The Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini: a church accused of paganism

Sigismondo Malatesta, Leon Battista Alberti and Agostino di Duccio: planets, zodiac and the tomb of Plethon in the Tempio Malatestiano of Rimini.

In 1462 Pope Pius II had an effigy of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, burned in Rome. Among the charges brought against the condottiere was that of having turned a Franciscan church into a temple that seemed dedicated more to the pagan gods than to Christ. That building still exists: it is the Tempio Malatestiano, now the cathedral of Rimini, one of the most singular monuments of the early Italian Renaissance.

A mausoleum for a lord

Sigismondo, born in 1417, was one of the most famous and controversial condottieri of his time. Around the middle of the fifteenth century he decided to renovate the Gothic church of San Francesco to make it the mausoleum of his family and of Isotta degli Atti, the woman he loved and later married. The interlaced initials of Sigismondo and Isotta appear everywhere, together with the coats of arms bearing the rose and the elephant, symbols of the dynasty.

For the exterior Sigismondo turned to Leon Battista Alberti, humanist and theorist of architecture, who designed a marble shell inspired by the Arch of Augustus in Rimini itself. The façade remained unfinished, and the great dome that was planned was never built. Along the sides, in the arches of the flanks, sarcophagi were placed for scholars and illustrious men of the court.

Planets, signs and liberal arts

The interior was decorated with reliefs largely attributed to the Florentine sculptor Agostino di Duccio and his workshop. In one of the chapels appear the planetary deities and the signs of the zodiac: Saturn with his scythe, Jupiter, Mars, Venus on her chariot, Mercury, the Moon, together with figures such as Cancer, which hovers over a view of Rimini. Another chapel is dedicated to the liberal arts and the Muses, yet another to the childlike spirits, the playing putti.

For a fifteenth-century humanist these themes were not necessarily in conflict with faith: astrology was part of scientific culture, and ancient wisdom was read as a preparation for Christianity. For Pius II, who knew Sigismondo well and loathed him for political reasons too, they were instead the proof of boundless pride.

The bones of Plethon

In one of the sarcophagi on the south flank Sigismondo had the remains of the Byzantine philosopher George Gemistos Plethon laid to rest, having brought them back from Mistra, in the Peloponnese, during a military campaign against the Turks. Plethon had been a central figure at the Council of Florence of 1439 and had spread among Italian humanists an enthusiasm for Plato. Some suspected him of wishing to restore the worship of the ancient gods.

The presence of Plethon, together with the planetary reliefs, has fed for centuries the idea of a hermetic temple, linked to Neoplatonism and astrology. It is an evocative interpretation with some basis in the culture of the court of Rimini, frequented by humanists such as Basinio da Parma and Roberto Valturio, although no document explains the decorative programme as a whole or clarifies its intentions.

Badly damaged by the bombing of the Second World War and later restored, the Tempio also preserves a fresco by Piero della Francesca of 1451 showing Sigismondo kneeling before his patron saint. Between that painted prayer and the carved planets one can read all the ambiguity of an age that sought to reconcile Christ and the ancients.