Abbey Church of Santa Maria in Portonovo

Not far from Ancona, at the foot of Monte Conero, on the side that slopes down towards the sea, stands the abbey church of Santa Maria in Portonovo, a small and highly distinctive jewel of Romanesque architecture and the only one of the structures that made up the monastery to have survived almost unaltered (an exception is the forebuilding in front of the west façade, which is of more recent construction). Scholars place the foundation of the monastic complex within the first half of the 11th century. Around the year 1320, the complaints the monks addressed to the bishop of Ancona, Nicolò degli Ungari, about the disastrous state of the abbey, “the convent had collapsed and there had been victims”, persuaded the prelate to abandon the settlement, which was thus condemned to ruin. St. Gaudentius, bishop of Ossaro (Croatia), was buried here, and St. Peter Damian may also have stayed here. Some scholars see in this monument a complex architectural achievement, attributing it to French influences of Cluniac origin (stepped apses), mixed with and mediated by craftsmen of “Lombard” culture (detectable in the sequence of blind arches along the eaves of the entire perimeter of the church and in the articulation of the wall surfaces by means of flat pilaster strips). Other studies propose instead “a five-aisled Lombard Romanesque basilica surmounted by a dome (or tiburio) of Byzantine inspiration”. The plan is highly articulated, and experts consider it a sort of mixture of the basilican and the cruciform scheme; it is nevertheless generally defined as a basilican structure with five aisles, of which the two outermost, to the south and north, are much shorter than the others. Some studies compare this plan, albeit with variations in size, with that of the church of Cerisy-la-Forêt in France. The dome is considered to be of “Byzantine inspiration” because it is square on the outside but octagonal inside. A documentary trace concerning the monastery of Santa Maria di Portonovo refers to papers of the 11th century (“In the year of our salvation 1034 a certain Stefano di Germano, son of the late Teobaldo Grimaldi of Poggio, a castle of the diocese of Ancona and the nearest to the said place, made a donation of 35 measures of land, called at that time Modioli, so that on that site, where at present one sees remains of the said abbey and the church still standing, a temple might be built to the Most Blessed Virgin, as in the deed of the said Michele, notary of Ancona, of 7 July of the year 1034, a copy of which deed is to be found in the archive of the records of the Chapter of San Ciriaco in Ancona”). The authenticity of this reported document is not certain. The original has in fact been lost. Scholars disagree on the dating of the church, which is variously placed in the mid-11th century, in the 12th, or even attributed to a rebuilding in the 13th century. According to recent studies, however, the construction of the church should be placed between 1034 and 1048. The importance of this monastic institution is also confirmed in papal documents of the following centuries (1177: privilege of Pope Lucius III; 1184: privilege of Pope Honorius III; 1222). The church measures 26.63 metres in length and 18.93 metres at its widest point. In addition to the main entrance, located in the western forebuilding, there are two other doors set in the wall facing the sea (plus a third, discernible only from inside thanks to a wooden lintel still in place in the wall). The door located next to the remains of the monastic structures attached to the church is surmounted by a lunette, probably once decorated with a bas-relief or a fresco depicting the Madonna with the figure of the patron beside her: now only fragments of an inscription remain, difficult to read and even harder to interpret: “MT…IM…EC…RIS ET CALOI…” An atrium (see photo west front), added in a more recent period, precedes the church proper. The portal leads into the nave, covered by barrel vaults supported by hanging columns in the Burgundian tradition. In the centre, on an ellipsoidal plan, rises the dome of the tiburio (see photo tiburio). Two rows of massive columns divide the three aisles, which are flanked on each side by an apsed chapel with a cross vault, extending the interior space into the form of a cross. The floor of red terracotta and yellow stone, which helps to create an elegant colour contrast with the whiteness of the walls of the elevation, is the original one. The capitals surmounting the columns of the nave, like those on the half-columns, have decorated features; symbolic signs are carved on the half-columns, while the motifs on the capitals of the nave columns would appear to be a schematic “water-leaf” decoration (comparable to the decoration of the capitals of the columns in the crypt of the church of Sant’Eusebio in Pavia). The windows in the hemicycles of the minor apses are not centrally placed but slightly offset, to make better use of daylight. St. Gaudentius, bishop of Ossaro (Croatia), was buried at Santa Maria di Portonovo, and St. Peter Damian may also have lived here for a time. Recent archaeological investigations have brought to light a medieval necropolis around the church. What is most striking about the church of Santa Maria di Portonovo is the singularity of its location and of its overall structure. As regards the “where”, there is an evident contrast between the white stones of the building, a little above the white stones of the beach, the changing shades of blue and the deep green of the sea, or the colour of the autumn woods on the slopes of Monte Conero. As regards the structure, the local white stone has been composed in forms that are certainly not monumental or particularly elegant and refined, yet are balanced, in an upward crescendo articulated in “steps”: of the apses set against the east end (see photo apse area), the main one is placed at the end of the nave, while the minor ones, also facing east, are built onto the arms of the transept; all are lower than both the roof of the transept and the roof of the nave; in addition, at the crossing of the aisle and the arms of the transept rises a tiburio which is in turn divided in its elevation into two levels: two-light windows adorn the lower, square level, while blind three-light windows characterise the upper octagon. In fact the subdivision is more evident from inside, where the cross plan is more clearly visible, with the addition of two semicircular apses on the east sides of the transept arms. This combination of levels nevertheless has a restrained impact, since the building is by no means monumental in size and, even in height, is certainly not among the most imposing: it is a small, sober and geometric building. In its plan, so unusual among the forms in use in the Marche in the same period, with its projecting apsed transept (see photo apsidiole) extending lengthwise to almost half the length of the old church (without the atrium), it recalls even older monuments of the Lombard period, such as the first San Salvatore in Brescia (7th century), although the latter had a semicircular apse at the east end of the nave in line with the side apsidioles. The forms of this church belong to the full Lombard Romanesque style, with blind arches of different sizes decorating the eaves (in particular the arched friezes under the eaves of the apses are very reminiscent of Lombard churches (see photo central apse detail), such as Sant’Ambrogio, San Vincenzo in Prato and Sant’Eustorgio in Milan, or San Pietro at Agliate). What also attracts attention in this building is the apparent homogeneity of its construction; admittedly, a closer examination reveals additions and restorations, as in the case of the west end, consisting of an atrium attached at the point where the blind arches under the eaves of the nave break off, or of the south end of the transept, which contains a room hardly consistent with the period when the church was built; the entrances, too, have not escaped modification, in addition to those made to the west entrance by the atrium, but these do not greatly affect the balanced proportions of the volumes, in plan and in elevation. Unlike the exterior, where the modest dimensions are not concealed by the complexity of the elevation, the interior appears spacious, and, perhaps owing to the diffusion of the light coming from the openings of the tiburio, the spaces seem to expand and rise. Certainly the white stone used for the walls helps to dematerialise the volumes: columns, vaults, apse hemicycles and tiburio create a harmonious whole and do not give the impression of a very complex architectural subject.