Visitation
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Authors
Francesco Sala
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Visitation , Virgin Mary , St. Elizabeth , St. Zechariah , St. Joseph , St. John the Baptist
Alternative Title
Abstract
This chapel was built sometime after 1625, when the first description of the sanctuary and Sacro Monte at Orselina was written by Don Giacomo Stoffio. The six terracotta figures inside were probably made around the same time (c. 1630 - 40). In the past, they have been attributed to either Francesco Silva (1568 - 1641) or Francesco Sala (dates unknown). In terms of style, these figures share very little with the works that are more securely attributed to Silva, such as those at the Sacro Monte sopra Varese. Sabina Gavazzi Nizzola and Mariaclotilde Magni have shown that these artists operated in the same circles and their works were often misidentified because of the similarity between their names. It is even possible that Sala trained in the Silva family workshop. Piera Gatta Papavassiliou published the image of a signature in Chapel Fourteen at Ossuccio in her 2013 book. She believes that the inscription reads "Francesco Silva fecit in 1665 codesta statua 18 Agosto," but I see no trace of a "v" in her photograph and suggest that the signature "F.o S.a 16 F 65 c.a. S.a. 18 Ag.to" indicates Francesco Sala's authorship instead. The figures in that chapel and in Chapel Four at Ossuccio have long lanky limbs and small ovular heads that align precisely with the style of the works in Oreslina's Visitation. This composition seems to be based on the group by Francesco Silva at Varese (c. 1605 - 1624). The women's gestures and garments, the contrast of Zechariah's long pointed beard and Joseph's short round one, and the serving woman with the sack on her shoulders are all noteworthy in this regard, although at Varese it is a young boy who carries the sack and the women merely look on. There is also a young angel in Sala's group. His presence is somewhat unusual for a scene of the Visitation. The frescoes were painted in 1929 by Pompeo Maino (1883 - 1944), an artist from Lugano. It is not clear how the walls were decorated before Maino's intervention. / Today, the Sacro Monte at the Santuario della Madonna del Sasso in Orselina is found in the Swiss Canton of Ticino. During the period in which the Sacro Monte was built, however, the region belonged to the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Milan. The Bishop of Como and the Archbishop of Milan continued to oversee the spiritual governance of Ticino until the mid-nineteenth century. According to local legend, the Sacro Monte was established in 1480 after Brother Bartolomeo d'Ivrea (d. 1511 - 1514), a resident of the Franciscan Convent in nearby Locarno, had a miraculous vision of the Virgin Mary and vowed to build a sanctuary in her honor on the rocky precipice overlooking the city. The Church of the Assumption at the top of the hill, now the Madonna del Sasso, was consecrated in 1487 and the Church of the Annunciation, at the bottom of the hill, was consecrated in 1502. The existence of additional chapels was first mentioned in 1578. Giovanni Battista Banfi, the archpriest of Locarno, wrote in 1596 that there were "little chapels [on the mountain] which, if they were decorated would resemble those at Varallo, but [now] are left undefended and not [decorated] with much diligence." The Descrittione della devotissima chiesa di S. Maria del Sasso records that there were seven narrative chapels on the mountain by 1625, but only three of them were decorated. Giacomo Stoffio mentions the presence of sculptures inside the chapels of the Nativity, Crucifixion, and Deposition or Pietà , assuring his reader that the Adoration of the Magi, Last Super, Saint Veronica, and Pentecost Chapels would be decorated shortly. Four more chapels had been added by the time the second edition of the Descrittione was published in 1677: The Visitation, Crowning with Thorns, Resurrection, and Ascension. Only four groups of figures seem to survive from this period and Orselina's original chapels. The sculptures in the Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, and Resurrection Chapels were replaced with new works in the late nineteenth-century and the remaining chapels have been destroyed. Members of the Franciscan Order lived in the convent at Orselina and cared for the sanctuary until the suppression of the religious order in 1848. When the Swiss Confederation allowed religious organizations to reform a few years later the convent was entrusted to a community of Capuchin brothers who have cared for the site since 1852. Orselina's Sacro Monte is sometimes described as the Sacro Monte of Locarno, because of its proximity to that city. This and the example at Brissago, the Sacri Monti Ticinesi, were recently put forward as potential UNESCO World Heritage sites. They did not advance beyond the national competition in 2017, but their candidacy may still be revisited in future.
Description
Sacro Monte della Madonna del Sasso, Orselina
Citation
Samuel Butler, Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (London: David Bogue, 1882), 347 - 357; Callisto Caldelari, Storia dell'eremo Sacro Monte e santuario della Madonna del Sasso (Orselina: Madonna del Sasso, 1980), 34 - 37, 41; Lara Calderari, Simona Martinoli, and Patrizio Pedrioli, Il Sacro Monte Madonna del Sasso in Orselina (Bern: Società di storia dell'arte in Svizzera (SASS), 2019), 76 - 78; Sabina Gavazzi Nizzola and Mariaclotilde Magni, "Una traccia per Francesco Silva stuccatore ticinese" in Arte Lombarda, Vol 17, No. 37, 86 - 95 (1972), 88; Virgilio Gilardoni, I monumenti d'arte e di storia del Canton Ticino, Locarno e il suo circolo (Locarno, Solduno, Muralto e Orselina), Vol. I, 418 - 477 (Basilea: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1972), 436 - 437; Piera Gatta Papavassiliou, Il Sacro Monte di Ossuccio: Guida alle Cappelle (Carlazzo: Attilio Sampietro Editore, 2013), 52 - 57, 144 - 151; Franco Restelli and Rosalba Franchi, Sacri Monti d'Italia e Svizzera (Varese: Pietro Macchione, 2013), 189 - 203.