Portinari Chapel
The Portinari Chapel (Italian: Cappella Portinari) is a
The commission
The Portinari Chapel, which has been described as a work of Tuscan architecture in Lombardy,
Above the chapel’s altar a donor portrait from 1462, sometimes attributed to Giovanni da Vaprio, depicts Pigello Portinari kneeling in prayer before Peter of Verona. This image may be the origin of the legend that Peter appeared in a vision to Pigello, commanding him to build a chapel in which his remains might be honourably preserved.[1][4][7] Pigello Portinari was interred here in 1468, but the saint’s head remained in the sacristy[8] and his tomb was not moved into the chapel until 1737.[4]
Description
The chapel is located at the eastern end of the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio. From the exterior it is a compact cubic brick building with a lower-roofed, projecting square apse. The main body of the chapel is surmounted by a dome with sloping tiled roof supporting a high lantern, framed by four turrets. The dome of the apse is protected by an octagonal structure, again capped with a tiled roof.
Internally the chapel has architectural features that bear similarity to the Sagrestia Vecchia by Filippo Brunelleschi. The interior spaces are defined by architectural orders, pilasters, architraves, mouldings, pendentives and a ribbed dome with all the details picked out in grey stone that contrasts with the flat plaster surfaces. These architectonic features are in places richly ornamented with formal motifs in relief.
A number of the surfaces have been painted in
In 1736 the elaborate marble sepulchre of Peter of Verona, commissioned in 1336 from Giovanni di Balduccio (a pupil of Giovanni Pisano), was moved from the basilica into the Portinari Chapel and placed at the back of the apse; the following year a marble altar was erected in front of it, on which was placed the silver shrine containing the saint’s head. In the 1880s the sepulchre, which had been hidden away awkwardly behind the altar, was moved into the main body of the chapel and placed somewhat off-centre, where it would be well lit by the lateral windows, and where it still stands. The head, however, is today conserved in a small adjacent chapel.[1][9][10][11]
The Chapel also includes a number of paintings by anonymous Lombard artists, including frescoes such as the Miracolo della nuvola e Miracolo della falsa Madonna, and a depiction of the martyrdom of
See also
- History of medieval Arabic and Western European domes
- History of Italian Renaissance domes
- History of early modern period domes
References
- ^ a b c d e ‘Cappella Portinari’, Basilica di Sant’Eustorgio (official site).
- ^ Luca Beltrami, ‘The Chapel of St. Peter Martyr in the Church of Sant’ Eustorgio, Milan’, tr. by A. R Evans, in Victoria and Albert Museum, Italian Wall Decorations of the 15th and 16th Centuries: A Handbook to the Models Illustrating Interiors of Italian Buildings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington (London: Chapman & Hall, 1901), pp. 13–32 (pp. 18 and 29).
- ^ Museums Archived 2009-04-18 at the Wayback Machine, Hello Milano.
- ^ a b c d Milano, Guida d'Italia del Touring club italiano, 10th edn (Milan: Touring Editore, 1998), pp. 370–372.
- ^ He was Inquisitor-General of the heretics in Lombardy from 1213 and made the basilica of Sant’Eustorgio his headquarters in waging war upon heresy. See Beltrami, p. 16.
- ^ Michael M. Tavuzzi, Renaissance inquisitors: Dominican inquisitors and inquisitorial districts in Northern Italy, 1474-1527, (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 58.
- ^ Beltrami, pp. 20–21.
- ^ Beltrami, p. 29.
- ^ a b ‘San Lorenzo and Sant'Eustorgio’, virtualtoursit.com.
- ^ Beltrami, pp. 30–31.
- ^ ‘Sant'Eustorgio’, Time Out Milan
Further reading
- Edith Wharton, Italian Backgrounds (London: Macmillan, 1905), pp. 164–6, provides a designer’s response to the chapel as it was at the start of the twentieth century. A preview of this section, from a 2009 reprint, is available from Google Books.