Santa Maria della Pieve

The church of Santa Maria della Pieve ( officially: Pieve di Santa Maria Assunta ) is the oldest and San Francesco is the second most important church in the city of Arezzo. It is located in the city center on the Piazza Grande.

History and Function

A predecessor of the traces at the southern entrance to the Via Seteria are understandable, is already in use for the year 1008. The present Romanesque building of sandstone was probably started around the middle of the 12th century and its construction continued until the 14th century.

In the 13th century the façade was built, and in 1330 the Campanile was completed, which is popularly called " Tower of the 100 holes "; meant are his 40 mullioned windows (ie in reality only 80 "holes" ) that arrange in 5 bullets on all four sides of the 59 m high square tower.

Restorations have taken place in the 16th and 19th centuries.

The emergence of the Pieve was tied to the rise of Arezzo as a free commune. The self-sufficient citizens they built in the center of the city in competition with the cathedral, where the bishop resided as the lord on the hill of Pionta outside the city walls. The establishment of the Pieve in a city-state is very rare in northern and central Italy.

Under a Pieve ( lit. " parish / rectory " ) - the term has survived in numerous Italian place name - was a church to understand with specific rights such as the right to baptism and burial. Only one Pieve had a baptismal font and a cemetery. The term Pieve is derived from the vulgar Latin plebes, ie Christian communities in the country, over which the parish had the case law and from which they took their tithing.

Location

Santa Maria della Pieve is - unusually for an Italian place design - not with the facade, but with the apse on the sloping Piazza Grande, which takes place on every first Sunday of the month, a regionally well-known antique market. The church is the oldest building on the stylistically heterogeneous, trapezoidal space, the finish of the Palazzo del Tribunale (17th century ), Palazzo della Fraternity dei Laici from different construction periods and Giorgio Vasari's Palazzo delle Sign.

Exterior

The design of the apse with a blind arcades series in the basement and two open gallery transitions in Central and floor continues architectural ideas from Lucca and Pisa. The facade repeated and extended this principle Pisan Romanesque and lucchesischer: Below blind arcades, about three rows of open arcades.

The facade has rich sculptural decoration of the three portals. In the lunette above the central portal of the Assumption is shown ( 1216) and the Archivolte decorate bas-reliefs of the 12 month allegorical figures. The relief in the lunette above the right side of the portal, the Baptism of Christ is (dated 1221 or 1227 ); the left portal has only vines in the tympanum. The unknown artist of the portal jewelery is in the stylistic tradition Benedetto Antelamis and presumably knew French cathedral sculpture.

There is no gable design; rather, the front sight designed almost in pure rectangular shape.

Interior

The church stands on a slightly warped south floor plan, which is due to the difficulties with the uneven terrain.

The three - aisled basilica with zweizonigem Interior wall elevation ( ogival arcades and mullioned windows as clerestory ) acts on the basis of unusually high arch openings to the side aisles, which are hardly perceived as such, more like a hall church more than a basilica. Because of the few and small clerestory windows make the room seem dark and cool - a mood that has brought about often aware in hot countries.

Transept and crossing are not visible from the outside.

The interior of the apse and the crypt under the chancel were redesigned and rebuilt in the 19th century.

The imaginatively designed capitals belong to different stylistic traditions; one hand, ancient forms occur, on the other hand Romanesque-Gothic masks and animal sculptures.

Polyptych by Pietro Lorenzetti

The most important work of art in the interior of the church is a polyptych by Pietro Lorenzetti from 1320. Was commissioned by the Bishop Guido of Arezzo Tarlati.

Shown are Mary and Child between Saints John the Evangelist, Donatus, John the Baptist and Matthew. In the row above the main field appear under blind arches the 12 apostles to a Annunciation scene. The polyptych is crowned by the Assumption.

It is an early work by the Sienese artist who is iconographically and stylistically in the tradition of Duccio di Buoninsegna and is therefore still very traditionally attributed to the Middle Ages; unlike in Florence where Giotto had at the same time, is nothing of the forerunners of the Renaissance still be seen here. Nevertheless, the movement of the figures is more alive than Duccio; Parallels to the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano have been described.

Other Equipment

• An imaginary by Giorgio Vasari for himself and his family in the grave chapel altar was spent 1864 in the church of Badia delle Sante Flora e Lucilla.
• Two bas-reliefs on the interior facade right of the central portal ( " Birth of Christ" and " Adoration of the Magi " ) by an unknown sculptor ( presumably 13th century or later).
• By Giovanni d' Agostino, a Sienese sculptor of the 14th century, the font comes with three scenes from the life of John the Baptist.
• A rare iconographic motif is on a fresco on the left column of the presbytery: (. Successor of Giotto, 14th century) Dominic and Francis of Assisi side by side
• A jeweled reliquary bust of St. Donatus ( patron saint of the city of Arezzo ) of 1346 is placed in the crypt.

The organ was built in the 1960s by the organ builder Tamburini. The instrument has 64 registers on three manuals and pedal. The tracker action are electric. A special feature is the first Manual of anspielbare " Organo antico ", a mitteltöniges work.