PAVIA’S RISE was due to her position near the confluence of the Ticino with the Po and at the junction of major Roman roads. Conquered in 572 by the Lungobards, or Lombards, she became the capital of their kings. The Visconti established their signoria in 1359 and founded the university two years later. Already overtaken economically by Milan, Pavia was nevertheless of continuing strategic importance, and it was outside the walls that King Francis I of France was captured in 1525 by the forces of Emperor Charles V. Spanish rule was followed by that of Austria, and it is to Empress Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II that the neoclassical university buildings are due.
Pavia is visibly prosperous. Public buildings and private palaces abound. Of the churches two, both Lungobard foundations, are of particular interest. San Michele, facing a small piazza 200 metres north of the Ticino, was reconstructed after 1117. The sandstone façade is a masterpiece of controlled decoration. Across the town, near the angle of the city walls, is San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, which was reconstructed in 1132. The west front follows that of San Michele, but was more ruthlessly restored in the nineteenth century. Behind the high altar is the Arca di Sant’Agostino, in which the relics of Saint Augustine of Hippo were placed; the sculpture blends Pisan and local influence. To the east of the church, also restored, is the enormous brick castle begun by Galeazzo II Visconti in 1360–65. The north side of the quadrangular structure was destroyed in 1527, but the vast porticoed courtyard still testifies to the resources of the dynasty.
Interesting as the city is, Pavia’s outstanding monument is the Certosa, some nine kilometres to the north. From a distance its pinnacles strike a defiant note across the level plain. The foundation stone was laid by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1396, but his death in 1402 interrupted work. This was resumed and given further impetus by Francesco I Sforza, ruler of Milan from 1450. Successive architects, Venetian and Milanese, were called in. The façade was designed by the sculptor Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, but its upper half was only completed in the sixteenth century. The reliefs, so typical of Milanese Renaissance taste, are by Amadeo and his associates, while the portal of 1501–6 is largely by Benedetto Briosco. The interior is of equal magnificence. Some pictures have gone – including the main tier of Perugino’s altarpiece, which is now in London – but nowhere can Milanese sculpture of the Renaissance be studied more comprehensively, and much glass of the period survives. So do the fine choir stalls designed by Ambrogio da Fossano, il Bergognone, the one major Milanese painter of his generation who did not allow himself to be unduly swayed by the example of Leonardo. His frescoed Ecce Homo in the north transept, framed by trompe l’oeil architecture, shows how moving an artist he could be.
Leave from the south transept, pausing to examine the delicate door-case by Amadeo, to the small cloister (1462–72). The arcades are decorated with terracotta. The luxuriant green of the enclosed garden contrasts with the varying hues of the brick of the walls and the vertiginous pinnacles of the southern flank of the church. A passage leads to the enormous Chiostro Grande, its outer wall with the twenty-four cells of the monks. The eye, lifted upwards in both church and the small cloister, is here drawn horizontally. The decoration is less sumptuous, for we are now in a world of silence and devotion.
Certosa: Ambrogio Bergognone, Carthusian at a Window, fresco.
The Carthusians were suppressed by the Emperor Joseph II, who redeployed their riches or such projects as the university. But it says much for the intelligence of the Italian state that, as recently as 1968, the Certosa was made over to the Cistercian Order.