Italian Gothic architecture

Gothic architecture appeared in Italy in the 12th century. The architectural ardite solutions and technical innovations of the French Gothic cathedrals never appeared: Italian architects preferred to keep the construction tradition established in the previous centuries. Aesthetically, in Italy the vertical development was rarely important.

A possible timeline of Gothic architecture in Italy can comprise:

Gothic architecture was imported into Italy, just as it was in many other European countries. The Benedictine Cistercian order was, through their new edifices, the main carrier of this new architectural style. It spread from Burgundy (in what is now eastern France), their original area, over the rest of Western Europe.

This kind of architecture had in fact already included most of the novelties which characterized the Gothic cathedrals of Île-de-France, but with a more subdued, and somewhat "ascetic", formal approach. Figurative decorations are banned. The stained glass windows are reduced in size and colorless. The verticalism is reduced. In the exterior bell towers and belfries are absent.

Always present, however, are oval rectangular groin vaults and clustered piers, composed by an ensemble of smaller columns, which continue with engaged pillars to the vaulting-ribs. The capitals have very simple decorations, usually not figurative. The stone-dressing is very accurate as well. The result is a quasi-modern cleanness, lacking embellishments.

The Cistercian architecture could be easily adapted, with slight modifications, to the necessities of Mendicant Orders such as the Dominicans and the Franciscans, which at the time were expanding rapidly throughout Italy. Both strove for a certain cleanness, when not poverty, in their edifices. They needed large naves and aisles to allow the faithful to follow the sermon and rites without visual obstacles, as often happened in cathedrals, whose interiors contained numerous pilasters and had the choir separated by walls from the nave.

As previously stressed, the first Italian Gothic edifices were Cistercian abbeys. They spread throughout Italian territory, often adapting construction techniques to local traditions. There were in fact brickwork edifices in the Pianura Padana, while stone prevailed in central Italy and Tuscany. In the latter was sometimes present the by-chrome wall decoration from the local Romanesque tradition.

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