ry
without cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It is a little place,
perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, which commands the
vale of Orcia; Monte Amiata soaring in aerial majesty beyond. Its
old name was Cosignano. But it had the honour of giving birth to
AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy
and had assumed the title of Pius II., determined to transform and
dignify his native village, and to call it after his own name. From
that time forward Cosignano has been known as Pienza.

Pius II. succeeded effectually in leaving his mark upon the town.
And this forms its main interest at the present time. We see in
Pienza how the most active-minded and intelligent man of his epoch,
the representative genius of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth
century, commanding vast wealth and the Pontifical prestige, worked
out his whim of city-building. The experiment had to be made upon a
small scale; for Pienza was then and was destined to remain a
village. Yet here, upon this miniature piazza--in modern as in
ancient Italy the meeting-point of civic life, the forum--we find a
cathedral, a palace of the bishop, a palace of the feudal lord, and
a palace of the commune, arranged upon a well-considered plan, and
executed after one design in a consistent style. The religious,
municipal, signorial, and ecclesiastical functions of the little
town are centralised around the open market-place, on which the
common people transacted business and discussed affairs. Pius
entrusted the realisation of his scheme to a Florentine architect;
whether Bernardo Rossellino, or a certain Bernardo di Lorenzo, is
still uncertain. The same artist, working in the flat manner of
Florentine domestic architecture, with rusticated basements, rounded
windows and bold projecting cornices--the manner which is so nobly
illustrated by the Rucellai and Strozzi palaces at
Florence--executed also for Pius the monumental Palazzo Piccolomini
at Siena. It is a great misfortune for the group of buildings he
designed at Pienza, that they are huddled together in close quarters
on a square too small for their effect. A want of space is
peculiarly injurious to the architecture of this date, 1462, which,
itself geometrical and spatial, demands a certain harmony and
liberty in its surroundings, a proportion between the room occupied
by each building and the masses of the edifice. The style is severe
and prosaic. Those charming episodes and acc