Resurrection

Abstract

This chapel was built in 1664 under the supervision of Brother Timothy Snider. Like Chapels Six and Twelve, it has an unusually large porch that spans the entire width of the devotional path. The building was funded by Bernardo Brentano of Azzano, a village about two miles north of Ossuccio. Many of the other privately funded chapels on the mountain, such as Chapels Nine and Ten, honor their patron by displaying his coat of arms, but this is not the case here, unless the coat of arms has been lost. Like Giovanni Bartolomeo Salice, the patron of Chapel One, Brentano was canon in the local church, and his family had earned their fortune as merchants, selling Italian goods in Germany. He served the church at Isola Comacina, the island that is visible in the lake below Ossuccio. The seven terracotta statues inside the chapel are about three-quarters life-sized. Agostino Silva made them in 1664 and inscribed that date into the helmet of the soldier that stands to the right of the empty tomb. Like most of Silva's work at Ossuccio, these sculptures were fired in multiple pieces and later assembled with metal wires or braces that are not visible to the viewer. Apart from the banner in Christ's left hand, all of the clothing and weapons in the scene were sculpted as part of the figures. That is not the case in the corresponding chapel at Varese, where Agostino's father seems to have used a cloth dipped in gesso to create Christ's swirling drapery and at least two soldiers hold wooden spears. Agostino's group is less crowded than his father's, and only Jesus' pose seems directly tied to the model at Varese. The wooden gloria that hangs behind Christ at Ossuccio does not have a mate at Varese, although the subsequent chapels on both mountains do include such a pair in their scenes of the Ascension. This suggests that there may have originally been a wooden gloria in Chapel Eleven at Varese that has since been lost. It is not clear who painted the frescoes in Ossuccio's Chapel Eleven or when they were finished. Like the sculptures, they are less crowded than the frescoes in the in the previous two chapels, which makes sense given that only the soldiers were present when Jesus rose from the tomb. The frescoes are dominated by sweeping views of a hilly landscape with tall mountains in the background and unobscured by any kind of large architectural structure, which is common in most of the other chapels. Two painted soldiers look up at Jesus as he rises from the tomb, but otherwise the frescoes do not seem to continue or respond to the sculptures in any significant way. Along with their excellent condition and extremely smooth surface, these observations may suggest that the extant paintings were repainted or redesigned sometime after the original frescoes began to deteriorate. / The Sacro Monte of Ossuccio is dedicated to the fifteen mysteries of the rosary, and many of its chapels closely resemble those at the Sacro Monte of Varese (built 1605 - 1699), which is dedicated to the same subject. Agostino Silva (1628 - 1706), an artist from nearby Ticino, designed most of the scenes at Ossuccio. He was also active at the Sacro Monte sopra Varese, where the majority of chapels had been decorated by his father, Francesco Silva (1568 - 1641). The early history of this Sacro Monte remains unclear: some sources suggest that work began as early as 1623, but it is clear from the records of pastoral visits discovered by Daniele Pescamora that none of the chapels were built before July of 1644. Traditionally, many modern scholars have followed Santino Langé, who believed that Francesco had modeled the sculptures in the first three chapels at Ossuccio and Agostino had only taken charge of the project after his father's death in 1641. However, the pastoral records cited above preclude Francesco's involvement entirely and suggest that most of the scenes were decorated from the sixteen-sixties onward, when Agostino was active on the mountain (he was first documented at Ossuccio in 1663). The end of the devotional path is marked by the sanctuary of the Madonna del Soccorso, which was built in the first quarter of the sixteenth century and houses the final scene in the rosary sequence. Modern scholars date the miraculous image of the Madonna and Child for which the Sanctuary is named to the 14th century. Most of the statues of the Virgin that are venerated in the sanctuaries at the Italian Sacri Monti are made of wood, but Ossuccio's titular image is carved in white marble and embellished with gold accents. The existing sanctuary is believed to occupy the site of a pre-Christian temple to the Roman goddess Ceres. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the religious complex was overseen by Third Order Franciscans. Just as Bernardino Caimi had directed the construction of the Sacro Monte at Varallo, the project at Ossuccio was led by Brother Timothy Snider from c. 1643 until his death in 1682. Unlike Caimi, however, Snider seems to have designed the chapels and arranged the devotional path himself. All the chapels have likely been cleaned and restored multiple times since they were finished. Silvestro Marmori's conservation efforts in 1935 were particularly extensive and are well-documented by Pescamora (2004).