Pienza is known as the ideal Renaissance Italian town - also known as the 'little medieval hilltop village that could'. Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) rebuilt the village to represent humanist planning principles (of course, some humans get the better end of the stick...). Rossellino, another great redheaded architect, supervised the work, including the travertine-fronted Duomo (1459 start), the Pallazzo Piccolomini, just a notch down in fancy dress for the Pope, and the PalazzoBorgia, not so fancy at all, for the lowly bishops from Rome.
On the fourth side of this trapezoidal-shaped piazza is the town hall, or Palazzo Pubblico. Since the Pope was born here, this tiny (11 acre) village was upgraded to the status of a city.
Today's Ex Tempore tasks were streetscapes, often difficult in these villages because of wanky vanishing points. This one below was done from the Piazza Pio II looking west along the Corso Rossellino (a street named after a redhead - my people). The only non-public building on the Piazza is a very humble corner store.
Later, we began to include landscape by trying the promenade edge on the south (the Via del Casello) looking towards the Duomo. Some of us competed in how big we could make our towers.
In the evening, we went to another dinky, charming town (I need to ask Victor where) and had more lard, this time on steak.
No comments:
Post a Comment