Last Supper
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Authors
Francesco Silva, attr. to
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Jesus , Disciples , Last Supper , , Passion , Passover
Alternative Title
Abstract
In 1625, Don Giacomo Stoffio mentioned a chapel of this subject in his Descrittione della devotissima chiesa di S. Maria del Sasso, which is the oldest surviving account of this Sacro Monte and its history. He said that the structure was newly built and would be decorated shortly. Stoffio also documented the chapel's patrons, which included "Signori Gio. Ludovico Comedatore di Malta, Gio. Valtero Cavagliero di S. Stefano Landtmano, Gio. Pietro, & Capitano Emanuel Fratelli Rolli d'Altorso." That chapel, the Cappella Von Roll, currently houses a group of wooden figures from the fifteenth century, which was acquired from the Chiesa di San Francesco in Locarno around 1878. The thirteen life-sized figures of the Last Supper are located nearby in a chapel that was originally dedicated to a smaller scene of the Lamentation scene. The present table must have been built to fit into the new space when the group was moved, since there is just enough room to fit the sculptures in between the table and the walls. The Von Roll Chapel has a larger footprint with curved walls that would accommodate a more traditional looking banquet table. The sculptures in this chapel are made of stucco. They are attributed to Francesco Silva, although Callisto Caldelari notes that this attribution has not been securely documented. Orselina is the only Sacro Monte apart from Varallo to include a scene of the Last Supper. This is also the only one of the chapels at Orselina that Samuel Butler thought worthy to mention. Two years after he visited the Sacro Monte in 1880, Butler wrote that there was a "good deal of feeling" in the group. He also complained that the chapel was too dark to to examine the fresco in the background or, indeed, determine the presence of such a painting. Any traces of paint in either chapel have been lost or painted over since Butler's time. / 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), 36, 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), 81, 87 - 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), 439 - 440; Andrea Schnöller Ed., Il Santuario della Madonna del Sasso ieri e oggi (Locarno: Edizioni Messaggero Madonna del Sasso, 1991), 96 - 97; Giacomo Stoffio, Descrittione della devotissima chiesa di S. Maria del Sasso sopra il Borgo di Locarno, Diocesi di Como (Como: Baldassare Arcione, 1625), 25; Franco Restelli and Rosalba Franchi, Sacri Monti d'Italia e Svizzera (Varese: Pietro Macchione, 2013), 189 - 2W03.