Tempio Malatestiano
Tempio Malatestiano | ||
---|---|---|
Year consecrated 800 | | |
Location | ||
Location | Rimini, Italy | |
Geographic coordinates | 44°03′35″N 12°34′13″E / 44.059624°N 12.570232°E | |
Architecture | ||
Architect(s) | Leon Battista Alberti | |
Type | Church | |
Style | Romanesque | |
Groundbreaking | 800 | |
Completed | 1468 (unfinished) |
The Tempio Malatestiano (Italian: Malatesta Temple) is the unfinished cathedral church of Rimini, Italy. Officially named for St. Francis, it takes the popular name from Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, who commissioned its reconstruction by the famous Renaissance theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti around 1450.[1]
History
San Francesco was originally a thirteenth-century
Malatesta called on Alberti, as his first ecclesiastical architectural work, to transform the building and make it into a kind of personal mausoleum for him and his lover and later his wife,
Works for the renovation of the nave began some five years before those of the exterior shell that encases the church.
Overview
The church is immediately recognizable from its wide marble façade, decorated by sculptures probably made by Agostino di Duccio and Matteo de' Pasti. Alberti aspired to renew and rival the Roman structures of antiquity, though here his inspiration was drawn from the triumphal arch,[3] in which his main inspiration was the tripartite Arch of Constantine in Rome. But as Rudolf Wittkower remarked,[4] he drew details (the base, the half-columns, the discs, moldings) from the Arch of Augustus. The large arcades on the sides are reminiscent of the Roman aqueducts. In each blind arch is a sarcophagus, a gothic tradition of interment under the exterior side arches of a church.[5]
The entrance portal has a triangular pediment over the door set within the center arch; geometrical decorations fill the
Immediately right of the main door is Sigismondo Pandolfo's sepulchre. The next chapel is dedicated to
The next chapel is the Cappella dei Pianeti ("Chapel of the Planets"), dedicated to
The bodies of some of Malatesta's ancestors are housed in the Cappella della Pietà, with two statues of prophets and ten of sibyls. The chapel, like numerous other places in the church, is characterized by the presence of the SI monogram (from the initial of Sigismondo and Isotta's names, or, according to others, the first two letters of the former) sporting a rose, an elephant and three heads.
Evaluation
Due to the strong presence of elements referring to the Malatesta's history, and to Sigismondo Pandolfo himself (in particular, his lover Isotta), the church was considered by some contemporaries to be an exaltation of Paganism. Pope Pius II, Sigismondo's deadliest enemy, declared it as "full of pagan gods and profane things".[6]
Destruction and restoration
The church was heavily damaged during
Sources
- Cricco, Giorgio; Francesco P. Di Teodoro (1996). Itinerario nell'arte. Bologna: Zanichelli. pp. 327–328.
References
- ^ Corrado Ricci, Il Tempio Malatestiano (Milan) 1924, remains the standard monograph, supplemented by Cesare Brandi, Il Tempio Malatestiano (Turin) 1956. Sigismondo had begun modestly, with two chapels added to the interior, 1447-49.
- ^ Delucca, Oreste (24 October 2012). "I 200 anni del nostro camposanto" [The 200 years of our cemetery]. Rimini Sparita (in Italian). Retrieved 14 January 2024.
- Basilica di Sant'Andrea in Mantua.
- ^ Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of humanism (1962) 1965:37 note 3.
- ^ As Ricci pointed out, Ricci 1924:281ff.
- ^ "Diocesi di Rimini - Annuario". Archived from the original on 2007-03-13. Retrieved 2006-10-21.
- ^ How the Monuments Men Saved Italy's Treasures Smithsonian magazine