3. EXTERIOR WALLS AND FACADE
The other things regarding the type of structure, the building materials, the solidity of the walls, the plaster, the revetment, depending on the type of church to be built and the other characteristics of the region and of the location, will be diligently established at the discretion of the bishop, after consultation with the architect.{1}
However these norms regarding the external walls must be observed, and that is that the side and back walls are not to be decorated with images. However the more the facade is decorated with holy images or paintings that depict the sacred history, the more pleasing and solemn it will be.{2}
In the pious decoration of the facade designed in line with the structure of the church and the size of the building, the architect will take care that no secular images appear, and that what is suitable to the sanctity of the place be depicted as well as the means available permit.
Care must also be taken that on the façade of every church, especially if a parish church, the image of the blessed Virgin Mary holding her Son be decorously and piously painted or carved outside above the main entrance. The effigy of the saint to whom the church is dedicated will be set on her right, and on her left that of the saint to whom the people of that parish are particularly devoted. If it is impossible to have all three figures, only the image of the saint to whom the church is dedicated will be made. If the church is dedicated to the feast day or entitled to the Virgin of the Annunciation, the Assumption or the Nativity of Mary, the image of the blessed Virgin will be represented in a manner that is suitable to the nature of the mystery revealed. It will then be the task of the architect to see diligently that this part of the structure is well protected from rain and other ravages of weather.{3}
The other sculptures or paintings and other ornaments, solemn and seemly, which help make the facade of the church majestic and solemn, will be established by the bishop, who will ask for the architect’s opinion if necessary, according to the type of ecclesiastical edifice built.{4}
NOTES
Chapter III, pp.
- Borromeo’s norms regarding the external walls and the façade had little in common with the medieval symbolism of the school of Durandus which gives such elaborate and complex symbolic interpretations as “the walls upon the foundations equal the Jews and gentiles who come from the four parts of the world to Christ. The faithful are the stones in the wall which shall continually be built up unto the world’s end. The large stones are placed at angles of the building and these are the holy men who by their merits and prayers support the weaker brethren. The cement is made of lime, sand and water. Lime is charity which joins the sand, figurative of a temporal condition, and both are mixed with water which is peace…The church consists of four walls built on the doctrine of the four evangelists, and the height of the walls represents courage, the length, fortitude, and the width, charity.”(a)
- This section, relative to the decoration of the side walls and the façade, has significant features that re-evaluate prior attitudes towards the Lombard style. Out of context, it would appear that the walls were to remain flat and smooth, reserving all decoration for the façade However, Borromeo’s reference to the side walls is that “nulla imago exprimatur,” meaning that on the façade alone was there to be anything of a religious iconographic connotation. The church of S. Fedele serves, for this study, as an approved Borromean-Tibaldi project. The side has the same monumental architectonic language as has the façade, and although Tibaldi’s plans underwent some alteration throughout the centuries, the basic interpretation is the same (Figs. 3.1, 3.2). The façade is composed of two orders, Corinthian and Composite beneath a single pediment. The side walls share a certain unity of design with the façade. Richard Haslam observes that the pair of triumphal-arch rhythms evolve from the internal arrangement of the church, and are brought to rest in the same way on the façade. The forms are handled with lightness and coherence, the lower window pediments are attached only by corbels to the architrave; the cornice springs from cherub-heads above the capitals. Such architecture is unique on the flank of a Milanese church and is outstanding both for its formal elaboration and for the use of various tone and stucco panels together.(b) In 1576 Borromeo, at the fourth Provincial Council, had urged “in uniuscuiusque item ecclesiae, praesertim Parochialis frontispico, a superiori scillicet parte ostili, maioris, sacrae imagines exprimantur ad praescriptum Instructionum quas de Fabrica ecclesiastica edidimus.”(c) The Instructiones appeared less than a year later.
- Don Carlo Marcora of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan suggested the following theory to the present writer. From the many letters at the Ambrosiana it is clear that a vital friendship existed between St. Philip Neri and St. Charles Borromeo, and that their companionship began during young Charles’ first sojourn in Rome from 1560 to 1565. St. Durandus, I, 10, 15.
(b) R. Haslam, “Pellegrino Tibaldi and the Design of S. Fedele, Milan,” Arte lombarda, 42/43 (1975), pp. 124-153.
(c) AEM, col. 318.
Philip Neri could well have influenced him in the matter of religious iconographic designs for church facades. The two had planned the Casa Pia in 1564 (near the church of S. Chiara) as a shelter for young prostitutes. Borromeo took a special interest in housing and feeding these girls, while St. Philip’s direction was towards the homeless young boys. In 1575, when Gregory XIII officially recognized the importance of the apostolic work of St. Philip and his community of priests, the church of S. Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova) was begun. St. Philip solicited the financial assistance of cardinal Charles Borromeo and of two brothers, Cardinal Pierdonato and Bishop Angelo Cesi, and construction of the church began under the collaboration of the architects Giacomo della Porta, Martino Lunghi, Matteo da Castello, and Fausto Rughesi, whose responsibility was the façade. Although the façade was not completed until 1605, Rughesi followed St. Philip’s iconographic plan which was to incorporate an image of the Madonna and Child flanked by angels in the arch of the main doorway, while in the upper tier, the left niche held a statue of St. Gregory the Great and the right niche, St. Jerome (Fig. 3.3). Since the plans for the façade date as early as 1574 and Borromeo’s norms are published in 1577, it is indeed a logical premise to link Borromeo’s inspiration with the church norm of St. Philip Neri.(c)
- These chapter notes would not be complete without some reference, however brief, to Borromeo’s attitude towards the façade of the Milan Duomo and the Gothic versus Classical debate that was finally pushed to a resolution by Napoleon, when in July of 1805 the Fabbrica was advised to sell property to the sum of 1,200,000 lire in order to have the financial resources to complete the façade.(d)
The post-medieval Gothic style was an architectural curiosity that surfaced in Italy as a reaction to the classical mannered style of the late Renaissance. Many theorists considered the Gothic style barbaric and excluded it from treatises. Vasari, always a partisan of Renaissance ideals, was concerned with the problem of taste and, in his Introduction to the Lives described the style as maniera tedesca, equating the Goths and Germans with the Gothic style. He complained that “on all the facades…they build cursed little niches, one above the other, with no end of pinnacles and points and leaves…it appears impossible that the parts do not fall over at any moment…This style was the invention of the Goths…May God protect every country from such ideas and style of buildings.” Wittkower, in discussing Borromeo’s reaction to the Gothic style, aptly observed that “We may also be certain that for a leader of the Counter-Reformation the maniera tedesca, the German style, was emotionally unacceptable, for this was the style which heretics north of the Alps applied to their churches.”(e)
Fig. 3.4 is a design by Vincenzo Seregni, c 1535, of the portal of the north transept of the Duomo. Seregni, as architect of the Duomo, was dismissed from his office by Cardinal Borromeo in July 1567, and four days later the vacancy was filled by Pellegrino Tibaldi.
(c) On the friendship between St. Charles and St. Philip, see A. Ratti, “San Carlo e S. Filippo Neri,” in S. Carlo Borromeo nel terzo centenario della canonizzazione 1610-1910 (Milan, 1910), pp. 74-77.
(d) R. Wittkower, Gothic vs. Classic: Architectural Projects in Seventeenth Century Italy (New York, 1974), p. 8.
(e) Wittkower, p. 27.
The design for the Duomo façade shown in figure 3.5, attributed to Tibaldi, indicates a complete break in style. It is a classical façade and has ten massive Corinthian columns that are over sixty feet tall with shafts that were planned to be single pieces of marble. Each column appears to be joined to a half-column behind it that is set into the walls of the façade. The orders, the form, the windows, doors, and obelisks are classical elements. Two free standing bell towers accompany the façade.
After a complicated, relatively painful period of debate, politics, and a fair amount of intrigue, Tibaldi’s plan was initiated in April 1609 with some modification in the upper tier. In 1635 Carlo Buzzi, then architect of the Duomo, presented a plan that would preserve Tibaldi’s classical portion and allow a return to the Gothic (Fig. 3.6). See also Fig. 3.7 for the Duomo as it stands today.(f)
(f) Wittkower’s work, as cited above, presents an excellent study of the development and various phases of the Duomo façade. Additional studies are found in the collection Il Duomo di Milano, Atti, Congresso Internazionale (Milan, 1969).
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