the madonna delle carceri in prato and italian renaissance pilgrimage architecture

SAHGB Publications Limited

The Madonna delle Carceri in Prato and Italian Renaissance Pilgrimage ArchitectureAuthor(s): Paul DaviesSource: Architectural History, Vol. 36 (1993), pp. 1-18Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568580 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 20:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

SAHGB Publications Limited is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toArchitectural History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.109 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 20:46:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sahgb

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568580?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Madonna delle Carceri in

Prato and Italian Renaissance

pilgrimage architecture by PAUL DAVIES

I shall deal first of all with private houses, and then with public buildings; and I shall briefly discuss roads, bridges, squares, prisons, basilicas which are places ofjudgement, xisti andpalestre which were places where men took exercise, temples, theatres, amphitheatres, arches, baths, aqueducts, and finally the way to fortify cities and ports. (Palladio, Quattro Libri, Preface, 1570)

Architectural theorists from Alberti to Palladio thought about architecture typo- logically. For them buildings were identified principally by their function rather than their form. This way of categorizing architecture has long been recognized by scholars and it has been profitably applied to the study of Italian fifteenth- and sixteenth-century architecture, especially that of villas and palaces. And yet the church, together with its

typological subdivisions, such as the oratory, the monastic church, and the pilgrimage church, has remained relatively neglected. As a consequence many aspects of the design of individual churches have been ignored or misunderstood. One example is the church of the Madonna delle Carceri in Prato (Figs I and 2). It has generally been discussed either as one of the most beautiful of fifteenth-century centralized churches, or as part of an attempt to characterize the style of its Florentine architect, Giuliano da Sangallo. Although these approaches have revealed much about how the Madonna delle Car- ceri's design came into being, when the building is seen from a different perspective, that of its function as a pilgrimage church, it becomes easier to explain aspects of its form, and to suggest alternative models for its design.2

Like most pilgrimage churches built in fifteenth-century Italy, the Madonna delle Carceri was built to house a miracle-working image of the Virgin Mary.3 The cult owed its origin to the vision ofJacopino d'Antonio di Sertingo Lapovera, a young boy who, while chasing a cricket on some waste ground next to Prato's thirteenth-century castle on 6July 1484, saw the Virgin emerge from her image frescoed on the wall of a disused prison and vanish into the prison's subterranean vaults.4 News of this miracle spread rapidly and fostered a cult which drew devotees not only from Prato and its surrounding villages but from all over Tuscany.s Pilgrims flocked to see the image by night and day in the hope of benefiting from or witnessing further miracles, and they were not disappointed.

Once the miracle had been authenticated by Giovanni Celmi, the vicar of the Bishop of Pistoia, the civic authorities petitioned Pope Sixtus IV to erect a building on the site



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 36: I993

. .. ,'

i | I: .

' .+ .. X P

"- S'.S_

Ii-

4 :

Fig. i. Prato, S. Maria delle Carceri, plan taken from Bardazzi, S. Maria delle Carceri (1978)

Fig. 2. S. Maria delle Carceri

Fig. 3. Mantua, S. Sebastiano, plan takenfrom Borsi, Disegni (1975)

2



THE MADONNA DELLE CARCERI IN PRATO

and to act as patron of the cult.6 Permission was duly granted and sometime during the

following winter the Comune published a competition for the design of the church.

By 20 April 1485 several projects had been submitted and a committee appointed by the Comune selected Giuliano da Maiano's design. Building work began imme-

diately and was sufficiently well advanced by 26 April for the foundation stone to be laid. During the course of the summer, for reasons which are unclear, work on the church was suspended and Lorenzo de' Medici was invited by the Comune to select a new design.7 The one he chose was by Giuliano da Sangallo and on 9 October 1485 Sangallo signed a contract with the Comune agreeing to build the church to this new

design.8 The scheme chosen by Lorenzo de' Medici is the simplest of all Greek cross types.

From the square crossing protrude four arms. Each has the same width as the crossing (20 braccia) and a depth equal to the dome's radius (Io braccia).9 Thus from the outside the building is all arm; the crossing is entirely enveloped and invisible except at the level of the drum and dome. Each of the arms, except that housing the miracle-working image, has its own portal. All three portals are compositionally identical and are set into identical fagades. This coherence stresses the centralized character of the design.

The Carceri was one of relatively few churches built with a Greek cross plan in fifteenth-century Italy. Only eight out of about thirty centralized churches adopt a variant of this plan type.10 Circles, octagons, and squares predominated. The Greek cross was to find greater favour with sixteenth-century architects in the wake of Bramante's designs for St Peter's, Rome. Given its relative scarcity, what potential models could Giuliano da Sangallo have seen?

The earliest of the Greek cross churches built in the quattrocento was Alberti's S. Sebastiano at Mantua of 1460 (Fig. 3). That this building was influential upon and the starting point for Sangallo's design has become almost a commonplace in studies of quattrocento architecture. 11 Indeed, at first sight, there is much to recommend the idea. The two churches resemble one another in a generic way. Both have Greek cross plans (Figs I and 3); both are free-standing or almost so; and both have barrel-vaulted arms (Figs 4 and 5). And finally the Carceri has, and S. Sebastiano was intended to have, a domed crossing. 12 Add these correspondences to the fact that Lorenzo de' Medici sent to Mantua for drawings of Alberti's church on I August 1485, when he was in the process of selecting a design for S. Maria delle Carceri, and the argument appears conclusive. 13 But is it?

One problem with this attractive idea is that Sangallo may have devised a Greek cross scheme before Lorenzo obtained the plans of Alberti's S. Sebastiano in August 1485. There is no reason to suppose that the scheme by Sangallo that Lorenzo chose was not, in its essential parts, one submitted in the original competition late in I484. Sangallo may well have been a participant; with the exception of Giuliano da Maiano the identities of the entrants in the original competition remain unknown. Indeed, there is little evidence that Lorenzo employed Sangallo to draft an entirely new design based on S. Sebastiano, only an ambiguous reference in a letter of I6 September 1485, in which Lorenzo enjoined Niccolo Michelozzi to ask Sangallo 'to execute his model'.14 But precisely what this model was remains unclear. It might be a model for the Carceri, as argued by Morselli, or, as Martelli would have it, a project for the villa at Poggio a



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 36: 1993 ? ,..0.1:.~,..~;~?" Fig. 4.

S. Maria delle Carceri, interior

Fig. 5. S. Sebastiano, interior

4

1.2 q- . w- . . "i:




Caiano, which Lorenzo certainly seems to have been planning at about this time. 15 It could have been a model for another project altogether. There is no evidence that Lorenzo de' Medici requested either a new competition or additional models when the Comune of Prato elected him to choose a design. 16 Surviving accounts only refer to him going to Prato to review the existing models and ultimately choosing one of them.

Consequently, it is reasonable to suppose that Sangallo had already submitted a Greek cross design in the original competition, and that this was the project Lorenzo chose. Indeed, Lorenzo may have wanted plans of S. Sebastiano because he had already decided, in principle, to select a Greek cross design. Lorenzo is unlikely to have requested these plans had he not already been considering a Greek cross; he may have wanted them to see how Alberti, an architect whom he respected highly, had dealt with a comparable structure. 17

Although the Carceri and S. Sebastiano have plans which are generically similar the differences between them suggest that the latter may not have been Sangallo's principal model. S. Sebastiano's plan is more complex than that of S. Maria delle Carceri. Its dominant feature is the square crossing from which the arms protrude. Unlike the Carceri, however, the arms are narrower than the crossing (Figs 3 and 5). This gives the

building the appearance, both inside and out, of having a cuboid core with attached subsidiary spaces; the Carceri's central core is entirely enveloped by the arms. Alberti's church has a single facade which gives on to a narthex. It is wider than the arm to which it is attached and consequently obscures the centralized character of the church behind, unlike the Carceri. These differences, though important, would not preclude the influence of S. Sebastiano on S. Maria delle Carceri and modifications to Sangallo's project may well have been occasioned by the study of Alberti's designs; but in all likelihood the source of the Carceri's plan lies elsewhere.

Precedents for the 'simple' variant of the Greek cross, employed by Sangallo at the Carceri, can be found but they are extremely rare. None appears, for example, among the drawings of antiquities in Sangallo's own Barberini and Siena sketchbooks. 18 When the Greek cross does appear among these drawings it has in each case a plan more intricate than S. Maria delle Carceri's. The plan which bears the greatest external similarity to it appears in the Codex Barberini.19 However, the inscription makes it clear that Sangallo believed this building to be a villa once belonging to Marcus Terentius Varro; it is unlikely that he would have modelled his church on a villa.20 Also, any external resemblance is counteracted by the division of the interior into suites of rooms surrounding an octagonal crossing. Three other buildings which appear in the sketchbooks may have been more influential. These are the Roman mausolea at S. Maria Capua Vetere (Fig. 6), the Mausoleum of Theodoric at Ravenna, and the Mausoleum of the Plautii near Tivoli.21 All three plans, though circular or polygonal on the exterior, have simple Greek cross interiors. On the drawings of the mausolea at Tivoli and S. Maria Capua Vetere Sangallo marked the crossing with a circle, indicating a dome. This feature is an inventive reconstruction; Sangallo's interpre- tations render the antiquities closer to the arrangement at the Carceri than is, in fact, the case.22 The possibility that these structures influenced the design of the Carceri is strengthened by the fact that at least two of them during the fifteenth century were not only churches but churches dedicated to the Virgin. The Mausoleum of Theodoric and

S



6 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 36: I993

Fig. . Mausoleum at S. Maria Fig. 7. Pn o Roman structure fom the

Capua Vetere, plan from the Bramantino sketchbook (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Barberini Codex (Biblioteca MS S. P. 10, 33 sup , fol 32)

Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Barb.

./;:::] ...a . .

Lat. 4424,. fol. 16v)

that in S. Maria Capua Vetere were known as S. Maria Rotonda and S. Maria delle

.. :::.........

_ ........

.... .... ,,'~,.~-.:;':5 __ ,!:

Grazie respectively. 23

Buildings with 'simple' Greek cross plans which Sangallo would have regarded as

being antique did exist in the fifteenth century. One is the Mausoleum ofGalla Placidia (c. 425) in Ravenna. Although this building has one arm slightly longer than the other three it may have acted as a model. Like the Carceri its arms are not as deep as the

crossing is wide and it has a similar vaulting arrangement: barrel vaults over the arms and a pendentive vault at their intersection. Another possible model could be seen in

Rome, where Sangallo appears to have spent part of his early career. Probably a

? :-tjw: ~i.t::.

,,:

mausoleum, it seems to have survived into the fifteenth century, when its existence was recorded in the Bramantino sketchbook (Fig. 7.24 It was apparently about half the size

Lat. V~t '-fol. -, ,"

Grazie respectively.~3

ofdid exist in the Carceri.25 Like the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, and unlike the Carceri, it had

only one entrance. Its vaulting too was different. A 'tiborio quadractong perhaps a square cloister vault, stood over the crossing angement: by the wall thickness and positioning of the piers the rest was cross-vaulted. Apart frtheir interal disposition. Another plan its greatest similarity to the Carceri is in the arrangement of the orders, which are found only at the corners of both structures. Despite this positional resemblance the two




Fig. 8. Bibbona, S. Maria della Pieta, plan taken Fig. 9. S. Maria della Pieta, interior from Marchini, 'Vittorio Ghiberti' (1961)

arrangements differ in detail. In the Roman structure the piers are treated as though they are set into the thickness of the wall. The use of internal pilaster fillets is analogous to that of Brunelleschi in the Sagrestia Vecchia and the Pazzi Chapel and differs from the Carceri, where the pilasters are wrapped around the corners.

Only one fifteenth-century precedent exists for the 'simple' Greek cross plan used at the Carceri.26 This is the church of S. Maria della Pieta at Bibbona, near Livorno (Figs 8 and 9). It was built from I482 by Vittorio Ghiberti, the son of Lorenzo.27 There are many points of similarity besides the plan. Both churches have entrances in three facades with the altar in the fourth arm. The doors to both buildings bear inscriptions alluding to the dedication and function of the church. The disposition of pilasters inside is similar in that they occur only at the corners of the structure, where they are wrapped around the angles. The altar arm, too, is in both churches differentiated from the rest of the church by a raised floor; no such feature appears at S. Sebastiano. There is also a similar arrangement of window openings, with one large window in each face and no others except those in the dome. Again, and surprisingly, the churches are remarkably similar in size. The Carceri has a total internal width of4o Florentine braccia and external width of 45.7 braccia; Bibbona is internally 43 Florentine braccia wide and externally approximately 45 braccia.28 Despite some significant differences between the two churches, such as the adoption of a single dome and four barrel vaults at the Carceri rather than the five domes of Bibbona, the latter remains the closest of all quattrocento antecedents for the Carceri.

One obvious reason for the Carceri's probable dependence upon the church in Bibbona is geographical. They are both Tuscan buildings and Prato is simply closer to Bibbona than it is to other towns which boast Greek cross buildings. But much more

7



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 36: 1993

importantly, the circumstances associated with their foundation are almost identical. Both are pilgrimage churches built to house a miracle-working fresco of the Virgin.29 They also share communal patronage;30 Florentine designers in Giuliano da Sangallo and Vittorio Ghiberti; and the support of powerful Florentine families, the Medici in the case of the Carceri and the Soderini at Bibbona.31 In addition, the two cults were

closely contemporary. That at Bibbona (1482) predates Prato (1484) by only two years.32 Not only were both cults popular with Florentines, they were often coupled by contemporary Florentine writers. A poem variously attributed to Feo Belcari or Savonarola contains the following couplet: 'Tu [acceccata anima] senti molti segni | a Prato e a Bibbona I e par che tu non degni di credere a persona' ('You [blinded soul] witness many signs at Prato and at Bibbona and it seems that you do not deign to believe at all').33 Similarly, the diarist Luca Landucci mentions the miracles at Bibbona in his brief reference to the cult in Prato: 'si comincio una divozione a Prato, d'una

Vergine Maria, la quale vi correva tutto il paese. Faceva de' miracoli come quella di Bibbona, in modo che si comincio a murare e ordinare a grande spesa' ('there began in Prato a cult centred on an image of the Virgin Mary, to which the whole populace ran in devotion. There were miracles like those of Bibbona, and so they began to build [a church] at great expense').34

The Prato miracles were indeed like those of Bibbona, for in both places the image of the Virgin was reported as changing colour, sometimes red, sometimes black, even green.35 Miracle-working images which bleed, exude milk, weep, close their eyes, or move are legion but this type of manifestation is very unusual, and the parallel miracles would have strengthened the association between the two cults in the minds of devotees.

The Pratesi would have known of the Bibbona cult. Given its popularity with Florentines, it is highly probable that Giuliano da Sangallo and Lorenzo de' Medici both knew not only of the cult's existence but also Vittorio Ghiberti's design. In Prato, the

competition for a church to house the new cult might well have prompted designers like Sangallo to study Ghiberti's design in order to see how he had coped with a similar brief.36 This may have suggested to him the adoption of this plan type.

Civic rivalry may also have played an important part in the selection of the design. The people and Comune of Prato may have seen the shrine at Bibbona as the Carceri's principal rival and wished to outshine it in a way that would redound to the city's honour and attract pilgrims in greater numbers. Just as the Prato miracles paralleled those at Bibbona, so did the form of the structure. Rivalry may have determined the size of the plan as well as its shape. The civic authorities in Prato would not have wanted to be outdone by a town as small as Bibbona. No doubt the Pratesi would have wanted a larger shrine or, at the very least, one that was no smaller. Hence the similarity in size between the two churches. The Carceri also outstrips the shrine at Bibbona in monumentality; the larger dome is more successfully proportioned to the size of the church.37 The Carceri is also decorated inside and out with lavish materials to a high standard of design and finish. This is a world away from the church at Bibbona with its impoverished detailing.

S. Maria della Pieta at Bibbona was probably not the only Marian shrine to inspire the design of S. Maria delle Carceri. Another may have been the pilgrimage church of

8




Fig. IO. Pistoia, S. Maria del Letto, interior

S. Maria delle Grazie (before 1484), better known as S. Maria del Letto, in nearby Pistoia, whose vaulting could have acted as the model for that of the Carceri (Fig. Io). Various other sources have been suggested, such as S. Sebastiano (Fig. 5) in Mantua and the Badia in Fiesole, but neither arrangement is as close as S. Maria del Letto.38 In S. Sebastiano, for example, the openings into the arms of the cross are set well below the intended level of the pendentives, unlike S. Maria delle Carceri, where the vaulting in the arms abuts the pendentives directly. The Badia in Fiesole has four barrel vaults

converging upon a pendentive vault at the crossing rather than a dome on pendentives. By contrast, at S. Maria del Letto the arrangement of barrel vaults, pendentives, and dome is almost identical to that employed at S. Maria delle Carceri.39

Yet another feature of the Carceri's design may have been inspired by Marian

pilgrimage architecture. Close inspection of the altar tabernacle (Figs i i and I2) reveals that its source was almost certainly Michelozzo's tabernacle (1448) in SS Annunziata, Florence (Figs 13 and 14), which housed a miracle-working image renowned throughout Italy for its efficacy.40 The most distinctive feature shared by the tabernacles is an unusual type of fluting in which each channel is entirely surounded by a narrow border: this produces the effect of a double instead of a single fillet between the flutes. A small

tongue or frond also appears at top and bottom between the flutes. This type of fluting was not a quattrocento invention. It can be found, for example,

on the interior columns of the Temple of Mars Ultor and on the columns flanking the main apse of the Pantheon. 4 That either building may have acted as Sangallo's source is

9




Figs i and I2. S. Maria delle Carceri, tabernacle and detail taken from Bardazzi, S. Maria delle Carceri (1978)

Jir? , r

Figs 13 and 14. Florence, SS Annunziata, tabernacle of the Virgin and detail

- = LWm

IO




supported by the derivation of the Carceri's main internal order from the Temple of Mars Ultor and by the dependence of its tabernacle's composition upon those inside the Pantheon; but other features of the tabernacle suggest that Sangallo's model was SS Annunziata rather than the antique buildings. The soffit of the architrave bears an inset

guilloche moulding framing a centrally placed rosette, with a row of four coffers behind: these are details which appear in the SS Annunziata tabernacle.

The idea that the Carceri's iconographic links with SS Annunziata were either recorded or perceptible is strengthened by the records of a projected transformation of the church's chancel in 15I6. On 7 October that year the vicario of the church, Baldo

Magini, employed Baccio da Montelupo to build a bronze and marble balustrade to cordon off the high altar.42 This was to span the width of the opening into the chancel (20 braccia) and was to extend to about head height (21/2 braccia).43 The contract goes on to specify that 'la opera del bronzo ha ad essere come quella della Annunziata di Firenze' ('the work made from bronze has to be like that of the Annunziata in Florence'). Thus there was to have been yet another formal reference to Michelozzo's tabernacle in the church, which would have made the association between the two even more apparent to contemporaries. The screen, however, was never completed and perhaps never

begun. This was not the first time that the SS Annunziata tabernacle had been used as a model

for a Marian shrine. It was the inspiration for the tabernacle of the Virgin erected c. I450 in the Pieve at Impruneta, just to the south of Florence (Fig. 5). As at SS Annunziata, the tabernacle housed a celebrated miracle-working panel of the Virgin which, on the instruction of the civic authorities, was regularly carried processionally into Florence to

implore divine intervention at times of plague, drought or famine. Both structures are four-columned canopies carrying a tall entablature with a flat coffered ceiling; both are set into corners of naves and each has an adjoining chapel reached through an arched

Fig. i. Impruneta, Pieve, tabernacle of the Virgin I-~~~~~~~ !! E. Fig. IS. Impruneta, Pieve, tabernacle of the V/irgin

II




. .

Fig. I6. Siena, Cappella di Piazza

' W:- ........ 1j'

Fig. I7. Siena, S. Maria di Fontegiusta, tabernacle of the Virgin

opening. Elaborately detailed bases, fluted column shafts, cornices and architraves overloaded with sumptuous decoration, similar sequences of mouldings, and a grille in the form of a fictive rope net fashioned in bronze are further features shared by these two structures. Given the probable dependence of both the high altar at S. Maria delle Carceri and the tabernacle at Impruneta on the shrine at SS Annunziata, it is likely that the similarity between such shrines was perhaps the product of a desire to emulate the shrine of a renowned and efficacious image.44

That these similarities between Marian shrines in and around Florence are the result of purposeful emulation and not casual borrowing can be demonstrated by a group of shrines in Siena. There the Cappella di Piazza (Fig. I6), built by the city in grateful thanks to the Virgin for relieving the city of plague in 1348, seems to have exerted a

significant influence on later Marian shrines in the city. Although the present structure was begun in 1376 it remained without a superstructure until 1468 when Antonio

Federighi completed it by adding a vault and an entablature. The entablature's frieze is decorated with griffins and candelabra and it was this feature in particular which was taken up by the designers of at least two other Marian shrines housing miracle-working images in the city: S. Maria di Fontegiusta (begun in 1479, Fig. I7) and the wayside shrine at the Palazzo dei Turchi.45

These parallels between Marian miracle shrines suggest clearly that in each case the model was selected not for its beauty but because a reference to an illustrious shrine

12




elsewhere was intended. They may even have been regarded as 'copies' in much the same spirit that spawned medieval 'copies' of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.46 But why should the architect or building commissioners have felt the need to do this? Was it out of a sense of decorum? Was it because association with a famous cult in the region would have lent a new cult a little of its prestige? Was it even in the hope that by copying architecture associated with one thaumaturge of the Virgin another would assume similarly miraculous powers and achieve greater success and enduring fame?

Whatever the precise motives, it seems that the altar of the Carceri was conceived in a spirit of respectful emulation rather than rivalry, a conclusion that raises a question concerning the adoption of S. Maria della Pieta at Bibbona as a model for the form of the church itself. Was the stimulus really civic rivalry, as I have already suggested, or alternatively another attempt at emulation? These motives are not, of course, mutually exclusive.

Several aspects of the Carceri's design are fully explicable only when viewed from the perspective of its pilgrim visitors. An example is the so-called 'podium' on which the church is elevated (Fig. 2). The familiar interpretation of this feature is that it

depends upon Alberti, who wrote in his discussion of temples that 'in my opinion, the space taken up by the portico and indeed the whole temple should be raised above the level of the city: this will give it a greater dignity'.47 Alberti gave this idea form at S. Sebastiano in Mantua. However, I have already questioned the assumption that Alberti's ideas and buildings were the principal precedents for the Carceri, and the same applies here. Pilgrimage shrines immediately attracted the lame and infirm hoping for cures and provision was often made for them, usually in the form of a sheltering portico. At S. Maria delle Carceri, however, there was no room for a portico between the church and the nearby castle. Instead, a stone bench running around the building provided for the resting of weary feet.48 The bench also continues around the church's interior, enabling invalids to attend mass and to make their devotions.

Though such stone benches are virtually unknown in earlier church design, the idea was not entirely novel. Brunelleschi used it inside the Pazzi Chapel, where its adoption was dictated by the building's function as a chapter house; the bench provided necessary seating for the members of the community at meetings of the chapter. It is likely that Sangallo saw its appropriateness for a pilgrimage shrine and employed it at the Carceri. While the use of the bench on the interior was prompted perhaps by the Pazzi Chapel, its innovatory application to the exterior of the church may have been influenced by Florentine palace design. By this date both the Palazzo Medici and the Palazzo Rucellai had benches ofths sort running along their facades. The idea was later adopted in the designs of other pilgrimage churches, for example S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi (1508) and S. Maria Monte d'Oro at Montefiascone (1523).

The practice of pilgrimage would also have been facilitated by the Carceri's three large portals, which would have permitted processions to move easily through the church and generally eased the control of crowds of pilgrims.49 Evidence that the church was used in precisely this way is scarce, but we do know that processions organized before the church was built did not end at the image.50 Beginning at the Pieve, now the cathedral, they passed by the locus of the cult to finish where they had

I3




begun. Such processions required their participants to pass the object of their devotions in an orderly fashion without breaking up the carefully devised hierarchy and consequently creating problems of reassembly. Therefore, one might suppose that the church was designed to this end. The most straightforward way for a large procession to pass through a building and at the same time venerate an image is to progress along a transverse axis, entering by a side door and moving past the image towards an exit immediately opposite. It is therefore significant that the temporary structure which preceded the oratory also seems to have had three doors.51 So, too, did the church's principal model, S. Maria della Pieta at Bibbona. Of interest in this regard is the decoration of the Carceri's liturgical north and south doors. Both bear rows of lilies, a reference to the coat of arms of the church's patron, the Comune's gilded lilies on a blue ground. The lily also appears in the neck of the facade's corner capitals and on the city arms placed repeatedly in the building's internal frieze. It is therefore strange that the lily appears on the side doors, rather than that opposite the main altar, unless, perhaps, it distinguishes a processional route through the building.52

Another, final feature of the Carceri's design may have been inspired by the devotional practices associated with pilgrimage architecture. It is the monumental balustrade that runs around the interior of the cupola. Earlier domes, such as that in Florence Cathedral, had walkways at this level, but at the Carceri the parapet is transformed into a pseudo-antique balustrade, the first example of its kind at the base of a dome. Every other baluster is topped with a spike for securing a candle. There are sixty spikes in all. When all the candles were lit the dome would have shimmered with the artificial light from this flickering crown.

Artificial light was commonly used throughout the Middle Ages to honour miracle- working images and relics. Lamps and candles generally encircled ciboria and local examples existed at Orsanmichele, SS Annunziata, and Impruneta. At the Carceri, however, the idea was extended from the altar tabernacle to the church as a whole, which raises the possibility that the church was conceived as a centrally-planned tabernacle on a vast scale. Sangallo, who was instrumental in popularizing the balustrade through his use of it in the Palazzo Gondi, Poggio a Caiano, and the arcade around the dome of Florence Cathedral, here may have referred to the form's origin in antiquity, as a support in a candelabrum, by associating the balustrade with the provision of light.53 Among Sangallo's immediate models may have been Brunelle- schi's octagonal choir screen in Florence Cathedral and a circular choir screen illustrated in Filarete's treatise on architecture, which both seem to have been topped with baluster-like candelabra. 54 But, in the light of the probable references in the design to other Marian shrines, it would appear that the most likely source for the idea is the screen enclosing the shrine of the Sacra Cintola (Fig. 18) in Prato's principal church, the Pieve of S. Stefano.55 The Sacra Cintola, or Virgin's girdle, was Prato's most precious relic and its chapel was Prato's most celebrated Marian shrine. That this chapel screen inspired the balustrade at the base of the Carceri dome is suggested by the fact that, unlike those at the other possible models, at S. Stefano only alternate uprights bear spikes for candles.

It would be a mistake to try to explain all the features of the Carceri's design by reference to other pilgrimage churches; we must also take into consideration precedents

I4



I5

rI~*


1 *. t _ _ I- w :.. to i!a

- ~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~~~~~ - _ - .

Fg Pat,.Sfno,Ca e ladeSaraCintl

Fig. 18. Prato , S. Stejhno , Cappella della Sacra Cintola

in the work of Brunelleschi and Alberti. Nevertheless, traditions in Marian pilgrimage architecture contributed much to the Carceri: not only does its design contain references to, or at least quotations from, other local shrines, in Bibbona, Pistoia, and Florence, but it also makes provision for the practice of pilgrimage itself. This might, in turn, suggest that we should be cautious in attributing a project for a pilgrimage church to an architect entirely on the basis of its resemblance to one for a documented shrine, for there are other reasons for similarities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Howard Burns and John Newman, who supervised the dissertation of which this was a part, and to Kerry Downes, David Hemsoll, and Clare Robertson for discussions which contributed immensely to the writing of this article.

Figs 4, 13-I6 copyright the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.

NOTES

I The principal art-historical studies of the church are, Giuseppe Marchini, Giuliano da Sangallo (Florence, 1942); Giuseppe Marchini, 'Della costruzione di S. Maria delle Carceri in Prato', Archivio Storico Pratese, 14 (1936), I-I4; S. Bardazzi et al., S. Maria delle Carceri (Prato, 1978); and Piero Morselli and Gino Corti, La Chiesa di Santa Maria




delle Carceri in Prato (Florence, I982). There are also important discussions of the church in Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 3rd edn (London, 1973); Giuseppe Marchini, 'Aggiunte a Giuliano da Sangallo', Commentari, I (1950), 34-38; and Andreas T6nnesman, Der Palazzo Gondi in Florenz (Worms, 1983). 2 Much of this article draws upon a chapter in my dissertation: Paul Davies, 'Studies in the Quattrocento Centrally Planned Church' (doctoral thesis, London University, 1992), pp. 2I3-88.

3 S. Maria delle Carceri is a very well-documented church. Most of the documents have been collected and published by Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, pp. 8I-I86, but they ignored a few of those earlier published in Bardazzi et al., S. Maria delle Carceri; these are listed in Davies, 'Studies', Appendix 6, pp. 386-95. The history of the church, with the origins of the cult, is related in two contemporary manuscripts: Andrea del Germanino, Miracoli et gratie della gloriosa madre vergine Maria delle Charcere di Prato, l'anno 1484, Biblioteca Roncioniana, Prato, MS 86; and Giuliano di Francesco Guizzelmi, Miracoli della Madonna delle Carceri di Prato, Biblioteca Roncioniana, Prato, MS 87. The former manuscript has been published in part by Laura Bandini, 'I1 quinto centenario della "mirabilissima apparitione"', Archivio Storico Pratese (1984), pp. 55-96. 4 Guizzelmi, Miracoli, fols 8v-I r. 5 Germanino, Miracoli, fol. 37; Bandini, 'Quinto centenario', p. 60. 6 For the authentication of the miracles see Guizzelmi, Miracoli, fols I I-1I2r. For the text of the Bull see Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, doc. I. 7 Germanino, Miracoli, fols 41-44r; Bandini, 'Quinto centenario', pp. 68-73. 8 Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, docs 6 and 7. 9 A proportional analysis of the building is in Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, pp. 38-53. o0 They are, S. Sebastiano in Mantua, S. Maria di Bressanoro in Castelleone, S. Maria della Pieta at Bibbona, S. Maria della Passione in Milan, S. Maria delle Carceri in Prato, S. Maria delle Grazie at Orciano, S. Giovanni Crisostomo at Venice, S. Sebastiano in Forli. I Marchini, Sangallo (I942), p. 2I; Philip Foster, 'Alberti, Lorenzo de' Medici and S. Maria delle Carceri in Prato', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 30 (197I), 238; Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, p. 29. 12 For the evidence concerning the original appearance of S. Sebastiano see Richard Lamoureux, Alberti's Church ofS. Sebastiano in Mantua (New York, 1979), pp. 5-24. 13 See Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico per gli anni 1473-74, 1477-92, ed. M. del Piazzo (Florence, 1956), p. 333; Foster, 'Alberti, Lorenzo de' Medici', p. 238. 14 The phrase espedisca el mio modello is discussed in M. Martelli, 'I penisieri architettonici del Magnifico', Contnentari, 17 (1966), I07-II; and Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, p. 29. 15 For the dating of the villa see Philip Foster, A Study ofLorenzo de' Medici's Villa at Poggio a Caiano (New York, I978), pp. io8-68. I6 Germanino, Miracoli, fol. 44', Bandini, 'Quinto centenario', pp. 73-74: 'et venendo qua due volte decto Lorenzo, del mese d'oghosto per veder el luogo et di poi, veduto che egli ebbe, vide tucti e' modoni, et disse agli operai: verrete a Firenze et faremo buon proposito di quello s'a a pilgliare. And6 a Firenze chi era sopra a cci6; disse Lorenzo che si toglesse el modello di Giuliano da Sangallo'. 17 Lorenzo's high regard for Alberti is well known. In 1484, for example, he lent Alfonso d'Este a copy of De re aedificatoria but asked that the manuscript be returned speedily because 'I hold it very dear and read it often'. Cited in Judith Hook, Lorenzo de' Medici (London, 1984), p. 126. 18 These sketchbooks, respectively housed in the Vatican Library and the Biblioteca Comunale, Siena, have both been published in facsimile. See C. Hiilsen, II libro di Giuliano da Sangallo. Codice Barberiniano Latino 4424 (Leipzig, I9I0) and R. Falb, II taccuino senese di Giuliano da Sangallo (Siena, 1902). 19 Hilsen, Codice Barberiniano, fol. 8. 20 For an analysis of this drawing see F. E. Keller, 'Alvise Cornaro zittiert die Villa des Marcus Terentius Varro in Cassino', L' Arte, n.s. 4 (I97I), 29-53; and S. Borsi, Giuliano da Sangallo. I disegni di architettura e dell'antico (Rome, I985), pp. 73-74. 21 Hiilsen, Codice Barberiniano, fols 8', 37v, 4Iv. 22 The mausoleum at S. Maria Capua Vetere has a cross vault at the crossing. See A. de Franciscis and R. Pane, Matsolei romani in Campania (Naples, 1957), fig. 79. 23 See Borsi, Disegni, pp. 74-75. Leandro Alberti appears to refer to the building as S. Maria delle Grazie in his Descrittione di tutta Italia et isole pertinenti ad essa (Bologna, I550). Another factor that may have suggested the Capuan building as a model to Giuliano is its popular name: the 'Carceri Vecchie'. Thus both the Carceri in Prato and the Carceri Vecchie in Capua Vetere were associated with 'old prisons'. However, it is not clear when the Capuan building first got this name. 24 A. della Croce and G. Mongeri, Le rovine de Romna alprincipio del secolo XVI. Studi del Bramantino (Milan, I88o), plate 32. 25 Croce and Mongeri, Rovine, plate 32. The full inscription is as follows: 'Questo sie poso S. iano de fora adre dde alimure e depeperino e longho chane 6 e palme nula. Alto li colonne tesste * e 3/7 li cholone sono ghrose palm 3.

I6




Aveva suxe li quatre cholone uno tiborio quadracto asindeva uno cholonacto de spora de la chornixa chon lo piedistolo propocionato'. The precise location of the building is problematic because there is no record of a 'S. Giovanni di Fuori' in the fifteenth century though the name may refer to S. Giovanni in Laterano, which at that time was well outside the inhabited part of the city. 26 The plans of earlier Greek cross schemes are usually more complex. One is S. Maria di Bressanoro in the small town of Castelleone, just east of Milan, built in the I46os under the patronage of Bianca Maria Sforza, at the suggestion of her confessor Amedeo Menez de Silva. The plan bears a greater similarity to Alberti's S. Sebastiano than it does to the Carceri. For this church see G. Sacchi, 'La Chiesa di S. Maria di Bressanoro', in IV Congresso Nazionale di Storia dell'Architettura (Milan, 1939), pp. I -53; Licia Carubelli, 'La Chiesa di S. Maria di Bressanoro presso Castelleone', Arte Lombarda, 6 (1982), 13-22; Luisa Giordano, 'La fondazione della fabbrica Sforzesca di S. Maria di Bressanoro', Bollettino della Societa Pavese di Storia Patria, n.s. 34 (1982), 241-44. The principal proponent of the Greek cross plan in quattrocento architectural theory was Filarete, who promotes it for church design above all other types, offering no fewer than five versions. See in particularJ. R. Spencer's Filarete's Treatise on Architecture (New Haven and London, 1965) and 'Filarete and Central Plan Architecture', Journal of the Society ofArchitectural Historians, 17 (I985), Io-I8. Filarete gives no explanation for his preference; nor does he attempt tojustify its use. Here, perhaps for the first time in quattrocento architecture, however, appears the Greek cross with three entrances, one in each of three arms. This may have been important for the Carceri, which has a similar disposition of openings. Lorenzo de' Medici almost certainly knew the treatise because Filarete dedicated a version of it to his father, Piero de' Medici. All Filarete's church plans differ from the Carceri, however, in one vital respect. The Greek cross is in each case inscribed within a square. Not one, therefore, can be cited as a close model for the Carceri. 27 This church is little known and consequently little studied. The principal literature to date is G. Righi, La Badia dei Magi, ed. M. Soldani (Florence, 1934); and G. Marchini, 'Vittorio Ghiberti architetto', in Scritti in onore di Mario Salmi (Rome, 1961), vol. ii, pp. I87 ff.; it is mentioned briefly in G. Marchini, Ghiberti Architetto (Florence, 1978), p. 32. 28 I would like to thank Liz Real and Rino Giordano for their help in measuring these structures. 29 See Luca Landuci, Diario Fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516, ed. I. della Badia (Florence, I883), p. 41. See also Righi, Badia; and Marchini, 'Vittorio Ghiberti', pp. I90, I93. 30 In Bibbona's case this can be inferred from the communal arms beside the main portal. Underneath are the intitials C.B. (Comunis Bibbonae), noted by Righi, Badia, p. 35. 31 For Soderini involvement see Marchini, 'Vittorio Ghiberti'. 32 For the dating of S. Maria della Pieta at Bibbona see Marchini, 'Vittorio Ghiberti', p. I93. 33 See the Edizione nazionale delle opere di Girolamo Savonarola. Poesie, ed. M. Martelli (Rome, 1968), pp. 85-90. The relevant passage from the poem is cited by Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, p. I3 but the cult and church at Bibbona are not discussed. 34 See Landucci, Diario, p. 47. 35 Of the cult at Bibbona Landucci writes: 'La quale comincio insino a di 5 d' aprile 1482, la quale [i.e. the image] si trasfigurava, cioe diventava d' azzurra rossa, e di rossa poi nera e di diversi colori'. See Landucci,Diario, p. 41. For the Carceri see Guizzelmi, Miracoli: he recorded innumerable miracles of this sort. 36 See Marchini, 'Vittorio Ghiberti'. Although there is no documented association between Guiliano da Sangallo and Vittorio Ghiberti before 1485 they almost certainly knew one another. Indeed, one year later in 1486 both architects fell into the same camp in the debate about how many doors the S. Spirito faqade was to have; see Borsi, Disegni, pp. 339-40. 37 The diameter of its single dome (20 braccia) is much larger than that of the central dome at Bibbona (I 3 braccia). 3 8 The suggestion of the Badia in Fiesole as a model for the vaulting appears in T6nnesman, Palazzo Gondi, p. I Io. 39 According to a document of 1484, the church ofS. Maria del Letto in Pistoia was not yet finished: 'e imperfecta et volendola alla vera perfezione ridurre secondo el disegno et modello presentato non si puo senza grave spesa'. Cited by Ferrara, 'S. Maria delle Grazie', p. 57I. This raises the distant possibility that the church was never completed according to the design mentioned, and that it was later finished to a design reflecting that of S. Maria delle Carceri. Even if this were the case, it would nevertheless illustrate the influence of one Marian shrine upon another. 40 For the history of the shrine see in particular P. Tonini, II Santuario della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze. Guida storica-illustrativa compilata da un religioso dei Servi di Maria (Florence, 1876); L. B. Bulman, 'Artistic Patronage at SS. Annunziata I440-1520' (doctoral thesis, London University, 1971); M. Ferrara and F. Quinterio, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo (Florence, 1984), pp. 231-34; D. F. Zervas, '"Quos volent et eo modo quo volent": Piero de' Medici and the Operai ofSS. Annunziata, I445-55', in Florence and Italy. Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. C. Elam and P. Denley (London, 1988), pp. 465-79. 41 Michelozzo may have borrowed this motif for several reasons. If he knew of its appearance at the Pantheon he might have considered it appropriate for the Virgin as this most famous of antique buildings was also a church dedicated to her. Perhaps it was simply because the richness of the form was appropriate for a shrine; medieval

I7



I8 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 36: 1993

shrines, like that at Orsanmichele, were as a matter of course encrusted with costly ornament. Michelozzo was simply substituting classical form for Gothic; the underlying aesthetic had not changed. 42 See Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, p. 78; and P. Morselli, 'Sixteenth-century Florentine Artists in Prato. New Documents for Baccio da Montelupo and Francesco da Sangallo', Art Bulletin, 64 (1982), 52-54. 43 See Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, doc. 93. 44 For the history of the tabernacles at Impruneta see Ferrara and Quinterio, Michelozzo, pp. 35 I-53. For the cult see R. Trexler, 'Florentine Religious Experience: the Sacred Image', Studies in the Renaissance, 19 (1972), 7-41. 45 For the history of the Cappella di Piazza seeJ. T. Paoletti, 'Antonio Federighi: a Documentary Re-evaluation and a New Attribution',Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen (1975), 87-143; and A. Cairoli and E. Carli, II Palazzo Pubblico di Siena (Siena, 1963), p. 43. For the church of S. Maria di Fontegiusta see A. Marelli, S. Maria in Portico a Fontegiusta (Siena, 1908). 46 For medieval 'copies' of the Holy Sepulchre see R. Krautheimer, 'Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (I942), 1-33. 47 L. B. Alberti, De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1485), VII, 5. The translation is taken from On the Art of Building in Ten Books, ed.J. Rykwert, R. Tavernor, and N. Leach (London, 1988), p. 199. The association of this passage with the Carceri was first made by Wittkower in Architectural Principles, p. 20. This idea has been perpetuated by Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, p. 36, and Tonnesman, Palazzo Gondi, p. Io9. 48 The bench is referred to only as such in documents. See, for example, Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, docs 57 and 75. 49 For a fuller discussion of processions at pilgrimage shrines see Davies, 'Studies', pp. 122-33. The possibility that processions tended to move across pilgrimage shrines along the transverse axis was first suggested in J. Zanker, 'I1 primo progetto per il Santuario di Santa Maria della Consolazione a Todi e la sua attribuzione', in Studi Bramanteschi (Milan, 1974), pp. 603-I5. 50 Germanino, Miracoli, fols 50V-52v, Bandini, 'Quinto centenario', pp. 81-82. On Sunday, 29 August 1484 (the feast day of S. Giovanni Decollato), the procession set out from the Pieve and moved down the Via de Valdigora past S. Domenico and down the Corso by S. Nicolo and then to the Cambioni and S.Jacopo and S. Chiara. It passed through the arch and went by S. Marco and the Spedale del Dolce and up to the Mercatale and S. Margherita. It then passed the three ponds, the little pond and continued on to S. Matteo and S. Michele. Then it went on to the vescovado and up through the piazza to the pieve and along the Via dei Pillicciai. It continued on to S. Giorgio past the new well and S. Giovanni del Tempio and then reached the image. Then from here it went to the tower near the loggia of Giovanni Migliorati and into the piazza of the Comune up through the Via dei Sarti and returned to the pieve where it finished. Further descriptions of processions to the image undertaken between 1484 and 1505 can be found in Guizzelmi, Miracoli. 51 See Morselli and Corti, S. Maria delle Carceri, doc. 5. 52 The description of the procession discussed above (note 50) suggests that the church would have been approached from the liturgical south side. 53 For the history of the balustrade in the Renaissance see P. Davies and D. Hemsoll, 'Renaissance Balusters and the Antique', Architectural History, 26 (1983), 1-23. 54 See Spencer, Filarete, vol. ii, fol. 122r. Brunelleschi's choir is recorded in a medal struck to record the death of Giuliano de' Medici in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. 5 5 For the history of the shrine see G. Marchini, La Cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel Duomo di Prato (Prato, I975). The screen (1438-67) was designed by Maso di Bartolommeo; see pp. 31 ff.

