Abbey of S. Pietro a Villanova

Historians trace the origins of this building back to the early Middle Ages (8th century, the year 763). The earthquake of 1117 is said to have caused extensive damage, and the present form would be due to the subsequent repair and rebuilding work. The earliest documents mentioning the monastery of S. Pietro at Villanova date from the first decades of the 12th century (1131) and refer to the reconstruction carried out by Abbot Uberto of the Counts of San Bonifacio. Throughout this century, privileges and exemptions are recorded which allowed the monastic institution to grow rich. Its decline began during the 13th century. The construction of the bell tower, understood as a structure erected for military purposes, is dated to the Roman period, while its use as a bell tower goes back to the first decades of the 12th century, with rebuilding in the Renaissance (bell chamber). Numerous renovations and innovations affected the building, and the whole monastic complex, over the following centuries, above all the 15th and 17th (the creation of new altars, the opening of windows, the addition of the two polygonal pillars/buttresses of the façade, surmounted by the coat of arms of the Olivetan order). The church of S. Pietro at Villanova has a nave and two aisles, reflected in the tripartite façade (see photo: façade), articulated by the alternation of light-coloured stones, excellently squared and worked and laid with little mortar, with red bricks set in superimposed horizontal rows of three, four or five, so as to create a decorative motif through the colour contrast. This two-colour treatment affects the upper part of the façade (see photo: façade, detail) and stops just below the slopes of the aisle roofs and just above the rectangular window, opened at a late date in the centre of the façade, leaving the facing of the lower parts to plain white stones, again well squared and excellently assembled (note that the lowest parts of this section of wall show a certain “carelessness”, both in the material used and in its laying). In the façade open three square windows, two smaller ones on the aisles and the largest in the centre, below a rose window (now closed by the vaulting built in the Olivetan period). Above the rose window is a processional cross in relief. The present entrance is a late work and consists of a simple squared portal without decoration, with a monolithic lintel of red Verona marble. Two polygonal buttresses run vertically up the façade in line with the sides of the nave, each culminating in the coat of arms of the Olivetan order (Mount Calvary surmounted by the cross, with two trees carved below its arms: it was clearly made by this order, after ownership of the abbey passed to them) (see photo: buttress, detail). A sequence of small monolithic blind arches with a simple frame crowns the entire tripartite upper profile of the façade. Where they are still in place, these arches are supported by small corbels decorated with “bellows” geometric motifs (horizontal incisions on the base of the corbel). Above this decoration, and along the whole eaves line, runs a saw-tooth profile in white stone. The south side of the church is not visible, as it adjoins the structures of the monastery, the cloister and monastic and farm buildings of greater or lesser age. On the inner east wall of the cloister, the only legacy of the ancient Romanesque structures of the monastery, a single-light and a two-light window of simple workmanship, in grey stones now rather worn, remain visible. EXTERIOR: NORTH SIDE Non-uniform building methods reveal the different dates of the various interventions that must have marked this building; from the outside (considering, for now, only the structures of the church, since the bell tower also has masonry of a different constructional character), at least three main building episodes can be identified, perhaps attributable to just two building phases: a first Romanesque phase, prior to the earthquake of 1117, and the subsequent one, following the restoration. The wall of the north aisle is for the most part built of well-squared white stones, except for the stretch near the façade, where the laying is more disorderly and the material used shows no particular care or working and is set in a great deal of mortar. The masonry of the nave above is different, and here the building techniques show at least three distinct phases (see photo: north masonry of the nave): from the façade towards the apse area, for a few metres, the wall consists of red bricks laid in herringbone pattern, alternating with horizontal bands of light-coloured squared stones (this type of masonry technique is also found in the lower parts, above the foundation plinth, of the central and north apses, although here the factors are, so to speak, reversed, that is, the intersections of the herringbone masonry of plain stones in abundant mortar are made with red bricks). Continuing the analysis of the nave masonry towards the end of the apses, after this stretch of “orderly”, geometrically balanced wall, there follows a stretch of wall about 4–5 metres long in whose fabric another factor appears, which in some respects recalls the masonry of the aisle in the area adjoining the façade, with little-worked stones in thick layers of mortar, where no attempt was made to create regular geometric and chromatic patterns. And again, near the apse section, the wall (still that of the nave) returns to the method that characterises most of the perimeter wall of the aisle, in well-squared white stones and abundant mortar. These differences could indicate the extent of the restoration or renovation work carried out after the disastrous earthquake of 1117, which did not entail radical rebuilding but more or less significant renovations, which in our case certainly involved the upper parts, those most exposed to the imbalances triggered by the earthquake. Also worth noting is a sort of projecting grey stone cornice running lengthwise along the whole upper nave, about half a metre above the present junction of the aisle roof slope; perhaps this is a sign of an older, higher position of the roof, also visible in the apse area, where the slope of the aisle is at a lower level than the opposite slope of the south aisle. The eaves of both the aisle and the nave, built in brick for a few horizontal courses, also retain, as their only decoration, instead of the more classic motif of small blind arches, a simple dentil cornice, again in red brick (see photo: north side, eaves). APSE AREA The apse area too shows constructional discontinuities, both in the choice of materials and in their laying. The building has a triple-apsed end with two windows in each small apse, arranged on two levels: a single-light window above, and a window with brick frame and lowered arch below (the result of rebuilding). The central apse, larger than the lateral ones, which are equal in size, has instead six single-light windows, also arranged on two levels and of different sizes, but apparently quite consistent with the masonry system that characterises the construction of this apse. Observation of the foundations (the crypt windows are placed just above this level of masonry), which form a single whole with the base of the bell tower, favours a unified construction of the tower-church complex. Moreover, the masonry of the plinth is of plain stone, in thick layers of mortar, and was probably not meant to remain visible (see photo: apse area and bell tower). SOUTH APSE The left-hand small apse (south apse) would seem to be of older workmanship, both for its masonry as a whole and for its crowning of composite blind arches (see photo: south and central apses). The lower part of the wall (above the foundation wall) is characterised by roughly smoothed stones laid in thick layers of mortar. Into this masonry is set the window with lowered arch and brick frame (rebuilt); a little above, roughly halfway up the apse wall, a horizontal cornice of red bricks divides this rough masonry of light-coloured stones from the upper part, where white stone is also used, but more worked and better squared, though here too there is no lack of mortar, topped by a decoration of small blind arches which is not uniformly built. In the centre of the apse semicircle opens another window (here too a late work, since its construction destroyed two of the small hanging arches above). Only the small arches in the southern part of the semicircle appear intact and original, made of small pinkish bricks laid in an arch; the others that remain are assembled too roughly to belong to the original construction. This type of crowning with small blind arches formed of terracotta or stone voussoirs assembled in an arch indicates pre-Romanesque workmanship, certainly earlier than the small arches crowning the other two apses. These, besides the comparison with those of the parish church (pieve) of Sasso (province of Parma), as already suggested by scholars, can also be compared with the apse of what remains of the so-called “Sepolcro dei Monaci” (Monks' Tomb, 9th–10th century), near the abbey church of S. Michele alle Chiuse, at the mouth of the Val di Susa, in Piedmont. But an example closer geographically, and also comparable for the type of material used, red brick, is the few terracotta arches remaining as the crowning of the central apse of the parish church of S. Andrea at Sommacampagna (province of Verona), datable to the 11th century. Returning to S. Pietro, historians believe that in ancient times (8th century) a small chapel stood here, the remains of which should be represented by this small apse. Indeed, the stretch of wall joining it to the central apse, since its constructional features are very close to the masonry system used in the main apse, would seem to be precisely the result of adapting this smaller apse to the rebuilding that would have involved the central apse and the small north apse. The south masonry has features different from the rest of the church building; on the other hand, a stretch of wall of the side building (an ideal extension of the perimeter wall of the south aisle) also preserves a few metres of masonry, now blended into the more recent brick construction, which allow some observations on the building features. This masonry, in its method of execution and in the materials used (small white stones, squared but not smoothed and laid neatly in thick layers of mortar), in fact recalls the more extensive masonry feature of the outer wall of the north aisle. Inside, on the east side of what remains of the cloister, on the ground floor, there are a single-light and a two-light window of ancient workmanship, probably what remains, together with this stretch of external wall, of the Romanesque monastic structures. continued >>>