Coronation of the Virgin

Abstract

This is the largest chapel at Ghiffa and the only one whose patron is known. The structure was built in 1647 with funds donated by Pietro Giacomo Canetta of Ronco after his death. It seems his family remained involved in guiding the project until the chapel was finished. Evidence from the State Archives in Verbania suggests that the stonemason who built the chapel belonged to the Avanzini family from Bombinasco, in Ticino, on the other side Lago Maggiore. Inside the octagonal chapel, eight terracotta figures of prophets and church doctors line the walls in raised niches. They include King David, Saint Dominic, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Jerome, but not all of the figures have been securely identified. Above the altar, a larger group of sculptures depicts the Coronation of the Virgin. During the Early Modern period, it was typical for artists to show all three members of the Trinità participating in Mary's coronation. The sculptures treating this subject at Crea (Chapel 23, c. 1599) and Varallo (Sanctuary at the Crossing, c. 1665 - 1680) include the entire Trinità, so it is very likely that the now-empty hook above this group at Ghiffa originally held a small sculpture of a dove to represent the Holy Spirit, who is otherwise missing. No other painted or sculpted decorations survive in the chapel. This is unusual both for chapels at the Sacri Monti and for the remainder of churches in Italy during the seventeenth century. The walls were likely whitewashed sometime during the nineteenth or twentieth century after the original frescoes began to deteriorate. The large open space at the center of the chapel, which is currently empty, was once filled with six confessional booths in order to help accommodate the influx of pilgrims and penitents that visited the sanctuary on certain feast days. When there were too many pilgrims to fit inside the sanctuary, Ghiffa's visitors could also hear mass, make their confessions, and receive the Eucharist here in this space. The fact that the chapel was designed or altered to facilitate this use as a devotional annex is evidence that the sanctuary, and not the Sacro Monte, remained the primary focus of popular devotion at Ghiffa in the early modern period. / The Sacro Monte at Ghiffa is the smallest and most irregular of the nine pilgrimage sites belonging to the UNESCO group. The Sanctuary (1605 - 1617) had existed on the hilltop as a pilgrimage site since at least the twelfth or thirteenth century and houses a miraculous image of the Holy Trinità. As at the Sacro Monte of Orta, the fabbricieri who oversaw the construction efforts at Ghiffa during the seventeenth century were laypeople from the nearby town of Ronco. Unlike the other Sacri Monti, however, there never seems to have been any permanent settlement of a religious community at Ghiffa. Furthermore, there were never any plans to build a unified series of narrative chapels on the site. The three existing chapels were added one-by-one between 1647 and 1703.