THE PAPAL PALACE IN VITERBO. (VOLUMES I AND II)

The papal palace in Viterbo is the largest thirteenth-century papal palace to have survived to our own day, but its construction, decoration, use and historical significance have been insufficiently studied. Even though Pinzi's 1910 monograph had assembled useful documentation about the palace, it left fully two-thirds of the complex undescribed and uncatalogued. The present dissertation, on the other hand, is a complete study of the palace's history. It includes a detailed survey of the palace's entire structure and a new set of measured, architectural drawings. Over two hundred new photographs accompany the text. With the aid of published and unpublished reports and old photographs, the author charts the palace's alterations and restorations from 1307 to the present.;A previously unpublished set of late thirteenth-century decorative frescoes were discovered in the palace. They are catalogued and form part of a larger discussion of papal palaces' decoration and function. The iconography of papal palaces and loggias is also discussed.;Finally, the papal palace in Viterbo is set into its appropriate local and papal context. In so doing, Viterbo has re-emerged as a major papal center of the Middle Ages, and the palace can now be seen to mark an important watershed for the popes' acceptance of imported, French gothic forms in Italy.;An archaeological analysis of the surviving medieval core of the palace's structure shows that the papal complex was erected in at least fifteen different medieval phases. The earliest parts of the palace probably date from the late eleventh century, but the first recognizable palace on the site can be dated to the late twelfth century, when Viterbo first became a bishop's seat. Papal additions did not begin until the mid-thirteenth century. All these phases are newly dated by two inscriptions on the facade of the palace, by the identification of certain coats of arms, by a chronology of Viterbese building types (based on the kinds of masonry which appear in Viterbo's well-documented city walls), and by relative chronology.