Wooden floors versus coffered ceilings: structural improvement and decorative complexity in the palaces of Cremona (1490–1540)

In the fifteenth century, the wooden floors in the lavish buildings acquired increasing complexity. In many European cities, different solutions appear, which improve stiffness and load capacity of the floors, and configure their construction elements within an architectural and decorative design. The merchants of Cremona (at that time the second city of the Duchy of Milan) were involved into international trades: here numerous double-warping ceilings dating from the fifteenth-sixteenth century are still preserved but only their painted curved panels, exhibited in famous museums, are renowned. In the most complex sort of these ceilings, the main beams support volute-shaped corbels, between which curved wooden panels are inserted. Its height is double of the joists. The apparatus continues along the walls, dividing the ceiling into rectangular bays, with equal pattern on each side. Above the curved panels, vertical panels are inserted between the joists. This construction is documented in Palazzo Raimondi, a paradigm of the Lombard Renaissance (1490-1497) and survives in the Priorato di S. Abbondio, completed around 1525. Perhaps they connote the activity of local builders, the De Lera workshop; the masons in Cremona belonged to the same guild as the carpenters, which were also appreciated as builders of altars Examples of these ceilings outside the city are very scarce, in the nearby areas from which oak timber came and, before 1530, they disappear, replaced by coffered ceilings, or better by elaborate masonry vaults. More than the reported lack of timber, functional and structural advantages seemed to prevail.