of cardinals on the pope’s good will. For the festivities of St Matthew, however, the pope’s eminence raised him above the crowd of local participants and onlookers, the ‘very high window’ providing spatial articulation to the power relations in the small town.
If we review these three carefully choreographed events that took place between April and September 1462 during Pius Il’s pontificate, it is possible clearly to discern how the ceremonial and ritual use of public space revealed the underlying motives of urban-scale development and renewal during this period. On each of these occasions, a carefully chosen route through the city offered an opportunity to display and to view the papal interventions that had reordered city space, etching papal authority onto the urban streetscape and in some cases anticipating through temporary solutions what would become permanent built architecture. While by no means all urban rituals expressed centralised or authoritarian dynamics of power (as we shall see, for example, in the next chapter), it is clear that triumphal processions of various sorts were increasingly used during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a means of communicating power relationships in a way comparable to that expressed through the creation of new streets. Popes, emperors, local princes and rulers, as well as civic authorities, increasingly adopted ceremonial practices in which streets were not simply routes, but became vectors of meaning, expressive of the authorities that had created them.
 
1     Filarete, 1972, pp. 165–7 (Book VI). »
2     Welch, 1995, pp. 120ff. »
3     Beltramini, 2001. »
4     Filarete, 1972, pp. 165–7 (Book VI); Pierotti, 1995, p. 122. »
5     Kostof, 1992, pp. 245ff. »
6     Alberti, 1991, p. 106 (Book IV, ch. 5). The treatise was first presented to Pope Nicholas V in 1450, and subsequently went through various drafts before appearing in its first printed edition in 1486 (fourteen years after Alberti’s death). »
7     Ibid., pp. 261–2 (Book VIII, ch. 6). »
8     Kostof, 1991, pp. 43–52; ‘no city [. . .] can be said to be unplanned’ (p. 52). »
9     On the ‘ideal city’, see, for example, Sciolla, 1975; see also Calabi, 2001, pp. 115–27, for the parallels between the idealised plan of Sforzinda and Milan. »
10     Çelik, Favro and Ingersoll, 1994a, p. 5. »
11     For an introduction to how cities were described by outsiders, see the collected essays in Nevola, Bardati and Renzulli, 2012. »
12     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 412 (II.43). »
13     Ady, 1913, p. 169; cited in Burns, 1981, p. 28, though he attributes this opinion to the pope as opposed to the reluctant cardinals. See also Piccolomini, 1984, p. 428 (III.2). »
14     ASS, Concistoro, 1995, fol. 56 (Carteggio, 25 September 1459). These comments were intended to warn the Sienese of the need to prepare their city for the pope’s return, to ensure that it would compare well with Mantua. For an extensive discussion of the papal sojourn in Siena, see Nevola, 2006b. For discussion of the expenditure involved in hosting the council, see Chambers, 2003. »
15     As reported by Carlo Brugnolo (30 December 1460); quoted from Burns, 1981, p. 28; Burns, 1998, p. 163 n. 180. »
16     Burns, 1998, pp. 142–4. »
17     Calzona, 1991, pp. 3–38. »
18     Ibid., pp. 8–9 (referring to a letter of 1 April 1461 from Bartolomeo Bonatto); see also Chapter 4. »
19     Calzona, 1991, pp. 14–18, for the paving campaign 1460–61; and p. 18, for a letter (dated 30 May 1461, doc. 87) from Zohanfilippo da Concorezzo, owner of the richly decorated shop on the corner of piazza delle Erbe and piazza Mantegna. Expenses were subsidised by frontagers, as Zohanfilippo accepted these liabilities in the same letter. »
20     For the proposal that the church may have been built as a vote of thanks for the avoidance of any outbreaks of plague, see Burns, 1998, p. 145. »
21     Calzona, 1991, p. 19 and n. 76, 35. For the asse gonzaghesco, see also Carpeggiani, 1994, pp. 182–3. »
22     Ferlisi, 2002, p. 297; from ASMn, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 2395 (Antonio d’Arezzo to Ludovico II, 11 August 1461). »
23     For courtiers’ patronage, see Ferlisi, 2002. »
24     Calzona, 2003, p. 578. »
25     A valuable guide to inscriptions on buildings, which have been largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, is Signorini, 2010, p. 93. This inscription reads: ‘Super fundo a di(vo) L(odovico) Prin(cipe) Op(timo) dono dato [. . .] haec fecit fundamenta.’ »
26     For Arrivabene, see Signorini, 2010, pp. 46–7 (entry 21); on the palace, about which very little is known, see Chambers, 1984, esp. pp. 415–16. »
27     Signorini, 2010, p. 57. The inscription reads: ‘Invictissimo Francisco Gonzaga IIII altero Camillo imperante restituta [. . .]’ on behalf of the humanist Battista Fiera. »
28     Ibid., pp. 18–19, map; see further discussion in Chapter 5. »
29     Burns, 1981, p. 33, as reported by Francesco Contarini, 1588, cited in Alberi, 1841, p. 367. »
30     Alberti, 1991, p. 257 (Book V, ch. 5). »
31     Discussed further in Nevola, 2007, pp. 91–113. »
32     Donati, 2013. »
33     ASF, Mediceo Principato, 503, fol. 185 (Agnolo Niccolini to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, 19 January 1563/4). »
34     ASF, Mediceo Principato, 1871, fol. 84 (Agnolo Niccolini to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, 9 August 1565). »
35     ASF, Mediceo Principato, 219, fol. 267 (Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici [in Pietrasanta] to Agnolo Niccolini, 3 February 1563/4). »
36     Zdekauer, 1897, dist. III, rubric 47. For a selection of documents on the piazza del Campo, see Nevola, 2009b, pp. 261–4. For a more extended account of the longue durée civic policies for urban improvement, see Nevola, 2020. »
37     Balestracci and Piccinni, 1977, pp. 41ff., quoting the first statute collection, ASS, Viarii, 1, r. cxxii, fol. 23. For further discussion of the work of the office, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 13–18. »
38     Balestracci and Piccinni, 1977, p. 45, focuses on the improvement of the streets, citing ASS, Consiglio Generale, 160, fol. 37 (22 December 1357); see also Ciampoli and Szabó, 1992. »
39     Balestracci and Piccinni, 1977, p. 48, citing ASS, Consiglio Generale, 143, fol. 32 (23 October 1349). On citizens’ obligation to contribute to the enactment of public policy, see Bortolotti, 1983, pp. 43–6. »
40     For the renewed powers and duties of the viarii, see ASS, Statuto di Siena, 47, fol. 140 (23 September 1415); ASS, Statuto di Siena, 2, fol. 286r–v (17 February 1443/4): ASS, Consiglio Generale, 231, fol. 268 (9 March 1466/7). »
41     Nevola, 2007, pp. 51–3; see also Turrini, 1997, pp. 43–81. ASS, Biccherna, 1060, fol. 2r–v (18 April 1444) for the enabling legislation: the volume records over 200 derelict buildings identified in the period 1448–1500. »
42     Nevola, 2007, p. 51; Turrini, 1997, pp. 43–81. »
43     Numerous processions and visits to Siena are discussed in Nevola, 2007; Provedi, 1791, remains a valuable source. »
44     For extended discussion of the work of the ornato, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 91–145; see also Pertici, 1995. Hub, 2012, pp. 71–2, following Braunfels, 1951, pp. 40, 96–7, proposes precedents for such activity managed through the tax office of the Biccherna. »
45     ASS, Concistoro, 2125, fol. 39 (18 December 1465); for the office’s enabling legislation, see ASS, Statuto di Siena, 40, fol. 137 (11 October 1458); Nevola, 2007, pp. 98–100. »
46     For the demolition of overhangs, see ASS, Consiglio Generale (e.g. Deliberazioni, 231, fol. 100 (116), 26 March 1466). »
47     For a detailed treatment, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 91–145. »
48     For a table based only on documented cases in ASS, Concistoro, 2125, see Nevola, 2007, p. 209. Numerous other cases can be traced from the Consiglio Generale and other records. »
49     For additional evidence and examples, see Nevola, 2006a. »
50     Bocchi, 1993b; Corrain, 2013. »
51     Corrain, 2013, p. 374. »
52     Tuttle, 2011, pp. 22, 217–18, followed by Corrain, 2013, p. 375; see also Tamborrino, 1997, p. 425, with some differences of opinion from Tuttle’s chronology. »
53     Tuttle, 2011, p. 22, for the paving of the piazza, overseen by the papal legate Baldassare Cossa, whom Tuttle describes as taking a ‘conciliatory’ stance in relation to Bologna’s local government institutions. »
54     Ibid., p. 20, for Leonardo Malaspina’s use of ten iron gates (rastelli), erected at all openings to the piazza Maggiore, to create a Visconti citadel (22 June 1403). On chains and gates used to control movement in the city see Chapter 3. »
55     Ibid., p. 217, for frontagers’ contribution, and p. 23 for discussion of piazza Maggiore as a prototype for the use of porticoes to regularise the piazza; the loggia was later redeveloped as part of Vignola’s Loggia dei Banchi project (from 1565). See also Lotz, 1977; Schofield, 1992–3. »
56     Clarke, 1999, pp. 406–7; Tuttle, 2011, pp. 23–5. »
57     Clarke, 1999, p. 404, citing the chronicler Cherubino Ghirardacci. »
58     For an interpretation of the palace that plays down its seigneurial ambitions, see Clarke, 1999, pp. 402–3. For discussion of the Palazzo Strazzaroli at Porta Ravegnana as a built tribute to the Bentivoglio palace, see Tamborrino, 1997, pp. 421–5. »
59     Clarke, 1999, p. 405; Tamborrino, 1997, p. 424. »
60     As reported by Ghirardacci in 1492; Tuttle, 2011, p. 25. For the inscription on the portico describing Bentivoglio as ‘Senatus Bononiensis Princeps’, see also Clarke, 1999, pp. 401, 406. »
61     Clarke, 1999, p. 401. »
62     Tamborrino, 1997, p. 424. »
63     Tuttle, 2011, pp. 31–4. »
64     For imperial honours awarded by Emperor Maximilian, see Tuttle, 2011, pp. 26, 32. »
65     Ibid. Almost all traces of this intervention were lost with the widening of via Ugo Bassi in 1925–30, although it can be seen in early maps, such as that in the Sala Bologna (Biblioteca Comunale Archiginnasio, Bologna, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Raccolta piante e vedute della città di Bologna, Cartella 2, no. 18) or Mitelli, 1692. »
66     Tuttle, 2011, pp. 26, 32, citing an unnamed chronicler. »
67     Clarke, 1999, pp. 402–3, for the familial significance of the palace area, and pp. 409–11; for dynastic ambitions of later projects around piazza Maggiore, see also Tuttle, 2011, pp. 27–4. »
68     Corrain, 2013, p. 375, cites Pietro Lamo, Graticola di Bologna: gli edifice e le opera d’arte della città nel 1560. ed. G. Roversi (Bologna: Atesa, 1977), p. 40, describing the remodelling of the strada San Donato in Bologna near the Bentivoglio palace; Corrain, 2013, pp. 376 ff., gives many examples of visitors’ accounts of porticoes. »
69     Alberti, 1991, p. 263. See further discussion in Chapter 4. »
70     For Pietro Summonte’s 1524 account, quoted from Nicolini, 1925, see Hersey, 1969, pp. 94–5. »
71     The first full treatment of the Addizione is Zevi, 1997, whose principal thesis has been widely challenged – for example, in Folin, 1997; Tuohy, 1996. »
72     For earlier evidence of plans to extend the city, see Folin, 1997, p. 373; Tuohy, 1996, p. 124, describes Venetian occupation of these buildings in 1483 during the war with Ferrara. »
73     For a detailed treatment of the overall building campaign and a gazetteer of the numerous new buildings, see Tuohy, 1996, pp. 124–41, and gazetteer. »
74     No clear explanation has been put forward for the 1490 date on some versions of the print, which appears to contradict the chronology of the Addizione; the Biblioteca Estense dates the print to 1499, which matches more closely the standing architecture. »
75     Folin, 1997, pp. 364–7; Tuohy, 1996, pp. 53–62. »
76     For the chronicler Ugo Caleffini’s comments regarding the smell created by butchers and livestock, see Tuohy, 1996, p. 61; see also Folin, 1997, p. 365. »
77     The loggia was built in 1492–3, see Folin, 1997, p. 366. For further discussion of shops on the piazza, see Chapter 4. »
78     As emerges clearly from the examples above; for multiple examples, see also the essays collected in Calabi, 1997. »
79     Tuohy, 1996, pp. 129–33; Palazzo dei Diamanti was built for Sigismondo d’Este, an illegitimate son of one of the duke’s many brothers. The street was 16 metres wide, and included pavements on both sides; Adams and Nusssdorfer, 1994, p. 216. »
80     The distinction between participants in the project is made in Folin, 1997, p. 375–6; Tuohy, 1996, pp. 132–3. »
81     Discussed further in Chapter 6. »
82     Kehl, 1998, p. 251. For jousts and other activities, see Folin, 1997, pp. 374–5; for detailed construction phases of the piazza, see Tuohy, 1996, pp. 132–4, 339–41. »
83     For work on the column (1498–9), see Tuohy, 1996, pp. 340–41; for identification of the 1598 map view, see Folin, 1997, p. 376. The column that can be seen today was erected in the 17th century, and was topped with a sculpture of the poet Ariosto in 1833. »
84     Burckhardt, 1937, p. 27; Heydenreich, 1996, p. 120. »
85     Adams and Nussdorfer, 1994, p. 220. Parallels can be drawn with the renewal of Milan, discussed in Chapter 3. »
86     On the relation between city plan and the authority of rulers, see Adams, 1993, pp. 129–30. »
87     Such concerns are further explored in Chapter 3, which considers the function of city streets in the exercise of government authority and control, though the example of Ferrara shows that concerns with splendour and decorum were rarely divorced from the more practical concerns with trade and defence. »
88     For a summary, see Frommel, 1986; Tafuri, 1992, reveals the complexity of this process. »
89     Bull of 29 March 1425, Lanciani, 1975, vol. 1, pp. 11ff”; translation as quoted in Partridge, 1996, p. 19. »
90     Ait, 1991; Re, 1920; Verdi, 1997; the first archival volume, ASR, Presidenza di Strade, 1, is lost and hence Re’s account and documentary appendix are fundamental for the early history of the institution. »
91     Re, 1920, pp. 32–6, 46–9. »
92     For the changing city of Rome, see most recently McCahill, 2013; Partner, 1990. »
93     On these and other streets in the ceremonial life of Rome, see Fagiolo, 1997a, with numerous essays, including Fagiolo, 1997b; on the ritual and processional uses of streets, see Ingersoll, 1985. »
94     The issues of commerce, streets and palaces are considered in Chapter 4. Modigliani, 1998; Vaquero Piñeiro, 1999; Vaquero Piñeiro, 2007. »
95     Bisticci, 1970, p. 2; these comments apply to the period before Martin V, but particularly to Eugenius IV Condulmer’s troubled pontificate, during which he was absent from Rome for long periods of time. »
96     The main accounts of this process are Burroughs, 1990; Magnuson, 1958; Tafuri, 1992, pp. 33–50; Westfall, 1974. »
97     Fiore, 2005b; Frommel, 1986, p. 42; Tafuri, 1992, pp. 49–50, 62–7. Manetti’s account suggests a hierarchical arrangement of the streets, with the central one wider and intended for more elite residences. »
98     Rubinstein, 1968, p. 227 and n. 37 (documents in ASR, Camerale 1: Fabbriche, 1503, fol. 71v (6 April 1462)). For the stair, see also Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1541. »
99     From an extensive bibliography, see Adams, 1998; Mack, 1987. »
100     Frommel, 1998a, pp. 385–90. »
101     Benzi, 1990; various essays in Benzi, 2000, including Vaquero Piñeiro, 2000; Frommel, 1986, p. 48. »
102     Tafuri, 1992, p. 107 and n. 66, suggested that the original plans may have made the church the focus of the new street, the via Sistina, which cut from the Canale di Ponte to piazza Nicosia (Porto di Ripa Grande), a project that was completed only in the 16th century. For use of a version of this route in papal processions, see Nevola, 2008. »
103     Howe, 2005. »
104     Tafuri, 1992, p. 107; see also Tafuri, 1984b, p. 82. »
105     The Latin original is transcribed in Forcella, 1879, p. 54. »
106     Clarke, 2003, pp. 227–32; Weiss, 1969. »
107     This is a narrative thread running through Tafuri, 1984b, and Frommel, 1986. This chapter does not attempt a survey of all of Rome’s new streets, but a number are discussed elsewhere in this book. Some of the significant examples are: Sixtus IV, via Sistina and Lungaretta; Alexander VI, via Alessandrina; Julius II, via Giulia; Leo X, via Leonina (from 1513, Ripetta) and plans for piazza Navona; Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, via Baullari (planned 1515; executed 1535 by Farnese as Pope Paul III). »
108     A detailed analysis and documents are provided in Petrucci, 1997; p. 35 refers to the decision made in the Papal Consistory (26 November 1498). See also Ingersoll, 1985, pp. 146–8; Howe, 1992. »
109     Petrucci, 1997, pp. 35–6. »
110     Palazzo Soderini was complete by 1493 (see Lowe, 1991), while in 1496 Adriano Castellesi mentioned the ‘Via Alexandrina’ in a request for building materials (Petrucci, 1997, p. 35). »
111     For documents pertaining to improvements to the street before 1498, see appendix to Petrucci, 1997, pp. 73–6. »
112     Ibid., p. 40. Etsi universis, the papal bull of 1500, renewed many of the measures for palace patrons introduced by Sixtus IV; the street is further described in Fauno, 1548, p. 155. »
113     Bruschi, 1969, pp. 1040–46; Bruschi, 1989; Tafuri, 1984a; see also Petrucci, 1997, pp. 41–2. »
114     The military functions of street design are more closely examined in Chapter 3. »
115     For the future-proofing of street development projects, see Chapter 4. »
116     The authoritative account is Salerno, Spezzaferro and Tafuri, 1973; see also Butters and Pagliara, 2009. »
117     Tafuri, 1973, p. 67 (quotation from Egidius), and p. 56 (for the inscription affixed by the maestri di strada Domenico Massimo and Girolamo Pichi); for references to Livy in the inscription, see also Temple, 2011, pp. 34–5. »
118     This adjustment in the topographies of power in Rome is central to Salerno, Spezzaferro and Tafuri, 1973; for via Giulia as ‘asse urbano all’avanguardia’, see Tafuri, 1973, p. 77. »
119     Butters and Pagliara, 2009; Temple, 2011, ch. 3. For the wider conflicts of Julius with the Romani cives, see Burroughs, 1990; Cafà, 2010, pp. 442–3. »
120     Cafa, 2010, p. 442; Spezzaferro, 1973, pp. 61–2; Tafuri, 1973, pp. 71–3; Tafuri, 1984b. »
121     Detailed account in Tafuri, 1973, including pl. V (a valuable coloured chronological survey of the street, revealing how little of the architecture pre-dates 1527); and in catalogue entries forming Part II of Salerno, Spezzaferro and Tafuri, 1973. »
122     Altieri, 1873, p. 17; also cited in Spezzaferro, 1973, p. 59. For Altieri, see Kolsky, 1987. »
123     The specific context for Altieri’s comments was the refashioning of the street layout around via delle Botteghe Oscure, close to the Capitoline; see Spezzaferro, 1973, p. 59. »
124     These examples and others are discussed in Chapter 4. »
125     For additional examples of the zoning of butchers see Chapter 4; for prostitutes, see Chapter 3. »
126     For clearance of ‘beccherie’ under Francesco Sforza to create ‘un largo bello da vedere’, see Patetta, 1997, p. 61 (18 April 1448). »
127     1472, aimed at clearing the coperto dei Figini, as well as ordinances of 1457, 1466, 1471, 1490 and 1497; 30 July 1480, to remove overhanging structures described as ‘riati et foppe’; and 15 May 1493, concerning ‘lobie e baltresche’; ibid., p. 63. »
128     Chambers, 1976. »
129     Ibid., pp. 28 ff., 47–9, docs 9–12. »
130     Ibid., p. 48, doc. 11 (2 September 1462). »
131     For the planning ideals that underpinned the project, see Nevola, 2009a. »
132     Adams, 1985, pp. 103–5. »
133     Nevola, 2007, pp. 97–8; on the zoning of such trades, see also Chapter 4. »
134     For a detailed account, see Nevola, 2011a. »
135     Ibid., p. 431; Sigismondo Tizio, ‘Historiae Senenses’, BCS, Ms. B.3.12, fol. 584 (29 October 1513); also reported by Pecci, 1755, vol. 2, p. 27. »
136     Shaw, 2006, points out that the phrase ‘la terra se levarà’ was commonly used to refer to public uprisings. The earth may in part have been used to fill Siena’s cathedral crypt, recently removed to reveal frescoes and architecture; see Guerrini, 2003. For via del Capitano, see Nevola, 2007, pp. 178–84. »
137     Folin, 1997, p. 374. »
138     Tuohy, 1996, pp. 339–41. »
139     Folin, 1997, p. 376; Tuohy, 1996, p. 141, describes the extension of Ferrara as ‘autocratic’. »
140     Probing the tensions inherent in the dynamics of urban-scale patronage is fundamental to Tafuri’s work, including Tafuri, 1992. »
141     From a vast field, key works remain Mitchell, 1979; Mitchell, 1986; Wisch and Scott Munshower, 1990; more recently, Watanabe-O’Kelly and Simon, 2000. For a specific consideration of ritual in relation to the fashioning of urban public space, see Ingersoll, 1985; for a wider discussion of urban rituals, see Muir, 1997. »
142     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1595 ff.; see also Ady, 1913, p. 257. »
143     Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1600–02. »
144     Prodi, 1982, pp. 922ff; Tafuri, 1984b, p. 56; additional details in Nevola, 2008. »
145     For a detailed description, see Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1494–557 (Book VIII, chs 1–2); discussed in Antoniutti, 2006; Rubinstein, 1968. Documents in Müntz, 1878–82, vol. 1, pp. 285–97. »
146     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1536. »
147     For a detailed account, see ibid., pp. 1534–41. »
148     Ibid., p. 1541; Rubinstein, 1968, p. 227 and n. 37, for documents regarding the piazza, ASR, Camerale 1: Fabbriche, 1503, fol. 71v (6 April 1462). »
149     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1536. »
150     First quotation, ibid., p. 1540; for Agostino Dati, see Nevola, 2008, pp. 185–6, Appendix document (ASS, Concistoro, 2003, fol. 37 (14 April 1462)). »
151     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1556. »
152     Ibid., p. 1597. »
153     For more detailed discussion and a map, see Nevola, 2008, pp. 179–82; Valtieri, 1980, citing documents 27–8 from ASR, Camerale 1: Tesoreria Segreta (Entrata Uscita), 1288, fols 104–7 (1461–2); see also Pacciani, 1985, pp. 79–80. »
154     For a detailed account of the procession and the stages along the route, see Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1597ff.; see also Nevola, 2008, pp. 179–82; Valtieri, 1980. For a contemporary account by chronicler Nicola della Tuccia, see della Tuccia 1872, pp. 84–7. »
155     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1596; the street was lined with plants and its surface covered in flowers; see also della Tuccia, 1872, p. 86. »
156     Della Tuccia, 1872, pp. 86–7; Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1608. »
157     Della Tuccia, 1872, p. 87; Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1610. »
158     Della Tuccia, 1872, p. 87, reports that the plague outburst had claimed 2,000 lives by Christmas. »
159     Chironi, 2009, p. 41. »
160     Adams, 1985; detailed accounts are preserved in the ASR, Tesoreria Vaticana, partially transcribed in Mack, 1987, pp. 180–89. ASR, Camerale 1: Tesoreria Segreta (Entrata Uscita), 1288. »
161     Virgil, Aeneid, Book III, 18: ‘meo nomen de nomine fingo’. For a more developed discussion of the literary classical allusions of the Pienza project, see Nevola, 2005a. »
162     Clarke, 2003, p. 1; Mack, 1987, p. 167. »
163     For an account of the buildings of Pienza, see Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1745–71; for details of the cardinals involved as patrons, see ibid., p. 1770. Chironi, 2009, p. 43, has argued that the elevation of Pienza to a city and diocese, and the involvement of the cardinals are to be understood in the wider political context of Pius’ relations with Siena. »
164     Piccolomini, 1984, p. 1770. »
165     Ibid., pp. 1770–77. For the intentional intertextual echo of these actions with Virgil’s description of races to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Anchises (Aeneid, Book V), see van Heck, 1991. »
166     Piccolomini, 1984, pp. 1772–3. »
167     Ibid., p. 1776. »
Chapter 1. Planned Streets and Urban Renewal in Renaissance Italy
Previous chapter Next chapter