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Evolution of the Design of Orvieto Cathedral, Ca. 1290-1310 Author(S): David M

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Evolution of the Design of Orvieto Cathedral, Ca. 1290-1310 Author(S): David M The Evolution of the Design of Orvieto Cathedral, ca. 1290-1310 Author(s): David M. Gillerman Source: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 53, No. 3, (Sep., 1994), pp. 300-321 Published by: Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990939 Accessed: 27/04/2008 11:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sah. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org The Evolution of the Design of Orvieto Cathedral, ca. 1290- 1310 DAVID M. GILLERMAN Providence College This paperfocuses on the choir,transepts, and nave of the cathedralof scholarly literature as resulting from a decisive change in the Orvieto.This earlypart of thecathedral is generallyassumed to havebeen artisticleadership at the Duomo.2 executedin a singleuninterrupted campaign of constructionlasting from In this paperI will dispute the acceptedwisdom on the Duomo 1290 untilabout 1308. Duringthis time the builders are thought to have of Orvieto. First I will advancean explanationof the placement of followeda predeterminedmaster plan. The elegantlate Gothicfacade is the side chapels based on reasonable assumptions regarding the usuallysupposed to havebeen started about 1310 as a completelyseparate Orvietans'formal ambitions.3Then I will suggest that the design projectby a new architect,Lorenzo Maitani. Based primarily on visual of the early parts of the building evolved during the course of analysisof thefabric, this essaychallenges some of theseassumptions, construction. I will also briefly explore the implications of these suggestingthat the design for thechoir, transepts, and naveevolved during changes for the cathedral'siconography. Finally, I will try to show the courseof constructionand that the architectand the sculptorswho that the laterparts of the nave are much more closely linked to the facadethan completedthe nave probably had a handin thedesign and executionof the has generallybeen assumed. that while construction facade. My analysissuggests proceeded swiftly and perhaps even without major interruptions, nevertheless the design evolved as constructionprogressed. There were apparently BECAUSE THE DUOMO OF ORVIETO (Figs. 1-4) has escaped three distinct phases in the evolution of the building's design, the kind of close that scholars have devoted to the analysis each of which contributed its own distinctive forms to the final cathedralsof Florence and Siena, it remains the least understood building. During phase one, the original choir, the transepts,and of these three important central Italian Gothic cathedrals.Earlier first pair of nave piers took shape. During phase two, the second historians have assumed the existence of a master plan for the and third pairs of nave piers were completed, but according to a Orvieto Duomo that guided construction of the choir, transepts, design different from the one laid out during phase one. Phase and nave from the founding in 1290 until the completion of the three saw the completion of the last three nave bays and a further nave in about 1308.1 In their critical assessments, these historians modification of the design of the nave. Phases one and two have held these early parts of the building to be a work of probably took place under the direction of a single architect, a exceptional artistic cohesiveness, while nevertheless excusing as local master,perhaps, whose aim was apparentlyto bring the local refinements such jarring incongruities in the as the plan displace- building traditionsinto step with developments in late-thirteenth- ment of the side chapels from the transverseaxes of the At bays. century Siena. Phase three reveals the hand of another designer, the same the obvious time, stylistic breakbetween the bold, nearly whose fondness for delicate Gothic forms contrastswith the more Romanesque forms of the nave of the cathedraland the delicate robust tastesof the first architect.The change is reflected only in a Gothic aspect of the facade is in the regularly represented stylistic change in the nave capitals, but it is a significant one nonetheless. Both in detail and in spirit, the new capitals are so close to the style of the Orvieto facadeas to allow me to speculate My researchon the cathedralof Orvietohas been supportedby the that this second architect was the same one who designed the American Academyin Romeand the GettyGrant Program. For help in faSade. preparingthis paper,I am gratefulto KatherineJ. Gill and Marvin Trachtenberg.Unless otherwise specified, all translations are my own. 1. Renato Bonelli, II Duomo di Orvietoe l'architetturaitaliana del duecento trecento,2d ed. (Rome,1972), 61, is especiallyinsistent on this point:"II 2. For example, Bonelli, II Duomo,48. Duomo e veramenteun bloccounitario, sorto di gettoe in brevetempo, 3. The Duomoof Orvietohas been a magnetofformalist criticism; see seguendosempre a fedelmentelo stessopiano." Subsequent authors have especially Bonelli, II Duomo, 34-45; and Angiola Maria Romanini, acceptedthis view, for example,Enzo Carli,II Duomodi Orvieto(Rome, "Arnolfodi Cambio e I'architetturadel Duomo di Orvieto," in Storiae arte 1965), 9; John White, Art and Architecturein Italy 1250-1400, 2d ed. in Umbrianell'eta communale, Atti del VI convegnodi studi umbri (Gubbio: (Harmondsworth,1989), 47-51. 26-30 May 1968), 2 vols. (Perugia, 1971), 1:43-72. 300 JSAH 53:300-321, SEPTEMBER 1994 GILLERMAN: DESIGN OF ORVIETO CATHEDRAL 301 Fig. 1. Cathedral,Orvieto, ca. 1290-1308, interior. (Author) Design phase one walls with three pairs of massive buttresses. A document of 1310 in which Maitani is citizenship and is made Few records survive for the earliest phases of construction.4 granted capomaestro refers to these events retrospectively.7 It also suggests that he had Local chronicles recount the laying of the foundation stone by by then completed the buttresses. However, while the document Nicholas IV on 13 November 1290 and the setting in place of the also notes that work on the in it no first roof beam in 1310.5 Construction of the choir and nave is began faSade 1310, gives indication of when the crisis occurred or how long Maitani had usually supposed to have proceeded smoothly from 1290 until been in Orvieto that time.8 This means that the date of 1308 as about 1308, when, as the nave was nearing completion, a crisis by the completion date of the nave is a guess and no more, based on occurred.6 Apparently, the Opera, the office of works, began to the unproven assumption that prior to 1310 Maitani's activities have doubts about the choir's ability to support the projected rib were confined to the buttressing of the choir, a job scholars vaults. The danger of collapse was felt to be so severe that a new estimate as about two architect, Lorenzo Maitani, was summoned to fortify the choir having required years.9 Maitani's buttresses were the first of a series of fourteenth- 4. Known records of a discussion to build a new cathedralchurch in century alterations to the original layout of the cathedral. When Orvieto date no earlier than 1284, and a dispute between the bishop and the cathedralcannons delayed the beginning of construction another six years.Carli's analysis of these events, IIDuomo (see n. 1), 1-2, leads him to 7. The document is published by Fumi, II Duomo, 21; for the best the conclusion that the plan of the building was established as early as analysis,see John White, "The Reliefs of the Facade of the Cathedralof 1284-85. Orvieto,"Journalof the Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes 22 (1959): 260-64. 5. For 1290 and 1310 see Luigi Fumi, ed., EphemeridesUrbevetanae, 8. White, "The Reliefs," 261-64. We know almost nothing else about Rerum ItalicarumScriptores, tome xv, part v (Citta di Castello, 1903-), the progress of work before 1321, the beginning date of the Opera's 162, 175. For additionalearly sources, see Luigi Fumi, II Duomodi Orvieto earliest surviving account books. The largest selection of documents for e i suoi restauri(Rome, 1891), 175-77; see also Marilena Rossi Caponieri, the entire period of constructionwas published by Fumi, II Duomo(see n. "Il duomo e l'attivitaedilizia dei Signori Sette (1295-1313)," in Lucio 5). For a discussion of the accountbooks see Lucio Ricetti, "LaBanca Dati Ricetti, ed., II duomodi Orvieto(Bari, 1988), 29-80. del Duomo di Orvieto. Considerazioni e prospettive,"Architettura Storia e 6. For the construction history of choir, nave, and transepts,see Fumi, Documenti1-2 (1989): 41-43. II Duomo,5-9; and Bonelli, II Duomo (see n. 1), 26-32. 9. As noted by White, "The Reliefs,"261. 302 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER1994 Fig. 2. Cathedral,Orvieto, ca. 1290-1308, south flank. The earlytrecento buttressescan be seen embedded in the transeptwall at the right. (Author) newly built, the choir was semicircularin plan, and the transepts opposed the projectbecause it threatenedsome of their property did not extend beyond the side aisles (Fig.
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