Sculptures

The Cathedral façade is a visual narrative that recounts the History of Salvation, well visible in a mix of architecture, sculptures, and mosaics. One's eyes are led toward “heaven” by vertical lines stressed by the four main pillars, the cusps, and the steeples. Verticality is counterbalanced by the horizontal lines that separate the different levels. Looking bottom to top, you will, first of all, admire the three huge and deep gates, whose splays and arches house thin spiral pillars decorated with different kinds of marble.
In the areas between the gates lie the basements of the main pillars, covered with marble slates and embellished with low reliefs that are among the most important specimens in Italian Gothic sculpture. By showing episodes of the Old and New Testaments, plus the Last Judgment, they make sort of a sculptured Bible that you may go on examining till you get lost in details.
Above the marble decorations, please have a look at the four bronze statues (actually copies; the original versions are in the Museum) representing the Evangelists by means of the Four Living Beings: an angel (Saint Matthew), a lion (Saint Mark), an eagle (Saint John), a bull (Saint Luke). Statues of Saints stand on the steeples and on the vertexes of the cusps. Horizontally, the façade area is further divided by an exterior gallery with three-lobed arches.

The mosaic decoration fills every part in the façade that is not taken up by sculptures. Since the Orvieto Cathedral is dedicated to Virgin Mary, she is the subject matter of decorations. The pictures in fact summarize her story, although – unfortunately – most mosaics have been heavily reworked during the centuries. The only original work left had been designed by Ugolino di Prete Ilario and made into a mosaic by a Franciscan friar, Brother Giovanni Leonardelli, in the second half of the 14^th century. In 1890, however, it was sold to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where it is still exhibited.

As a theologian and philosopher, Romano Guardini, put it, “A cathedral is not mere architectural space, it is a spatial substance that pulsates and breathes.”
The space inside the Orvieto Cathedral is broad and majestic, a gathering point for art and faith. Like the external sides, the interior is typically decorated with bands in travertine (white) and basalt (gray); it is divided in three naves covered by wood trusses. The space, recalling the ancient Roman basilicas (public halls, not churches), is made solemn by the vertical dynamics of the walls, the ten central pillars, and the light effects from the alabaster sheets in the windows. Each visible architectural element leads one's soul upward. The floor is in red limestone from Prodo (a place near Orvieto).
The side naves are made livelier by two sets of five semicircular chapels. In the left nave, especially to be admired is a 1423 fresco by a famous painter, Gentile da Fabriano (1370 - 1427), showing Virgin Mary enthroned, together with a smiling Infant Jesus, who grasps one of his mother's fingers in an attitude of moving tenderness.
In the years 1370-1380 the apse was frescoed by Ugolino di Prete Ilario with episodes from Virgin Mary's life. Quite striking are the colors projected by the light from the big central window, dating back to 1334; it consists of 44 glass panels, the work of Giovanni di Bonino. The heads of the transept house the two most important chapels: the Chapel of the Corporal and the Chapel of Saint Brizio.

In this chapel they keep the relic of the Holy Corporal, that is, a linen cloth stained by true blood drops that fell from a consecrated wafer during a Mass in the town of Bolsena in 1263. The officiating priest was thinking, right then, he was not completely sure that that was Christ's real Body. The story of this miracle is reported on the walls, in the frescoes made – again – by Ugolino di Prete Ilario in 1357-1364. But the most precious work of art here is the reliquary made by a goldsmith, Ugolino di Vieri, in 1337.

This chapel is dedicated to a bishop who also is Orvieto's patron saint. It exhibits some of the most surprising examples of 15^th century Italian painting. The vault was entirely frescoed by Fra Angelico between 1447 and 1449, while the walls were frescoed by Luca Signorelli in the years 1449-1504 with scenes of the Last Judgment. They influenced Michelangelo.