Altarpiece of the Virgin of the Assumption
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Authors
Giovan Angelo Del Maino and Tiburzio Del Maino (sculpture), Gaudenzio Ferrari and Fermo Stella (painting and gilding)
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Assumption , Mary , St. Lawrence , St. Bernard , Adoration of the Magi , Flight into Egypt
Alternative Title
Abstract
This huge painted wood altarpiece, which at about five meters tall occupies the entire altar wall of the Santuario dell'Assunta in Morbegno (in the Valtellina of northern Lombardy), serves as a particularly grand frame honoring a fifteenth-century fresco of the Madonna and Child, which was thought to have performed miracles. Documents confirm that the wood specialist Giovan Angelo del Maino (likely with his brother Tiburzio) sculpted the work in 1516-19, just after making a similarly elaborate altarpiece for the Cathedral of Como, and that after the wood had time to cure, the painting and gilding were added by Gaudenzio Ferrari and Fermo Stella in 1520-6. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars assumed that Gaudenzio had designed the entire work, because of similarities to some of his paintings and because of a general modern bias in favor of painting, but the documents and comparison to other works reveal that the work must have been first designed and sculpted by Giovan Angelo del Maino and then only later painted by Gaudenzio. (Often, major artists painted on a variety of surfaces, both flat "paintings" and relief and fully in-the-round sculptures.) Here, the complex and richly ornamented architecture of the altarpiece creates the illusion of a centrally planned temple or tabernacle housing the miraculous painting, with figures disposed in niches or on top of the roof. Scenes from the life of the Virgin on the lower level are carved with almost in-the-round figures set in sophisticated perspectival spaces, like stage sets. These imitate compositions both from local Lombard paintings but also especially from the prints of Albrecht Dürer, which were very popular and circulated in Italy. (Tiburzio also seems to have traveled and possibly trained in Germany.) The entire structure is carved out of wood and then covered in gesso and painted or gilded, except for the grotesque pilasters that frame the reliefs of the Flight into Egypt and the Adoration of the Magi. Some of these have been damaged, but one survives intact. The grotesques on this pilaster are particularly finely carved bare wood, never painted or gilded. The rest of the work is carved out of softer poplar, but the motifs on this pilaster are carved out of a harder wood. The inclusion of unpainted wood, even in such a small area, may also suggest an interest in experiments occuring in these years in Germany. Nevertheless, the style of the whole is emphatically classical, both in terms of the architecture and the figures, with their heavy-hanging drapery and swaying contrapposto poses. Above the narrative reliefs are large statues of St. Lawrence and St. Bernard, and then above them the Annunciation, with the Apostles standing on one level of the drum, music-playing naked baby angels on the next, and the Virgin of the Assumption as the very pinnacle of the work. The artists play with scale and the relation of the figures to the frame, creating, for example, windows in the partitions between the standing saints and the central fresco, with carved praying angels whose fronts are visible on the side of the fresco and backs visible in the niches with the saints. Likewise, grotesque framing elements can be painted with lively flesh tones and so seem on the same level of reality as the holy figures -- most pointedly in the Annunciation, as here Gabriel and Mary are not so much framed by as dwarfed under the curling tails of gigantic, in-the-round, flesh colored phytomorphs. Likewise, flesh-coloured nude crouching angels frame the archways of the niches in which St. Lawrence and St. Bernard stand, seeming to stare at the saints from disconcertingly close range. Bernard stands in triumph over the devil (shown here in characteristic racist fashion as being dark-skinned), whom he holds in chains. Lawrence has an animated, almost casual stance, leaning to one side on the grill that was the instrument of his martyrdom. This rather nonchalant Lawrence seems an apt image for the saint who is said to have made a joke while being martyred, saying that he was done on one side and needed to be turned over! The florid outer frame surrounding the entire structure was added in the eighteenth century. The structure has been dismantled and reassembled several times, including in 1799 when the church was used to house troops in the border town, during WWI and WWII, and in the modern restoration finished in 1981. 32 sculptures from this altarpiece were stolen in 1978 and fortunately recovered two weeks later, though they had suffered damage. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Santuario dell'Assunta, Morbegno
Citation
Raffaele Casciaro, La scultura lignea lombarda del Rinascimento (Milan: Skira, 2000), 168-78, cat. 128, pp. 334-5; Paolo Venturoli, "Il restauro dell'ancona dell'Assunta a Morbegno," in Studi sulla scultura lignea lombarda tra quattro e cinquecento (Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2005), 11-12.