THE majestic walls of Lucca, with their sequence of eleven formidable bastions built between 1504 and 1645, offer visual evidence of the city’s long independence from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Her strategic position and the fertility of her territory ensured the survival of the Roman town. In 1119 Lucca became a free commune; a period of great prosperity – and church-building – ensued. After a phase of political turbulence, the city recovered independence in 1369. Paolo Guinigi held the signoria for thirty years until 1430, but thereafter Lucca prospered as an increasingly aristocratic republic until the French invasion of 1799. Granted by Bonaparte as a principality to his sister Elisa and her husband Felice Baciocchi, Lucca was in 1817 awarded to Napoleon’s wife, Maria Luisa of Parma, and only passed to Tuscan rule in 1847.
The eighteenth-century tragedian Vittorio Alfieri recollected of his first visit to Lucca that a day there had seemed like a century. Few will agree. While the walls testify to Lucca’s determination to preserve her independence and the innumerable villas in the hinterland imply the sustained wealth in later centuries of her leading families, many of the outstanding buildings in the city itself date from the period of the free commune. The church of San Michele in Foro, at the very heart of the grid of the Roman town, epitomizes the Pisan Romanesque. Ruthless restoration does not disguise the richly decorated texture of the façade; the apse is also distinguished. Passing this, and making north-west, turn right and then left on the Via Fillungo; beyond the bend, to the left, is the great church of San Frediano, largely built between 1112 and 1147. The mosaic of the Ascension on the façade is, alas, much restored, but the interior is particularly satisfying. The decoration of the second chapel on the left is the masterpiece of that most eccentric of Bolognese Renaissance painters, Amico Aspertini, whose classicism is informed by a kleptomaniac’s accumulation of detail. Further on is the Cappella Trenta, with a sculpted polyptych, dated 1422, by Jacopo della Quercia.
Leave the church and cross the Via Fillugo to the Roman amphitheatre. The centre has been cleared and serves as a playground; houses are built into the structure. However, its form and scale can still be sensed. We can only be grateful that it has been spared by the archaeologists. As Lucca retains so much of the early street plan, it is relatively easy to head south for the Duomo. Founded in the sixth century by San Frediano, this is the most ambitious of the Romanesque churches of Lucca. The upper part of the façade was constructed by Guidello da Como and bears the date 1204; the elaborately decorated portico was begun in 1233. Entering the church, one is immediately impressed by its scale and height. In the left aisle is the octagonal shrine devised in 1482–4 by the local sculptor Matteo Cividale to contain the revered Volto Santo, a Romanesque effigy of Christ on the Cross in a robe enriched with Gothic jewellery. Mentioned by Dante, the Volto Santo was – and remains – the religious symbol of Lucca. An early copy is at Borgo San Sepolcro, and the image appears on an early sixteenth-century English cope at Stonyhurst. The people of Lucca still pay it far more attention than the two Renaissance masterpieces in the church.
Cathedral: Fra Bartolommeo, Madonna and Child with Saints Stephen and John the Baptist, 1509.
The earlier and better known of these, in the left transept, is Jacopo della Quercia’s extraordinary funerary image of Ilaria del Carretto, wife of Paolo Guinigi. She died in 1405 and the tomb was delivered in 1408. The effigy is placed on a sarcophagus decorated with putti supporting a splendid festoon. The young and exquisitely beautiful consort lies in her eternal sleep, a lapdog at her feet. Fluidly carved in flawless pale marble, the sculpture exerts an irresistible appeal. The most recent restoration has been irresponsibly criticized. Behind the monument, to the left of the presbytery, is the Chapel of the Sanctuary. The altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints Stephen and John the Baptist was supplied by Baccio della Porta, Fra Bartolommeo, in 1509. One of the purest achievements of the Florentine High Renaissance, exquisite both in its equilibrium of composition and subtle clarity of colour, this is one of the few major works by the painter which can still be seen in an appropriate setting.
Lucca repays the persistent. There are other early churches. And a wonderfully detached impression of the town and its campaniles can be gained from the walls. The Museo di Villa Guinigi houses a substantial museum, including a sensitive portrait of a diffident youth by Pontormo, while the Palazzo Mansi retains the collection of that family. Those with time should try to see at least some of the villas of the Lucchese and their gardens, but will need to check opening times. Of the gardens, the most magnificent are those, impeccably maintained, of the Villa Reale di Marlia, once inhabited by Elisa Baciocchi. The eighteenth-century topiary theatre is a particularly happy survival.