A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Introduction (excluded from the word count)

In this brief essay Id like to talk about Pienza, explaining why it will be so important for the future Renaissance
period in Italy. A case in the middle between reality and eutopia.
For Eutopia, one means a good attempt for establishing a good model for a better society, an ideal society.
Its important to remark that this was possible only thanks to the fall of the Occidental Roman Empire in 1453 (
this is the common date to fix the end of the Middle Ages), from which many byzantines sought refuge in Italy,
bringing whit them many Greek texts that otherwise would not had been recoverable. Books written by
philosophers such as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, just to make an example. The rediscovery of these
philosophers helped to exit from the culture of the middle ages and hence to create a new movement called
Humanism or First Renaissance.
Humanism is an ideological and cultural movement that affirms the dignity of human beings. It began in the
fifteenth century as a literature movement (the most important center was Florence) and spread throughout
all Europe at the same time. The term Humanism derives from the Latin Humanae litterae, indicating the
disciplines typical of the human being. This rediscovery is a cultural prerequisite of the Renaissance, with which
the humanistic generation emphasizes a clear separation between the medieval world, characterized by a
vision of life, which put God at the center of the Universe and demanded the total submission of the man to
the will and power of the Church, and their vision in which the man is at the center of the Universe and is
considered creator and master of his own destiny.1
Pienza
This switch can be seen especially in the pictorial art of that time, for the first time the religious figures started
to be represented with human bodies and proportions. As the man put himself to the center of universe, hence
even his proportions were elevated and used to shape the new vision of the cultural movement. Things were
not beautiful because they were outwardly pleasing to behold, but because they were the expression of a
system of precise harmonic rules and relationships. For this reason the rediscovery made by Poggio Bracciolini
around 1414 of the De Architectura (about the architecture) , a book written by Vitruvius around 29-23 a.C
under the empire of the roman emperor Augustus and dedicated to him, its crucial for the birth of the
architectural Renaissance movement.
On his book Vitruvius talked about the three classical orders, their proportions and their relation with the
human body.
Artem sine scientia esse non posse There can be no art without science
an ancient roman saying reported by Vitruvius 2.
Ever since Vitruvius , architecture had established an anthropomorphic matrix both for the buildings as a
whole, and for its separated elements, or ornaments. In Renaissance architectural theory, the proportion of the
human body assumed a crucial role in the formulation of the architectural orders. In his treatise De re

Leonardo Benevolo , Storia dellarchitettura del rinascimento, 19-48.

Personal notes taken during the Renaissance history seminar, Prof. Gerardo Doti.

Oswald Mathias Ungers, Architecture as a craft, 97.

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Aedificatoria Alberti goes back as far as the idea of the building as an organism, constituted of lines and
matter, in which the lines stem from the spirit of man, and the matter from nature. Beauty, retained Alberti,
is a form of sympathy and consonance of the part within a body, according to definite number, outline and
position, as dictated by concinnitas (harmony), the absolute and fundamental rule of nature3.
Albertis concept of harmony stands for a natural order in the sense as a logical use of the architectural orders,
idealizing the structures of decoration for buildings. Indeed the orders represents three types of human body :
The Doric order is compared with the man, the Ionic with the woman and the most slender one, the Corinthian
with a virgin. The orders were not simply categorized by conceptualizing their shape with the human body, but
with a precise proportion relationship even between girth and height (Doric 1:7, Ionic 1:9, Corinthian 1:9.5).
Therefore, form was not a random occurrence but the result of applied logic, and hence comparable with the
result of applying proportional relationships4. But those are just general theories applicable to any Renaissance
Italian site. We need to start to fly down and go to the point5. We need to introduce a tool, proper
invention of that time, with whom we can link all what has been said till now: the Perspective ( seeing
through). Paraphrasing Panofsky : the perspective is a symbolic form, as it tries to return in the form of a twodimensional space a fragment of reality much more complex of the sheet (window) in which it is contained,
according to the scientific and religion beliefs of that time6.
But it is only in the Renaissance, and more precisely at the threshold of the Renaissance, in which it managed
to have a loyal and scientific restitution of the three-dimensional complexity thanks to Filippo Brunelleschi in
1416, who invented the central perspective. Describing it with clear mathematics and geometric laws.7 That
leads then to a switch between the aggregated space of the medieval cities to a systematic use of the space
for the Renaissance cities8.
Thats the beginning of Pienza. A vision, a programme, an experiment on urban scale of a humanistic city,
mostly financed and wanted by a single man: Enea Silvio Piccolomini, a humanist first and then a pope, Pope
Pious II.
In order to understand how this happened, one cant avoid to talk about the characters that made all of this
possible. Enea Silvio Piccolomini ,Leon Battista Alberti, Bernardo Gamberelli detto il Rossellino .Enea Silvio
Piccolomini was the son of a rich family of bankers originally from Siena, whose possessed many estates and
properties. During the time they progressively lose money and power, forcing them to leave the city and retire
into one of their estates, one of them was in Corsignano. Here Enea was born. First son of 18, from which only
3 survived, he and two other sisters. As the son of a retired noble man he received the best education of that
time, a humanist education. In 1423, his father Silvio sent him to study at the university of Siena (founded in
1240, one of the oldest in the world) and then in Florence, in which he met the most important humanists of
the time : Francesco Filelfo and Poggio Bracciolini. Starting from 1431, he began to work for the church,
covering progressively many different important roles, till becoming pope after the death of Callixtus III in
3

Oswald Mathias Ungers, Architecture as a craft, 102-103.

Oswald Mathias Ungers, Architecture as a craft, 106.
5
Rick Krosenbrink , TU Delft PhD Researcher.
6
Erwin Panofsky , Perspective as Symbolic form, Section II and Section IV
7
Leonardo Benevolo , Storia dellarchitettura del rinascimento, 1-18.
Personal notes taken during the Renaissance history seminar, Prof. Gerardo Doti.
Erwin Panofsky , Perspective as Symbolic form, Section II and Section IV
4

Erwin Panofsky , Perspective as Symbolic form, Section III

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

1458. He was close friend with Alberti. Famous amateur architect of that period, but mostly known as writer,
the most mentionable ones are De Pictura and De Re Aedificatoria. Who had the opportunity to meet
during one of his many coming back and forth from Rome to Vienna during one of his diplomatic mission
between the Pope Nicholas V and the emperor Frederick III.
Everything started by accident, in 1459, when Enea Silvio Piccolomini, was on a journey to reach Mantova for
an important council to proclaim the necessity of a war against the Ottoman empire. During his journey from
Rome to Mantova he decided to stop with his friend Leon Battista Alberti in his hometown: Corsignano.
The legend says he decided to transform his city after that visit on 21st February 1459, what he saw scared him.
He couldnt recognize most of the people he used to know, even the village was a ghost of itself: dirty and
dilapidated. Only in that moment he realized of being human, he couldnt stand against the flow of time. But
he thought he could do something that could live forever, specifically engraved in that time and place, on his
birthplace. His legacy was just about to start.
The conversion from Corsignano to Pienza was slowly taking shape in his mind.
As soon as he left the village, 23rd February, in order to shape his vision, based on Albertis advice, Pious gave
the task to Bernardo Gamberelli better known as Il Rossellino (for the color of his hair), a well-known
architect of that time, sculptor and painter, who had demonstrated to be able to learn and master the art of
perspective illusions from Brunelleschis works and one of Alberti scholar as well. They both shared the love for
the antique roman ruins and their strong sense of monumentality, as well as they both worked for the pope
Nicholas V.
This, let us imply that Pious had already planned to do something in his village long time ago before his official
visit. This can be easily proven thanks to some letters and tax summaries (gabella dei contratti) preserved in
the archives of Siena9. But still, he hadnt a clear idea of what to do. So for the moment he just commissioned
to Rossellino the construction of a new church and a personal palace, both for his private use and as an estate
for his family.
Officially, the construction started on 8th May 1459 as recorded on a Sienese note, since they received a
petition from the most distinguished Pontiff . But it was only after his third visit in Corsignano that his vision
started to be clear in his mind: it was not just about building two new palace, it was about reshaping the city
according to his way of seeing life. In order to have a better dialog with Rossellino and Alberti he documented
himself, studying the Vitruvius treatise and Albertis De Re Aedificatoria. As reported in an official document of
the town council of Siena, dated 5th October 1460, the monumental phase began. Not only he invested his
money in the project, but he encouraged others to do so as well.
Little we know about the original plan of Corsignano, as the only information that historians were able to
collect on this place are written by Pious himself, on his Commentarii. He just reported that many houses
were demolished to make space for this new intervention. But he did that in an exquisite way: without
damaging the villagers, as the municipalities does nowadays when it comes to renewing some quarters of the
cities, he first bought the dwells and spots in which he intended to build his vision and then he demolish them
to make space.

Charles R. Mack, PIENZA, The Creation of the Renaissance City, 37.

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Some believe that the original configuration originated in a Roman foundation, which would have established
an enduring axial street pattern common to many Roman colonial communities. Thus, the east-west
orientation of the present corso il Rossellino, would in this view, correspond to the ancient decumanus while
the Via Marconi would follow the original line of the cardo. If so, the forum of this hypothetical Roman town
would probably have stood at the intersection of these two principal streets, occupying what would later be
the site of the actual Piazza Pio II and Piazza del Mercato. One in, this case, could speak of a continuity of
location and function which would have placed, almost through tradition, the religious and civic buildings of
the Renaissance on ground once occupied by their Roman counterparts an antique city plan reborn some
fifteen hundred years later through the intervention of a humanist pope. Alas, such pleasant speculations on
ancient origins and orthogonal layouts appear to have no true substantiation. At least there have been no
archaeological excavations to support such an attractive thesis. But without any sort of doubt we can say that it
was just like a normal village on the Orcia valley. What did set it apart was that it had produced a pope.

Main intervention placed at the intersection of the original main roads

So he asked to Rossellino to treat the city as it was a giant page of a book written in a humanistic style, full of
ideal concepts connecting the city with the landscape and blending all the different place of power into a single
place. Thats how the piazza was born.
Around the end of the summer of 1462 Rossellino managed to finish almost the entire monumental area and
the rest was going at quick pace, so fast that in the same year it was possible to rename Corsignano into
Pienza, meaning the city of Pious.

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Pienza was officially born.

Personal Drawing - The new monumental intervention

But, never completed, as both Pious and Rossellino died in 1464.

This is why we defined it eutopia, a model that unfortunately wasnt complete and within this contradiction lies
his beauty. A legacy, not only for the villagers and his family, but an example that lead the basis for all the
future first Renaissance cities.
Indeed what Rossellino managed to complete was only the main intervention: 4 volumes articulated around a
square. Palazzo Piccolomini, the new church, the bishops palace and the town hall, the last two are less
interesting both for form and facade treatment. They were built just for necessity.

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Personal Drawing Close up

But due to is uniqueness is still studied nowadays.

This intervention can be seen as the result of an ambitious man, the first renaissance theories and a matter of
luck and science combined all together.
The square for example, can be seen as the first attempt to regulate through his void the complex relationships
of the adjacent volumes both in length, height and rhythm. Hence it is a generative void. Rossellino used the
square as a Renaissance painter would do to construct his guide lines for a perspective paint. It is even
materialized by its orthogonal pattern. Here Albertis influence is evident :
" The difference between the drawings of a painter and those of an architect are this: the former takes pains to
emphasize the relief of objects in paintings with shading and diminishing lines and angles; the architect rejects
shading, but takes his projection from the ground plane and without altering the lines and by maintaining true
angles, reveals the extent and shape of each elevation and side - he is one who desires his work to be judged
not by deceptive appearances but according to certain calculated standards."
- Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria10.
Rossellino in order to modulate all the complex relationships between the dwells and establish a hierarchical
order among them, gave an irregular trapezoidal shape to the square and then used again a perspective trick
called anti-perspective or slowdown perspective. First of all he oriented the long side of the trapezoidal square
10

Thomas Forget, The construction of drawings and movies : models for architectural design
and analysis, Introduction.

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

to face directly the Monte Amiata, on the oblique side he put to the left the Bishops Palace and to the right the
Piccolomini Palace and in the end, on the long side he placed the church. Obtaining in this way a perception of
the space much more shorter than it is in the reality. Consequently the perception of the church is much more
wider and closer than it is in reality. The hierarchy, connected with the symbolism of that time now is evident:
first there is the Church, which symbolize God, then there is the Piccolomini Palace, (the house of Pious) the
representative of God on earth and then in the end there is the Bishops Palace, symbolizing the man.

Personal Drawing Levels of perception from the Square (Piazza)

Its not even a case that this disposition directly face to the Orcia Valley and allow the visitor in the square to
see it from the gaps between these buildings. This was dictated by Pious himself, as his sense of aesthetic was
also shaped by a true love for nature. He was a wooer of nature. His joy in the outdoors comes across clearly in
the Commentarii in glowing descriptions of trips into the countryside, in the verbal vedute of sight seen,
and in refreshing rememberances of Picnic consistories.

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

As we previously said the location of his monumental intervention might be seen as a combination of luck and
science. Luck because the Palazzo Piccolomini had been built in the original location of Pious house and it is
even possible to see some remains on the east garden wall of his palace. Science because its very uncommon
to have such a strange orientation and location for the church. The canonic orientation is with the choir
directed towards East. Instead here is directed towards the Mount Amiata. Neither Pious himself would had
done such a thing just for the love of nature. The reason must be another. As the architect Jan Pieper Pointed
out the reason might rely with the representation of the symbolism of the most important Christian liturgy:
Easter. The facade of church worked as giant sundial. This phenomena can be seen only the first Sunday after
the spring equinox, during which the projection of the shadow of the church exactly covers the 9 squares of the
square, also reported by Pious himself on his Commentarii. With this giant sundial the pope wanted to
communicate to the devotees concepts such as the temporality of life and the flowing of time. The message
was clear: the "light" of the church, symbolized by the circular opening (detto occhio = eye) in the facade, was
set against the stone ring inserted into the pavement of the square. Made dark by the church's facade shadow,
the so-called navel identified thus the evil, the darkness and the dark unconscious. Their measures contribute
to emphasize the relationship between the two architectural elements; the height of the center of the eye at
the base of the facade of the church is equal to the distance between the base and the considered center of
the ring stone. Their diameter is also equal . Even today you can see this event but not to the same date as a
result of the change of the calendrical system occurred in 1582. Nowadays its possible to admire this event 1011 days after the Spring equinox11. Therefore the churchs orientation derives from a precise astronomical
reason.

Jan Pieper Sketch

11

Rosa Maria Trentadue, UNA MERIDIANA ASTRALE IN PIAZZA PIO II.

http://www.centrostudipientini.it/wordpress/?p=338
Comune di Pienza , Omaggio allarchitetto Jan Pieper. http://www.centrostudipientini.it/wordpress/?p=208

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Jan Pieper Technical drawing and facade\square shadow projection

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Jan Pieper Photo of the projection of the facades square

In conclusion, there would be so many other things to say, but what it is important to remark is that if this site
manage to survive till our days, its only thanks to the improvise death of its creator. Bringing the city back to
its normal rural life up on the Sienese hills. If the death didnt take Pious life so prematurely, we might have
assisted to a total different landscape of the Orcia valley since he was willing to dam a river in order to create
an artificial lake, completing his landscape vision, proving fish and protection at the same time12. Even if this
eutopia lasted no longer than 5 years, its legacy its tangible in many other Italian cities of the Renaissance.
Furthermore it settled the basics that will be defined and fully developed in the late Renaissance. As an
example, the spatial arrangement around the square inspired Michelangelo for his project on the Capitoline
Hills of Rome13.

12
13

Charles R. Mack, PIENZA, The Creation of the Renaissance City, 40-42.

Charles R. Mack, PIENZA, The Creation of the Renaissance City, 159.

10

A HEART THAT BEATED ONLY ONCE

Site of Pious project lake14

There is also another thing to say none of these great buildings would had been possible if Rossellino didnt lie
about the real cost of the works, Pious amazed by the works done appreciated the lie and even rewarded
him15.

14
15

Charles R. Mack, PIENZA, The Creation of the Renaissance City, 154.

Charles R. Mack, PIENZA, The Creation of the Renaissance City, 107.

11