Chapter 2 The Reform of Space for Prayer: Ecclesia primitiva in Nicholas of Cusa and Leon Battista Alberti
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Invited by Pope Pius ii to draw up proposals for curial reform, Cusanus submitted his Reformatio generalis, a proposal for change in the entire church in 1459. For him this meant the restoration of the original, primitive principles of the apostles’ church (ecclesia primitiva). Although the idea itself was a prevailing theme in the mid-fifteenth-century curia in general, Cusanus devised a plan by which to achieve it, which included simple places for devotion. Concurrently, in his De re aedificatoria (1440s-1472) Alberti expressed his support for reform and proposed a return to a more austere church interior which was in line with Cusanus’ theological approach and with the new, monochromatic interior style developed in Florence. Both men were familiar with ancient churches embellished with resplendent colored materials; both knew about new all’antica murals in Pope Nicholas v’s chapel in the Vatican; and both had written extensively about representational images – yet, what they valued was the simple, monochromatic, and almost iconoclastic space for prayer.