Gothic in Monza
For gothic in Monza we mean the artistic experience of the city between the end of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth century. In this period the city, which was still affected by the importance given by being the capital of the Lombard kingdom, was subject to important works by the Visconti, lords of Milan, aimed at asserting their power over the city of Monza and suggesting their continuity with the reign of Queen Theodolinda. After passing this first phase of artistic splendor, the city of Monza lost importance over time to make room for the capital of the duchy.
Religious buildings
Duomo
The most important work of the Gothic period in Monza is certainly the cathedral of Monza, built from the early years of the ‘300 in place of the church of San Giovanni Battista, private chapel of the royal family under the Lombard kingdom, whose construction was promoted at the time by Queen Teodolinda. The construction of the new cathedral, decided by the city chapter and the Municipality, was strongly desired by the Visconti family, recently lords of Milan, interested in asserting their power over what was the main center of the Milanese countryside and suggesting a continuity between its dominion and the Longobard one .
The salient façade, carried out on a project by Matteo da Campione, one of the greatest masters of the area, was probably taken up again by the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Milan, and is divided into five vertical sections that correspond to the interior corridors.. The two-color facing, initially made of alternating white and black marbles, was then replaced with white and green marbles during the nineteenth-century restorations. The only access point to the church is the portal of the central nave, preceded by a porchwith a round arch, with the lunette decorated with statues depicting various saints in addition to Queen Teodolinda, placed on a base with Roman statues dating back to the II century . Above the protiro is a copy of the fourteenth-century statue of St. John the Baptist, currently housed in the Cathedral Museum, and a rosette inscribed in a square composed of decorated panels: above it there is a sculptural work in checkerboard that takes up the framing square to formelle of the rose window, a solution probably borrowed from the Tuscan models imported by Giovanni di Balduccio. The decoration ends with newsstands, with canopy at cusp, placed on top of the buttresses containing statues of saints .
In the interior, deeply reworked in later eras, there is however the pulpit made by Matteo da Campione, later modified in the 18th century, of which the fourteen niches with Saints and the Cristo Giudice on the little bed are still preserved .
Among the surviving pictorial decoration of the fourteenth century, we can mention the frescoes of the Passion of Christ in the old sacristy, executed by a painter from the circle of the so-called Masters of Chiaravalle, Lombard painters with marked Giotto influences . Next is the cycle of frescoes of the Stories of the Virgin and of the Passion of Christ dating back to the beginning of the fifteenth century : originally in the chapel of the Rosary, they were removed in the nineteenth century and placed in the sacristy. The cycle, attributed to Michelino da Besozzo, owes its realization to a direct commission of the duke Filippo Maria Visconti, as evidenced by the rich floral decorations with gold background .
Separate mention should be made of the fresco cycle of the workshop of the Zavattari for the Teodolinda chapel, one of the most important pictorial cycles of Italian Gothic, performed in the first half of the fifteenth century . The chapel includes a cycle of 45 episodes arranged on five horizontal registers, which narrate episodes of the life of Queen Teodolinda taken from the works of Bonincontro Morigia and Paolo Diacono . From the first to the twenty-first scene the cycle narrates the marriage of the queen with Autari, the fourth register the death of the latter and the second marriage with Agilulfo, to end with the last scenes of the expedition to Italy of Constant II and the consequent victory of the Longobards . The whole work, although performed by several hands, shows a co-ordinated execution by a certain stylistic unity: in all the frescoes the decoration of the background is not performed representing natural landscapes, but with golden tablet decorations and plastic insertions in correspondence of the elements architectural .
Other churches
Another important Gothic church is the church of Santa Maria in Strada, built starting in 1348, famous for its rich terracotta decoration. The façade presents a hut bordered by two buttresses, divided into four horizontal bands. The ground floor has an ogival portal decorated in terracotta, while the second floor presents the edible brickwork with trilobed arches, motif taken in the mullioned windows on the upper floor next to the rose window: both the rose window and the two-light windows are framed in decorative terracotta tiles taken from the decoration of the city cathedral. On the top of the façade we find a kiosk containing a statue of theMadonna and child from the school of Jacopino da Tradate .
In the belfry there are remains of a fresco of the Crucifixion that recalls the manner of the frescoes of the counter-façade of the church of San Cristoforo sul Naviglio on the canal, which together with fragments of an ‘ Annunciation, was dated just before the beginning of the fifteenth century .
From the simplest architecture, derived from the sober Cistercian Gothic style, the church of San Pietro Martire : the salient façade appears in terracotta, with a trifora as the only decoration. On the right side there is an entrance to the church a porch with a round arch with a pitched roof. The interior has a rectangular plan and is divided into three naves with cylindrical pillars: definitely altered in appearance by subsequent interventions, presents traces of fourteenth-century frescoes, such as the Stories of St. Peter Martyr, similar style to the so-called Master of Lentate, author of the frescoes of the Oratory of Santo Stefano di Lentate sul Seveso, and above all the painting of the Virgin announced with the saints Ambrogio and Domenico realized by a painter from the circle of Giovanni da Milano .
Civil and military buildings
The civil work of the surviving monzish gothic period is certainly the arengario, built on the model of the new Broletto di Milano, which follows the longitudinal layout and the lower porticoed floor with the great chapter room on the upper floor . The ground floor has a portico with pointed arches on three sides with rectangular pillars and has a rectangular plan divided into two longitudinal naves. On the upper floor there is the room used once for public meetings, lit by mullioned windows and mullioned windows with rounded arches corresponding to the spans on the lower floor. Particularity of the monzese arganarium is the bell tower that ends with Ghibelline battlements, built to compensate for the lack of an adequate bell tower of the cathedral .
In the fourteenth century the city walls were reinforced: the major work was certainly the construction of the Visconti castle, which had to look like architecture at the castle of Trezzo d’Adda: the imposing city defense system, today only the New Bridge, built in stone on three arches, one of which is now buried, and the Viscontea tower, built on the remains of the castle using some elements. Among the ancient city gates you can mention the Teodolinda tower, used as a passage to collect the duty for goods entering the city from the river Lambro, made of terracotta with single and double-pointed mullioned windows and mullioned windows.
Another name “false” (the buildings built in the Gothic era can not have any relation with the Queen Teodolinda) is the “house of the Queen Teodolinda”, the house of the Gualtieri : among the few private houses of the Gothic period in the city was made of terracotta and serizzo, in which the profiles of the original single- lancet windows emerge, despite the numerous alterations.
Source from Wikipedia