A Wooden Model for the Cathedral of Pavia

Last week, we had two posts of Nicola de’ Grandi’s pictures of the cathedral of Pavia, Italy, and the tomb of St Syrus, the city’s first bishop. As I mentioned in the second one, the current cathedral is the result of a major rebuilding project that began in the later 15th century, and still remains technically unfinished. As a brief follow-up, here are pictures of a very beautiful and very well-preserved wooden model for that project, made between 1497 and 1501. It represents the fusion of the ideas of the original architect, Giovanni Antonio Amodeo, who planned the central nave, the external buttresses, and the external chapels, with Donatello Bramante’s design for the cupola and the large external apses. The church as it currently stands bears some resemblance to this design, but many of the model’s features were removed as the project slowly progressed.

In 1490, Leonardo da Vinci was called to Pavia to offer his opinion and advice on the project; here we see some sketched which he made in that period, one of a series of Greek-cross church designs, which were something of an obsession for the architects of that era. (Bramante would go on to be hired by Pope Julius II to rebuild St Peter’s basilica, which he planned as on a Greek-cross design, later imitated by Michelangelo, and not definitively altered until the early 17th century.) 

Another of a basilica, both in plan and prospective, based on some of the prominent church buildings in Lombardy such as the very ancient basilica of St Lawrence in Milan.