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The Stucco Technique of the Magistri Comacini: the Case Study of Santa Maria Dei Ghirli in Campione D'italia (Como, Italy)

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The Stucco Technique of the Magistri Comacini: the Case Study of Santa Maria Dei Ghirli in Campione D'italia (Como, Italy) The stucco technique of the Magistri Comacini: the case study of Santa Maria dei Ghirli in Campione d’Italia (Como, Italy) 1* 1 2 2 2 3 LAURA RAMPAZZI , BIAGIO RIZZO , CHIARA COLOMBO , CLAUDIA CONTI , MARCO REALINI , UGO BARTOLUCCI , 3 4 5 MARIA PERLA COLOMBINI , ANDREA SPIRITI , LAURA FACCHIN 1 Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Ambientali, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy 2 Istituto per la Conservazione e la Valorizzazione dei Beni Culturali, Unità di Milano ‘Gino Bozza’, Area della Ricerca Milano 3 Bicocca, via Cozzi 53, 20125 Milano, Italy. 3 Dipartimento di Chimica e Chimica Industriale, Università di Pisa, Via Risorgimento 35, 56126 Pisa, Italy 4 Dipartimento di Informatica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Via Mazzini 5, 21100 Varese, Italy. 5 Scuola di Dottorato in Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi di Verona, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Dipartimento di Arte, Storia e Società, via S. Francesco 22, 37129 Verona, Italy. *Corresponding author Laura Rampazzi, email address: [email protected]; phone number: +390312386475; fax number: +390312386449 Abstract This article is aimed to define the artistic technique performed by the outstanding artist Isidoro Bianchi for the Baroque stucco decorations in the church of Santa Maria dei Ghirli (Campione d’Italia, Italy). Samples of stucco were examined by means of optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with microprobe, X-ray powder diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and laser ablation mass spectrometry equipped with plasma source spectrometry. On the basis of the results obtained art historians made new hypotheses on the biography of the artist and on the historical location of his birthplace. Keywords: stuccoes, Baroque, artistic technique, Magistri Comacini, microscopic analyses, spectrometric analyses, laser ablation 1 1 Introduction The study presented in this article investigates the artistic technique used for the Baroque stucco decorations in Santa Maria dei Ghirli, located in Campione d’Italia (Como), a sovereign Italian territory completely surrounded by Swiss territory and facing the lake of Lugano. The research is part of a wider program of analytical campaigns within the project L’arte dello Stucco nel Parco dei Magistri Comacini – Valorizzazione, conservazione e promozione (The art of stucco in the Magistri Comacini Park – Enhancement, conservation and promotion, referred to as ‘Stucco Project’ in the text), funded by the European Community Cross-border co-operation III A Program in order to promote the cultural heritage in the borderline area between Italy and Switzerland (Various Authors, 2006). In particular, the project managed by Insubria University of Como (Italy) and SUPSI University of Lugano (Switzerland) was focused on the stucco works from five churches and some civil buildings spread between the lakes of Como and Lugano, with the aim of comparing the decoration techniques. The authors of these decorations were the so-called ‘Magistri Comacini’, known also as ‘Artists of the Lakes’: painters, sculptors, architects coming from the aforementioned lakes, and working from the Middles Ages to nowadays. The artists used to work all over Italy and Europe for most of the year and return home during wintertime. On these occasions they usually enriched the local heritage, e.g. by making stucco decorations, which are still unknown outside the region and need to be investigated and compared to similar case studies all around Europe. One of the most outstanding sites decorated by the Magistri Comacini is the church of Santa Maria dei Ghirli, whose plaster decorations date back to the great period of Baroque stucco artworks. In that period, i.e. 17th and 18th centuries, stucco had a starring role in architectural decorating, both polychromatic and enriched by gilded finishing, and sometimes made with casts in order to improve the modelling. The mixture of lime or gypsum binder, sometimes combined with sand and rock fragments, gripped the overhanging finishings to iron or wood frames, and the organic additives ensured workability and plasticity (Davey 1971). Many finishing layers could be applied for aesthetic or conservative purposes and a complex stratigraphy is often observed on the external surface. The Scagliola technique, very similar to stucco technology, was perfected in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany and Lombardy (Intelvi Valley) in the same period. Altarpieces, sculptures, and panels were produced mixing gypsum, organic additives and pigments in order to imitate precious natural stones such as marbles. New light on the stucco technique used in Santa Maria dei Ghirli was shed by the exploitation of an analytical protocol set up in a previous work (Rampazzi 2008) and by the discussion of the results with art historians, in order to be sure that they make sense if compared to the cultural and artistic scenario of that time and to the artist’s fingerprint. This paper describes an interdisciplinary and complementary team approach, which resulted in enhancing our knowledge of the decoration from the point of view of its conservation state, composition, technique of preparation, history, iconography, philology, chronology, and relationships to contemporary artists. In particular, the analytical protocol (Rampazzi 2008) made use of various analytical techniques, complementary in decrypting the layer arrangement and the composition of the stucco decorations: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and laser ablation mass spectrometry equipped with plasma source (LA-ICP-MS). The aforementioned techniques are some of the most popularly used methods. FTIR identifies the inorganic and organic compounds and XRD determines the crystalline phases of the 2 minerals (Montana 2002; Cavallo 2005; Tulliani 2005; Cardell-Fernandez 2006; Galván-Ruiz 2009; Mazzocchin 2010; Sansonetti 2010); SEM-EDS investigates the morphology and maps the element along the stratigraphy (Montana 2002; Galván-Ruiz 2009; Sansonetti 2010); GC-MS allows the determination of the organic content (Wouters 2000) and LA- ICP-MS traces the element content on the surface (Giussani 2009). In particular, the coupling of LA-ICP-MS and SEM proved effective in distinguishing layers very thin and similar from the compositional point of view, thanks to the high sensitivity for trace elements analysis of the former and to the high resolution of the latter (Rampazzi 2008). 1.1 Historical and artistic background The cycle of the Santa Maria dei Ghirli church is an interesting case of stucco decoration in early Baroque style, still influenced by mannerist accents. The building is placed in Campione d’Italia, a small Italian enclave in Switzerland that actively contributed toward the artistic development of many European cities since medieval times through the work of the Campione Masters, part of the wider group of the ‘Artists of the Lakes’ (A. Spiriti in Various Authors, 2006, pages 27-32). The main nucleus of Santa Maria dei Ghirli church was probably built in the 7-8th century, and between 777 and 874 it became the property of the monastery of Sant' Ambrogio in Milan and under its jurisdiction. The growing devotion to the Virgin Mary (the church is dedicated to the Annunciation) favoured enlargements and remakings of the building over the centuries, particularly in the second half of the 14th and early 15th century (Colombo 1988). In the first decades of the 17th century important architectural and decorative modifications gave to the church the present aspect. The project was planned by Isidoro Bianchi (Campione d’Italia, 1581-1662), an artist who used to work as painter, sculptor and engineer in Prague, Lombardy and especially as court painter for the Savoy dynasty in Turin where he was the leader of a team which involved firstly Antonio and Pietro Castelli and later his sons, Pompeo and Francesco (Grabach 1997; Dell’Omo 2003). According to the dates painted and carved on the walls, the work started at least in 1610-12 and lasted until 1634 (De Angelis 1988). Isidoro Bianchi planned the new lantern and dome connected with the third span of the single nave and covered by a barrel vault, partially remodelled the presbytery area, and coordinated the artist’s team that dealt with the interior decoration, i.e. frescoes and stuccoes. The Ghirli cycle had been only considered in a wider range of studies on Lombardy religious building and on Isidoro Bianchi himself (Colombo 1988; De Angelis 1988), but it had never been the object of a specific essay until the research carried out within the ‘Stucco Project’ (various authors 2006). The archival investigation was focused especially on notarial deeds (such as contracts, wills and proxies) kept in the State Archive of Milan, in order to better reconstruct the decoration cycle’s chronology and the artists that modelled it. The research moved to the text written by Roberto Rusca (1566-1629/after), Ambrosian monk and Vicar of Campione (1620-1623), most probably the patron of the whole enterprise. His chronicle, published in two different editions (Bergamo 1625 and Piacenza 1629), recorded the execution of most of the stucco decoration during the years 1620-21-22 (Rusca 1625). The other two stucco campaigns were probably carried out by still unknown artists. The former took place
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