Description
The Church of Saints Maria and Tecla, also called the Church of the Vergine, is a modern work by Giovanni Michelucci, on the southeastern outskirts of Pistoia, on Piazza della Vergine. It is not a church you visit for frescoes: it is a sober, original building of brick, concrete and stone, worth seeing to understand how a great 20th-century architect thought.
Michelucci, a Pistoian, was the architect who with the Gruppo Toscano had won in 1933 the competition for the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence. In 1947 he was commissioned to rebuild a church destroyed by the bombings of the Second World War, in a new place, next to the Vergine cemetery.
The first idea was daring: a building that seemed unstable, with the facade leaning inward and the roof bent toward the presbytery. Michelucci himself, with irony, called it "brilliant." The criticism came at once: the forms seemed ambiguous, and the church small.
With few state funds the project changed several times, and in 1950 the final version was approved, "of Franciscan spirit." Essentiality prevailed: a simple, tall hall, compared to that of the mendicant orders' churches and in particular to the flank of San Domenico in Pistoia.
Outside, on a high reinforced-concrete base clad in rough stone, rise brick walls marked by pilasters. The reinforced-concrete frame stays in view and divides the brick curtain: it is the true protagonist of the building, and it is repeated inside, in the roof trusses.
Light enters from slits and high windows, especially in the apse and the transepts. Beside the church, standing apart, rises the bell tower, which repeats in a minimal design the alternation of rustic stone, reinforced concrete and brick.
Work began in 1954 but stopped almost at once: the contractor feared the vault would weigh too much. It resumed in 1955 with reinforced-concrete trusses in place of the vault, and the church was finished a year later.
The project was presented in 1957 in the magazine L'architettura, with an article by Michelucci himself, and critics have often stressed the importance the load-bearing structure takes on in the architect's career.
Michelucci, a Pistoian, was the architect who with the Gruppo Toscano had won in 1933 the competition for the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence. In 1947 he was commissioned to rebuild a church destroyed by the bombings of the Second World War, in a new place, next to the Vergine cemetery.
The first idea was daring: a building that seemed unstable, with the facade leaning inward and the roof bent toward the presbytery. Michelucci himself, with irony, called it "brilliant." The criticism came at once: the forms seemed ambiguous, and the church small.
With few state funds the project changed several times, and in 1950 the final version was approved, "of Franciscan spirit." Essentiality prevailed: a simple, tall hall, compared to that of the mendicant orders' churches and in particular to the flank of San Domenico in Pistoia.
Outside, on a high reinforced-concrete base clad in rough stone, rise brick walls marked by pilasters. The reinforced-concrete frame stays in view and divides the brick curtain: it is the true protagonist of the building, and it is repeated inside, in the roof trusses.
Light enters from slits and high windows, especially in the apse and the transepts. Beside the church, standing apart, rises the bell tower, which repeats in a minimal design the alternation of rustic stone, reinforced concrete and brick.
Work began in 1954 but stopped almost at once: the contractor feared the vault would weigh too much. It resumed in 1955 with reinforced-concrete trusses in place of the vault, and the church was finished a year later.
The project was presented in 1957 in the magazine L'architettura, with an article by Michelucci himself, and critics have often stressed the importance the load-bearing structure takes on in the architect's career.