Certosa di Pavia (Italy)

Period: Renaissance

D E S C R I P T I O N:

The church is built on a Latin cross plan, with a nave, two aisles and transept, typical of Gothic architecture. The chancel terminates with an apse. It is covered by crossed vaults on Gothic arches and is inspired, on a reduced scale, by the Duomo of Milan. The vaults are alternatively decorated with geometrical shapes and starry skies. The transept and the main chapel end with square-plan chapels with smaller, semi-circular apses on three sides.

The façade of the church is famous for its exuberant decorations, typical of Lombard architecture, every part being decorated with reliefs, inlaid marble and statues. Sculptors who worked on it include Cristoforo Mantegazza and Giovanni Antonio Amadeo himself. In addition to applied sculpture, the facade itself has a rich sculptural quality because of the contrast between richly textured surfaces, projecting buttresses, horizontal courses and arched openings, some of which are shadowed, while those in the small belfries are open to the sky.

The sober form of the roughly finished brick front can be seen in a fresco by Ambrogio Bergognone in the apse of the right transept, painted in 1492-1495, when work was commencing on the new facade, portraying Gian Galeazzo Visconti offering the model of the Certosa to the Blessed Virgin. Its profile, with roofs on three levels, has been compared to the churches of San Giovanni in Monza and San Petronio in Bologna; among the architects in close correspondence at all three projects, Borlini ascribes the form of the original facade at the Certosa to Giacomo da Campione, who was working at Pavia while his uncle Matteo was completing San Giovanni in Monza.

The architect Giovanni Solari, in building the double row of arcades down the flanks of the church, modified its appearance. After his death he was succeeded in Pavia by his son Guiniforte Solari, but work came to a halt with the death of Guiniforte in 1478.

In 1492 Gian Giacomo Dolcebuono took up the construction, assisted on site, for he was cocurrently occupied with the cathedrals at Pavia and at Milan and other churches, by his inseparable collaborator on both cathedrals, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo. In their hands the project was thoroughly redesigned. Scores of artists were involved. The classicist style portal is by Benedetto Briosco (1501). The porch has a large arch of classicist form resting on paired Corinthian columns which are each surmounted by a very strongly modelled cornice on which the arch rests, the construction being derived from the Classical, used by Brunelleschi, and employed here for a bold and striking effect. The decoration is of bas-reliefs illustrating the History of the Certosa. Above the central arch is a shallow balcony of three arches, above which rises the central window.

This campaign was interrupted in 1519 as work was going forward by the condition of French occupation in Lombardy after the War of the League of Cambrai. French troops were encamped round the Certosa. Notations of work on the facade did not resume until 1554, when a revised design under the direction of Cristoforo Lombardo was approved for the completion of the facade above the second arcade; there marble intarsia was substituted for the rich sculptual decorations of the lower area. Some final details were added by Galeazzo Alessi.