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Art History
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The Sculptural Reliefs of the Santa Casa di Loreto
[LORETO] Anonymous. Spiegazione delli Quattro prospetti dei bassi rilievi in marmo che circondano le mura della S. Casa di Loreto: qui anessi in puntata, oltre l'altro prospetto del palazzo pontificio, facciata del tempio, campanile, e cupola. Loreto, Federico Sartori, c. 1800.
Small folio [23.75 x 37.75 cm], title in woodcut border, 5 densely engraved plates, with identifying legends, the fourth plate signed Luigi Povelato, Veneto. Bound in linen wrappers.
$3,500 Very rare pilgrim’s souvenir album showing some of the artistic treasures of the Santa Casa di Loreto, one of the principal shrines for Marian devotion from the late 13th century to the present day. The shrine purports to be house of the Virgin Mary, miraculously transported from Nazareth to Loreto, a small town in the Marches 30 kilometers from Ancona. A sanctuary was built over the house c. 1469 and quickly became a major pilgrimage site. With papal support, a building and decorative program attracted the leading names in Quattrocento architecture, sculpture and painting.
In 1509, Julius II commissioned Bramante to construct a rectangular structure to contain the Santa Casa. He encased it in an elaborate marble shell, using fluted Corinthian half marble columns resting on pedestals and supporting entablature, cornice and balustrade to articulate the main story. The structure has two doorways at each of the north/south sides. The sculptural decoration shows 9 scenes from the Life of the Virgin by such sculptors as Giovanni Cristoforo Romano, Andrea Sansovino, Baccio Badinelli, Niccolò Tribolo and Raffaello da Montelupo. These reliefs are framed by pairs of statues in niches set one above the other executed in the 1540’s (authorship unknown). There is one plate for each side of Bramante’s shell, and a final plate shows the courtyard of the basilica, the papal palace and the bell-tower renovated by Luigi Vanvitelli in 1750-54.
Not in OCLC, RLIN lists one copy: Penn State. Not at Getty or National Gallery.
* Grove Dictionary of Art XIX.685ff.
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