Orvieto Cathedral: A Gothic Cathedral and Shrine in Italy
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- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Papal States
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page20 sections
History
Orvieto Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Orvieto, Italy, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Construction began in 1290 in the medieval Romanesque tradition and developed into an Italian Gothic building over almost three centuries. The cathedral became the mother church of the Diocese of Orvieto-Todi and was built to commemorate and protect the Corporal of Bolsena, a relic associated with a reported Eucharistic miracle.
Foundation and the Bolsena relic
Work began on 13 November 1290 by order of Pope Nicholas IV. The project followed Pope Urban IV’s establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264, the Catholic celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ. It was also connected with the decision to house the Corporal of Bolsena at Orvieto.
The relic was associated with an event said to have taken place at Bolsena in 1263. According to the tradition, a priest who doubted transubstantiation, the Catholic doctrine that consecrated bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ while retaining their outward appearance, saw blood emerge from the consecrated Host and stain the altar cloth. The corporal was brought to Orvieto because the pope was residing there and because the town occupied a defensible volcanic plateau.
The first plan was for a Romanesque basilica with a nave and two aisles. The design is attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio, while construction was directed by Fra Bevignate di Perugia. Giovanni di Uguccione later reshaped the project in the direction of Italian Gothic architecture, a regional form of medieval building associated with pointed arches, ribbed vaults, height, and large glazed openings.
Maitani and the medieval building campaign
Lorenzo Maitani became chief master of the works in 1309. He addressed structural difficulties, especially those involving the choir, and substantially revised the design. Under his direction, the cathedral took on an appearance closer to that of Siena Cathedral. Maitani continued the façade from 1310 until his death in 1330, after which his sons carried on the work.
The long building campaign involved several successive masters. Andrea Pisano became master of the works in 1347, followed by Andrea di Cione, known as Orcagna, in 1359. Antonio Federighi worked on the façade between 1451 and 1456. Michele Sanmicheli completed the central gable in 1503, and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger completed the right spire in 1534. Ippolito Scalza added the right pinnacle in 1590 and the left pinnacle in 1605 to 1607, when the final pinnacle was completed.
The cathedral’s religious role continued to develop alongside its construction. On the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Corporal was carried from its chapel in processions through Orvieto. The church also became a pilgrimage destination because it contained the remains of Saint Pietro Parenzo. Pope Innocent III had appointed Parenzo podesta, or chief civic official, of Orvieto in 1199. After his murder that year, reports of miracles associated with his tomb brought pilgrims from across central Italy, and he came to be venerated as a saint.
Chapels and Renaissance decoration
The Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio began as the New Chapel in 1408 and was completed in 1444. It was dedicated to Saint Britius in 1622. Britius was traditionally regarded as an early bishop of Spoleto and Foligno and as an evangelizer of Orvieto.
Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli began decorating the chapel in 1447, but stopped after Pope Nicholas V summoned them to work in the Vatican. Pietro Perugino was approached in 1489 but never started the commission. Luca Signorelli took over in 1499 and completed the principal fresco cycle between 1500 and 1503, pausing in 1502 because of a lack of funds.
Signorelli’s cycle presents the Apocalypse and Last Judgment through scenes of the Preaching of the Antichrist, the End of the World, the Resurrection of the Flesh, the Damned in Hell, the Elect in Paradise, and the Reprobates driven to Hell. The Preaching of the Antichrist was painted soon after the execution of the Dominican friar and religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola in Florence on 23 May 1498, an event that formed part of the political and religious background evoked by the fresco.
Traditional identifications of the writers and philosophers beneath the principal frescoes include Homer, Empedocles, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, and Dante, although these identifications remain disputed. Giorgio Vasari identified the dead Christ in the chapel’s Pietà as Signorelli’s son Antonio, but that interpretation is also contested. Antonio was still alive when the work was delivered in February 1502 and died several months later.
Papal buildings and later institutional history
The attached Palazzo dei Papi was begun in the mid-thirteenth century after the popes moved to Orvieto to avoid conflict in Rome. Urban IV and Martin IV lived in the town, and Boniface VIII extended the building. Work stopped after the papal court moved to Avignon in 1309. The palace remained a papal residence until 1550, then passed to the cathedral and was converted into a museum in 1896.
The Palazzo dell’Opera del Duomo, opposite the cathedral, was built in 1359 for the cathedral’s administrative offices. It was enlarged in 1857 to accommodate a museum containing Etruscan artifacts discovered in Orvieto. The adjacent Claudio Faina Museum houses a nineteenth-century collection of Etruscan art assembled by Count Mauro Faina and bequeathed to the city.
Between 1842 and 1846, Russian architectural students and graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts cleaned the façade, exposing mosaics and reliefs beneath accumulated dirt. They also made measurements and drawings. Their work was published in Paris in 1877 and contributed to the spread of Neo-Gothic architecture in Russia.
The cathedral received the status of a minor papal basilica in January 1889. This designation recognizes a church’s religious and historical importance without changing its status as a cathedral. Since 1986, Orvieto Cathedral has also served as the episcopal seat of the former Diocese of Todi. It remains an active Catholic church.
Remains
Plan, façade, and exterior fabric
Orvieto Cathedral stands above the town’s volcanic geological formation. Its plan is cruciform, with three aisles, a six-bay nave, and a single transept. The interior was deliberately arranged to remain spacious and relatively uncluttered. The side walls are faced with alternating courses of local white travertine and blue-grey basalt, creating a striped surface associated with northern Italian and Lombard Gothic architecture.
Façade sculpture and mosaics
The façade combines Italian Gothic work from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Three triangular gables rise above three portals, pointed pinnacles, openwork arcades, quatrefoils, and a large rose window set within a square frame. Golden mosaics cover much of the surface, and three bronze doors form the present entrances. The doors were completed in 1970 by the Sicilian sculptor Emilio Greco and depict works of mercy from the life of Christ. Above them is a marble Madonna and Child made by Andrea Pisano in 1347.
The lower façade piers carry fourteenth- and fifteenth-century marble bas-reliefs. Read from left to right, their subjects are episodes from Genesis, the Tree of Jesse and messianic prophecies, scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary, and the Last Judgment. At least three or four masters and their workshops produced this collective work, whose installation on the piers began in 1331.
Bronze symbols of the four Evangelists stand along the façade cornice. The Angel, Ox, Lion, and Eagle represent Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Maitani and his collaborators made the figures between 1325 and 1330. Matteo di Ugolino da Bologna added a bronze Lamb of God above the central gable and a bronze Saint Michael above the left entrance gable in 1352.
The façade mosaics were produced between 1350 and 1390. Early work is attributed to Piero di Puccio and other mosaicists, while later designs are associated with Cesare Nebbia and Giuseppe Ottaviani. Sections were replaced or redesigned in 1484, 1713, and 1842. The scenes include the Nativity of Mary, the Baptism of Christ, and the Coronation of the Virgin.
Rose window and upper façade
Orcagna made the central rose window between 1354 and 1380. Twelve apostles occupy the niches above it, while pairs of Old Testament prophets stand on either side. Mosaics of the four Doctors of the Church fill the surrounding spandrels. The frame contains 52 carved heads, with Christ’s head at the centre. Records attribute eight of the niche statues to Nicola de Nuto.
Nave and central interior
Cylindrical columns divide the nave and aisles. Their alternating travertine and basalt courses, together with their capitals, reflect changes made during the extended building campaign. The lower portions of the aisle windows contain translucent alabaster panes. Above them are Neo-Gothic stained-glass windows designed by Francesco Moretti and installed between 1886 and 1891.
Roof, transept, and furnishings
The wooden roof uses a trussed structure decorated in the 1320s by Pietro di Lello and Vanuzzo di Mastro Pierno. It was heavily restored during the 1890s by Paolo Zampi and Paolo Coccheri. The transept is covered by quadripartite stone vaults, each divided into four sections, constructed between 1335 and 1338.
Near the left entrance is a large marble baptismal font decorated with lions and elaborate frieze reliefs. Luca di Giovanni began it in 1390. Sixteen years later, Pietro di Giovanni of Freiburg added the red-marble basin, and Sano di Matteo completed the octagonal pyramid in 1407.
Above the font is Gentile da Fabriano’s International Gothic fresco Madonna Enthroned with Child, painted in 1425. It was preserved when stucco altars were installed in the nave chapels in the late sixteenth century. The destruction of those altars in the nineteenth century revealed fragments of other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frescoes, some attributed to Pietro di Puccio.
At the beginning of the nave stands a marble holy-water stoup sculpted by Antonio Federighi between 1451 and 1456. Above the entrance to the Chapel of the Corporal is the cathedral organ, originally designed by Ippolito Scalza and Bernardino Benvenuti in the fifteenth century. It has 5,585 pipes and was redesigned in 1913 and 1975, while its original wooden carving was retained.
Apse and southern transept
Apse and choir
The apse contains a large quadrifore stained-glass window, a window divided into four openings, made between 1328 and 1334 by Giovanni di Bonino of Assisi, probably to a design by Maitani. The window is approximately 16.3 metres high. Above the altar is a large polychrome wooden Crucifix attributed to Maitani.
Gothic wooden choir stalls were begun in 1329 by Giovanni Ammannati and Sienese woodcarvers. They were originally placed in the centre of the nave and moved to the apse around 1540. Three walls behind the altar carry damaged Gothic frescoes of the life of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Ugolino di Prete Ilario and collaborators, including Pietro di Puccio, Cola Petruccioli, and Andrea di Giovanni, created the cycle around 1370 to 1380 over approximately ten years. The Annunciation and Visitation were repainted by Antonio del Massaro at the end of the fifteenth century.
Southern transept sculpture
Near the northern transept entrance is Ippolito Scalza’s marble Pietà, carved in 1579 over eight years and composed of four figures. The sculpture forms part of the cathedral’s later marble decoration and survives as a distinct work within the interior.
Chapel of the Corporal
The Chapel of the Corporal occupies the northern side of the main crossing. Built between 1350 and 1356, it is two bays deep and covered by quadripartite vaults. Its wrought-iron gate was made between 1355 and 1362 by Matteo di Ugolino da Bologna and completed by Giovanni de Micheluccio da Orvieto in 1364.
Relic chapel decoration
The chapel’s frescoes present the history of the Eucharist on the left wall and miracles associated with the bleeding Host on the right. Ugolino di Prete Ilario, Domenico di Meo, and Giovanni di Buccio Leonardelli painted them between 1357 and 1363. The paintings were restored in the mid-nineteenth century.
An aedicule-shaped tabernacle, a small shrine-like structure, stands on the altar. Nicola da Siena designed it in 1358, and Orcagna completed it. A panel of the Madonna dei Raccomandati, painted around 1320 by the Sienese artist Lippo Memmi in the Italian Byzantine tradition, occupies a niche in the right wall.
The chapel’s reliquary is a Gothic triptych made by the Sienese goldsmith Ugolino di Vieri between 1337 and 1338. A triptych is an artwork or shrine formed from three connected panels. This example combines silver, gilded silver, and multicoloured translucent enamel. It measures approximately 1.39 by 0.63 metres and contains 24 scenes from the life of Christ and eight scenes concerning the Corporal. When closed, its form echoes the cathedral façade in miniature. The reliquary was moved to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in the adjacent piazza in the early twenty-first century.
The remains of Saint Pietro Parenzo are kept in a small coffer visible through an oval opening at the centre of the altar associated with his tomb.
Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio
The Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio occupies the southern side of the transept and is structurally almost identical to the Chapel of the Corporal. Two wrought-iron gates enclose it. One is associated with Conte di Lello Orlandi, while the other bears the signature of Gismondo da Orvieto and the date 1516.
Early paintings and altar
The chapel contains the Madonna della Tavola, a late-thirteenth-century panel by an anonymous Orvieto master probably influenced by Cimabue and Coppo di Marcovaldo. The Child’s face was restored in the fourteenth century. The panel stands on the late-Baroque Gloria altar, made by Bernardino Cametti in 1715.
Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli painted two sections of the vault in 1447, Christ in Judgment and Angels and Prophets. Signorelli later added the Choir of the Apostles, the Doctors of the Church, the Martyrs, the Virgins, and the Patriarchs.
Signorelli’s Last Judgment cycle
Signorelli’s frescoes fill the large lunettes and walls with the Preaching of the Antichrist, the End of the World, the Resurrection of the Flesh, the Damned in Hell, the Elect in Paradise, and the Reprobates driven to Hell. Dramatic movement, foreshortened bodies, crowded groups, collapsing cities, darkened skies, angels, demons, and resurrected figures give the cycle its forceful visual language.
The Preaching of the Antichrist includes figures traditionally identified as Raphael, Dante, possibly Christopher Columbus, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Cesare Borgia, together with a self-portrait of Signorelli and a depiction of Fra Angelico. Some of these identifications are uncertain. Smaller paintings beneath the main cycle show writers and philosophers observing the Last Judgment, while grisaille medallions treat subjects associated with Dante’s Purgatorio, Orpheus, Hercules, Ovid, and Virgil.
The Resurrection of the Flesh shows nude figures rising from the earth as angels sound trumpets. In the Damned in Hell, intertwined human bodies are overwhelmed by demons, including a flying demon carrying a woman probably intended as the Whore of the Apocalypse. The Elect in Paradise shows the saved looking toward angels making music.
A Pietà in a lower-wall niche depicts the dead Christ with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint Pietro Parenzo, and Saint Faustino. The composition provides visual references to two martyred saints associated with Orvieto.
Associated museums and collections
The cathedral’s associated museum displays paintings, reliquaries, original construction plans, and architectural elements removed during later restoration. The Palazzo dei Papi also contains paintings, reliquaries, construction plans, and architectural elements from the cathedral. Its ground floor houses the Emilio Greco Museum, which preserves works, preparatory studies, and sculptures by Emilio Greco, the artist responsible for the cathedral’s bronze doors.
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