God the Father and the Holy Spirit with a Host of Angels Above a Townscape
Oil on paper in grisaille. Circular top.
381 x 291 mm. (15 x 11 1/10 inches).
Provenance: Herbert List (the famous photographer), Munich.
called IL POMARANCIO
Pomerance (near Volterra)
c.1553 ~ 1626 Rome
Our bozzetto is stylistically very close to an oil sketch in the British Museum connected with Roncalli's decoration for the drum and the cupola in the Basilica of the 'Santa Casa' at Loreto. According to the legend, the 'Sant Casa', the Virgin Mary's house, had been carried by angels from the Holy Land to Loreto in 1291. This commission was one of Roncalli's most important and he worked on it from 1610 until 1615. The stipulated subject was for eight stories from the Life of the Virgin to be frescoed on the octagonal drum and for an enormous fresco, depicting a Glory of Angels with The Coronation of the Virgin at the centre, to decorate the dome itself. Unfortunately, the cupola was later gravely damaged by humidity and thus all this decoration was replaced, in c.1890, with frescoes by Cesare Maccari.1 Both our sketch and that in the British Museum are principally concerned with a composition of angels and cherubim arranged on banks of cumulus cloud. There are many extant drawings of angels and putti, most often in red chalk, which are not only related to Roncalli's designs for the drum and the dome but also to those in both sketches.2 However, the shape of the B.M. sketch and its content are much closer to the cupola, as executed, than ours. Therefore, one can only assume that our sketch, showing God the Father at the apex of the composition and the Holy Dove in an auriole below, must have been an idea for another fresco or altarpiece, connected with the Basilica of Loreto, which was never executed. The Assumption and the Coronation of the Virgin, painted by Roncalli in 1609, for the new Treasury, show similar groups of cherubim, in grisaille, circling the heads of the sacred figures. The shape of the dark space, lower centre, could indicate the position of a free-standing tabernacle to be set against a painted altarpiece or frescoed wall. Also Roncalli loved depicting architecture as one knows from his earlier work. Perhaps the buildings here, to lower left and right, represent the original Virgin's house in contrast to the grand, cruciform basilica built to cover it in the 16th century.
1. J.A. Gere and Philip Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints & Drawings in the British Museum, Artists Working in Rome c.1550 to c.1640, British Museum Publications, London, 1983, 2 vols., cat.no.255, pl.246.
2. James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 1974, p.334,no.16.
3. Cf. F. dal Monte, “I disegni del Pomarancio per gli affreschi distrutti della Cupola di Loreto” in Rassegna Marchigiana, VIII,1929–30, pp.41-56.
4. W. Chandler Kirwin, Il Paragone, xxix, 335, 1978., pp.43–44.
5. Ileana Chiappini di Soria, ‘Cristoforo Roncalli detto Il Pomarancio’ in I Pittori Bergamaschi dal Xlll al XIX Secolo, Il Seicento, I, Bertgamo, 1983,p. 76 in colour & pp.186-187.
