The Frame Blog

by Marc O. Manser and The Frame  Blog

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of the Rosary, 1648, frame for Simone Cantarini (1612-48), Madonna of the rosary with SS Dominic & Catherine, 1642, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches

Further to the trilogy of articles [1] on the ways in which altarpieces, secular paintings and looking-glasses might be hidden behind various covers, here is a surviving example of a sacred cover-painting in the Marches with its machinery still intact, photographed by Marc O. Manser. Although the statue of the Madonna it had originally hidden seems sadly to have vanished, it later allowed a rather unexpected cuckoo into its nest; however, its main purpose here is as an introduction to the operatically extraordinary altarpiece frames and decorative schemes created by the 17^th century sculptor Leonardo Scaglia.

The altarpieces of San Medardo in Arcevia

Ercole Ramazzani (after; 1530-98), map of Arcevia with detail showing the Collegiate Church of San Medardo; engraving from Johannes Blaeu (c.1596-1663), Theatrum civitatem et admirandorum Italiae…, 1663, Antiquarius

The church of San Medardo in the hill town of Arcevia was completely rebuilt and refitted from 1634, and  – amongst the striking procession of altarpieces which eventually furnished it – it boasts a magnificent and little-touched altarpiece by Simone Cantarini of Pesaro, a pupil of Giovanni Pandolfi, Claudio Ridolfi, and (until they fell out over etchings) of Guido Reni.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of the Rosary, detail of pediment with God the Father, San Medardo. Photo: Beni storici e artistici

A great deal of its magnificence is owing to its massive Baroque aedicular frame, supported by two pairs of Salomonic columns and crested by a Mannerist collision of three pediments, where an entourage of angels surrounds the figure of God the Father,  mantled in crimson and rising from a cluster of silver clouds.The painting was commissioned from Cantarini in 1642, and the frame itself ordered from and designed by the Frenchman, Leonard Chailleau, known in his adopted country as Leonardo Scaglia, and executed by him, along with other altarpiece settings and many statues in the church, from about 1648.

Scaglia was a protegé of the Benedictine congregation of St Sylvester of Fabriano [2]; his main workshop and earlier works were in Perugia, but for his commissions in Arcevia he was required to take a local carver into partnership – Francesco Giglioni, of whom nothing seems to be known save that he hailed from Montecarotto near Arcevia [3]. The two of them, along with what seems to have been a shifting army of assistants, executed a large number of altarpieces in the area, San Medardo in Arcevia being particularly blessed in its number of spectacular frames.

Interior of the Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia: Leonardo Scaglia, Altarpiece of St Teresa of Avila on the left (the high altar is further to the left)

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of St Teresa of Avila, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches; detail of figure of St Teresa. Photos: Beni storici e artistici

The Altarpiece of St Teresa of Avila by Scaglia and Giglioni, for example – which was also contracted for in 1648 – is completely sculptural, and opulently so. However, because the frame isn’t surrounding a painting, with its carved ornament contained by the four margins around the canvas (large though those might be), it encompasses instead the whole façade of the altarpiece, creating a layered and restless surface. The Baroque variation of level as architectural elements are pushed forward or recede is echoed by the close juxtaposition of organic and geometric ornament, and of different types of finish – gold and silver leaf, polychrome backgrounds to carving or sgraffito, marbling, coloured lacquer over gold – whilst the gesturing figures reflect the similar energetic tension in the Mannerist arrangement of the pediments.

For such a static object as a massive wooden altarpiece, this is a design which appears to be in permanent motion, causing even the figure of God the Father to appear slightly distraught as He emerges from another nest of curly silver clouds. Scaglia and Giglioni aren’t the world’s most sophisticated sculptors: their figures are doll-like, with rudimentary anatomy [4], but this is compensated for by the vibrant gesticulations of cherubs and angels, and their tenuous contact with their perches, as if practically launched into the air. Every projecting hand is urging the worshipper to look, pay attention, comprehend and adore; these are possibly some of the most evangelizing frames ever conceived.

Francesco Mancini’s book devoted to Leonardo Scaglia includes extracts from the contract for the Altarpiece of St Teresa:

‘For a fee of one hundred scudi, the two sculptors promise to execute, by June of the following year, “at their own expense” [i.e. buying all the gesso, gold leaf, glue, pigments, &c., and paying their own living expenses] and supplying “their own wood”, the “conam et ornamentum pro capella ipsius domini capitanei Paduani” [‘an altarpiece and its frame for the chapel of the Lord Captain Paduano’], “in which altarpiece there must be, amongst other things, the statue of St Teresa in the middle and a figure of God the Father above, and the frame with its columns, capitals and decoration, and with four angels, conforming to the drawing” [that is, the design of the whole work, approved by the commissioning client, Giovan Battista Paduano].’ [5]

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of San Medardo, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches. Photo of altarpiece: Marc O. Manser; photo of statue: Beni storici e artistici

Next on the right-hand side, immediately beyond the Altarpiece of St Teresa, is the transept chapel of San Medardo, patron saint of the church.  His altarpiece (another Scaglia/Giglioni extravaganza) faces, in the left-hand transept, the Altarpiece of the Rosary with its painting by Simone Cantarini, which begins this article. Again, although the sculpted figures may lack Michelangelesque verisimilitude, they work extremely hard to draw the attention with fluttering hands, legs, draperies and wings. But (also again) the outstanding feature of the altarpiece is its use of every technical device available – architectural, ornamental, and variety of surface finish. The niche where San Medardo stands is framed by an inner rectilinear frame with outset corners, and a frieze covered in a foliate design in punchwork; it is set against laterals panels with further punchwork. The plinth is composed of marbled panels, and the saint’s niche is painted with a faux stone effect in blues and eau-de-nil, like blurred peacocks’ feathers. His bishop’s robes are intricately brocaded in white and gold, and he stands on his own plinth, where the gilded carvings are relieved against faux stone grounds in blue-green and red. His presentation is opulently theatrical, as is the superb Mannerist aedicule which surrounds him.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), Baldacchino, 1624-34, bronze; St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Photo: Dennis Jarvis; Scaglia & Giglioni, Altarpiece of San Medardo, detail of columns. Photo: Marc O. Manser

Here are the Salomonic columns which appear in many of Scaglia’s major works, and which derive from Bernini’s baldacchino in St Peter’s (finished c. fifteen years earlier), which Scaglia would have known at first hand. Sometimes he uses just two, as in the San Medardo altarpiece, where they are supported behind with engaged, fluted columns springing from nests of acanthus leaves and carved in the lower third with scrolling foliage and têtes espagnolettes.

Altarpiece of the Rosary, San Medardo, detail; and Bernini, Baldacchino, detail

Sometimes there are two pairs of columns, as in the Altarpiece of the Rosary, where it can be seen that Scaglia’s Salomonic columns are, in nearly every aspect, more of everything than Bernini’s. They are chubbier, twistier, more thickly twined with climbing branches, dealing more fiercely with horror vacui by stuffing any bare inch with birds eating grapes, or cherubs, or larger, spikier crowns where Bernini had simple golden rings. Scaglia also goes one better than Bernini’s symbolic bay leaves climbing the columns of the baldacchino, by covering the forward columns with roses and rose leaves for the Virgin, and those at the back with Eucharistic grapes and vine leaves: both pairs inhabited by swarming cherubs, pinioned to the fat spiralling curves.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), drawing of a pedimental angel, pen, ink, gouache & chalk (no location), and Altarpiece of the Rosary, pedimental angel. Photo: Marc O. Manser

It should be pointed out that, although the figures made under Scaglia’s direction are hardly in the same class as Bernini’s (especially the pinioned cherubs), the drawings he made for them are graceful and elegant, and it is in three dimensions that their anatomical detail lets them down (again, probably due to outsourcing the carving).

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, altarpiece frame for Sassoferrato (G.B. Salvi; 1609-85; attrib.), Altarpiece of Sant’Adriano (after Domenichino, Madonna & Child with SS Petronius & John the Evangelist), Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches. Photo: Marc O. Manser

On the opposite side of the nave from San Medardo, and one altarpiece down on the left, next to the Altarpiece of the Rosary, is another variation on Scaglia’s infinitely variable Mannerist/ Baroque frame, the Altarpiece of Sant’Adriano, holding an enthroned Madonna and saints by Sassoferrato. This version is similarly packed with architectonic elements and barnacled with ornament; here the columns are straight, but wound with climbing vines and rose branches; there are the usual layered and broken pediments, and a particularly large and prancing pair of angels in the upper tier, barely attached to the open ogee pediment behind them. Drops of sculptural fruit decorate the back edge at each side of the altarpiece and the pilasters of the top tier, and there are flattened Mannerist scrolls on both storeys.

It is an eye-catching confection, partly because the polychrome finish reflects the blue and scarlet in the painting, referring them upward and outward across the frame, and also because of the size of the three-dimensional, practically detached angels at the top, which project forward of the altarpiece, rather distracting attention from the painting. Scaglia was clearly more at ease when he was in command of an integrated sculptural altarpiece, like those of St Teresa and San Medardo, balancing his cast of figures across the  whole composition.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & ? Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of Christ Crucified, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches. Photos: Marc O. Manser

Finally, here is the altarpiece of the Crucifixion from the Chapel of the Sacrament, which opens from the left side of the nave, next down from the  Madonna & Child with saints… by Sassoferrato. In comparison with the layered elements and ornaments of the other altars, this seems almost plain; it has a single pediment, composed of an open swan’s neck at the sides and a segmental arc above, with a convex cartouche holding a glory. From the centre of this the dove of the Holy Spirit flies out like a sort of peace-bringing missile, hailed by two quite securely-seated angels; whilst in the simplified arched niche below, the Crucifixion stands against a blue starry ground, and Christ’s blood is caught by three chalice-bearing angels.

Leonardo Scaglia, Altarpiece of Christ Crucified, angel with a chalice; raking shot showing decorated surface. Photos respectively: Beni storici e artistici  and Marc O. Manser

Even the Salomonic columns, although very tightly wound, are less encrusted with leaves and extraneous fauna; however, in close-up, the beautifully decorated surfaces of many of the apparently plain friezes and other areas can be appreciated. The internal convex friezes beneath the segmental pediment, the column bases and the friezes and scotias behind them, the blocks above the capitals and pedestals of the columns: all of these are engraved and punched with a complex brocaded pattern of scrolling foliage and flowers, as though a shimmering veil of damask has been cast over them. This is perhaps the altarpiece where Scaglia’s own hand is most evident.

The altarpieces of Perugia

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), Altarpiece of the Compagnia degli Oltremontani,  for Bernardino Gagliardi, St Helena adoring the True Cross, detail, Santa Maria Nuova, Perugia. Photo: Sandro Francesco Allegrini . See also Fondazione Zeri

Certainly, his schedule of work on groups of large altarpieces (all of them varying in different ways) for churches in various locations in the Marches and Umbria meant that his work must frequently have been concentrated on the designs, the contracts, and then on marshalling the workshops where the carving and finishing was carried out. Apparently the difficulties caused by this came to a head in Perugia, where he had been commissioned by the Societas Teutonorum et Gallicorum to produce an altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria Nuova, where expatriate Germans and French, many of them students, worshipped; he was actually sent to prison for a few days in the ensuing fall-out [6]. This was a earlier contract, preceding his partnership with Giglioni.

The Altarpiece of the Compagnia degli Oltremontani is an elaborate Mannerist triptych with a complication of open and closed triangular pediments, topped by a segmental arc, and two wings holding statues of St Louis IX of France and St Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor. It has another sculptural scene above the lowest pediment, with cherubs bearing the heavenly form of the Cross, exaggerated flattened scrolls supporting each tier, and drops of fruit at the sides of the wings.  It is finished all over in faux stone in two colours, picked out in gilding, and forms a very striking whole – apparently it also functioned as a funerary monument for Germans and French who died in Perugia.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), sculptural altarpieces: Altarpiece of the Madonna (left), and of Altarpiece of the Angels (right), 1643, and detail of pediment on the latter with the Risen Christ, San Fortunato, Perugia. Photo: Beni storici e artistici

There is another collection of altarpieces by Scaglia in San Fortunato, Perugia; these represent his first sizable work in the region, due to his being commissioned by Father Ubaldi, head of the order of St Sylvester of Montefano, in 1636 [7]. They are executed in a rather simpler Mannerist style, the tiers supported by his favourite exaggerated and flattened scrolls. The frames above are composed with three-dimensional half-figures of God the Father (Altarpiece of the Madonna) and the Risen Christ (Altarpiece of the Angels) stretching right out from the attic tiers; there is third frame (Altarpiece of the Holy Spirit) with the dove against a glory, and a fourth (Altarpiece with Christ Crucified) with the pelican nurturing its young. The upper tier sculptures of God the Father and the Risen Christ illustrate perfectly Scaglia’s idiosyncratically dynamic form of figurative carving; everywhere his saints and angels are in motion – diving out from their frames, waving swords or hands, holding their breasts and pointing, their hair blown by celestial winds or standing out in aureoles of sausagey ringlets, their draperies fluttering: all of them emulating the operatic gestures introduced in the divine figures in San Fortunato.

Altarpiece and ceiling of the Oratory in Fabriano

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), coffered ceiling, 1642-43, and altarpiece frame (for Antonio Viviani/ Paris Scipione, Annunciation, c.1601, reframed 1653) in the Oratory of Santa Maria del Gonfalone, San Benedetto, Fabriano

Leonardo Scaglia, detail of Oratory ceiling, with central coffers showing, from top, God the Father, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Death of the Virgin, flanked by two Apostles in adjacent coffers. Photo: Beni storici e artistici

A particularly stunning work glorifies an outwardly modest oratory in Fabriano [8], where Leonardo Scaglia is documented as having carved and finished in polychrome, gold and silver leaf, the coffered ceiling. This monumental work is designed with fifteen coffers, the central band of five holding scenes of the Death (with ten Apostles) and Assumption of the Virgin, rising up to the figure of God the Father. There are cherubs in all the outer coffers, save the four corners (double foliated bosses) and the two surrounding the Virgin’s death, which hold the missing Apostles.

The frames around the recessed scenes form wide, complex bands of carved architectural mouldings (cabochon chains, leaf-tips, outer friezes with relief rosettes between enriched dentils, astragal-&-triple bead, egg-&-dart, and inner marbled friezes); there are more and larger relief rosettes in lozenges on the blue fields of the dividing friezes, and in the corner cassettes. The colouring and repeated roses are attributes of the Virgin, as are the stars which scatter the celestial backgrounds to the figures.  The clouds which accompany the stars would once have been silver, rather than the dark thunderclouds of today; this use of silver leaf anticipates the clouds surrounding God the Father in two of the altarpiece frames in Arcevia. The figures in relief – especially of the Assumption of the Virgin and the small musical angels  in the coffers to either side of her – are very beautiful, set against some of the altarpiece angels in Arcevia, arguing that Scaglia working by himself or with different collaborators could produce much higher quality figural carvings.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), altarpiece frame (for Antonio Viviani/ Paris Scipione, Annunciation, c.1601, reframed 1653), Oratory of Santa Maria del Gonfalone. Photo: Beni storici e artistici

The frame of the altarpiece in the Oratory is in the same style and has the same vocabulary as the frames in San Medardo, Arcevia (it is, perhaps, closest to the Altarpiece of Christ Crucified). The painting, executed around 1601, was reframed in this commanding frame in 1653, a decade after the ceiling was completed, and elevates Viviani’s/ Scipione’s Annunciation to a much higher level of grandeur. It features chubby Salomonic columns decorated with twining rose branches and grapevines, staggered segmental pediments and a panelled and ornamented altar. The blank space in the upper tier may have been destined for a small Crucifixion, God the Father or Risen Christ which was never painted; perhaps for one of Scaglia’s energetically waving sculptures, or for a relief of the Pietà. The frame is rather let down by the large angels kneeling on the lower open pediment, which are not of such quality as the relief carvings above it; however, it creates a striking ensemble with the ceiling.

The interior of Santa Lucia in Serra San Quirico

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), interior of Santa Lucia, 1651-c.55, Serra San Quirico. Photo: Albris

But then there is the church of Santa Lucia, in Serra San Quirico, which was rebuilt in the mid-17^th century. Father Ubaldi of Montefano, following Scaglia’s work for the Sylvestrine order in Perugia, Fabriano and Arcevia, commissioned him in 1651 to create the internal decorative scheme, the stuccowork, and the standing altarpieces [9]. This small church, 27 metres long, is a tour de force of integrated Baroque ornament, with Scaglia’s characteristic Mannerist touches. It includes a programme of five paintings showing the life and martyrdom of St Lucia, which sweep in a great curve around the apse; they are set into white and gilt frames with outset corners holding rosettes, the outer convex mouldings decorated with spiralling leaves, and are separated by pilasters in a faux malachite finish, with cherubs’ heads supporting the capitals. On the ledge of the cornice above small white and gold stucco angels sit, dangling their legs and supporting leatherwork and shell cartouches which hold inscriptions appropriate to each painting.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), altarpiece frame now containing Pasqualino de’Rossi, Assumption of the Virgin, Santa Lucia, Serra San Quirico

In the nave below three chapels on each side hold Scaglia’s large altarpieces, in a similar arrangement to the chapels in San Medardo. In the chapel first to the right is a particularly extraordinary ebullition of his imagination: a fantastic amalgam of  sculptural elements, in which reminiscences of Venetian ‘Sansovino’ frames (which have lurked as a vague influence behind many of the frames described above) appear. They include the trio of triangular and segmental open and closed pediments, the angelic caryatides supporting the capitals, the drops of fruit which cascade down behind  these angels, the central cherub’s head in a scrolling cartouche, and Scaglia’s repeated outset corner inner frame. They would hardly recall a ‘Sansovino’ frame in their new guise, however; who but Scaglia would have used Salomonic columns twined with grapevines, but cut them off a third the way up in order to provide plinths for the capital-supporting angels?

The angels gesture towards the painting, inside which a slightly later and drearily wispy Assumption struggles to maintain credibility, whilst two more vigorously gesticulating angels sit on the lowest segmental pediment, pointing towards the Heavens in an effort to imbue the anaemic Virgin with some of their robust energy. More angels sit on the curve of the chapel arches, supporting inscribed cartouches, like those in the apse.

Scaglia’s mechanical altarpieces

Two out of all these theatrical altarpieces are recognized in the literature on them as containing the remains of mechanical pulley systems, which would have lowered the paintings into or raised them from the bottom halves of the altarpieces and their altars, revealing or concealing on liturgically important days the statues which stood behind them [10]. However, looking at the construction of some of the other altarpieces, it seems certain that many others would have been fitted out with the same mechanism, and that Scaglia’s dynamic sculptural work was probably matched – pretty well everywhere he built an altarpiece – by an equally dynamic way with sacred paintings.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of the Rosary, 1648, frame for Simone Cantarini (1612-48), Madonna of the rosary with SS Dominic & Catherine, 1642, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches

One of the two examples mentioned is the Altarpiece of the Rosary in Arcevia which opened this article; the other is the Altarpiece of San Medardo, patron saint of the church; these two face each other in the transept chapels of the church of San Medardo. Francesco Mancini quotes the contract for the first altarpiece, in which the commissioning clients agreed to pay Scaglia and Giglioni ‘twelve hundred and fifty scudi, plus their housing and beds’, in exchange for which they would execute:

‘…iuxta formam mudelli super hoc facti… conam seu ornamentum altaris in cappella dicte comunitatis sub titulo Sancti meardi in ecclesia collegiata dicti Divi medardi existente ad cornu epistule, altaris maioris, cum statuis, colunnis, ornamentis, angelis et aliis… et signanter cum quatuor colunnis ut dicitur, doi acute e doi dritte scannellate’

(‘in accordance with the model produced for this purpose… the image and frame of the altar in the chapel of the said community under the title of San Medardo in the Collegiate Church of the said Divine Medardo, diagonally across from the high altar, with statues, columns, ornaments, angels and other things… and significantly with four columns, as has been stated, two carved and two fluted’) [11].

This, then, must refer to the Altarpiece of San Medardo rather than the one for Cantarini’s painting, as Mancini suggests, since it is the former which has two Salomonic columns carved with grapevines in front of two fluted columns, whereas the Altarpiece of the Rosary has four Salomonic columns.

Scaglia & Giglioni, Altarpiece of the Rosary, open panel at the side of the plinth showing pulley mechanism. Photos: all details Marc O. Manser

Marc Manser, visiting the church of San Medardo recently, found a side panel open on the plinth of the Altarpiece of the Rosary, revealing what was left of the mechanism which lowered and lifted the Cantarini painting.

Altarpiece of the Rosary: ratcheted wheels with crank handle (above) and spindle of winding mechanism (below), with (below, on right) the ropes reaching up the side of the altarpiece

Altarpiece of the Rosary: the canvas is lowered inside the plinth and altar

The pulley could be fairly easily turned by the crank handle from the side of the altarpiece, and the painting dropped slowly down behind the predella panel into the plinth behind the altar, and probably slightly further, to just beneath floor level. This is what happens with Titian’s Transfiguration, painted to cover the 14^th century silver-gilt Pala d’oro on the high altar of the church of San Salvador, Venice, and which can be wound down, progressively revealing the early altarpiece behind it.

In the case of the Titian, however, it was treated much more like a fabric blind, with what appears to be only the reinforcement of the stretcher and perhaps strips of wood at the edges to protect it; unlike the Cantarini, which remained in the inner decorated frieze of the frame, constructed as a separate inlay, which guarded much of the surface from rubbing against the lower part of the altarpiece as it descended.

Altarpiece of the Rosary: details of inner frame

Unfortunately the canvas must have been looser on its stretcher at the top, bulging forwards so that the sky and parts of the flying angels have been lost. The inner frame itself has also sustained quite a lot of damage over time, with long scratches gouged through the painted and gilded decoration to show the gesso beneath, and even the bare wood.  The unsightly screws which cluster around the original dowel, beside the mitre, may indicate that this inlay has now been screwed to the main altarpiece to prevent its moving.

The statue of the Virgin, which had originally fitted into a niche like the one holding the statue of San Medardo in his altarpiece, and which the Cantarini was designed to cover, has long vanished; possibly stolen. In any case, by 1870 the space where it stood was empty, and the parish council of Arcevia decided to rescue a Della Robbia altarpiece from the suppressed Capuchin order which owned it, and to install it inside the frame of the Altarpiece of the Rosary, where it remained for more than a century, presenting a very odd appearance.

Altarpiece of the Rosary with Della Robbia altarpiece shown inside it, as it would have appeared from 1870; a montage using the pre-restoration image from Web Gallery of Art

The Cantarini painting of the Madonna had apparently been forgotten – lowered for one last time into the space behind and below the predella panel, and left there whilst the Della Robbia was mortared into the back of the apparently empty frame – a patchwork cuckoo made of elements from more than one work, by more than one member of the family, trespassing in a most unsuitable nest.

Chapel of the Sacrament, San Medardo, Arcevia, with the Altarpiece of Christ Crucified sharing its walls with the restored Della Robbia altarpiece

In 1994 documentation relating to the Cantarini was rediscovered, and between 1999 and 2003 the Della Robbia was hoicked out of its squatting place, divided into the constituent parts by Giovanni della Robbia (1513) and Fra’ Mattia Della Robbia (attrib.), cleaned and restored. It was then installed (on a rather tacky grey display stand and backboard) in the Chapel of the Sacrament in San Medardo, next to the Altarpiece of Christ Crucified, and the Cantarini was replaced in its altarpiece frame.

However, at some point during the various upheavals suffered by the Altarpiece of the Rosary (possibly at the time that the Della Robbia was put inside it), it underwent a further loss: the altar frontal designed to expand on the theme of the altarpiece – the life of the Virgin, together with the original statue of the Virgin and painting of the Madonna enthroned – was removed and placed, with little care for its symbolic value, in front of the Altarpiece of Christ Crucified (above, and below).

Altar frontal with scenes from the life of the Virgin, now Chapel of the Sacrament, San Medardo. Photo: Marc O. Manser

This is an unusually beautiful and beautifully unusual work: an antependium which is made of carved giltwood elements backed with cloth embroidered in coloured silks. It is designed as an arcade of Ionic pilasters with rosettes and drops of bellflowers, cherubs’ heads in the spandrels of the arches, and roundels in scrolling frames linked by festoons of more bellflowers, signifying humility.

Altar frontal with details of the embroidered and framed roundels. Photos: Marc O. Manser

The roundels hold small embroidered scenes (the Virgin at the Crucifixion in the centre, and her Coronation on the left: the right-hand scene, which must have been the Annunciation, is missing).

Altar frontal with details of the urns of roses. Photos: Marc O. Manser

The arches beneath the roundels shelter carved giltwood urns containing great sheaves of roses, also embroidered in silk. They are pale and delicate now, but their colouring may have been much richer when they were first sewn; they are, of course, one of the attributes of the Virgin, the Rosa Mundi. The frontal thus provides part of the contextual furniture of the Chapel of the Rosary, which includes frame, statue, painting, altar with antependium, and whichever wall-hung sculptures Scaglia might have designed to support the theme; all of this forms a larger symbolic framework intended to focus the concentration of the worshipper on – in this case – the life of the Virgin.

Another loss, but one which was there from the beginning, concerns the painting which, like the Cantarini, would have covered another precious statue. In this case it is the painting which was commissioned for the Altarpiece of San Medardo, to hang in front of the statue of the saint. This altarpiece, like its opposite number, was also designed with a mechanism for lowering the painting into the bottom half of the frame [12].

Claudio Ridolfi (1560-1644), Clotario e San Medardo, 1644, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches. Photo: Marc O. Manser

Claudio Ridolfi began the painting, which was to show San Medardo with King Clotario, but he died in 1644 before it was finished. The canvas was given to the clients so that they could find another artist to complete it, but this never happened, and it now hangs (rather sadly, and unframed) in the diocesan museum.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59) & Francesco Giglioni, Altarpiece of San Medardo, montaged with Claudio Ridolfi, Clotario e San Medardo

Presumably the artist would have worked up the bishop’s and the king’s robes to create a more strikingly colourful response to the Cantarini painting (commissioned two years earlier), but, as it now stands, it is sufficiently Lenten in tone to provide an appropriate cover for the opulently detailed statue of the saint.

Scaglia and Giglioni, Altarpiece of San Medardo, raking shot: green lines highlight the slot where the painting would have fitted; red lines, the analogous panel to the Altarpiece of the Rosary for accessing the pulley. Photo: Marc O. Manser

The mechanism for raising and lowering the painting must be accessible, like that of the Altarpiece of the Rosary, from one side of the plinth (not necessarily the one above). Looking upwards at a raking angle, the space between the inner frame and the niche housing the statue of San Medardo is clearly visible; this would be where the painting was intended to ride up and down, concealing or revealing the statue. In this case the inner frame sitting forward of the painting or the statue has a decorative outset corner shape, with large rosettes in the corners. The Altarpiece of the Rosary has its own decorated frieze, which remains with it as it moves; however, once the outset corner motif becomes apparent as a structural element, it can be found in other examples of Scaglia’s altarpieces, the associated strong shadow visible inside it leading to the conclusion that this is, indeed, an indication that the frame in question almost certainly housed a mechanical pulley system, similar to the two still surviving in Arcevia.

Altarpiece of Sant’Adriano, Collegiate Church of San Medardo, Arcevia, Marches. Photo: Marc O. Manser

The Altarpiece of St Adrian is an example; the Madonna & Child with saints by Sassoferrato may well have hidden a statue of St Adrian, since it is built on the same scale as the Altarpiece of the Rosary, with the same organization of plinth and depth of altar, and it has a similar outset corner frame.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), Altarpiece of the Compagnia degli Oltremontani,  for Bernardino Gagliardi, St Helena adoring the True Cross, detail, Santa Maria Nuova, Perugia. Photo: Sandro Francesco Allegrini

So does the earlier Altarpiece of the Oltremontani in Perugia, where the Gagliardi painting, like the Cantarini, seems to have its own protective frame – in this case, the inner frieze of the outset corner frame, decorated with a faux stone finish – which looks as though it is a separate inlay, designed to move within the outset corner moulding which defines the sight edge of the whole altarpiece. There seems to have been some kind of funerary vault beneath the altar for the remains of the Germans and French who died in Perugia, so there would have been ample room for the descent of the painting. Possibly it would have concealed another Scaglia sculpture of the Crucifixion, completing the arc of St Helena’s search for the True Cross; possibly a statue of the saint herself.

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), altarpiece frame for Pasqualino de’Rossi, Assumption of the Virgin, Santa Lucia, Serra San Quirico

The Altarpiece of the Annunciation in the Oratory in Fabriano appears to lack the space which would  allow for separate pieces moving apart; however, the altarpieces in Santa Lucia, Serra San Quirico, seem much more likely to have been built with pulley mechanisms – perhaps because of the sheer operatic drama of the whole interior, and the unlikelihood otherwise of creating any sense of Lenten withdrawal. Perhaps the painting of the Assumption of the Virgin envisaged at the time the altarpiece above was designed would have been something more in keeping with Scaglia’s dramatic style; possibly it might also have veiled a suitably dramatic sculptural representation of the Assumption or Coronation of the Virgin.

In the 19^th century, Napoleon’s depredations and the suppression of religious orders emptied Santa Lucia of its free-standing furnishings. The organ also seems to have fallen silent and was only more recently restored, so it is quite possible that any existing altarpiece machinery may have been forgotten, with the gradual leeching away of the liturgical practice of covering or revealing significant statues or paintings. If a pulley system can lie abandoned in a church in the middle of Rome [13], then many more 16^th – 18^th century altarpieces may be concealing the mechanisms which once moved them, and their congregations.

Part 2 of this series of articles, ‘Curtains on sacred works’ quotes Alessandro Nova on a contract involving the Cremonese artist, Bernardino Campi:

‘In 1572 Bernardino Campi agreed to paint in oil a picture of the Mourning of the dead Christ for the monks of the Monastery of San Bartolomeo  and also to buy cloth ‘di far la quartina’, a lapsus or spurious rendering of the word for curtain (cortina). On this covering, Campi painted a crucified Christ with Mary, St John, the Magdalen, and a kneeling monk — all done “in light and dark with a punched border around the edges and he also promises to have the beam and iron that goes at the bottom of the cloth made as well as the cord and strings to raise and lower said covering” (“di chiaro et scuro con il suo friso stampato a torno el ornamento e più promette di far far il subio et il ferro che va a basso alia tela et corde et cidrella da levar et bassar detta coperta”).

The beam (subio) is a wooden cylinder around which the cloth was wrapped; clearly this painted linen cover was raised up and down via the roller, which was set into action by the strings connected to it; while the iron bar held the cloth straight as the curtain was lowered to cover the altarpiece. In short, this was a system not unlike modern ‘roller-blinds’.”[14]

This was a more primitive mechanism than Scaglia’s, where a rigidly-supported painting on a stretcher was slid up and down behind the sight edge of an altarpiece; but during the sixty to seventy years following Campi’s contract for his altarpiece painting and blind, the machinery of the theatre and opera had also moved on, and this was presumably what Scaglia was drawing on. He seems, with his integrated schemes of groups of altars for a whole church, and his organizing of local workshops to carry out the huge amount of carving involved, rather like a theatrical impressario – or even like a film director, dealing with the creation of scenes and sets on a relatively monumental scale… because, after all, his subject matter was the revelation of the celestial world through the temporal, and what could be more dramatic than that?

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), ornamental cartouche, 1640-50, pen-&-ink, and wash, 20.8 x 14.7 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), design for an altarpiece, 1640-50, pen-&-ink, and wash; no location

Leonardo Scaglia (fl. 1636-59), design for an altarpiece, pen-&-ink, and wash; no location

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With many thanks to Marc, for his detective work, photos, book-ferreting, and translations

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[1] Part 1: ‘Covers and shutters on sacred works’; Part 2: ‘Curtains on sacred works’; Part 3: ‘Curtains and covers on secular paintings and looking-glasses’

[2] Francesco Mancini, ‘Nella bottega di Mastro Lionardo scultore franzese’, Bolletino d’arte, 2011, no Extra 1, pp. 183-98

[3] Francesco Mancini,  Leonardo Scaglia. Sculptor gallicus between Umbria and Marche around the middle of the seventeenth century, 2016, p. 100

[4] This may, of course, be one of the disadvantages of the assistants Scaglia needed to employ

[5] Mancini, 2016, op. cit., p. 99

[6] See Key to Umbria: Perugia: ‘Santa Maria Nuova’

[7] See Giorgio Mangani and Barbara Pasquinelli, ‘Museums’, in Guide to Serra San Quirico, 2011, pp. 19-58

[8] ‘Oratorio di Santa Maria Annunziata del Gonfalone’, by students from the Liceo Scientifico V. Volterra di Fabriano

[9] Mangani & Pasquinelli, op. cit., p. 22

[10] Mancini, 2016, op. cit., p. 100

[11] Mancini, op. cit., p. 100

[12]  Ibid., p. 100-01

[13] See the photos of the pulley mechanism for G. B. Conti, San Gabriele, SS Giovanni e Paolo, Rome

[14] Alessandro Nova, ‘Hangings, curtains and shutters of 16^th century Lombard altarpieces’, in Italian altarpieces 1250-1550: Function & design, ed. Eve Borsook & Fiorella Gioffredi, 1994, pp.182-83, quoting R. Miller, ‘Regesto dei documenti’, in I Campi e la cultura artistica cremonese del Cinquecento, exh. cat., Milan, 1985, p. 468, note 217 (9 October 1572)