Sarcophagus of Berardo Maggi

The Sarcophagus of Berardo Maggi is a sculptural work made of ammonitic red (121×197×101.5 cm) within the first quarter of the 14th century and preserved in the old cathedral of Brescia.

The tomb was made by an unknown local master to preserve the mortal remains of Berardo Maggi, bishop of Brescia from 1275 to 1308. and, from 1298 until his death, prince and lord of the city...

The mausoleum evokes the deeds performed during the deceased's lifetime through a dense and complex iconographic apparatus placed at the lid:. Berardo had in fact been a peacemaker in the internal struggles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines of Brescia in 1298, admitting into the city the Ghibelline faction that had been driven out earlier and leading to a situation of substantial reconciliation.

History

A sarcophagus for Berardo Maggi

The quotation is taken from Camillo Maggi's Chronicus de rebus Brixie and indicates how Berardo's brother, Maffeo Maggi, had seen to it that the sarcophagus was placed in the so-called Rotonda, i.e., in Brescia's old cathedral.. To explain his brother's intervention, it is appropriate to clarify the events following the death of Berardo, which occurred in 1308: given the need to find a place for his burial and also a worthy sarcophagus for the body, it was the brother Maffeo who took charge of the construction of the sarcophagus and had it placed in the aforementioned place;. in truth, it is not known what the original and precise location of the sarcophagus might have been in the context of the cathedral, that is, whether it was near some altar or placed in a possible private chapel, and for this reason it can only be hypothesized:... perhaps it was near the high altar; perhaps, instead, in the so-called St. Mary's Stall.

Almost certainly, however, Maggi's tomb established with the church a symbolic as well as artistic dialogue that was quite evident, in addition to being coherent and functional. In any case, this early integration between the work of art and its “container” (the same old cathedral) is precluded to the contemporary observer: in fact, the mausoleum has been placed, since the end of the 19th century, at the entrance to the cathedral and is, therefore, devoid of any integration with altars or liturgical places in the same old cathedral..

Chronological placement To clearly frame the chronological space in which the funerary monument was made one can rely, once again, on Camillo Maggi's Chronicus de rebus Brixiae, from which the quotation placed at the beginning is taken. The testimony of the Chronicus, nonetheless, should indeed be considered a valuable source to draw on in outlining the chronological events of the sarcophagus, but it should also be consulted with due caution, given the temporal distance of two centuries between the events narrated and the narrator; moreover, Camillo Maggi never reports, in the course of the narrative, on which sources he relied to describe the facts he sets forth in his work.

The sixteenth-century source, nevertheless, may suggest that Berardo's tomb had already been begun during the last years of his lordship in Brescia (thus in the time span 1303-1308);. still following what is said in the Chronicus the sepulchral ark, in the light of the bishop's death in 1308, would have been completed under his brother's directives, as already pointed out above. Moreover, it is the same sixteenth-century chronicle that places the departure of Maffeo during 1311,Historia Camilli de Maggis cit., ms. A.III.20, cc.112-113 thus allowing the completion of the sarcophagus to be circumscribed within that same year, namely 1311. Ultimately, it can be concluded that the great sepulchral ark was plausibly completed between the death of Berardo (1308) and that of his brother Maffeo (1311).

The sixteenth century through an eighteenth-century testimony

Whereas throughout the course of the fifteenth century there is no news or sources to report about Maggi's funerary ark, there is instead an important event during the sixteenth century, such as the moving of the sepulchre in question, documented and attributable specifically to 1571:.The displacement of the sarcophagus and its plausible masonry are evidenced by a receipt of payment to the carpenter Gerardo Bottani, dated June 9, 1571, also reported in . (BQ, ms. F. VII.24, f. 170r, Liber boletarum fabrice ecclesie maiori) this same intervention did not happen in isolation, but rather was part of the larger project, desired and promoted by the then bishop of Brescia Domenico Bollani, of rearranging the interior of the cathedral.. In light of this, the funeral monument, from its original and unknown location, was moved, elevated and in all probability walled up near the chapel of the Sante Croci,See precisely the testimony present in , In which he states that: as reported by Baldassarre Zamboni, archpriest of Calvisano.. Also according to the latter's testimony, the ark would have been fixed in the wall of the left transept (perhaps placed on the tympanum of a door, which in turn communicated with the corridor through which the adjacent basilica of San Pietro de Dom could be reached)... The modification of the interior of the church was attributable to reasons of space and better usability of the place of worship, in order to improve its use for the faithful: hence the ark was moved and placed precisely in an elevated location..

As a result of this plausible masonry of the sarcophagus, it can be inferred that one of its two sides was sacrificed out of view and is no longer visible: it is perhaps on this occasion, among other things, that an inscription was made on the marble case by means of a graphic style in an ideal humanistic capital, quite different from the fourteenth-century style of the rest of the sarcophagus. Further evidence for a presumed posteriority of the inscription on the chest is the use, in the same, of Arabic numerals, which in the fourteenth century were still not so widely used; another element in favor of this interpretation is the presence of the term “princeps,” never used in Maggi's lifetime, who, on the contrary, always wished to define himself as “Arbiter et arbitrator.”... Also at the same juncture, moreover, would also have been added the circular supports at the base of the casket (22 cm in diameter each), made of gray stone and recurring, in many cases and as a type, in Renaissance sculpture: a further evidence, this last one, of an evident reworking of the fourteenth-century tomb in the midst of the Renaissance age... The text of the inscription affixed to the casket reads as follows:

This supposed sixteenth-century elevation of the sarcophagus, admittedly quite complicated both by its size and weight, would have led Maggi's tomb to harmonize and conform with the other examples of funerary monuments in the old cathedral, all of which were walled up and substantially used as wall decorations, such as the case of Domenico de Dominici's funeral monument, that of Balduino Lambertini, and that of Gianfrancesco Morosini. However, establishing with absolute certainty what the exact location of the tomb was, and whether it was actually walled up as reported earlier, is a very difficult subject: it has already been mentioned how difficult it would have been to hoist the ark and fix it to the wall in question, without then considering the possible structural failures should the masonry have been in all respects completed, especially in the absence of buttresses to support its enormous weight; according to the testimonies provided by Zamboni, Rossi and Brunati the tomb would have been hoisted and placed in the wall in question, although in reality this is highly unlikely, for all the reasons mentioned above. Instead, it is more plausible that the heavy sarcophagus was indeed raised and placed against the wall, but not walled in..

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Following a silence that lasted throughout the course of the seventeenth century, it was the aforementioned Baldassarre Zamboni who reported in his work, after the second half of the eighteenth century, news about Maggi's tomb, also taking care to produce prints, illustrations and deeds regarding its history: all this is accomplished through the use of documentation and notes to support the text, evaluating what was said on the basis of personal research about Brescian public life in previous centuries. It is precisely through the testimony offered by Zamboni that the situation of the ark, i.e., its position in the cathedral and the condition in which it was located, can be recorded contextually at the time: in fact, a drawing provided in the codex makes it possible to understand that the funerary monument was located within a niche and with the supporting spheres at its base, added during the Renaissance period and already mentioned above...

Another important depiction, this time of the 19th century, is provided by the historian Federico Odorici, who precisely in 1856 produced a drawing depicting the same ark:.The quotation given is again found in he prefers, in this case, to report the most hidden side of the sarcophagus, that is, the one that is close to the wall and for this reason less visible; later he also illustrates the more exposed side but on a smaller scale. It is again Odorici, moreover, who reports in his Guide to Brescia that the funerary monument, at the time, was accessible to the observer by means of a “ladder at the back of the monument,” further remarking the elevated position of Maggi's ark..

The restorations of the Old Cathedral by Luigi Arcioni

Close to the end of the 19th century, construction sites for the restoration of the old cathedral were begun, supervised and directed by architect Luigi Arcioni.. He was able to carry out well-targeted interventions aimed at the arrangement of the place of worship, such as, for example, razing the cathedral's interior roofing, reconstructing the original lowered Romanesque double-entrance: he also remarked the position of the pillars by covering them and also highlighting the floor of the ambulatory; he unearthed the ancient crypt of St. Philastrius, which had been sealed up until then and used as a mass grave, reconstructing its entrances; he rediscovered, among other things, the foundations of the previous cathedral, the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore de Dom, marking its perimeter in the pavement by the use of darker stones and also uncovering some of its floor mosaics..

In general, moreover, he accomplished a rearrangement of the liturgical furnishings, isolating them and making them stand out to further enhance their symbolic and cultural value; an operation accomplished in the same way for the sarcophagus of Berardo Maggi.. The restoration of the old cathedral was therefore conceived as a total renovation of the ecclesiastical building, with the aim of returning the same structure to the community with a new mission: having lost its role as the city's cathedral in favor of the new one, it was much more suited to a museographic role, as a container of works of art and the city's history...This new vocation of the old cathedral would find its final fulfillment in the exhibition of sacred art organized in 1904. As a result of this general reassessment, Maggi's funerary monument was removed from the wall where it had stood for more than three centuries and placed in front of the entrance to the Cathedral, in a much more prominent and isolated position, without any integration with the other works of art in the Cathedral.See in ACMBS (Archives of the Civic Museums of Brescia), folder 1, in which a handwritten note by Arcioni (most likely dated 1895), containing the planned interventions, reports:

Description

General view