Madonna
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Authors
Giovan Angelo Del Maino
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Madonna , Mary , Adoration , Miracle , Virgin
Alternative Title
Abstract
On September 29, 1504, a man named Mario Omodei was in the vineyard near his house when he was miraculously lifted into the air and taken to a place with a small garden. There the Virgin Mary appeared, standing before him and resplendently dressed, and told him that if a church was built in that spot, and if people came to the church and offered alms, they would be saved from the pestilence. Accordingly the great basilica of the Santuario della Madonna in Tirano (in the Valtellina) was soon after erected on the site of the miracle. The site became and still remains a great center of pilgrimage, and devotees attest to healings and other miracles wrought by visiting the church, as Mary promised. This sculpture of the Madonna adoring Baby Jesus is at the centre of this devotion, the most revered religious work in the area. (Another sculptural group by the same artist is located behind the altar, in a cavity beneath the altar, adjacent to a plaque in the floor that identifies the exact place on which Mary stood when she appeared to Omodei.) This painted wood sculpture of the Madonna was made for the newly-erected church only 15 years after the miracle -- 1519-24. The original sculpture of Baby Jesus has been lost and replaced by a modern version. Also lost is the rest of what was a complex altarpiece -- originally, the Madonna and Child were flanked by reliefs of narrative scenes and surrounded by an architectural frame. In the seventeenth century, these were covered with thick silver sheets, which were stripped from the altarpiece to be melted down in the eighteenth century, destroying much of the original work in the process. The statue of the Madonna is well-preserved, however, including the sophisticated and resplendent original polychromy and gilding, which convey some of the radiance of the vision Omodei described. Mary leans far forward, craning her neck, her hands poised fingertips touching in a graceful gesture of prayer, looking towards her baby but also surely gently on devotees below with her heavily lidded eyes and slight smile. Adding to the regal beauty of this image of the Queen of Heaven are her abundant and richly carved curls and the delicate head scarf that ties some of her hair back behind. With her golden hair, columnar neck, almond-shaped eyes, etc., this is both a Petrarchan ideal beauty and something that would be not too far from local lovely fair-haired young women in this part of northern Italy, just over the Swiss border. Behind the altar are many votive offerings left for the Madonna of Tirano, which run the range from centuries old paintings to modern photographs. The sculpted Madonna herself is dressed in some of the most magnificent of these offerings, including a seventeenth-century golden crown and an eighteenth-century silk and gold mantle, and dangling from her hands is a rosary given by Pope John Paul II. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Santuario della Madonna, Tirano
Citation
Raffaele Casciaro, La scultura lignea lombarda del Rinascimento (Milan: Skira, 2000), 180-2, cat. 133 pp. 339-40; Gianluigi Garbellini, La Madonna di Tirano: Monumento di fede, di arte, e di storia, 13-15, 81-2.