A small hill town in Tuscany, province of Siena, Pienza is a deliberate experiment of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, of the transformation of a medieval village into a so-called ideal city, at least formally speaking. Mainly, such a metamorphosis was commissioned to the architect Bernardo di Matteo Gambardelli nicknamed Rossellino, between 1458 and 1462. In his 1987 book “Pienza: The Creation of a Renaissance City”, the American art historian Charles R. Mack wrote this intriguing parallelism: «The town is a Renaissance Williamsburg, without the artificiality of restoration.»
Really, is it so? Indeed, some artifice seems plausible, in the Pienza of the time as well as in the characteristic New York neighbourhood of today. Ultimately, an architectural mind doesn't change that much, even across the centuries. For instance, let's look at the photos below on the right, portraying the Cathedral in the celebrated main square of Pienza, seen from the outside and inside respectively. Now, it's evident: the façade and its context represent the perfection of a Renaissance classicist, symmetrical and perspective style.
Yet, as soon as our gaze penetrates into the church, what appears before our eyes is one of the purest interiors created in a late Gothic style, including the large ogival window of the apse, which by the way is one of the most daring constructions of the same genre. Perhaps, then, the whole jewel of Pienza isn't just an episode of cultural transition to an early Modernity, but also a composite, nostalgic and touching farewell to the deep sacred or even magical Middle Ages.
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