Alberti deprecated the invisibility of the clergy.[2]  In De iciarchia, Battista, the primary interlocutor, ostensibly concentrates upon the character and actions of the paterfamilias.  But reducing the discussion to the scale of the domestic stage is a stratagem.  Alberti’s readers are to know that what applies to the family applies at the level of the republic.  And the Church too is a sort of republic.  The churchman is to conduct himself like anyone with command over others.  ‘Quelli saranno qui nel numeri de’ primi [ie. hierarchs] quali sanno e vogliono essere utilissimi a’ suoi, e con studio e diligenza curano il bene di tutti gli altri.[3]  It is a vigilant sort of authority that is laudible – one like that of the spider in the centre of its web, to which Alberti likened the paterfamilias in De Familia.[4] He is to be active and visible.

According to Giannozzo Manetti, in the Life of Nicholas V, the pope’s visibility was a central theme of the design of the chapel that it was proposed be added at the liturgical east end of the church of St Peter’s: ‘In summitate vero tribunae solium pontificale altiuscule eminebat, ut et ipse ab omnibus circumstantibus videtur, ac pariter omnes adstantes sedentesque videret.[5]  It is interesting, then, that, in mid-fifteenth-century Rome, a further prominent architectural act of what could be called ‘clerical monstrance’ was made, again within the milieu in which Alberti moved or – just after his death – had moved.  In other words, there is reason to believe that there was a grouping of like-minded clergy who were of the same view as Alberti and who set about addressing the criticism of invisibility by architectural means.

Pius II initiated the digging of the foundations of the Benediction Loggia in 1461 and the transportation of six columns from the Portico of Octavia.[6]  Platina, in his Lives of the Popes, pointed to the pope’s purpose of making himself visible, that is, doing the opposite of what Alberti accused Nicholas’s bishops of doing: ‘He (Pius) was mightily pleased with building, and at his charge were the steps in the Vatican Church repaired, the portico of it made glorious and strong, and he had a design to carry the rubbish from before the church door and pave the Piazza.  He was about to make a portico, from whence the Pope might bless the people.’[7]  Alexander VI added the third storey.[fig.]    

Given Pius’ employment of Bernardo Rossellino at Pienza and the all’antica character of the loggia, his name has been offered as architect.  In summer 1464, a stone carver was dispatched from Rome to collect the design.[8] The Florentine connection also points to Bernardo.  However, two points make questionable the proposition that the work was his.  One is that the loggia is not, as a design, all-of-a-piece.  It shows signs of having been built in two or even three separable phases.  That is, although the building work continued long after Pius’s time and  other masters were involved, including Giuliano da Sangallo and Bramante, an authoritative design did not exist, and authorship as well as execution becomes divisible.[9] The other is that, within Bernardo’s oeuvre, there is a work – the façade of the cathedral at Pienza – that displays such a muddle-headed conception of the antique, that it must be supposed that, where he did not sink to that level, he was benefitting from the advice or direction of others.  The loggia, if he were involved, would be one projected under tutelage.

Although the loggia no longer stands, it was illustrated often enough that its form in large part can be established with some confidence.  The most articulate representation is Marten van Heemskerk’s of the 1530s.  The composition of what appear to be piers supporting round arches with applied half-columns and pilasters indicates the work’s indebtedness to the Colosseum.  The cortile of the Palazzo Venezia – on two levels – is similar.  Van Heemskerk’s drawing shows four arches on three levels.  Pedestals for two more columniations are to be seen, and corresponding with the distance of the northmost pedestal from the parapet of the stairway into the Platea Sancti Petri are more fragments of masonry.  Evidently, the four arches were intended to become seven.  Pius II, as has been seen, referred to six columns being brought from the Portico of Octavia, near the Theatre of Marcellus. [Get the numbers right.  I’ve said seven above.]  Alfarano describes ‘…quinque parastatis cum columnis’, and his famous engraving of the plan of Old St Peters shows only little circles representing the columns.[10] Van Heemskerk’s drawing shows half-columns, and pilasters are applied at levels two and three.  The same seems to be the arrangement at ground level.  Could the columns be half-sunk in piers?  Alfarano’s convention contradicts such a notion.(fig)  It is that circles within squares indicate that plinth and shaft belong together.  Here, he shows that the shafts are independent objects.  In his hand-drawing of 1571, Alfarano tries to indicate more about the columns or their pedestals by showing the circles of the shafts within what look like short-armed Greek crosses (Fig.) 

It is possible that Pius’s columns were never used.  However, in the event that they were, the columns must have stood free-standing before the piers.  Marten van Heemskerk’s drawing is difficult to interpret as showing a combination of piers and columns at ground level. If they are columns at ground level, they must have had elements serving as plinths for the order above stepping forward from the plane of the piers very boldly.  It is unlikely that that second order was of columns rather than half-columns, for the third level is undoubtedly provided with pilasters.  A step-back by degrees from column to half-column, to pilaster is also suggested by the forward-stepping frieze blocks above the second level.   The ‘columns’ were presumably secured to the plane of the wall behind by ties.  In the building drawn by Van Heemskerk, an error in Roman usage was made at the level of the tops of the capitals of the lowest storey with the placing of the stones acting as plinths of the second level directly atop.  An entablature block should have been used.  Such a move would have obviated the need for the pedestals of the second level to be excessively tall. There is considerable difficulty for the observer trying to locate the floor-level of the piano nobile.  A string course has run at the level of the apices of the archivolts and has coincided with the astagals of the capitals.  It is likely that the need was to achieve the floor level of the wing to which the loggia is attached.  Windows resting on a string course to the north of the loggia imply a floor level in line with the bottom of the balustrade of the first-floor loggia.  Unfortunately, the string course of the windows above does not align with the balustrade of the top level correspondingly, but rather with the cornice of the entablature separating second and third storeys.  In any event, there is a deeper void between the first and second compared with the second and third.  The difference is perhaps owing to the need to adapt to floor levels within the palace; but the effect of disparity could have been mitigated if the correct usage had been followed and a full entablature been set atop the ground level colonnade.  The oddity of the colonnade supporting a cornice must have looked very awkward where the step-forwards occurred.  Between second and third levels, a stepped-forward entablature above the columns is correct and comfortable.  The archivolts rise to the level of the architrave and there is no stringcourse aligning with astragals.  The top level has pilasters instead of columns, and the architrave above steps forward only above the northernmost one.  The roof as-it-were rests prematurely, for the entablature is incomplete. [this is all offered, at this stage, without much confidence]

The anomaly of the missing architrave and frieze between the first and second storeys and the heightening of the bases of the upper pedestals is consistent with Bernardo’s action on the façade of the Cathedral of Pienza, the building that reveals his own confused thinking about ancient architecture.(fig)  The façade really is rather unpleasant.  Four pedestals support pilaster bands that rise through two levels to the level of the pediment or gable.  In the entrant angles of the pilasters are columns.  At the top of the first level, as at the Benediction Loggia, they support a cornice, instead of a complete entablature, which in turn supports the columns of the second level.  Arches spring from each upper pair of columns.  The central span is greater than the lateral ones; but because of the pediment it cannot rise higher.  Bernardo has simply inserted in the middle an arch that is less than a semi-circle.  His thinking here is to be contrasted with Alberti’s at Rimini.  The central arch of the façade of the Tempio Malatestiano rises to the level of the entablature whilst, in the narrower side bays, the arches rise to a lesser height.  The small all’antica details at Pienza are very well designed and executed; but Bernardo’s understanding does not extend to the principles of construction and assembly.  Differences between the Palazzo Piccolomini next to the cathedral and the Palazzo Rucellai (where he is credited with the execution of Alberti’s design) are to be accounted for, then, not by reference to the relatively rustic context of the former but to Rossellino’s vagueness.  Perhaps too it was when he was not under Alberti’s invigilation that, at the Palazzo Rucellai, the two bays, upper right, were built with their misaligned rustication.

The fault in combining columns and cornice is common to the Pienza Cathedral façade and the Benediction Loggia.  So, there are grounds for finding Bernardo at work unsupervised through the whole process of construction of the cathedral façade, and at the point where the loggia was to continue beyond the tops of the first storey columns.  There is no particular reason to give him responsibility for the design at ground level.  The use of pedestals, if it was not a means to reach the necessary height for an entablature using spoglia columns that were too short, at this stage was a sign of a sophisticated understanding of ancient Roman architecture.  They were used in the cortile grande of the Palazzo Venezia.(fig)  Neither the Colosseum or the Theatre of Marcellus use them on the ground level.  The loggia of San Marco (fig) – another instance of architectural monstance – follows these precedents more fastidiously than does the Benediction Loggia.  The Loggia itself began to rise as a building promising to adhere to the most rigorous Roman rules.  It forgot them for a brief and crucial moment before resuming its sage way.  The fact that the error between levels one and two was corrected between levels two and three indicates that the error was not immediately apparent.  If it had been, it could have been remedied.  Therefore, it seems likely that building went ahead, raising the piers of the piano nobile, until 1470 when ‘maestro Julianus Francisci di Florentia’ was required ‘perficere quattuor arcus dicte Benedictionis nunc existentes … secundum quod superaedificare quattuor arcus ad altitudinem designatum scapellinis…’[11] The model collected from Florence by the stone-cutter in 1464 did not correct the error; but, around 1470, the correct way ahead had been established.

What is needed for an attribution of the Benediction Loggia is a more-informed architect than Bernardo Rossellino, and perhaps one whose direction of the work was remote and intermittent.  Alberti, of course, would qualify on those grounds.  A couple of circumstantial points may be added.  Alberti was interested in making the Colosseum serve as a model for the architecture of his own age.  The Palazzo Rucellai is an example – a meditation upon the combining of the arcuated with the trabeated in a systematic way. (fig)  It represents its conclusions in graphic rather than plastic terms; but a drawing of the Colosseum can readily be imagined alongside it.  The main differences are that the arches of the Palazzo Rucellai rise short of the entablatures by a greater amount, and the level without the arcuations at the top of the Colosseum appears at ground level in Alberti’s building, where, as at the Benediction Loggia, the pilasters stand on pedestals.  Were the Palazzo Rucellai to be rendered in fully plastic terms, pedestals and entablatures would have to break forward in column-alignments.  Alberti also used pedestals at ground level of the façade of Santa Maria Novella for the four Corinthian columns.

The Benediction Loggia – and the loggia at San Marco – also had a raison d’etre that stands outside of architectural formalism and antiquarian reference.  And in having it, it satisfied a requirement that was very important for Alberti.  The Loggia was to do with visibility. Alberti’s thought is often hidden in metaphor.  Father, spider, city – all have the virtue of vigilance.  The loggia can be their architectural companion.  Here he is, on the city in De re aedificatoria, IV, 2: ‘Moreover your city ought to stand in the middle of its territory, in a place from whence it can have a view of all its country, and watch its opportunities, and be ready whenever necessity calls…’[12]  This city is very like the spider.  The loggia has a gaze directed in just one direction and, like a picture, is observable from just one side.  The vast numbers expected in the Platea Sancti Petri could see the pope and the clergy in their polyptych richness and profusion.  Equally, the arcades looked upon the scene and promised a surveillance of the piazza, a vigilant eye, perhaps, upon the virtue of the faithful.  Had all seven ranks of three arches been constructed, entrance to the atrium of the church and to the palace would have involved an undifferentiated architectural experience.  The structure becomes the very image of candour – of the hierarch’s openness to scrutiny and of the family’s congregational warmth.

The conception of the Benediction Loggia is to be connected with plans made for the Platea Sancti Petri during the pontificate of Pius II.  One of the great events of Pius’ life would seem, from his Commentaries, to have been the reception in 1462 of the Head of St Andrew, presented by Thomas Paleologus of Mistra.[13] At last, St Andrew would be reassembled.  The church already claimed to possess his body, as Giovanni Rucellai noted when he visited in 1449.[14]  A monumental set of steps was created across the front of the Church of St Peter’s and the palace, where a huge raised platform served as apron to the buildings.  Martin van Heemskerk’s drawing shows the arrangement.  Two giant statues were made to stand on pedestals on either side of the staircase at the level of the faithful.  Saints Peter and Paul were sentinels directing the path of the faithful to the shrine itself.

As early as the pontificate of Nicholas V, according to Giannozzo Manetti in his account of the pope’s plans, there was a proposal to regularise the streets passing from the Castel Sant’ Angelo to the Platea Sancti Petri.  There were to be three porticoed approaches.  The planned northern street ended opposite the entrance to the Vatican Palace, the central street, the entrance to St Peter’s and the southern pointed towards the obelisk and the Canonica.   Pope, Peter and clergy were the three goals, and the pilgrims would predominate on the central street.  Dignitaries, pilgrims and clergy were projected from sun and rain.  Similar solicitude would have been shown them – especially pilgrims – by Alberti as they crossed the Ponte Sant’Angelo, if Vasari correctly attributed a drawing of the bridge that he possessed.  He wrote, of his book of drawings, “…nelle quali e disegnato il ponte Sant’Angelo, ed il coperto che col disegno suo vi fu fatto a uso di loggia, per difesa del sole nei tempi di state, e delle pioggie e de’ venti l’inverno: la qual’opera gli fece far papa Nicola V…’[15]  In other words, the porticoed streets and the covered Ponte Sant’Angelo were of a piece, at least as far as concern for public comfort was concerned.  [cf. Florence Cathedral in Apologi [check here]  The project seems to have anticipated the import of Agnolo Pandolfini’s estimation of works of the time of Pius.  The Platea Sancti Petri was nothing less than a vast outdoor church.  The three streets, from the perspective of the Piazza Sant’ Angelo, corresponded with the three doorways of grand churches.  The congregational space upon which they opened passed right up to the staircase and podium, which corresponded to the sanctuary of a church.  The Benediction Loggia would be a virtually Colossal spectacle, capable of transformation into something more marvellous than anything that could be achieved elsewhere in Christendom (unless the climactic experience was the shrine of the prince of the apostles itself, whose need for the dramatic enframing of Nicholas’ new chapel arch at the liturgical east end was increased by the quality of the exterior spectacle).  It was accommodation fit for the heavenly host.  The outdoor church of St Peter’s had not yet been completed, but Pius’ plan for it seems to be relatively clear.

A similar though more modest arrangement of loggia and nave-like public space was at S. Marco.  There, the portico is of three arches on piers on two levels, with applied half-columns at ground level and pilasters above.  When the Palazzetto was located to the right of the loggia, the public space was enclosed differently from nowadays, when it has been shifted to the southwest corner of the Palazzo Venezia’s insula.  Again, Alberti has been mentioned by some scholars in connection with Pietro Barbo’s works on the palazzo.[16]  But how he stood in relation to Barbo’s social milieu is perhaps problematic, partly because Alberti was a a member of the College of Papal Abbreviators which Paul II disbanded in 1466 for harbouring anti-papal thinking and paganistic tendencies.  As has been seen, Alberti’s sympathies seem to have accorded with those of the College, if Paul’s charges were well-founded.  However, Alberti did express them more covertly than, say, Platina, who was imprisoned as a subversive.[17]  If a Colosseum-based design was needed, and especially if the need was felt before 1466, Alberti was the person to go to.  Since 1450, and his design for the Tempio Malatestiano, he had used it.  The cortile grande at the Palazzo Venezia shows what the Benediction Loggia aspired to in terms of ancient Roman correctness.

The San Marco Loggia seems to belong to a more experimental stage of loggia design, especially in the treatment of the pilasters in the lower porch: they have bases but, instead of capitals, they have at top elements of cornice above which spring the transverse arches of the vault.  The building could be said to be under-designed or else the building-work under-supervised.  This is a common feature of Alberti’s architecture.  At Mantua, the churches of San Sebastiano and Sant’ Andrea are a long way from his intentions.  Although, at the Palazzo Rucellai, there was clearly a drawing that attempted to exert most rigorous control over the work, it did not prevail in the two upper right-side bays, as has been seen.  Alberti’s designs do not seem to have had unimpeachable authority or received unquestioning loyalty.  It could be because they remained imperfectly resolved or because of the extra link in the chain of command that he himself represented.  In any case, it has been speculated here that Alberti was often present at that somewhat messy stage of planning and design, when decisions had not yet been definitively made and when the initiation of the idea was not readily to be allocated to one individual.  The Benediction Loggia seems to have developed out of similar circumstances.

The open-air church of San Marco was relatively rudimentary.[check Ricci so see if the upper window of the Tempio Malatestiano had a balustrade and was served by a stair]  That at St Peter’s was grandiose.  Evidence that Alberti thought specifically about the outdoor church and that he can therefore be associated – how closely must remain debatable – with these examples is to be found at Mantua.  The façade of San Sebastiano is designed with regard to the piazza before it.(fig)  Monstance and display are essential to its conception.  It is enough to ask, why five doors?  The answer involves the church’s possession of a number of relics.[18] As at Sant’ Andrea, these were to be displayed to the faithful.  But San Sebastiano, on its Greek cross plan, is not a congregational church.  San Sebastiano’s piazza is the congregational place.  Raised on its podium, the façade was eminently visible.  The loftiness of any ritual actions that look place at the level of the loggia was evident.  Staircases rose to the round-headed openings as at present, or else the three central square-headed where approached up a flight of steps – less likely if clergy were to do more than stand in their doorways, indeed were meant to pass through and forward onto an apron to expose the relics or themselves in more than a dumb-show.  It is not necessary here, however, to attempt a detailed reconstruction of Alberti’s original intentions for the church and its façade –the interpretation of the documentation and the material fabric has occupied scholars for a long time and will no doubt continue to do so.  The general character of the spectacle to which the façade was crucial may be described.  The composition adheres to the basic laws of altarpiece design (indeed, it is possible to say that the church façade in general serves as the model for the altarpiece, conceived as a place of encounter with holy personnages).  Axiality establishes the rule of hierarchical importance.  Here, the pediment that preeminently aligns with the central doorway and the window that breaks the entablature enforce the rule.  Elevation is orchestrated, with the earthly at the bottom and, above, the celestial (or, as in the case of the common motif of the Annunciation enacted across the spandrels at the top of the main panel, the antecedent).  There are three clear levels at San Sebastiano; the crypt, the loggia and the upper window.  Access is controlled.  In the case of the altarpiece, the intercession of the saints is sought and the ease with which they can perform this role is graduated according to their historical closeness to Christ and the Madonna or their importance in shaping the dogma of the Church.  The faithful before an altarpiece usually make their address first to the saints humblest, lowest and most distant from the axis.  At San Sebastiano, the doorways increase in dignity towards the axis.  The faithful would approach the hierarchy via the round-headed doorways to which niches respond in the back wall of the loggia. Or else deacons or acolytes could emerge.  The three central doors in the facade correspond with three doors giving directly into the church.  As a result, the spaces within the loggia, containing the round-headed doorways and niches, serve, as-it-were, as anti-chambers to the main route of holy progress.  The upper window’s breaking of the entablature, or else the entablature’s deferential dividing for the sake of the window increases the sense of the vitality of the axis as a route of manifestation or egress.  The drama of religious display would have arrived at a splendid climax if, at last, a person, a relic, or an actor playing saint or angel should have appeared in the upper opening.[19]  All the while, of course, the setting of a congregational space in open air before a portico behind which was a sanctuary recalls ancient Greek and Roman practice and custom.

The façade of San Sebastiano may be usefully compared with Donatello’s altar in the church of St Anthony in Padua -the Santo Altar.  The present composition of  statues, reliefs and architectural elements is an incorrect reconstruction of what Donatello intended.  Documents list the components which would have found a place in the ensemble, and scholars have offered various suggestions.  Evidently, there was an arch over the central part of the altarpiece and otherwise the bronze saints were assembled in trabeated spaces.  Mantegna’s San Zeno Altarpiece in Verona very probably  pays homage to Donatello’s intention.  Flanking the Madonna and Child at Padua the saints were grouped three on either side.  The Madonna and Child were surely isolated under the arch and contained by columns in a narrow space.  The sacramental seriousness of the group, partly indicative of which is its closed composition, demands their exclusive occupancy of their space.  The attendant saints are more or less open in pose and communicate more of less animatedly.  Those humblest and most remote from the Madonna and Child historically and theologically –St Anthony and St Francis- and most concerned with others’ salvation before their own, should have been placed at the extremes of the figure composition, the more effectively to perform their intercessory task.  It is surely a betrayal of their lives and work that, at present, they comprise an inner triptych group with the Madonna and Child.  A relative psychological composure belongs to the martyrs, S. Justina and Daniel and the bishops, St Louis and St Prosdocimus.  The hierarchy of saints would go from confessors (Francis and Anthony) to bishops (Louis and Prosdocimus) to martyrs (Daniel and Justina).  When the altarpiece is conceived as an ascent and journey, rather than a static heavenly assembly, finding the most important saints of the place – Francis and Anthony- at the gate so-to-speak dramatizes the scene, that is, removes it from the timeless and sets within the terms of historia.  The spirit of the intercessory saints can be thought to inhabit the steps and the round-header doors at San Sebastiano, that of the loftier the platform with the three lintelled openings.

From the piazza, high and low, axial and periferal, remote and assessible are all made clear.  These are the fundamentals of a composition that locates the pastoral in relation to the priestly, the secular in relation to the religious, the knowable in relation to the mysterious.  These same terms were implicit in the Platea Sancti Petri.  Their best and purest representation is in Alberti’s Ur-form: their most magnificent is in Sant’ Andrea; and their rudest and simplest is in Alberti’s own church of San Martino a Gangalandi. 

These fundamentals of this theatre of piety are to be distinguished from the fundamentals of matter and design.  Arches, piers, columns, entablatures and the rest of the lexicon of classical architecture explain the absolutes of span and height.  They constitute an architecture aimed at formal perfection.  We pass through it as hushed visitors or we survey it, transfixed.  If they are material relics in our imagination, archaeology connects with history, and they may conjure up associational ideas.  But, as well as these things –and more than them- Alberti’s architecture is this theatre of piety and morality.  Its essence is that it is not uninhabited; it is not silent.  It has been shaped to accommodate and facilitate human interactions.  As such, it is witness to events.  The bench awaits sitters, the doorway expects an appearance; the platform will serve for formal intercourse.  People are to be pictured.  There will be conversations, greetings and a sacral lowering of voices.  In other words, the fundamentals of the theatre of piety apply also to the city at large, conceived as a moral conventicle. 

There, a scene of harmonious and virtuous citizenship was to disclose itself.  The moral society required that a route pass uninterruptedly from the private house to the church.  For Alberti, a simplified and Early Christian religion could open the path, could connect the secular and religious.  Where they met was the piazza, beneath the skies the arena of public virtue, inspired by Christian example from one direction and from the other by instinctual identification of individual happiness with the happiness of our fellows.

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[1]

[2] Alberti, De re aedificatoria, VII, 13, p.627-29. See above, Faith and Belief, n.56

[3] Grayson, II, De iciarchia, p.273. lines 21-23

[4] Romano,Tenenti, Furlan, III, p.265, l.2131-2134.  See also the Intercenale, ‘Servus’, in Marsh, 1987, pp.91-7

[5] Torgil Magnuson, Studies in Roman Quattrocento Architecture, Figura 9, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1958, Appendix, p.358, sentence 144

[6] Pius II, The Commentaries of Pius II, translation by Florence Gragg with historical  notes by Leona Gabel, Smith College Studies in History, Vol.XXXV, Northampton, Mass., 1951, p.[get]

[7] Platina, Lives of the Popes, translated by W. Bentham, p.272

[8] Another name associated with the project but with an equally tenuous claim to responsibility is that of Francesco del Borgo. See Charles Burroughs, From Signs to Design : environmental process and reform in early Renaissance Rome, Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press, 1990, p. [Get

[9] See Op.cit., pp.20-23, note 3

[10] Tiberio Alfarano, De Basilicae Vaticanae Antiquissima et Nova Structura, con introduzione e note dal dott. D. Michele Cerrati, Roma Vaticana, 1914, p.129

[11] Ludwig Heydenreich, Architecture in Italy 1400-1500, Yale University Press Pelican History of Art: New Haven/London, 1974, p.59

[12]Rykwert et al, IV,2, p.97; Orlandi, L’Architettura, p.279: ‘Caeterum locasse urbem oportet agro in medio, unde spectare in oram suam et discernere oportuna et adtemperate praesto esse quo necessitas postulet…’

[13] Pius II, The Commentaries of Pius II, translation by Florence Gragg with historical  notes by Leona Gabel, Smith College Studies in History, Vol.XXXV, Northampton, Mass., 1951, Book VIII, pp.523-66

[14] Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo zibaldone, I, “Il Zibaldone Quaresmale”, pagine scelte a cura do Alessandro Perosa, London: The Warburg Institute, Unioversity of London, 1960, p.69

[15] Vasari, Milanesi, Vol.II, pp.546-47 [check].  Taken from Franco Borsi, Alberti. L’Opera Completa, Milano: Electa, 1980, p.39-40, who cites the passages in De re aedificatoria where Alberti mentions the roof on the Ponte Sant’ Angelo and the desirability of such roofs generally.

[16] Tavernor and Borsi ?[get refs]

[17]Paul’s fear was perhaps of a repetition of a conspiracy like that of Stefano Porcari, in 1453, when it was Nicholas V who was the object.  Alberti wrote De porcaria conjuratione [check], a text that was perhaps too even-handed, first of all for Nicholas’s liking and then for Paul’s.

[18] Richard Lamoureux, [get] or Ercolano Marani

[19] At the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini, a platform at first floor level, as deep as the front door recess, would have been a similarly impressive place at which to display the relics of the church, which included prominently a thorn from the crown of the Passion and a fragment of the True Cross and were held in the Cella delle Reliquie beyond the first chapel of the south side.  Unfortunately, there is no evidence that there was a plan to make it accessible.[possibly too idle a speculation]