Ecclesiastical Architecture

ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. - 1. GENERALITÀ. - Buildings for ecclesiastical use respond first of all to the requirements of worship (v. CHIESA); then to the needs relating to the education of ecclesiastics and, more generally, to those particular environmental conditions that are required of those who dedicate themselves to the religious life.

The buildings that, with respect to the above-mentioned purposes, satisfy this complex set of needs are: a) buildings for the celebration of the sacred liturgy (churches, chapels, oratories, baptisteries); their most directly dependent annexes (sacristies, bell towers); or those necessary for the carrying out of that work of religious education which has its most logical reason and its most fitting seat around the church (buildings for religious instruction, educators, recreation centers, associations); or those destined for particular offices (curias); or those assigned to the dwelling of the officiating clergy (episcopal residences, canonries, parish houses).

b) centers for the formation of the clergy: ecclesiastical colleges, seminaries; c) places of retreat: abbeys, monasteries, convents; d) centers of government of the Church: the papal palace, episcopal palaces, palaces of the congregations, directive and organizational centers of the various branches of ecclesiastical activity.

Elements that almost constantly enter into buildings destined for collective dwelling and in which ecclesiastical architecture has expressed itself in characteristic forms are: cloisters; chapter halls; libraries annexed to the various types of ecclesiastical buildings; refectories; dormitories.

To these are added in some cases the buildings for institutions of hospitality (hospices-hospitals).

In the more general sphere of architecture, ecclesiastical architectural forms are brought, in these buildings, to the highest expressions permitted by the various degrees of civilization, of material and spiritual prosperity.

From the primitive Christian constructions, such as may be the remains of cemetery annexes and the adaptations to worship of certain parts of houses whose owners had been converted to the new faith, we can deduce only a generic character of functional and formal elementariness, in relation to the historical necessities of the first centuries of Christianity. Indeed, extremely scanty are the remains of the rooms of Roman houses used for worship assemblies, upon which the first churches were later grafted, and which today emerge beyond centuries of modifications; for example, in St. Pudenziana, in St. Clemente and generally in the primitive "tituli" (v.); and only historical record can attest to us with certainty the existence of buildings in which the primitive Christian communities gathered (dominicum-dominica praedia) as precisely in the dominicum Clementis (St. Clemente).

The first affirmation of monumental Christian architecture is represented by the grandiose complex of the Lateran, the first official seat of the bishop of Rome founded by Constantine. Here were the basilica, the episcopium (residence of the Popes) later patriarchium annexed to the basilica, the baptistery, the oratory of the Cross, a vast portico built by Pope Hilary, and other lesser buildings. Similarly, among the most ancient and distinguished groupings of buildings ordered to religious purposes are those that formed around the ancient St. Peter's (Corpus sancti Petri) and around St. Paul's.

The forms of these buildings (v. BASILICA; BATTISTERO; ORATORIO) are connected to the evolution of late-Roman forms, to which the spirit of the new religion adds clear stylistic particularities.

II. ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE IN THE REGIONS OF THE EAST

In the Asiatic and African territories of the East, the new religion naturally lived in a Hellenistic environment: this also left its mark on the architecture of the buildings that the rapid spread of Christianity was bringing forward in flourishing centers, as well as through the work of an opulent bourgeoisie, also through the formation of a numerous priestly and monastic class.

After Constantine and Helena, in the first half of the 4th century, religious buildings in Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia were numerous and important, monumental in size, form, and significance. As with the type of the church, so too for the buildings connected with it, there was widespread use of cut stone, which the regions supplied abundantly. But it is still elements of classical and Hellenistic tradition that are found in the arrangement of omega-shaped architraves (that is, curving upward at an intercolumniation), in the types of porticoes, in the grouping of buildings around porticoes at whose center stands the church. Insistence on pilaster rows, forming simple and superimposed porticoes, now of thrusting ashlar blocks, now in the form of pseudo-arches (that is, drawing the arch but acting vertically). The use of sail vaults and domes on pendentives constitutes a transverse resisting system which, compared with Roman systems of predominantly longitudinal framing, represents a more solid structural bond, especially in relation to the problem of roofing.

This architecture, while repeating from Roman tradition the effects of plasticism in the decorative projections of pilasters, bands, architraves, archivolts, moldings, also hints at certain decorative solutions destined to develop in the subsequent periods leading to the Romanesque, namely small columns, hanging arches, string courses, vertical divisions of façades. The ornamental repertoire, fundamentally derived from Ionic and Corinthian models, becomes flat and dry: acanthus leaves sharp, ornamental foliage lanceolate, running motifs geometrized, with geometric ornament generally dominant. In the interiors, following Eastern taste, polychromy composed of precious materials (marbles, enamels, glass pastes, metals) was preferred. Bas-relief sculpture, strongly outlined, partakes of the Asiatic tradition: flat, chiseled like metal, it tends toward a stylization with the character of stone carving.

The decorative characteristics are analogous in the Christian churches of the interior of Asia Minor (Cappadocia, Lycaonia, Galatia) and of the southern regions (Pisidia, Pamphylia, Lycia, Isauria, Cilicia), which however give us notable variants of the church plan, especially in the central forms, in which is outlined what would be, from the 6th century, the Byzantine organism.

The spread of monasticism and of the cenobitic conception promoted in Syria the construction of great convents, in the interior of the Hauran, along the Jordan, in the Gebel Hass, in the territory of the Orontes (convents of St. Simeon Stylites at Qal'at-Sim'ân, of Saqqah in the Hauran, designed not only for the life of monks but also to receive pilgrims).

Similar groupings populated the territories of Christian Africa. The remains of Tebessa (Algeria) and the better-known ones called the White Monastery and the Red Monastery in Egypt document the origins of this religious building; in the latter case they are interesting for the knowledge of Coptic architecture.

With aspects characterized by particular modes of construction in which the use of powerful walls in rubble conglomerate prevails (analogously to the Roman manner), there is grafted onto this group of the Christian East the Armenian production, which, until the 13th century, as it gives us its own type of church, so too documents for us the fervent religious life in a series of vast convents and patriarchal palaces: conventual buildings of Etchmiadzin (7th century), of Akhtamar (10th century), of Mar-

3) Church of St. Andrew, design by L. B. Alberti (then L. Fancelli), begun in 1472.

(from Lübbe-Semrau, Die Kunst der Renaissance)

2) SS. Sergius and Bacchus (early 6th century) - Constantinople.

(from Diehl, Manuel d'art byzantin)

4) Church of the Annunziata, design by G. B. Fornovo 1566 - Parma

(from Brinchmann, Baukunst der XVII. und XVIII. Jahrh.)

mashen (11th century), of Ghélat (11th century), of Koska Vank near Ari (12th-13th century), of Safar (13th century), of Horomos, of Sanahin (11th century); the patriarchal palaces of Zaurthnoc, of Cikherdabassi, of Bagaran, of Larin, of Mzen, of Talis. This architecture draws its exterior appearance from cut stone and from the facing of wall cores of irregular stone conglomerate: this procedure accords with a great plasticity of forms and architectural masses (in analogy with Roman procedures), dynamically articulated in plan and modeled in elevation with broad architectural plasticity, both in the interpenetration of the volumes of elevation and in the development of vaults ribbed by arches of dressed stone, with a system that seems to prelude the subsequent Romanesque-Gothic procedures.

In the exterior, decorative elements, with the assimilation of forms of various provenance, Greco-Roman on the one hand and Mesopotamian on the other, accomplished in the 7th century and later in the 12th-13th century also with Arab influences (to which is due the appearance of the pointed arch), this architecture assumed a particular individuality. Contributing to it are the polychromy resulting from the contrast of stones of different colors, the results of light architectural features that unfold from thin string courses to form panels and recesses, the insertion of sculpture that is architecturally arranged in zones of chiaroscuro, in bands, in concentrations of figures raised on recessed planes.

Linked to this Eastern group is Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture (v. BIZANTINA, ARTE), which in this case too expresses itself not only in the vast cycle of the church building (from the 4th to the 6th century on the rise, from the 7th to the 8th in decline, from the 9th to the 10th-11th century in a revival), but also in the great monasteries. The monastery of Sinai, Mar-Saba near the Dead Sea, the Coptic convents of Egypt, above all the monastery of the Meteora of Thessaly of the 16th century and the monasteries of Athos can be cited as the principal types of monastic architecture of the late Byzantine empire. The group of Mount Athos (v. ATHOS, MONTE) represents this Byzantine architectural taste, according to which, around a vast courtyard, are grouped the lodgings of the monks and guests, the refectories, the fountain for ablutions, and characteristic loggias forming an overhang, with a function analogous to the Western cloister: for example, the monasteries of Lavra, of Iviron, of Vatopedi, of Chilandari of the 12th-13th century; of the Pantocrator (1363), of Esphigménon (14th century), of St. Paul (15th century), of Koutloumousi (1540).

III. ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE IN THE REGIONS OF THE WEST

In the West, the religious building heritage is likewise constituted, to a great extent, on the theme of monasteries. (For the church building in particular v. CHIESA; for the annexes, v. BATTISTERO; CHIOSTRO; cf. also the entries dedicated to the individual artistic periods). It is the rule of St. Benedict that establishes the architectural program of the numerous series of monastic buildings; a program that is expanded in the abbeys, true citadels organized for the life of vast groupings of individuals (v. ABBAZIA; MONASTERO).

The advent of the great religious Orders informs ecclesiastical architecture (v. FRANCESCANA, A.; DOMENICANA, A.).

More austere and more closely adhering to the Romanesque taste, generally understood, are the Franciscan buildings. The Dominicans, on the other hand, led by their mission into contact with inhabited centers for the learned dissemination of religion, insert their churches and their monasteries into the nucleus of the cities. The Romanesque-Gothic constructional formula, which in the building of churches is carried to its extreme consequences, and the monumental expressions that derive from it — through the power of wall thicknesses, the solidity of the buttresses opposed to the thrusts of the ribbed vaults, the interweaving of these ribs into geometrically complex bundles, the boldness of heights of pilasterwork and colonnades brought to the limits of resistance by skillful calculations — persists in the buildings complementary, subordinate or annexed to the principal ones.

In the Romanesque, an effect of solid walls on which are cut secluded windows; contrasts between broad mullioned windows and resistant cores in the Gothic. The walls are marked by architectural projections (pilaster strips, bands) to mark the internal order or to determine subordinate zones in harmonious geometric relationships. Skillful are the moldings traced according to a rigorous geometric calculation formally resolved in relation to the visual field, the lights, the architectural function. There flourishes anew, as already in Byzantine times, the love of facing woven with stone or marble materials drawn from the juxtaposition of various colors or in the tracing of the various joints forming a design.

This sense of color is more vivid in Italian art, both for the strength of the Roman-Byzantine tradition (Veneto) and for Arab influences (Sicily-Campania); but it is frequent also in French architectures, in which, even within the stone structure, there always remains alive the taste for the sparkling color of mosaics and frescoes enlivening the shadows; the decoration is graffitoed, flat, metallic, rich in significant and symbolic motifs; architecturally interpreted is the position of sculpture and its plastic treatment and its stylization.

The same effects of expressive order that we see in the churches are found in the medieval ecclesiastical annexes. From the contrast of architectural masses, from the systems of opposing vaults for whose equilibrium ever more powerful dimensions are determined in the vast spaces in the supports and in the counter-thrust elements, from the perspectival depths that are created in the succession of spaces, from the gradation of lights and shadows, arises the expressive force of these a. in which the spirit has at every time most strongly felt the religious aspiration translated (v. ROMANICA, ARTE; GOTICA, ARTE).

IV. THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

The flowering of ecclesiastical constructions which in the Middle Ages had unfolded with such extent and monumental richness partly declines in the fifteenth-century period. It is still the conventual theme that presents itself above all to the a., more often in works of transformation or enlargement of ancient foundations.

In this time, into the ancient abbeys are grafted constructions that apply new decorative formulas to traditional distributive schemes. Thus at Camaldoli, besides the first cells and the first oratory of St. Romuald, the buildings for the guesthouse are added, and, in the 16th century, the church is renewed and the Ionic cloister is built. The ancient Badia of Florence is marked today by the small fifteenth-century cloister annexed to the transformed 18th-century church.

But the fifteenth century gives us monumental works of new creation. In the Sienese territory, at Monte Oliveto, a company of patricians chooses the most desolate places to create that hermitage which then, through successive constructions, would become the monumental abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore: a colossal building, the convent and the church; notable are the small and large fifteenth-century cloisters, the chapter hall or great definitory hall of 1498, that of the small definitory or hall of justice, and the great library of the sixteenth century.

The fundamental simplicity of fifteenth-century forms adapts itself to the expression of the religious theme. Thus in the new Dominican center of S. Marco which the art of Michelozzo and of Blessed Angelico composes and animates: thus in the annexes of the church of S. M. Maddalena de' Pazzi with the art of Giuliano da Sangallo.

In other regions, where the decorative tradition is stronger, religious buildings are adorned with carvings and color, whether in terracottas or in marble inlays. This is the Lombard and Venetian flowering of the constructions of the Certosa of Pavia, of the sacristy of S. Maria at Bergamo and of the great fifteenth-century additions to the ancient abbey of Prataglia (Casentino). Refined rhythms of Bramantesque art compose with airy breadth and soaring the great cloisters of S. Ambrogio in Milan, and Bramante would repeat the same rhythmic rule in the Roman cloister of S. Maria della Pace.

More solid and rough in the cutting of the travertines is the fifteenth-century Roman construction, in which, with the restoration of pontifical power in Rome, the ancient tradition is renewed.

To the religious character of the sixteenth century corresponds an architectural language based - roughly - on the resurrection of Roman architectural forms. These pass over into the theme of the church: they become interpreters of the other ecclesiastical themes, which now reflect a new expression of authority and of hierarchies.

The style of Vignola - diffused in a variety of regional schools - by its fundamental setting of austerity, of a somewhat cold chasteness, proves itself suited to the interpretation of the religious theme, both in the church and in the ecclesiastical buildings connected with it, according to the spirit of the time, dominated by the thought and action of the Counter-Reformation (v. CONTRORIFORMA, ARTE della).

To this taste are imprinted the Roman architectures of the end of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth, as in the Casa professa del Gesù, in the college of the neophytes annexed to S. Maria dei Monti.

In Emilia (at Reggio) are found two great convents, one of S. Prospero, the other the grandiose one of the Benedictines, where the work of architects of the Pacchioni family unfolds robust and rusticated architectures in a vast courtyard, around which the building is majestically composed. Similarly at Bologna, in the cloisters and convents of S. Michele in Bosco, by Michele Fiorini; of S. Giovanni in Monte, by Antonio Morandi; of S. Gregorio, by Andrea da Valle; of the Servi, by Francesco Giulio Andreoli; in the Gesuate, by Bartolomeo Richini.

We find again the austerity of Michelangelesque architectures in the enclosed feeling of certain sixteenth-century convents (at Florence, church and convent of Ognissanti, taken up again by Alessi in a convent of S. Chiara and in the cloister of S. Pietro at Perugia) and once more in the charterhouse of S. Maria degli Angeli grafted onto the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian: a Michelangelesque taste that dominates all Tuscan Baroque architecture and that is reflected also on ecclesiastical buildings with the artifices of Mannerism.

We find these characteristics at Florence in the constructions of the Carmine, in the convent of S. Firenze dei Filippini, which develops between 1643 and 1715 with the work of Silvani and of Ruggeri and of Zanobi del Rosso; in the convent of the Carmelites of S. Maria degli Angeli and of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi by Antonio Ferri (1680-89); in the additions of the convent of S. Jacopo sopr'Arno. We find them again, albeit with changed elements, in the Neapolitan Certosa of S. Martino. The subtle Lombard Bramantesque elegances echo in the architectures of Zaccagni and of Tramello, at Parma in the convent of S. Giovanni Evangelista, at Piacenza in S. Sisto and in S. Sepolcro, in the complexes that associate monastery, hospital, houses of the commendatory connected by the cloisters. Lombardesque effects enlivened by the color of the frescoes spread on the walls like tapestries, in the constructions annexed to S. Stefano at Venice, in those of S. Giustina at Padua with the work of Briosco and of Leopardi.

In the ancient Peruzzian spirit, on the other hand, live certain Sienese monastic architectures (monasteries of the Derelitte of B. Neroni called il Riccio, and of S. Maria by Anton Maria Lari), where great restful zones of brickwork and insistent horizontality of lines in the succession of the planes accentuate the character of quiet suited to the theme.

The theorizations dear to the masters of the Renaissance foresee the ecclesiastical theme: Alberti and Serlio develop in their treatises the chapters relating to religious a.; Palladio premises to the treatment of religious a. (proem to book IV) that God « being the supreme good and the supreme perfection, it is most fitting that all things dedicated to him be reduced to that perfection which is greatest possible for us ». This perfection he derived, also for works consecrated to God, from the ancient module, from the inspiration of ancient a. which, having known how to hand down its temples with such constructive wisdom, gave the example to follow both in the choice of the form « most apt to demonstrate the Unity, the infinite Essence, the Uniformity, and the Justice of God » (book IV, ch. 2) and in that « ... decoro, in which consists a most beautiful part of Architecture » (ibid.).

How this erudite and antiquarian foundation is transferred into the architectural spirit of the sixteenth century is known for the churches in which the Roman organism persists but is renewed in original forms. The buildings

The religious buildings of Palladio are clear testimony to this: the remains of the grandiose convent of the Carità designed in Venice, with its peristyle and its "Corinthian" halls, show us how the artist steeped in Roman antiquity was able to grasp its essence for the perpetuity of certain laws of harmony, by which homage may be paid to the divinity "for the honor and observance of which one must do as much as one can that is beautiful and rare" (ibid., ch. 5). Among these elements of beauty is whiteness: "since the purity of color and of life is supremely pleasing to God" (ibid., ch. 2). Indeed, the naves of Palladian churches are white, and likewise the annexed parts, except for slight [variations], especially in the arrangement of the orders in the parts of the convent of S. Giorgio Maggiore, in its cloister, in the chapter hall, in the refectory and in the scenographic staircase. Similarly, in the convent of the Zitelle and of the Franciscans of the Redentore, this clarity of architectural spaces contributes to the effects of calm serenity proper to Palladian art.

5. BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE

Baroque taste also dominates the formal investigations of the ecclesiastical building, because within the vast range of its architectural colorations there also exists the calm and solemn tonality of broad planes, of the bands that articulate them, of simple masses. We see this also in the works of Borromini, and in those of Borrominian stamp, which develop in Rome the theme of religious buildings, from the squared façades of the Oratory of the Filippini to the wing of the convent of S. Carlino, from the mass of the college of Propaganda Fide to the rough structure of the convent of S. Maria dei Sette Dolori. It is a style that is created for ecclesiastical constructions, which for the most part is identified with what is called the "Jesuit style": and indeed it is marked by a severity of simple lines, yet on the other hand capable of expressing that solemnity, that surprising showiness with which the Order of St. Ignatius intended to make the sovereignty of Jesus perceptible even in buildings of worship.

And it is from Rome that this artistic tendency sets out, which reverberates everywhere in Italy and especially in the countries

German ones of central Europe. In Rome it is found in the convent annexed to S. Croce in Gerusalemme, in the annexes of the house of the Barnabites at S. Carlo ai Catinari, in the Greek college of S. Anastasio, in the convent of S. Marcello, in the annexes of S. Andrea della Valle, of S. Andrea del Noviziato (at the Quirinale), and it is composed into an extensive building in the Trinità dei Pellegrini. The architectural concept thus widely practiced consists in the opposition of broad fronts to the nucleus of the church, which dominates with its crowning of orders and chiaroscuro effects. Such is the appearance of certain Venetian monuments, such as the building of S. Maria Assunta dei Gesuiti built by Domenico Rossi (1715-39) and by Fattoretto (1730), the group of the Gesuiti (S. Maria del Rosario and its annexes, by Massari, 1726-43) and the austere group of the Tolentini, over which the pronaos by Tirali stands out.

The practice of receiving aspirants to the priesthood in specially designated buildings had already been implemented in certain ancient institutions, such as the college of Alcalá in Spain, in Kraków in the college of the Jagiellonians, in England at Cambridge, in Bologna in the college of the Spaniards (founded by Cardinal Albornoz in 1364), still today a document of typical Bolognese architecture in the great courtyard with depressed arches, in Rome the one erected by Cardinal Capranica under Eugene IV. Elsewhere these ecclesiastical colleges were housed in ancient buildings adapted for the purpose (at Assisi in a complex of 14th-century buildings; at Pisa in the annexes of S. Caterina dei Domenicani).

The major architectural achievements in the matter of ecclesiastical colleges depend on the action of the Council of Trent. Already Rome, through the work of St. Ignatius, sees the establishment of the Collegio germanico and the palace of the Collegio romano inaugurated by Gregory XIII in 1582. Here the architecture, more properly that of Fr. G. Valeriani, constitutes the model of interpretation of the theme relating to institutes of culture, like the Casa professa dei Gesuiti. The Sapienza - the Roman archiginnasio - dates back to the beginnings of the Roman Renaissance, to Eugene IV and then to Leo X; particularly cared for subsequently by Paul III and then by Gregory XIII and by Sixtus V with the work of Giacomo della Porta. Borromini grafted onto it the oratory and the wing of the library of Alexander VII. The building, with the circuit of its halls around the courtyard and with the backdrop of the oratory, remains representative of the architecture suited to institutions of ecclesiastical culture.

The major constructions devised for ecclesiastical purposes of education depend on the work of St. Charles Borromeo: the Collegio elvetico in Milan begun by Fabio Mangone in 1608 and continued by F. M. Richini from 1630 and by Quadrio; the Seminario maggiore, designed by Aurelio Trezzi (from 1602), executed by Fabio Mangone; the collegio Borromeo by Pellegrini (1563-85) and by Richini (from 1628 to 1629). The distributive layout of these buildings develops around a broad courtyard with a double order of loggias, of such amplitude that two storeys correspond to each order: such is the system of the columned porticoes, architraved in the Collegio elvetico, with a classical Palladian return, with arches on a paired row of columns in the college of Pavia, and also in the college of Brera founded by the Jesuits in 1591, completed by Richini in 1651.

We have in these works the architectural translation of the new educational spirit as it is formed under the action of the Counter-Reformation, so that they remain symbolic of the character of institutes of education.

Between 1637 and 1650 there rises in Rome, in the area of S. Maria in Vallicella, the grandiose and monumental oratory of the Filippini, through the work of Borromini. There rises in 1627, through the work of Urban VIII, the collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide for the apostolate among the infidels. In the architecture of these monumental complexes the classical schemes are innovated and surpassed, now replaced by broad and deep pilasters, by framing that takes advantage of the amplitude of dominant solids, by the contrasts and oppositions of volumetric curves, by the accentuation of certain centralized features against the recurrence of elements repeated insistently. Of this procedure we have analogous solutions also in other monuments of this era: in Venice in the Seminario patriarcale annexed to the church of the Salute, in other forms in the collegio Flangini by Longhena and in Turin in the palace of the archiepiscopal seminary by Juvara. This great architect creates original means of expression capable of giving rise to possibilities of new interpretations especially for this type of building.

6. CATHEDRALS AND BISHOPS

With the affirmation of the preponderance of the secular clergy, the cathedral constitutes its predominance in relation to other religious institutes: thus among the dependencies of the cathedral the episcopal palace arises, forming a building complex that echoes by analogy the abbatial groupings.

Among the episcopal constructions of the Middle Ages of monumental scale, those of Laon, of Auxerre, of Narbonne, of Reims, of Orvieto, of Viterbo, of Anagni should be remembered, now closed like little castles, now open like lordly palaces.

In the Renaissance the episcopal building (and in general buildings with a representative purpose) such as the pontifical residence that arose on the Quirinale at the time of Gregory XIII, the Lateran one of the time of Sixtus V, and those having functions of government, such as in Rome the palace of the S. Uffizio, and (in connection with the hospitaller institution of S. Spirito) the one called del Commendatore, fall, as regards organic scheme and architectural composition, within the type of the Renaissance palace. The expression of lordly, princely nobility is taken up again and brought to the new theme, in regional and personal interpretations proper to the various periods in which they arise.

Thus with a specific ecclesiastical purpose arise the 15th-century episcopal palaces of the Rossellino group of Piacenza, those of Perugia and of Padua and, in the 16th century, the Sangallesque ones of Amelia and of Castro, of Ascoli (with portal by Cola dell'Amatrice) and the grandiose archbishoprics of Pisa, of Pavia, of Milan.

Neo-Palladian, with an actually neoclassical imprint, are the episcopal palaces of Vicenza and of Venice.

After an interruption due to the persecutions against the Church following the French Revolution, there is - especially in the second half of the 19th century - a revival of ecclesiastical constructions, which is also connected with the reconstitution and organization of many religious Orders and with the extension of missionary activity. There are especially, besides new convents, institutes of instruction of the religious, colleges and, with a notable extension of the building of new churches, buildings annexed to these or in any case dependent on them and completing the religious service assigned to them.

Rome offers in this sense a very significant production, especially in the colleges which either renew themselves in their ancient seats or are newly established. Reflected in these modern architectures is the eclecticism that characterizes the end of the 19th century. The college of S. Anselmo on the Aventine assumes monumental value (architecture by Father Ildebrando da Hemptinne and by Vespignani), where the Benedictine tradition is renewed in forms of great nobility and with signs of evident modernity.

Vincenzo Fasolo

7. CONTEMPORARY ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE

Ecclesiastical architecture still constitutes today one of the most notable branches of architecture, not so much for a definite stylistic value of its own — which, moreover, has not been fully attained in any branch of architecture — as for the importance of the themes it proposes to the new building technique: namely, the use of constructional means proper to our time (wide-span structures in reinforced concrete, steel and glass, etc.) and the deeper study of the technical solutions for certain requirements and installations (visibility, lighting, acoustics).

Interest in church building grew with the evolution of the current architectural trends, which, having arisen after a period of creative weakening (19th century) due to the predominantly positivistic orientation of art in general and of architecture in particular, tend gradually to rediscover with a new spirit the essentially expressive foundation of the elements that come into play in construction.

At first there were experiments with iron and masonry structures (St-Eugène in Paris — cast-iron columns — 1851; St-Augustin, also in Paris — iron roof — 1861-70), which were followed by the first trials of reinforced concrete at St-Jean in Montmartre (Paris, 1894, architect A. de Bodout); finally this same material was used for the first time in its typical expression by the brothers A. and G. Perret in the churches of Notre-Dame at Raincy and of St. Teresa at Montmagny, likewise in France (1923-27), while the architect O. Barting went so far as to experiment with structures entirely of steel and glass (Protestant church at the Press Exhibition in Cologne, 1928). The best architects who now treat the theme of the church, although applying the new means extensively and often totally, tend rather toward a free use of modern structures and of the typical effects that derive from them, bending them to a decided expressive intent, both in proportions and in the promiscuous use of different materials, according to the purposes and the environmental conditions. On the whole, although without the affirmation of a new, mature stylistic direction and alongside the spread of an antiquated and uninteresting mannerism, the results achieved by individual architects are often remarkable and sometimes attain the value of accomplished works of art, worthy of the high tradition of the ecclesiastical architecture of the past.

The countries that offer the most significant examples of modern church architecture are those same ones that made the strongest contribution to recent architectural evolution, such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We may mention in particular, among the German architects, Emil Fahrenkamp, Hans Hercommer, and especially Dominikus Böhm, who passed from Expressionist attitudes (the church at Bischofsheim near Mainz, 1926) to more sober and constructive values (St. Joseph at Hindemburg); among the Austrians, R. Kramreiter (the church at Pernitz, Austria) and above all Clemens Holzmeister, more cautious in continuing, through his copious production, with new means, the intimate and festive tradition of the Austrian Baroque and Neo-Baroque; finally, among the Swiss, K. Moser, above all for the church of St. Anthony in Basel, where the concrete structure achieves a new maturity of expression.

Nor should the work of the Scandinavian architects be passed over in silence, such as G. Asplund and E. Thomsen (aiming at a lofty stylistic sense of classical inspiration), Jensen and Kaare Klint (with most noble neo-Gothic attempts), even though it was carried out for Protestant places of worship, both because of their derivation from traditional Catholic religious forms and because of their influence on all present-day religious architecture.

Meno interessante appare la produzione in altri paesi come la Francia, la Spagna, l'America latina.

In Italy, in the still abundant production of ecclesiastical buildings, no decisive stylistic direction is to be noted so far, since architects are still torn between traditionalist forms pursued in vain in new simplifications and the liveliest contributions of contemporary architecture. Most notable, among others, are the works of G. Muzio (church of S. Maria della Rossa in Milan, 1932; sanctuary of S. Antonio in Cremona, 1937; project for the church of Regina Pacis in Milan and S. Ambrogio in Cremona), of M. Piacentini (church of Cristo Re in Rome), of A. Foschini (church of the SS. Pietro e Paolo at the universal exposition of Rome). - See Plates CXXIX-CXXXII.

Saverio Muratori