Palatine Basilica of Santa Barbara

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The facade
Mantua, Palazzo Ducale: the castle square and the campanile of Santa Barbara

The Palatine Basilica di Santa Barbara is the Palatine Chapel of the Gonzaga family in Mantua .

history

Built at the request of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga and designed by the Mantuan architect Giovan Battista Bertani, it was built in two phases, from 1562 to 1567 and from 1569 to 1572, and from 1565 the religious court ceremonies were presided over by the abbots.

The connection between the Ducal Palace and the Church, desired by Duke Guglielmo, was closed at the end of the 19th century to separate the property of the Italian state from that of the Church due to the conflict that followed the end of the Pope's secular power in 1870 . The passage was reopened to the public on September 16, 2018.

Santa Barbara can be viewed as the masterpiece of both the client and the builder. It was granted numerous privileges by the duke in order to remove it from the control of the bishop and to practice its own rite, which differed from the Roman one. It was conceived as a place of rich liturgical ceremonies, which, thanks to the Antegnati organ, were accompanied by sacred music of the highest quality, the Duke's passion.

The strong earthquake in Emilia on May 29, 2012 caused damage to the dome of the bell tower of the basilica.

description

A central structure with a square dome in the middle is followed by a raised presbytery covered by a second dome similar to the first, followed by an apse decorated with peculiar intersecting coffers. The interior has a single nave with side chapels and the adjoining semicircular presbytery. Next to the main altar, a staircase leads to a deep tomb, which consists of a rectangular room and an oval shrine. The pilasters consist of simple ribbons without a base or capitals .

The brick bell tower, crowned by a small round temple, is one of the most characteristic elements of the urban landscape of Mantua. The model that inspired the court architect Giovan Battista Bertani is the round temple of San Pietro in the Montorio by Donato Bramante , where he replaced the Vitruvian entablature with a Venetian window after the visit of Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio .

Inside, on the two side altars designed by Giovan Battista Bertani, there are two large paintings by Lorenzo Costa il Giovane , the Baptism of Constantine and the Martyrdom of St. Hadrian . Other paintings are the altarpiece in the presbytery with the Martyrdom of Saint Barbara by Domenico Brusasorci (1564), the Annunciation on one side of the organ doors by Fermo Ghisoni and on the other side Saints Barbara and Peter (around 1566).

organ

In the basilica, with the organ on the right wall
Antegnati organ from 1565

In the basilica there is an organ that was built in 1565 by the organ builder Graziadio Antegnati and restored and reconstructed by Giorgio Carli from Pescantina between 1995 and 2006. 312 pipes have been preserved from the Antegnati workshop.

The instrument is equipped with a manual and an attached pedal . The manual has seven divided upper keys for subsemitonies (dis / es, g sharp / as). The organ is housed in a richly carved, gilded Renaissance case , which is set up above the choir in the Cornu Epistulae . The prospectus can be closed by two doors which are attributed to Fermo Ghisoni and which depict Saint Barbara and Saint Peter on the outside and the Annunciation on the inside . The disposition is as follows:

I Manual CDEFGA – f 3
Principals 16 ′
Fiffaro 16 ′
Ottava 8th'
Decima Quinta 4 ′
Decima Nona 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
Vigesima Seconda 2 ′
Vigesima Sesta 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Vigesima Nona 1'
Trigesima Terza 2 ⁄ 3 ′
Trigesima Sesta 1 ⁄ 2 ′
Flauto in XIX 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
Flauto in VIII 8th'
CDEFGA – a 0 pedal
coupled

Gonzaga Hall of Fame

Important members of the Gonzaga dynasty, found during restoration work in 2007, were buried in the Palatine Basilica :

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luigi Preti: Notes statistiche della città e provincia mantovana . (Italian, google.it ).
  2. ^ Mantova, Palazzo Ducale e Santa Barbara sono di nuovo uniti ( Italian )
  3. ^ Mantova, danni del terremoto ( Italian ) milano.corriere.it.
  4. ^ L'organo Graziadio Antegnati , accessed on April 22, 2019.
  5. ↑ Il cimitero ducale ( Italian )
  6. ^ Il sepolcro segreto dei Gonzaga ( Italian ) repubblica.it.
  7. ↑ Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga Nevers ( Italian ) Archived from the original on April 27, 2012. Information: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 31, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fermi.mn.it

literature

  • Paolo Carpeggiani: Il libro di pietra: Giovan Battista Bertani, architetto del Cinquecento . Milan 1992 (Italian).
  • MG Grassi: Le "statue" di Leone Leoni per Santa Barbara a Mantova con una nota sul reliquiario di sant'Adriano . In: Arte lombarda . NS 128.2000 No. 1, p. 55-61 (Italian).
  • Paolo Carpeggiani: Il progetto del Palazzo Ducale (1549–1587) . In: R. Morselli (Ed.): Gonzaga. La Celeste Galeria . Le raccolte, Milan 2002, p. 479-498 (Italian).
  • Rosanna Golinelli Berto: Associazione per i monumenti domenicani . Ed .: Sepolcri Gonzagheschi. Mantua 2013, ISBN 978-88-908415-0-7 (Italian).
  • Scuola laboratorio di restauro conservazione beni culturali (ed.): Il santuario nuovo ovvero La cappella del Preziosissimo Sangue nella Basilica di Santa Barbara in Mantova . Mantua 2016 (Italian).

Web links

Commons : Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara (Mantua)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 45 ° 9 ′ 36.5 ″  N , 10 ° 47 ′ 58.4 ″  E