HISTORY
The Cathedral of Parma, together with the nearby baptistery, is one of the most important monument of Romanesque art in the Po valley. The structure of the cathedral is quite complex, reflecting the many architectural changes it underwent over the centuries. Great artists worked on it, many important Italian sculptors well known in the Romanesque period such as Benedetto Antelami (1150-1230 AC). During the sixteenth century, many painters went on with the embellishment of the building: beautiful frescoes, among which the famous “Ascension of the Virgin” made by Correggio between 1526 and 1530, covered the walls and ceilings of the church. The building is a mixture of two Romanesque styles: the "Lombard" style that we can also see in the cathedrals of Piacenza and Cremona, both architectonically very similar to that of Parma, and the “Germanic" style reinterpreted here according to the local manners. The consecration to St. Mary of the Assumption (Santa Maria Assunta) dated to 1106 under Pope Pascal II. A document dated 884 attests the existence of a primitive church "infra civitatem parmensem”.
The construction of the actual cathedral began under Bishop Cadalo (1046 - 1071), after a fire that in 1058 destroyed the previous church. The Chronicles of Parma (Chronicon Parmense) tell about a terrible earthquake in 1117 that caused many damages (“Ecclesiae Sanctae Mariae magna pars dirupta est"). However, works continued and ended in 1178. On that year, Antelami worked on a pulpit of which remain today only the element representing the Deposition of Christ.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
EXTERNAL
Its gabled façade is the result of a delicate balance between structure and decoration, which integrate each other according to the padano-Lombard tradition, as we can also see on the facade of San Michele in Pavia. Its stone structure is composed of three levels. The first includes three portals of which the central has a decorated prothyron with column-bearing lions executed in 1281 by Giambono Bissone. The second part is composed of two orders of three mullioned loggias with Verona marble columns. On the bottom edge of the arc of the prothyron is carved a relief with the cycle of the months, which dates back to the twelfth century. The continuous frieze of the portal represents hunting scenes and monstrous animals. The decoration of the façade shows the same overlapping loggias of the apses, generating strong chiaroscuro contrasts. The presbytery outside is characterized by plastic effects thanks to the succession of square and semi-cylindrical volumes, decorated with pilasters and blind arcades ending with loggias. The bell tower is square with thin vertical pilasters, according to the typology of the Lombard Romanesque style. The elegant three-mullioned window and the crowning spire, dating from the end of XIII century, are clearly inspired by Gothic.
INSIDE
The plan of the Parma Cathedral is a Latin cross with three naves and a transept that ends with semicircular niches. The clustered and composite columns give a vivid impression of verticality. They are decorated with capitals and half columns upon which lean high ribbed vaults. The interior is both majestic and imposing. The woman’s galleries consist of four mullioned windows with capitals decorated with herbal motifs and symbolic themes as the Woman of the Apocalypse (Signora Dell'Apocalisse). The rings of the arches lean on corbels carved in the shape of animal or human head. The sleek appearance of the structure is enhanced by the raising of the presbytery finished with the tiburio in which was built the famous dome in the sixteenth century. The vast crypt under the presbytery has cross vaults on carved capitals with phytomorphic motif from XII century. The capitals of the nave are probably later. The sculptures are not homogeneous and probably are carried out by several artists. The Master of the Month (Il Maestro dei Mesi), however, seems to have been particularly active: he works also on the development of sculptures inside of the building and in particular on the cycle of months in the prothyron. The most important sculptor was, however, Benedetto Antelami. The bishop’s throne is monumental: both telamons, the representations of Saint Georges killing the Dragon and the Conversion of St. Paul, are harmoniously integrated into the cubic structure of the throne. Antelami comes off in the Deposition of Christ to the realism of Wiligelmo (who decorated the Cathedral of Modena), reviving the content and getting elegant and balanced sculptures that show his adherence to the models beyond the Alps, probably due to a stay in Provence. An herbal fascia frames the relief in which there are inscriptions with the names of the characters in the scene. At the top on the right, there is the sculptor's signature. The figures are firmly anchored to the bottom frame and the draperies are well-defined creating strong contrasts of light and shadow. The Cross of Christ harmoniously divides the scene into two equal parts: to the right the Christian world and to the left to the pagan. This division is emphasized by the representation of the sun and moon symbolizing good and evil respectively. It reflects a gothic taste, also visible in the Parma Baptistery in which Antelami worked around 1200.
HISTORY
The idea of a new cathedral for the town of Ferrara coincides with the will of autonomy of the city, which was at that time under the influence of the diocese of Ravenna. In 1139, the bull of Innocent II confirms both Ferrara’s independence from Ravenna and the approval for the construction of a new cathedral that began in 1133. It had among its main donors Guglielmo Adelardi, to whom belong the basic ideas about the building. A tombstone found during the works of restoration in 1925 certifies that "Glielmo fo l’auctore", as well as the main financier of the work, and that the hand of the beautiful sculptures that enrich the cathedral belong to Nicolaus, student of Wiligelmo and Lanfranco in Modena. The cathedral that today stands majestically on the square is the result of numerous renovations after the thirteenth century, evidenced by the extreme heterogeneity of styles that you can read on it. A number of significant actions date back to Ercole I, who commissioned Biagio Rossetti, the most important local architect, to work on the building. On that occasion, Rossetti widened the choir and built the apse. In the interior of the church, the aisles had its present-day Baroque appearance only after a disastrous fire that destroyed the previous structures.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
EXTERNAL
The Romanesque style is evident especially in the lower part of the building, for example in the imposing and austere white wall on which there are three large portals. Fulcrum of the whole building is the wonderful porch that is one of most interesting of the Po valley Romanesque for variety of reliefs and sculptures. It is attributed to the great sculptor Nicolaus. The majestic main entrance below has in the archivolt a beautiful lunette, in which is represented the legendary battle between San Giorgio, saint patron of the city, and the dragon. The Gothic style loggia, dating from 1250, opens with three decorated arches in the center of which, between two double lancet windows, there is a Madonna and Child of the XV century. Over the loggia, the stories of the last judgment developed on three levels.
NORTH SIDE
The north side of the cathedral, which takes place on Adelardi’s street, retains its Romanesque structure because it never had successive interventions. Materials used for the construction are bricks. There are also two ancient fortified gates: the largest, called the Gate of Judgment, led to the old cemetery.
SOUTH SIDE
The south side of the building, which is developed on Trento Trieste’s Square, retains its Romanesque appearance in the sequence of arches supported by half-columns that drop to the ground. The shops opened under the porch in the Loggia dei Merciai, also if they have not been kept in the old form, are interesting. About halfway along the length of the side, the Romanesque gallery is interrupted by an arch, which is what remains of the Months portal destroyed in 1717. The original tiles are preserved in the Cathedral Museum. The author of this beautiful cycle of sculptures, characterized by an intense plasticity, is known as the Master of the Months.
HISTORY
An historical reconstruction of the cathedral of Reggio Emilia, located on the Prampolini Square, is hard because of the various construction phases and numerous restorations over the centuries, still ongoing. Until 903, the oldest documents show the cathedral of Reggio as San Prospero, which is the church located outside the town walls. The Bishop of Reggio decided to build a new cathedral dedicated to Santa Maria, already established in 857, by the powers conferred on him by the king Ludovico III and through the Act of donation of 31 October 900 in response to a raid by Hungarians. Thus, it is likely that the first cathedral of Reggio Emilia had been raised in its current position, between the years 904 and 942. Before there was probably a pagan temple, which was destroyed by order of Constantine, dedicated to Bacchus or Apollo. It is from 979 that the new cathedral began its period of maximum extension, when the bishop Ermenaldo helped strengthen its role by placing the remains of San Prospero. It is also assumed that the cathedral was rebuilt after the year one thousand at the end of the eleventh century, in according with the building dates of the greatest Romanesque cathedrals of other cities of Emilia Romagna as Modena and Fidenza. Reggio’s Cathedral had inside in the sixteenth century an inhomogeneous appearance: its Romanesque structure coexisted with the cross vaults of the fifteenth century and the Renaissance apses and transept. In the sixteenth century, the facade was rebuilt by Prospero Sogari, called "the Merciful", who concealed all the lower part to place marbles from the new project. The interior underwent a real homogenization work, with which the Sienese architect Cosimo Pugliani incorporated the old Romanesque structure in a Doric trabeation. In 1623 on the transept was erected the dome that was built by the priest Paul Messori and decorated in 1779 with frescoes designed by the designer Francesco Fontanesi.
ART-HISTORICAL NOTES
The old structure of Reggio‘s cathedral, after a presupposed reconstruction in the eleventh century, was rebuilt in the same Tuscan style of San Miniato al Monte in Florence. It had a Latin cross with three naves and a transept. It was marked by the presence of a transverse nave that, together with an apse chapel, replaced the third span of the typical Tuscan style. Another foreign element in this Tuscan scheme is the octagonal dome cladding, built in 1269 during the so-called “restauro Malaguzzi”. It overlooked the front of the church and it is now detectable only on the outside, highlighted by the actual steeple. From year one thousand, various works of considerable artistic value were also carried out: frescoes, columns, capitals and the remains of the galleries from the Romanesque period. Among them there were also a mosaic floor from XII-XIII centuries, a Byzantine fresco with Christ in a mandorla with angels and saints that adorned the facade of the church until 1960 and the remnants of the ambo by Antelami’s school from the early thirteenth century.
In these years was probably built the crypt in which was found an interesting high relief of the Pantocrator, which comes from the parapet of the pulpit standing over the crypt. This sculpture has been dated between 1220 and 1230 and it is attributed to the circle of Antelami. The same attribution had the column-bearing lions, which probably held up the supporting columns of the pulpit of the Cathedral. The building has a cruciform plan that consists in the nave, transept and choir. Pillars divide the nave from the aisles. On the sides of the aisles open five chapels, where there are the most important tombs, paintings and works of famous artists from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries including Bartolomeo Spani, Domenico Cresti called Passignano, Cristoforo Roncalli, called Pomarancio, Orazio Talami, Palma il Giovane, Annibale Carracci e Giovan Francesco Barbieri called Guercino.
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