Nicholas V’s Tribuna for Old St. Peter’s in Rome as a Model for the New Apsidal Choir at Padua Cathedral

Abstract

In 1486 the Padua Cathedral canons requested permission to build a new apsidal choir in “the way and structure of the church of St. Peter in Rome.” The canons were evidently referring to the unfinished Vatican tribuna: a deep vaulted apse at the west end of St. Peter’s. Newly published documents reveal that both Nicholas V and Paul II spent large sums on its construction. The Paduan case shows that the Vatican tribuna was influential in terms of architectural type and function. Although the physical extent of the fifteenth-century work is hard to determine, Bramante’s continuation of the extension in the sixteenth century shows it was considered substantial enough not to abandon completely. In Nicholas V’s Tribuna for Old St. Peter’s in Rome as a Model for the New Apsidal Choir at Padua Cathedral, Joanne Allen suggests that the St. Peter’s project could represent an important episode in the development of extended high altar chapels and retrochoirs, a phenomenon that gained momentum in the decades after work began on the Vatican tribuna.