As on other occasions, Briane’s consultancy is not only accompanied by building projects for the construction of new facilities. Cultural and tourism enhancement is also particularly important, especially in the Bergamo area. A mission that confirms Briane’s strong connection to the area and its cultural heritage. Examples are the projects in Gromo and Dossena (as you may have read in our previous articles), the result of a partnership with local associations dedicated to safeguarding our heritages. Among them, one of the most important sites that deserves more publicity is the Suardi Chapel near Trescore Balneario, whose artistic value we want to tell you about.
The oratory has simple rustic architecture with a rectangular base, a pitched, wooden roof supported by exposed rafters, and a small semicircular apse, around which there were already some modest frescoes. The frescoes unfold on three walls, above a high plinth, and on the ceiling, between the rafters, and represent a complex iconographic program on the theme of Redemption and Faith, embodied in the lives of saints (Barbara, Bridget, Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria). The ceiling was frescoed with a faux arbor, against a very bright blue background, using the real wooden beams of the roof, between which play lively grape harvesting putti, between cartouches with biblical passages and liturgy related to the theme of the vineyard and wine in relation to the Eucharist. On the counter façade are the Stories of Saints Catherine and Magdalene, and on the two side walls are the Stories of Saint Bridget and the Stories of Saint Barbara; overall, the iconographic program is a celebration of Christ’s victory over evil, announced by the prophets and sibyls, guaranteed and confirmed in life by the saints. The north wall, the most spectacular, brings together on a continuous surface and in a single composition two different, independently readable themes devised with extraordinary inventive imagination. In the center of the wall stands a monumental figure of Christ with outstretched arms, with the praying figures of the Suardi patrons at his feet: Battista, his wife Orsolina and his sister Pauline. Above him, in a table, there is, between the dedicatory inscription (only partially legible today, with the patrons, the painter’s name and the year), a passage from the Gospel in gilded letters, in which the vine is remembered: “Ego sum vitis vos palmites.” This is the key to the entire program, understood as continuity between Christ and the Church, in clear anti-Lutheran polemic, with the exaltation of the value of good works in the stories of the saints.
Christ himself is in fact depicted as a miraculous vine, whose branches come out of his fingers and go to form, in the upper register, a series of ten clypeus where, as fruits, the saints and Doctors of the Church are depicted. At either end are recognized Saints Jerome and Ambrose, to whom some grape pickers, armed with ladders and billhooks, try to approach to cut vine shoots, but are driven back, and fall into the void. They symbolize heretics, who attack Christ with their “false doctrines”: some inscriptions mention their names, often drawing on historical figures. On either side of Christ unfold, along a series of buildings and landscape glimpses, the Stories of St. Barbara, from her conversion to Christianity to her martyrdom.
From the left we see Barbara, a martyr who lived in Nicomedia during the time of the emperors Maximian and Diocletian, being locked by her perfidious father in a cylindrical tower (from which the saint’s typical attribute is derived) under construction as a defense against too many suitors. Instead, there she is visited by a hermit who instructs her in the Christian faith until she asks for baptism and rejects pagan idolatry. Upon the woman’s return home, her religious choice is discovered by her father who, in a rage, attempts to kill her with a sword. The saint then flees to the mountains and hides in the bushes, where, however, a shepherd betrays her, causing her to be found and dragged before the praetor by the hair. He ordered their scourging and torture with hammers upside down. She is then locked up in prison, where Christ visits and heals her. To the right of the central Christ they resume the stories, with the maiden again before the praetor, who has her hung by the arms and tormented with flashlights. Denuded, having her breasts amputated and deflowered, she is protected with a white cloth by an angel and then dragged through the city, amidst a curious crowd, right into the market square. Eventually, in the background, we see the conclusion of the story with the father carrying out his daughter’s death sentence by beheading, then being punished by the fire that suddenly devours him. The right (south) wall is occupied by three panels with the Stories of St. Bridget, separated by the intrusion into the walls of the oratory of the entrance and two windows; each of the scenes contains different episodes from the life of the saint, united by a false continuous wall on which roundels open, from where prophets and sibyls look out: David, the Erythraean Sibyl; Isaiah, the Samian Sibyl; Jeremiah, the Delphic Sibyl; Ezekiel, the Cimmerian Sibyl; Micah, the Ellespontian Sibyl. Above these images the cartouches are still clearly legible. When Bridget, a 6th-century Irish saint, took her vows as a nun, a wood was miraculously greened: the scene is depicted in the first panel, which opens outward through a half-collapsed wall; outside, the saint is seen distributing bread to the poor, in the presence of the patron’s family-Maffeo Suardi and his family members, men women and children. In the small painted church, a still life composed of sacred objects is depicted on the altar, perhaps a reminder of Raphael’s Bolsena Mass.The second panel is set in the countryside, where the saint dispenses food to the needy, turns water into beer, heals a blind man, drives away a hurricane, desiccates a tree, and tames a wild boar. The third and final panel is set in a city and shows other exceptional or unusual activities of Bridget, such as dividing a pot for three lepers, or rescuing a man condemned to death by replacing him with his shadow.
A rarity, a Renaissance testimony of primary importance for the Bergamo area, the result of the Venetian school and derived from the control of the Serenissima. Lorenzo Lotto’s cycle of frescoes saw the light of day thanks to the patronage of the Suardi family, promoters, as happened to many other Italian families, of prestigious works of art that would highlight their domains. A wealth that, inherited centuries later by the community, must be defended and preserved. As we will deal with in the near future, Briane is at the forefront of artistic heritage protection processes through state-of-the-art technological tools.
