Lamentation
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Authors
Andrea da Saronno (sculpting) and Alberto da Lodi (painting and gilding)
Date
Type
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Language
Keyword
Lamentation , Mary , Christ , Passion , Compianto , Nicodemus
Alternative Title
Abstract
This group of painted wood sculptures was originally a part of a much larger theatrical scene: all of Mount Calvary, with the empty crosses, with 12 large figures of the Lamentation and 49 smaller figures, including horses, filling out the operatic scene. The work was moved multiple times and figures removed (including three moved up into the drum of the dome), repainted, and destroyed. In Casciaro (2000) and Perrer (1996) nine figures are shown in the present plain chapel in front of a modern cross, but today there are 11, as two of the angels that were removed and kept in the Archivio have been returned to the group. The sculptures were also restored starting in 1997 -- it is not clear whether the polychrome surface visible in these 2018 photographs is the original one. These figures conflate what were usually shown as two separate moments: Mary fainting beneath the Cross on which her son was dying and the Lamentation. (The Lamentation was often shown in Lombardy with the body supported in Mary's lap, whereas here the body is on the ground.) The figures model different types of pious reactions -- the meditative sorrow of Joesph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, as opposed to the agitated luncge forward and open mouth of Mary Magdalene, she who was forgiven because she loved so much. St. John the Evangelist and another pious woman both have their mouths open in lament, but gesture more calmly, the one pointing to his heart and down to Jesus, the other clasping her hands in prayer. Mary, the exemplar of compassion (which means suffering the Passion along with her Son) is falling before us in a faint, supported by two more pious women. The group is very similar to a sculpture of Mary fainting with pious women in San Vittore in Varese. The original large and busy scene, with frescoed backdrops, would have created a dramatic emersive spectacle, like sacred theater of the time and also like the kind of realistic tableaux that were being created in the same years for the Sacri Monti, holy mountainous pilgrimage sites, including Varese, where Andrea da Saronno would go after working in Saronno. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Santuario della Beata Maria Vergine dei Miracoli, Saronno
Citation
Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, Il Santuario della Beata Vergine dei Miracoli di Saronno (Saronno: Istituto per la Storia dell'Arte Lombarda/Parrocchia della Beata Vergine dei Miracoli, 1996), 203-5; Raffaele Casciaro, La scultura lignea lombarda del Rinascimento (Milan: Skira, 2000), 228-32, cat. 151, pp. 354-5.