Romanesque in Pisa

The Pisan Romanesque style is the Romanesque architectural style that developed in Pisa and was exported to a vast area of influence at the time when it was a powerful Maritime Republic, from the second half of the eleventh to the first of the thirteenth century.

The Pisan Romanesque culture was formed in the building sites of Piazza del Duomo and from there it radiated to other city projects, to the territories controlled by the Republic of Pisa (including Corsica and Sardinia) and to Tuscany, especially the northern belt from Lucca to Pistoia.

Architecture

Pisa, the Piazza del Duomo
The Primaziale of Pisa is one of the most admirable medieval buildings in Europe: it is an extraordinary construction for the size and whiteness of its marble surfaces, enhanced by the surrounding grassy area where also the Baptistery, the bell tower and the Campo Santo.

Among these, the first realization was the Duomo, the largest Romanesque church in Tuscany; started in 1063 – 1064 by Buscheto and continued by Rainaldo, it was consecrated in 1118. It is a building with five naves with a large apsidal transept with three naves that is inserted into the main body at an elliptical dome.

On the outside the decorative apparatus is substantially uniform and consists of a series of blind arches on several levels where recessed rhomboidal elements alternate, typical of the Pisan Romanesque and derived from North-African Islamic models (for example from Tunisia or Egypt); in the apse and on the façade the arches instead acquire depth, forming tunnels shielded by slender columns. The Rainaldo façade was created taking its cue from the hanging loggia already used in Lombard architecture (Sant’Ambrogio di Milano, San Michele Maggiore di Pavia…) and multiplying the application to use them to completely cover the upper part of the elevation, through four orders, which greatly lighten the surface.

The interior, flattened by a sixteenth-century coffered ceiling that replaces the original theory of exposed trusses, is characterized by a succession of columns on which the matroneis are set, which overlook the central nave by means of mullioned windows. It strikes the structure at the intersection of the transept with the longitudinal body: unlike other European churches, here the space is closed by the rhythm of the columns and matronei that, by means of a sort of bridge, separate the side bodies from the main nave, giving the transept almost the function of a separate church.

As in Venice, the Pisan architecture was therefore influenced by that Constantinople and Byzantine in general, due to the flourishing commercial routes of Pisa, which favored cultural exchanges with other areas of the Mediterranean. In fact, at first the Cathedral was similar to a Greek cross (you can still see stones of different colors in the external side of the aisle in correspondence to the addition of the mid- twelfth century) and other Byzantine elements are the matroneis and the crowned dome bulb, placed in the ” Lombard ” way”at the crossroads of the arms, even more than in Venice, the oriental elements were reinterpreted according to Western taste, arriving at artistic forms of considerable originality, for example the configuration of the interior has a typically early Christian spatiality.

The decorative scheme of the cathedral was repeated both in the bell tower (the famous Leaning Tower, begun in 1173), and in the Baptistery (begun in 1153), at least for what concerns the first ring, having been completed in later times (during the XIV century), changing the original design, attributed to Diotisalvi, with elements of Gothic tradition.

Another typical feature of the Pisan Romanesque is the use of two colors alternating bands of white marble with bands of darker stones, derived from models of Muslim Spain : in the cathedral of Pisa the contrast with the light gray of the verrucano is very slight, while in other areas were used dark green serpentine marble (in Pistoia) or other petrographic typologies (in Sardinia and in Corsica) obtaining a vibrant architectural embroidery.

Other Pisan churches
In Pisa, the building activity during the golden age of the Republic between the eleventh and twelfth centuries was very remarkable. Many churches therefore present the characters of the new style, with the use of the arches, churches decorated with lozenges and, in the most valuable cases, even the hanging loggia on the façade. The most important example after the Piazza del Duomo is the Old Cathedral of San Paolo a Ripa d’Arno, rebuilt between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, where the façade looks like a small copy of that of the Cathedral, but also the plan (three naves with a wide transept) and the dome are a faithful quotation.

Other examples of value are the ancient basilica of San Pietro Apostolo, the church of San Frediano in gray verrucana stone, the church of San Pietro in Vinculis, the church of San Paolo all’Orto, the church of San Michele degli Scalzi, the Abbey of San Zeno and the bell tower of the church of San Nicola. In the Pisan area there is for example the Parish Church of San Giovanni and Santa Maria Assunta in Càscina. Later on, the church of San Michele in Borgo, with its white marble façade with loggias, or the Church of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria, with a gabled façade, which testify to the persistence of style, although with updates, even in the Gothic period.

Tuscany
In Pistoia, the church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas (XII century) presents a vestment with blind arches, columns and lozenges typically Pisan, highlighted by the clear two-tone between white and dark green marble (serpentine).

An evolution of the Pisan models took place in Lucca, but not in the Basilica of San Frediano or in the church of Sant’Alessandro, two classicist architectures with a typically Lucchese style, but in the Cathedral of San Martino (completed in 1205 by the maestro Comasco Guidetto and redone inside in gothic style) and above all in the church of San Michele in Foro, where the high façade decorated by loggias extends far beyond the nave, as a symbolic setting which does not correspond to an equally vast external and internal architecture.

Proceeding towards the east (Pistoia and then Prato), the Pisan style evolved further, with a greater accentuation of the two colors, favored by the local presence of the dark green marble of Prato). In the Duomo and in the Baptistery of Pistoia and in the Duomo of Prato, characterized by an evident striped exterior, the Gothic elements blend with the Romanesque ones.

Pisan influences are also evident in the Cathedral of Massa Marittima. In the mid-twelfth century Pisan influences were also reported in Arezzo, at the church of Santa Maria della Pieve, where the apse and the façade have a series of loggias on small columns.

Other areas
In Sardinia there is often an encounter between the Tuscan and the Lombard ways, as in the Basilica of San Gavino in Porto Torres (1065 – 1080), in the church of San Nicola di Silanis in Sedini (SS) (before 1122), in the original Cathedral of Cagliari (remodeled over the centuries and equipped with a neo-Romanesque façade in the twentieth century) or in the church of Santa Maria a Uta (late 12th-early 13th century), characterized by pilasters and hanging arches in the external facing.

The fourteenth-century fortifications of the city of Cagliari are also of clear Pisan origin, with impressive towers such as the Tower of San Pancrazio and the Tower of the Elephant, and the church of San Nicola di Ottana (NU); while very close to the taste of Pistoia are the Cathedral of San Pietro di Sorres and the church of the Holy Trinity of Saccargia (XII century), characterized by the strong two-color of the wall hangings. Other important architectures are the palatine chapel of Santa Maria del Regno di Ardara (SS), the Bisarcio Cathedral in the municipality of Ozieri (SS), the Basilica of San Simplicio in Olbia, the Cathedral of Santa Giusta of the homonymous center (OR).

Pisan influences were also found in Liguria (Commenda di San Giovanni di Pré), in Corsica and in southern Italy, for example in the Cathedral of Troia, in Siponto, in the Cathedral of Benevento, in the Cathedral of Termoli and in Corsica in the Cathedral of Lucciana called the Canonica and the Bell Tower of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bonifacio.

Sculpture
The Pisan sculptor school was born in Pisa to the Cathedral’s building sites and later spread to neighboring areas and thanks to the thick commercial relations of the Pisan Republic.

Maestro Guglielmo sculpted between 1152 and 1162 the pulpit for the Cathedral of Pisa, then transported to Cagliari and now preserved in the Cathedral of Cagliari, where Lombard and Provençal influences can be found (in the drapery, in the lively narration), with a strong plastic relief of the characters, which are clearly separated from the background of the arabesque.

Guglielmo was inspired by the brothers Gruamonte and Adeodato, who with Enrico sculpted the architrave of the main portal of the church of Sant’Andrea in Pistoia (Cavalcata and adoration of the Magi, 1166), while Gruamonte alone sculpted the architrave of the church of San Bartolomeo in Pantano (1167) and of the church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas.

At Gruamonte, Biduino, inspired by the Gospel episodes for the church of San Casciano a Settimo near Pisa (1180), was inspired by it.

Towards 1180 Bonanno Pisano merged the bronze doors for the cathedral of Pisa, destroyed in a fire that involved the facade in 1595, but the door was saved on the back of the right transept called San Ranieri, with Stories of the life of Christ. in his work we can identify classical influences (the rosettes and the strings around the panels), Rhenan (the figures with their heads particularly protruding, as in Hildesheim) and Byzantines (in the iconography).

Another important author was Roberto, author of the Stories of Moses in the baptismal font of the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca.

On the work of these masters, in the XIII century, Nicola Pisano’s activity was grafted, perhaps of southern formation, which led to the complete renewal of Tuscan and Italian sculpture.

Source from Wikipedia