Montepulciano Cathedral site features

The cathedral closes one side of Piazza Grande, at the top of the town, and the first thing anyone notices is that it is not finished. The façade, of salient form, is unfinished: structural brick, never faced in stone, facing the grandest square in southern Tuscany.

Beside it the bell tower is massive, in travertine ashlar and brick, and it too stops short — its apical section, marked by slender bell-chamber mullioned windows, was never completed. Two unfinished elements, side by side, on the principal square.

Walk round to the flanks and the contrast is sharp: these were finished, faced in brick and travertine ashlar, and articulated by Tuscan pilasters with round arches set between them. The sides got their skin; the front never did.

Inside, the effect is austere and deliberate. The architectural framework is of clear Florentine descent, and its elegance comes from the clarity of plastered surfaces alternating with stone-ashlar wall facings — white and grey, with almost no ornament.

The plan is a Latin cross, divided into three naves by powerful pillars carrying round arches. In the central nave, the transepts and the apsidal scarsella, raised entablatures support a barrel vault. At the crossing, corner pendentives carry the drum on which the dome is set. The side naves are groin vaulted, and barrel-vaulted chapels open off them at every bay. Against a right-hand pillar stands the pulpit, carried on small Ionic columns.

Then the altarpiece, and it is worth standing still for. Over the high altar Taddeo di Bartolo's Trittico dell'Assunta of 1401 dominates the whole church. Read it from the bottom up, because the three central scenes are a sequence in time: the twelve apostles crowding round the Virgin's empty tomb, then the monumental Madonna Assunta surrounded by angels, then her Coronation. The side panels hold saints in adoration; on the four pillars dividing the panels are twelve small Doctors of the Church, three to a pillar; above the side panels are the Annunciating Angel on the left and the Madonna Annunciate on the right; and along the predella run nine scenes of the life of Christ, with very small Old Testament scenes above it.

• The unfinished façade — of salient form, never faced in stone, standing on the principal square of the town.
• The bell tower (third quarter of the 15th century) — massive, in travertine ashlar and brick, by Iacomo and Checco di Meo da Settignano, and the only surviving structure of the ancient pieve; its apex, with slender bell-chamber mullioned windows, was never completed.
• The finished flanks — faced in brick and travertine ashlar and articulated by Tuscan pilasters with round arches between them: the parts of the building that did get their cladding.
• Taddeo di Bartolo's Trittico dell'Assunta (1401) — monumental, over the high altar, and read bottom to top as the Death of the Virgin, her Assumption and her Coronation.
• The twelve Doctors of the Church — small figures, three to each of the four pillars dividing the triptych's panels.
• The predella — nine scenes of the life of Christ, with very small Old Testament scenes above it.
• The Annunciation across the triptych's top — the Annunciating Angel on the left, the Madonna Annunciate on the right.
• The interior framework — of clear Florentine descent: plastered surfaces alternating with stone-ashlar facings, a Latin cross in three naves on powerful pillars under round arches, barrel vaults over the nave and transepts, groin vaults over the aisles.
• The dome on its drum — carried at the crossing on corner pendentives.
• The pulpit — set against a right-hand pillar, supported on small Ionic columns.