Exterior view

The little church of Sant’Andrea on the Via Flaminia was commissioned by Pope Julius III. Free from collaborative constraints, in Sant’Andrea Vignola realized a work with powerful theoretical implications. In terms of scale and function it is little more than a wayside chapel for pilgrims, but like the Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo, Florence (1419-28), or the Tempietto, Rome (after 1502), Sant’Andrea addressed the practical and intellectual concerns of an epoch.

The church is rectangular in plan with a projecting altar room opposite the entrance. The interior walls are subdivided by Corinthian pilasters, above which rise warped pendentives carrying an oval cornice and dome. By effectively uniting an oblong space focused on the altar with a dome that extends over the entire nave, Vignola succeeded in reconciling the traditional liturgical demand for axiality with the humanistic ideal of centrality. Sant’Andrea was the first church to employ an oval dome, a feature that won great favour in the 17th century.

The fa�ade, which ingeniously recalls the Pantheon in Rome, has Corinthian pilasters, disposed outwardly in diminishing intervals in order to accentuate the centre, carrying a pediment set into a flat wall of brick before an oval drum capped by a stepped dome.

View the ground plan and section of the church.