Inferno
Pietro GRILL known as Alamanno
(Goettweig 1430/40 – Ascoli Piceno 1498)
Madonna del Popolo or delle Grazie (1485), details of the Devil flying archers. San Ginesio, Collegiata, Coro.
Originally altarpiece of the chapel of the People, sponsored by the Magistrate of San Ginesio.
Large canvas that fits into the traditional motif of the Madonnas contra pestem of the processional banners, intended to have a protective function against plagues. Respect to tradition, the variant of the work of San Ginesio is represented by the discrimination between those who are saved and pronounce prayers to the Virgin, and the others who, out of his protective cloak, they regret their lack of faith, while the two patron saints, the martyr Ginesio and the Dominican preacher Vincenzo Ferrer, they pronounce the two words in the scrolls, “seek grace in her” and “hope in her, gathered people", which give the work its name, Madonna delle Grazie or del Popolo.
The originality of the composition is strengthened by the unique fact that the instrument of the calamities sent upon the sinful people is of a demonic rather than divine nature, as usual, or perpetrated by God the Father, Christ gives angelic figures.
Above the light emanating from the citadel hidden within mighty city walls, deep in a dark sky, on both sides of the central group of Madonna and Saints, instead of angels, they are in fact two groups of monstrous demons, “flying devils with bat wings, lunghe code squamate, horned, long-eared animalistic heads, who shoot arrows by hand or with bows, traditional symbol of divine punishment for the sins of men.” Added to this scourge is another completely unusual one, “the seventh of the plagues in the Apocalypse, that is, large hailstones thrown or spat by devils, give interpretation come over, that is, a sign of the end of times and of the Last Judgment". To add to the drama, one of the flying devils on the far left blows a hunting horn, instrument symbolically associated with war and hunting.
The Madonna del Popolo is an example of a happy mix between popular devotion inflamed by the charisma of the powerful fifteenth-century preachers and the financial commitment of the Municipality of the Land of San Ginesio, that is, the city magistrate who commissions the work, as evidenced by its author himself who signs in capital letters, on the lower edge of the painting, in the writing set in the middle of the band decorated with a stylized motif of dolphins and palmettes:
“1485 last day of June – this most holy image of the Mother of God, Mary of Graces, he made the Magistrate clear (community) of San Ginesio to the praise and glory of the same glorious Virgin and of her patron saints Ginesio and Vincenzo and for the salvation of the entire people (Community) sopradetto. Work by Pietro Alamanno.”
Purgatory
Mercurio Rusiolo
(Sanginese painter active between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century)
Souls of Purgatory, San Ginesio, Collegiata, The chapel on the right
Altarpiece of the noble chapel sponsored by the illustrious Sanginese family of the Severini.
It represents the Madonna who, as mother of Christ the Savior, he becomes a conduit to heaven for the souls of repentant sinners, redeemed by the prayers and good works of the living; ; action represented in this case by the brother of the Archiconfraternity of the S.S. Suffrage, of Jesuit inspiration, who tempers the punishment of penitents by throwing water on the flames that envelop them. [n. d. r.: Image found and presented by prof. Giuseppe Capriotti – Unimc]. The somewhat naive synthesis of the painting dramatically highlights the contrast between the infernal flames and the glimmer of light that opens in the sky.
The subject was completely compliant with post-Tridentine devotional sensitivity. As is well known, Purgatory constituted the main doctrinal issue in the dissent between the Catholic confession, for the purposes of saving the soul he believed in the value of works, unlike the reformed one, who justified it exclusively through grace, or “predestination by faith”.
This work and the others of the entire undertaking of the five chapels on the right of the Collegiate church, carried out in the period from 1589 to 1631, they had the intent to redeem the Land of San Ginesio from the suspicions of the Holy Office and to erase the memory of the sentences inflicted on it by the Court of the Inquisition, for having been the homeland and refuge of 'heretics' in the past twenty years 1560-80.
Paradiso
Confraternal commissions for external painters
Federico Zuccari
Attribution, (Sant'Angelo in Vado 1540 c.-Ancona 1609).
San Ginesio, Collegiata, Altarpiece of the fifth chapel on the right, Annunciation (early 17th century), detail of the angels in the cloth.
The beautiful canvas, composed “with volumetric clarity and qualitatively sustained technique, comparable to the best examples of Roman painting of the late sixteenth century", it has been attributed to the painter Federico Zuccari. After all, At the bottom stands the coat of arms of the Vannarelli family from San Giovanni, with great probability donors- ce of the work, and that, as she stood out for high officials in the Roman Curia, he had the possibility of accessing the painter working in Rome and for the Loreto basilica.
The narrated subject presents the Angel of God who announces Mary's imminent flawless motherhood. In the background there is a sumptuous curtain draped in scrolls, can be glimpsed, indicated by the heavenly messenger, a corner of paradise from where the Eternal, surrounded by a crown of angels, sends the light of his will to the future Mother of his earthly incarnation through the dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit.
The theme of the Annunciation, as well as being contiguous to the dedication of the Collegiate Church itself, connects to the other, addressed by Malpiedi in the Madonna of Loreto, as the event is narrated by tradition as having occurred in the house of Nazareth.
Once again, following the ideal enterprise that had animated the very need for the chapels of the Collegiate Church, the “courtly Roman” pictorial language reiterated the desire to comply with cultural directives- cultural and devotional deriving from the legitimate ecclesiastical hierarchies".
Simone De Magistris
(Caldarola 1538-1613)
San Ginesio, Collegiata, Coro, Madonna of the Rosary and Saints Dominic, Catherine of Siena and Peter Martyr (1575), detail of the singing cherubs with musical scores.
Commissioned by the confraternity of the same name of the Rosary erected as a Collegiate Church, the splendid canvas is the painter's first commitment to the clients of San Gimignano, which will continue with those for the Flagellants of Santa Maria della Pietà (Compassion, 1594), and for the Blessed Sacrament (Triptych Crucifix, Last supper, Ascent to Calvary, 1598); works all admirable for their high pictorial and confessional depth.
The present work, the first post-conciliar one in San Ginesio, praises the Madonna who had presided over the victory of the Catholic countries over the Ottomans, in the naval battle of Lepanto of 7 October 1571. Accompanied by the pragmatic requirement of the mysteries of the passion, his triumph among the angels of heaven, among which the six magnificent singing cherubs with score stand out for their grace and lightness, he is assisted by a corolla of Dominican saints, the religious order of preachers and inquisitors. With this spectacular pictorial solution and with the iconographic programs of a doctrinal and didactic nature that will follow in the chapels built subsequently in the Collegiate, the most influential families of San Ginesio took the opportunity to demonstrate their adherence to a devotional climate diametrically opposed to the heterodox deviations and internal discords of the recent past.
Commissioned by Domenico Malpiedi
(San Ginesio 1570-75, documented until 1651)
for the noble chapels of the Collegiate Church and for the Hermits of Sant'Agostino
Madonna of Loreto: translation of the Holy House
(late 16th-early 16th century), altarpiece of the IV Chapel of the Collegiate Church, detail of the musician angels.
While work was in full swing to define the internal spaces of the grandiose sanctuary of Loreto, the cult of the Virgin of Loreto was a strong Catholic argument, aimed at countering the accusations of falsehood and idolatry that came from reformed circles, especially starting from the publication of De idolo lauretano by Pier Paolo Vergerio (Tübingen 1554).
The action takes place in the high heavens, where many musician angels, in the foreground some with guitars, harp and trumpet, others singing the praises of the score and still others barely mentioned, they accompany the passage of the Virgin and the house of Nazareth towards Loreto by praising it.
Saint Mary Magdalene
(second decade of the 17th century), San Ginesio, church of Sant'Agostino, detail of the six singing angels with musical scores
The canvas represents Mary Magdalene, the sinner saved by Jesus, converted by his preaching, and set out on the path of unshakable faith. To prove it, his adoration of the crucified Christ who came into the world by the will of the Eternal Father, man among men, in a stable, in the humblest condition man can imagine, to make the mercy and love of God known to the world. The light of heaven bursts into the darkness of the human condition, resonating with the voices of angels singing psalms of glory, as the learned Augustinian fathers certainly did during religious functions.
The baptism of San Ginesio
(1630-31), San Ginesio, Collegiate church, detail of the two angels pointing to a sacred book in the whirlwind of clouds
In 303, almost at the end of the most ferocious period of persecutions conducted against Christianity by the Roman Empire, Genesio, Roman mime and musician, he was martyred because, while performing in front of the emperor Diocletian, he was touched by the grace of God and refused to ridicule the sacrament of Baptism on stage.
The large canvas represents the moment of conversion. The actors, in costume, I am on the stage at the Emperor's feet, while above a gap opens in the clouds, from where the angels of the Lord point with an arrow to a sacred book, probably the New Testament.
Other testimonies of post-Tridentine inspiration, where Triumphs of Angels immersed in divine light look out from the clouds, between earth and sky
Domenico Malpiedi
(San Ginesio 1570-75, documented until 1651)
Ascension, then called Our Lady of Mercy, San Ginesio, Collegiate church, chapel of the Madonna della Misericordia, detail of the flight of angels to the Lord
A crowd of men of faith and pious women witness Mary's assumption into heaven, where the Son awaits him, against a background of angelic creatures, he is surrounded by the nine hierarchies of Angels, arranged in an ascending direction.
This altarpiece was the protagonist of two miracles: on 20 July 1796 and the 19 June 1850 the Virgin's eyes were seen to move, causing such a large influx of faithful and offerings, to suggest a more suitable arrangement than the previous one. For this reason a large chapel was erected for her in the left nave of the church, opposite the other large chapel dedicated to the miraculous Crucifix of the Exiles, erected just over a century earlier by the brotherhood of the SS. Sacramento.
Andrea Boscoli
(Florence 1560 – Roma 1607)
Assumption of Mary with the Saints of Assisi, Francesco and Chiara, and Saint Peter (1605), San Ginesio, church of San Francesco, The chapel on the left
The church of the Franciscan Minors, as well as being venerated as a sacred temple, it had hosted the most significant meetings of the Community in its large hall, among these the acceptance of the Varano enfeoffment (1367) and the presentation of the city statute (1577), on the eve of the Superiors' authorization to print. In the new devotional fervor, the Franciscan order resorts to the flamboyant mannerism of the well-known Florentine painter of sincere counter-reformation devotion operating in those years in the Marche. Mary ascends to heaven accompanied by a riot of angels who come in the dazzling light of the Lord. The two Franciscan saints witness the miracle, Saint Francis and Saint Clare, while on the other side there is "a monumental Saint Peter holding in his hand, in great evidence, the book and the keys, symbol of theological and papal authority".
Filippo Bellini
(Urbino 1550c. - Macerata 1603) o
Federico Barocci
(Urbino 1535-1612)
attributions
Madonna enthroned between Saint Gregory, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Francis and Saint Catherine (1599?). Detail with a glory of small angels and cherubs ethereal like clouds around the monogram of Christ, flanked by two major angels. Church of San Gregorio Magno.
This Sanginese church also felt the need to adapt the iconography of its altarpiece to the new Tridentine precepts, which he commissioned from a painter of the new generation, among those who grew up in the workshops who worked in Rome and for Rome.
This altarpiece is truly evocative and represents a traditional subject in pure mannerist style, the Madonna enthroned with Child and Saints. Looking carefully, the two great Angels of the Lord who surmount the whole, they open the view on a very original dissolution in the divine light of angelic creatures that revolve around the acronym of Christ, IHS, surmounted by the cross.
Guglielmo Ciarlantini
(San Ginesio 1881 –1959)
Dome with angels (1911), San Ginesio, Collegiate church, chapel of the Crucifix of the Exiles
The encaustic decoration represents the most important intervention of the Sanginese painter in what was the restoration and decoration campaign of all the chapels of the Collegiate church which he himself designed starting from 1909. The overall style summarizes and enhances his experiences with Pre-Raphaelitism, Purism and Liberty.
“The dome is divided into eight segments delimited by candelabras with vine racemes and bunches of grapes that branch out from a vase, at the top of which there are putti placed at the corners of the octagon of the lantern that opens in the center of the vault. Seven segments house a praying angel … while at the bottom there is a garland with flowers and fruit from which intertwined ribbons emerge with a decoration of clear Liberty ancestry.” The eighth segment, the one above the altar, represents “two sorrowful angels with the symbols of the Passion”. The theme of the Passion of Christ is the common thread that links the modern work to the pre-existing triptych of works of strict post-Tridentine observance, Last Supper, Crucifix, Ascent to Calvary, performed in 1598 by the painter Simone De Magistris.
Credits
