Niccolo dell'Arca's LAMENTATION

Niccolo dell'Arca's LAMENTATION, 1464
Bologna is worth a Lamentation
The only work of art worth going to Bologna to see is the terracotta group of sculpted figures by Niccolo dell'Arca (c.1440-45-1494) called the LAMENTATION, set up now in the small church of Santa Maria della Vita, the church of its origin.

Although not certain, the date usually given to the work is 1464. The arrangement consists of six lifesize figures placed in location around the supine body of the Dead Christ.

Because the figures are lifesize, because they have traces of color still on the baked clay, because they have gestures that are familiar, because they form a semicircle facing the viewer, because they are only slightly raised up from the ground, they appear to be real human beings, and the viewer shares their space. In fact if another group of real humans were to form a mirror semicircle, the chapel would become a full circle of figures around the dead body
of Christ.
        First let us identify the figures as best we can, then we will discuss why they are portrayed as they are.
         From the left:
JOSEPH of ARIMATHAEA or NICODEMUS

He is dressed as a town merchant with tools, a hammer projecting from his right hand and tongs hanging on his belt. Hammer still cocked, he kneels as though he has just completed removing the nails from Christ's hands and feet. He is the only figure who looks out at the viewer. His face, probably a portrait of the commissioner or a self-portrait of the artist, is in shock, his brow furrowed. He grabs his belt with his left hand, trying to take stock of what has happened, trying to grasp literally something to ground himself in order to understand the significance of the death he has witnessed. His rich clothing suggests he could be Joseph of Arimathaea, who donated his tomb for the body of Christ, but his tools suggest that he is Nicodemus, who was a sculptor and helped get Christ's body down from the cross. If the figure is meant to be Nicodemus, it would be appropriate for the sculptor, Niccolo dell'Arca, to want to present his namesake (both have nicknames of Nico) as himself, the sculptor of the terracotta figures we see. As such, the whole group could be seen, then, as the expiatory project of the sculptor to ensure his own immortality and afterlife.
           The next individual figures:
2 MARIES -   MARY, wife of Cleophas  and the Virgin MARY, mother of Christ

MARY CLEOPHAS grasps the cloth of her gown in disbelief as she stares at the body. She is the wife of the brother (Cleophas) of Mary's husband (Joseph) and was thought to be the mother of John the Evangelist who is to her proper left in the scene.

MARY, the MADONNA, Christ's mother, clasps her hands together in anguish
 
 and a moan escapes her open mouth as she looks down at her son:

Christ lies on the ground with his right hand crossed over his left:

 His eyes are closed, his mouth slightly open; he still wears the crown of thorns:

In the center of the 4 women stands JOHN THE EVANGELIST, Christ's disciple, to whom Christ entrusted the care of his own mother:
 

His eyes show the swelling lids of weeping, his brow is furrowed, his face wracked with pain, and he rests his chin on his right hand as though the weight of the moment has been too much.

The three left figures, together with John the Evangelist build a sliding diagonal of restrained emotion that stops with the vertical figure of John in contemplation,

then all sound and fury are let loose in the two far right figures of MARY SALOME and MARY MAGDALENE:

MARY SALOME sticks both her hands out as if to ward off the danger of death to herself, to keep from seeing the disaster of overwhelming feelings. "Let it not be true!" her hands say, as she catapults towards the truth.

Both she and MARY MAGDALENE are running toward the dead figure, with cloaks billowing out behind them as if they had just heard the news and are racing towards the others. 

                              

They both look down at Christ with their mouths open in extreme pain, the screams of mourning that people feel when learning of the death of a beloved person. We even see their teeth and wild eyes.

MARY MAGDALENE has been placed near Christ's feet because she is always associated in the Renaissance with the woman who anointed Christ's feet with oil at the house of Simon the Pharisee.

 

MARY MAGDALENE's hand gestures say, "How can this be? I wasn't finished loving him; I need more time to be near."

 

The pressing of the drapery on her figure in front and the motion of the drapery behind her are not this powerfully rendered again by a sculptor until Bernini in the 17th century. She is the most extraordinary of the figures and expresses her grief in the most dramatic way. Her passionate love is so visible and forthright and her extreme pain so remarkably sculpted that the viewer finds it hard 

to look at anyone else in the group.

Niccolo dell'Arca's intent is to produce a COMPIANTO, the Italian term for a group who are joined in crying (Piangere the verb in Italian) over Christ after he's been crucified. The mourning of the group is meant to stimulate the feelings of mourning in the viewers of the work so that they, too, join in the grief, in the co-crying. He has so powerfully rendered, in terracotta, figures in the extreme
stages of grief, that he has made a crescendo from left to right of sound, motion, feeling, and rhythm that effects a pure catharsis for the viewer of the drama.

 On learning that Santa Maria della Vita housed a group

of flagellants (members of the faithful who whipped themselves to obtain penance and reach ecstatic religious heights,) an example of one who can be seen here in a much later 1595 depiction in the Beinecke library ms. 457,

it is much easier to understand the expression of passion that Niccolo dell'Arca wanted to convey. We cry with the figures in the depths of their grief after viewing this LAMENTATION.

The sculptor whips us as participants as violently as he sends the clay cloths of Mary Magdalene flying in her

frenzy.

Brunelleschi's Dome in Loreto

Brunelleschi's Dome in Loreto

You will already be familiar with Loreto from my blog entry on Melozzo da Forli's fabulous angel chapel painted in Loreto Cathedral in 1477-80:

The style of the painter here provides the link between Mantegna and Michelangelo for ceiling painting.
 

         But what about the architectural style of the dome for the building Melozzo's painting is in?

                                Basilica della Santa Casa, Loreto, with Adriatic Sea behind
It, too, provides a link: between Brunelleschi's dome of the Florentine Cathedral and Michelangelo's dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

 


















The entire cathedral complex at Loreto spans many centuries:

1291 - Holy House transported from Nazareth to Croatia
1292 - Holy House transported from Croatia to Recanati, then up the hill to Loreto 
14th-15th centuries - church dedicated to Mary already existed on the site in Loreto; planning continued to cover over and protect the Holy House; nave and side walls went up and included the fortress walls and "ronda" (round turrets surrounding the entire structure with walkways to guard from attack by sea)
1477-80 - Melozzo da Forli paints chapel
1477-80 - Signorelli paints chapel
1484 - Sixtus IV becomes Pope - issues bulls for the sacredness of the holy house; invests money in the decoration.
1499-1500 - nine months to build the dome of the basilica; designed and constructed by Giuliano da Sangallo (he lives from c. 1445-1516)

1500 - Bramante designed apostolic palace in the piazza

1571 - facade of the cathedral
1750-54 - campanile (bell tower) produced by Vanvitelli

Since the dome is our focus here, the architect of that, Giuliano da Sangallo, and its date (1499-1500) are particulars that lead us to view it as THE DOME of the intervening years between

FLORENCE CATHEDRAL DOME (1420-1436) and ROME's ST. PETER'S DOME (1503-1556.)   

Let us start back with a journey to Loreto. When you come from the sea
inland to
Loreto, the sacred site is approached up a hill, so the viewer looks up at the dome rather than
down at it in a valley, as one would the Florentine dome.

But from first glance in approach, the similarities of the silhouettes of the two structures are
striking. The height of the Loreto dome is 128 feet, slightly lower than the 144 feet of the Florence dome, but perhaps because of the hill, it seems higher than it is, making up the difference.
 

Even a comparison of their aerial views is particularly similar, with both buildings meant to project
the image of a flower for Mary with a long nave stem and radial petal chapels at transept and apse, as well as a public piazza in front of the facade.
And the eight ribs used to anchor the dome with similar lantern structures at the top. Only the color
of the tile on the Loreto church is dissimilar to that of the Florentine Cupola, but if you change the color is is easy to see how much they look alike.

 

The eight ribs descend down to the drum pierced with oculi (windows) and the ribs are reinforced by supporting pilasters in the drum.
Even at night they look satisfyingly alike.
   

Both were structures meant to emphasize Mary's nourishing qualities, buildings dedicated to the

mother of the Godhead of Christianity. Both buildings needed protection, which in Florence was

provided by the city walls, in Loreto by the fortress ramparts with walkways (seen here lit at night)

running around the entire church. Loreto's Holy House is built like a castle intent on defending itself against attack from the sea. (Fear of Muslims in our century has precedence in previous centuries.)

The "hortus conclusus," Latin phrase used to denote Mary in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,

the enclosed garden, is here given a physical, visual ramification. The sentry walkways still exist

high above the nave,

 giving perfect outlook for defense of the complex

which hugs the hill with head and arms almost looking like the "angels" who brought the Holy House

from Nazareth. (In reality the Italian merchants, whose last name was "Angeli" were the transporters

of the simple room, said to have bricks dating back to the first century.)

This room, thought to be the room where the Annunciation took place, is encased with a larger structure, built and decorated in the 16th century by Bramante and others:

(The guardhouse with its precious interior has precedent as a play within a play in St. Francis's

 Porziuncola covered with decoration in Santa Maria degli Angeli (appropriate), built in the
14th century in the valley of Assisi.)

 

















The dome in this case, Loreto, is less imposing and colorful because the Nazareth building within a building within another building is the most important part of the reliquary. Atop the Loreto dome is a statue of the Madonna, in Florence a bronze orb and cross.

Extraordinary, though, for those coming from Florence on a trip down the Eastern Coast of Italy,
to come upon a Cupola whose shape, rib number, drum oculi, and lantern, replicate in local stone
sincerity the major site dedicated to Mary in the larger urban center of Florence. That it was begun 63 years after Brunelleschi finished his innovative double-shell structure speaks volumes about the influence of the Florentine architect on the rest of the peninsula. And when Michelangelo comes to design the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, not a Marian site, between 1547 and 1593 (completed by Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana after Michelangelo's death in 1564), he makes sure his Roman cupola is highest at 448 feet, has twice the ribs of the Florentine and Loreto ones, and makes his drum more muscular and articulated with alternating rectangular windows and paired Corinthian colonettes. He moves the oculi into the surface of the dome for breathing space for the stone, and he repeats the paired colonnettes in the lantern to make the whole more robust and masculine
as well as closer to the shape of a papal tiara:







While Michelangelo would not have necessarily seen
the Loreto dome, although his patron, Julius II, would
certainly have been aware of it, he would have known
that the competition to produce a dome equal to or greater than the dome of Brunelleschi's in Florence was heating
up, with the example of Loreto in the background and
other examples in Rome itself, especially one near Trajan's column by the brother of Giuliano da Sangallo, Antonio da Sangallo, begun in 1507 and curiously dedicated to Santa Maria di Loreto:

Fortunately for the viewer of St. Peter's today, Michelangelo chose not to replicate the frog-eyes

of the Roman Loreto dome in his cupola,

but he must have known that somewhere out on the horizon

to the east sat a near-replica of the beloved Florentine dome

of his childhood, and he knew he had to do better than that: