Le Chiese delle Cittá: San Pietro in Mantua

Greetings fellow Earthlings!

I have returned from an extremely fruitful, stressful and fun week in the North of Italy. As you know, if you have been reading my posts, I was in Venice at the beginning of last week and featured a Venetian Church. Since I have only been back in Rome for a couple days, I decided to do my post this week on another church from the North. Besides Venice, I was also in two other towns featured in the plays of Shakespeare: Verona and Mantua (yes, I did see Giulietta’s Balcony). Verona was by far my favorite city qua city. However, its many beautiful churches will not grace the pages of this blog. You’ll have to go there yourself. I highly recommend it.

No, I will instead look closely at the Cathedral of Mantua, San Pietro. It was designed by the famous Giulio Romano, a Roman architect who went into self-imposed exile from Rome after the Sack of 1527. He is famous for his use of rustication and an interesting take on the classical architectural orders. For more on that, look up Palazzo Te in Mantua. It’s done by Romano.

San Pietro is located right across from the Ducal Palace right on the waterfront of Mantua. The Ducal Palace was built by the Gonzaga family which ruled Mantua for a long time. This is in fact the same Gonzaga family made famous in Catholic circles by St. Aloysius Gonzaga. San Pietro is also right down the road from San Andrea designed by the great Florentine architect Alberti. This is of course Significant because as we all know, San Pietro was the brother of San Andrea. These were the two great churches of the city. For those of you who know the particulars of architectural history will know that Alberti was before Romano, but whichever church came first, they were both there before either man came along.

The most important thing to know, to the uninitiated architect, is that Giulio Romano left Rome during the construction of the New S. Pietro in the Vatican. In fact, the construction had barely started so the old S. Pietro was still quite in existence. Maybe it was because he missed his native Rome, or maybe it was because he wanted to do Bramante one up, but whatever the case, Romano used the architecture of Old S. Pietro as his model. A model he followed pretty closely.

Like the old S. Pietro, S. Pietro in Mantua is a five aisle basilica. This means that it consists of a nave and two aisles on either side. Since it is in the style of early Roman churches, the division between the aisles is a trabeated (without arches) colonnade. In Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque churches, the side aisles were often divided from the nave by an arcade of some kind. Also, most churches after the Early Christian period were three aisle churches (a trend which continues when not circular in design). However, one church which I have featured before was a five aisle church. First one to remember gets a prize.

Like an Early Christian church, S. Pietro has a flat celing over the nave however, one thing that distinguishes S. Pietro as a Renaissance church and not an Early Christian one is that there is a heavy use of vaulting in the aisles. In truth, it is only the first set of aisles that are vaulted, but you get the point. As well as five aisles, there are side chapels lining the length of the church.

Along the nave is an a pulpit that looks like it is from an older tradition than the Renaissance, although it could just be throwback. Once you reach the crossing however, the Early Christian really stops. There is a dome which is very un-Early Christian. Also, there is a lot of Renaissance/Baroque artwork going on.

We only were able to be in the church for a very short time, so my picture supply isn’t as amazing as it could be. However, the history of the building was too exciting to pass up.

I’ll have a poll now. Who wants me to feature another church from my trip and who wants me to return to Roman churches? I am open to both. I have some epic church visits still planned.

Ciao for now!

(Featured Image: Palazzo Ducale at sunrise)