Bergognone’s Crucifixion (1490) for the Certosa di Pavia dates from the
period of highest influence of Bramante’s monumentality and
perspectival experimentations on the artist. An architecture in the
background immediately recalls Bramante’s theoretical and architectural
ideas: a marble church with a square layout lantern, decorated with
flying buttresses and Gothic pinnacles. In his Opinio given to the
overseers for the building project of the Duomo of Milan, Bramante
suggested, in place of the octagonal lantern already outlined by
Guiniforte Solari, a powerful Gothic square layout-tower, actually very
similar to that depicted by Bergognone. Such a singular connection
confirms the relationship between Bergognone and Bramante, already
suggested in the past based on the influence of the former’s style on the
latter’s, but also on their actual collaboration for the church of Santa
Maria at San Satiro, very few years later. Bergognone’s interest for
architecture, and especially for the Gothic lantern, is further documented
in other paintings; and compared to the other visualizations of
Bramante’s Opinio – such as that found in Cesare Cesariano’s
commentary on Vitruvius (1521) – Bergognone’s appears by far more
coherent with the writings and artistic vision of the architect from Urbino.
The retrieval of the contract for the moving of Bernabò Visconti’s statue
from the choir of San Giovanni in Conca in Milan (1571) gives an
opportunity to reconsider the years following the Pastoral visits of Carlo
Borromeo, which marked an important renovation of the Carmelite
church. While the Cardinal once again had to deal with the problem of
ducal remains occupying a place of worship and prayer, Vincenzo
Seregni, the actual promoter of the architectural adjustment, looked for
a solution to numerous problems, regarding which ancient and recent
tombs played a relevant role.
The author reports the full text of a previously unpublished manuscript
by Michele Caffi – kept at the Archivio della Società Storica Lombarda in
Milan – which allows to clarify the tormented events of the now dismembered marble complex of the tomb of St. Evasius in the Cathedral of Casale Monferrato. The manuscript accounts for some excerpts from a now missing convention signed in Milan on January 5th 1548, in which Bambaia and Cristoforo Lombardi – appointed to the building of the tomb in 1525, together with Gian Giacomo Della Porta – entrust
stonemason Giovanni Antonio Della Torre from Como with the realization of some parts of the monument, as well as the assemblage of the works in Casale, which probably never started. The contract also constitutes the very last known document of the activity of Bambaia, who would die six months later.
An unpublished document from the Chapter’s Archive of the Duomo of
Milan certifies the offer of a tabernacle to be placed in the Cathedral,
upon a drawing by Michelangelo («tabernacolo di metallo da porsi in
Duomo giusta il disegno di Michel Angelo Buonaruota»), thus adding new
facts to our knowledge of a tabernacle realized by Giacomo Del Duca
upon a drawing by Michelangelo for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
Del Duca’s work described in the document is very similar – even
in size – to that offered to Philip II for the church of Saint Lawrence of
El Escorial, thus allowing to say it is the same tabernacle; a relation to
the one now placed in the Charterhouse of Padula, formerly at the
Museum of Capodimonte, is less likely. The tabernacle offered to the Duomo has an octagonal shape, a stone pedestal and a metal body with a total height of 50 hands. On one of the eight facets of the pedestal there is a door which takes along a stair to
the octagonal reliquary guarding the Blessed Sacrament, illuminated by
eight windows, some with red stained glasses, with six corresponding
figures; both on the upper and in the lower sides are fourteen bas-reliefs
with the Stories of the Passion. A Crucifix and a Resurrected Christ are
embedded in the two main windows. Underneath, a second octagonal
bronze element constitutes the base of the actual tabernacle, while the
upper side culminating in an eight-sided vault with a balustrade, a globe
and an image of Christ ascending into heaven («Cristo […] il qual sta in
atidudine di ascendere in cielo»).
Ambrogio Figino’s Madonna of the Serpent, placed in the oratory of the
Immaculate at Sant’Antonio Abate in Milan, constitutes the well-known
iconographic model for Caravaggio’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne
(Madonna dei Palafrenieri) from the Borghese Gallery in Rome. The
common subject was the Immaculate Conception, a thoroughly discussed theme, especially during the Counter-Reformation. Figino’s painting – which was in the painter’s house in 1591, and would be kept there until his death in 1608 – was probably an altarpiece rejected by the customers, perhaps destined to the church of San Fedele, where Milanese critic Giovan Paolo Lomazzo saw a «Madonna del serpe» by the same artist. It’s likely the Jesuits rejected it because of its ambiguous iconography: since the Child helps Mary smash the serpent, the beholders might have thought she was not able to defeat the Original Sin on her own, and so she had not been conceived immaculate. Such ambiguity probably played a similar role in the unfortunate events of
Caravaggio’s Madonna dei Palafrenieri, which stayed in its place on Ste.
Anne’s altar in the basilica of St. Peter in Rome for only a week.
Successively, the same iconography would be used with completely opposite intentions: in France to support the Protestant refusal of the cult of Mary and Ste. Anne, in the Spanish Netherlands to spread the worship of the Immaculate Conception.
The analysis of the group of 17th-Century drawings from the Bianconi
collection, regarding the complex of S. Ambrogio in Milan – so far read
as a series of proposals for the demolishment and rebuilding of the
basilica – allows several chronological clarifications about the interventions for the realization of the monastery annexed during the 17th Century.
A formal analysis, supported by documents, suggests the rejection of
theories implying such a radical intervention, never mentioned by the
sources. The reconsideration of a document so far nearly ignored – which
attests an agreement made before 1623 for the building of a church for
the exclusive use of the monks, to be annexed to the old basilica – allows
to interpret the drawings as studies for such operation, eventually
aborted. Nevertheless, the formal elements of the drawings, extremely
refined, all very similar and lacking in measurements, reveal an abstract
and academic origin. The clear influence of Mangone supports the theory
that the drawings were made within the Accademia Ambrosiana – where
Mangone taught Architecture – as exercises on a given theme, without
any prospect of an actual realization. Such interpretation suggests
further reflection upon the structure of the Accademia and its teaching
methods, heavily marked – as is evident in the formal reading of the
drawings – by Classicism, severe and devoid of excessive decoration, as
it was handed down to the next generation of Lombard architects.
The conception and realization, between 1603 and 1612, of the Fuentes
Fort in Colico, at the northern border of Spanish Lombardy, have been the
subject of several studies. Yet the history of the building – wanted by the
Governor of Milan, Pedro Enriquez de Acevedo, in order to allow Castilian
troops the transit towards the rebellious Flanders through Valtellina, then
controlled by the Grisons – is still full of surprises. After the study on the
building and the engineers responsible for the projects and the structural
analysis of within the boundary wall, all possible new elements seemed
exhausted. On the contrary, new findings allow us to broaden the research
to the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. The well-known documents preserved
by the Archivio General de Simancas and the State Archives of Milan and Venice are now joined by those coming from the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna and the private archive of Mariavittoria Antico Gallina in Milan, which reveal proposals and interventions that modified the site up until World War I, thus demonstrating the persistent strategic relevance of the Pian di Spagna. Suggestions and operations by technicians working for the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy point continuously – as is
evident – on that part of Lake Como, from the renovation of the 17th- Century Fuentes fort to the building of the 20th-Century Lusardi fort.
In 1860 Frenand de Dartein (Strasbourg 1838 - Paris 1912) went to Italy
on a mission to study northern Romanesque architecture: more
specifically, he found that in the basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan,
undergoing a massive restoration at the time, the typical “Lombard”
features appeared in their full identity. In that site, he met architect
Gaetano Landriani; the collaboration between the two, furthered by a
common ability in architectural drawing, addressed both the restoration
and the publishing of two volumes (Dartein’s on Lombard architecture,
Landriani’s on Sant’Ambrogio). This essay analyzes 17 letters – kept in
private archives – from the Italian portion of the correspondence
between the two colleagues (1865-92), with particular focus on the
facts regarding certain parts of the basilica (which were an item of
discussion at the site): the arrangement of the presbyterial area, the
polychromatic stucco decoration of the apse, the stalls in the wooden
choir (with a suggested date), the columns for the Pre-Romanesque
basilica, the conformation of the third bay with two rectangular vaults
(both demolished in ’66), the portico with its original plan and its
connection to the opposite square and the bell-tower ‘of the Canons’.
Upon the death of the Milanese architect (1899), Dartein had an
epistolary exchange with Luca Beltrami, addressing some of his
restorations and projects, and pointing out the trait d’union of their
mutual friendship: Landriani himself
The activity of Riccardo Ripamonti (Milan, 1849-1930), a key figure of
Lombard sculpture between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the
20th Century, has to be placed among the most thought-provoking facts
in Italy at the time, both on a formal and on a content-related level.
Nonetheless, Ripamonti’s life and work have been long forgotten by art
historians, as well as by his contemporaries. It is then very interesting to
trace the evolution of his sculptural production, beyond his best-known
work – the monument to Missori still placed in the homonymous square
in Milan – finding a coherent thread in a consistent tension between civil
commitment and explicit social protest. Such delicate balance finds its
expression in a style of Verist derivation, occasionally sketchy, more often
sustained by a more evident Realism, as in the case of Miscarriage of
Justice, presented at the Milan Triennale of 1891, which distinguished
Ripamonti as one of the most interesting actors in the tendency of Social
Realism, very common in Italy, and particularly in Lombardy, during the
last decade of the 19th Century.
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