Descent of the Holy Spirit (or Pentecost)
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Authors
Francesco Silva, attr. to
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Keyword
Holy Spirit , Descent , Pentecost , Mary , Disciples , Fire
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Abstract
This chapel illustrates the moment that Christ's followers received the Holy Spirit after Jesus' death and resurrection. Acts 2 recounts that the disciples were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Weeks when they heard a loud sound like the rush of wind and saw what looked like tongues of flame appear and rest on each person present (Verses 2 - 3). The fifteen life-sized figures in this scene represent the twelve disciples, the Virgin Mary, and two female believers. The sculptures are made of stucco and are attributed to Francesco Silva (1568 - 1641), although Callisto Caldelari notes that this attribution has not been securely documented. Silva modeled another scene of the same subject for Chapel Thirteen at the Sacro Monte sopra Varese (1623 - 1643). The poses and gestures of many of the figures at Orselina seem to be based on the examples at Varese. The two pairs of followers flanking Mary are on the opposite side of the Virgin in the stucco group, but all five of these central characters clasp their hands in a very similar manner in both scenes. It is not clear what the frescos in this scene originally represented or who painted them, although it is possible that they too recalled the paintings in Chapel Thirteen at Varese. An artist named Giuseppe Giugni (1844 - 1921?) is believed to have repainted the frescoes in 1868. Virgilio Gilardoni records that the sculptures were repainted in 1914. It seems likely that they have been restored again in recent years. The image of this chapel in Gilardoni's book shows that the curtains behind the figures were once articulated with much more sensitivity. / 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), 42; 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), 89; Sabina Gavazzi Nizzola and Mariaclotilde Magni, "Una traccia per Francesco Silva stuccatore ticinese" in Arte Lombarda, Vol 17, No. 37 (1972), 86 - 95, 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), 440 - 441; Andrea Schnöller Ed., Il Santuario della Madonna del Sasso ieri e oggi (Locarno: Edizioni Messaggero Madonna del Sasso, 1991), 96 - 99; Giacomo Stoffio, Descrittione della devotissima chiesa di S. Maria del Sasso sopra il Borgo di Locarno, Diocesi di Como (Como: Batldassare Arcione, 1625), 30; Franco Restelli and Rosalba Franchi, Sacri Monti d'Italia e Svizzera (Varese: Pietro Macchione, 2013), 189 - 203.