ANTONIO SPARAPANE, AUTHOR OF THE PICTORIAL SERIES OF AMANDOLA
by Mario Antonelli
The Apennines, in spite of the harshness of the territory, have never represented an unsurmountable obstacle for the circulation of either ideas or men.
Its massive presence has not prevented the development of a vaste repertoire of artistic productions, whose roots are often confused because of their reappearance, on a later occasion, with in fact original caracteristics of the graft of native cultures.
Therefore, the confirmation of one pictorial series has to be led back to the activity of those “minor masters” who have conformed the figurative culture developed on both sides of the Apennines.
The period mentioned is the one that it’s shown to the visitor when entering the narrow bay at the first stage of the bell tower, in the church of S. Francesco in Amandola. Photo 1.
The pictorial composition is included in the gothic architecture characterized by the cross vault, on whose partitions the four Evangelists are represented whereas in the left wall, the only one completely painted in a fresco technique, appears the Announcement between the images of Saint John Baptist and Ludovico; a Crucifixion completes the chromatic area, in the superior rose window. In the soffit of the only single lancet window, strongly splayed, Saint Bernardine of Siena opposes Saint Anthony de Padua. The rest of the parts of the fresco painting make hypothize about the presence of other saints like Saint Nicola of Bari and San Giacomo, identified by the traveller cane and the hair. In the front window of the entrance the imposing figure of Abbot Saint Anthony is located with well-taken care of in the complex structure of the marble throne. Finally, the subtle image of Saint Lucia, defined at the top of a cornice with triple arcs, closes the pictorial series of which that in the past made the chapel functions, dedicated to the Announcement.
Speaking of “minor masters” we we have to make emphais on the warehouse of the Sparapane of Norcia.
Cordella defines his art like this: “It is an specific and vernacular way of conceiving the scene and the personages, the little apparatuses, the pragmatic devocional functionality, the dryness of the composition”.
We can find all these elements also in the series of Amandola: the sober style that emphasizes in all the representation, the gentleness of the colors and the winding profiles of the ovals of the vaults, the arabesque backgrounds that lock up the personages in a shell, the decorative motifs printed in the clothes of the Saints.
The comparison relates naturally to the theory of images on the walls of the church of San Salvador in Campi of Norcia (1464): the Moan of the Marys by the mortal rest of the Redentor but particularly the own Announcement, here divided in the two extremities of the iconostasis.
A still more appropiated comparison is nevertheless the one with the analog subjects in Santa Maria Bianca of Ancarano, very close to the first church, throughout the provincial highway Norcia – Preci - San Eustizio.
The right wall is subdivided in two parts, in the superior one are the unfold stories of the life of Mary; in the other, devotional images. The author describes them like this on a guide: “The four superior scenes (Christmas, Presentation in the Temple, Announcement, Weddings) talk about the lessons of Nicola of Siena and about Saint Mary of Piazza in Campi and of Saint Scolastica in Norcia, but here the brush is the one of Antonio Sparapane. Under the throne of the Virgin with the Child is written the date 1476”.
The suggested hypothesis in the “Fresco paintings of Amandola” is confirmed here without a doubt: in the scenic exposition, in the disposition of the Virgin, the furniture of the room, the Announcing Angel. There’s no doubt that the hand that has painted the fresco in San Francesco of Amandola is the one of Antonio Sparapane.
The date of the work is significant: 1476. If we considered that from January 1477 to 1481 and successively between 1496 and 1498 the Picen and particularly Amandola, it was infested by the plague and that between 1477 and 1493 the painter finished works in Santa Maria delle Pieve, left unfinished by Nicola of Siena and Bartolomeo Scarpetta, we can hypothize that the work of Amandola was made before 1476 and probably after the absorbent work in San Francesco in Tuscania (1466).
If we add that in the picen city, Nicola of Siena himself, unquestionable master of the Norcino, had painted in 1463 a picture for the church of Saint Augustin, we can sustain the hypothesis that in this time interval, that’s to say, between 1466 and 1476, Antonio would have finished the work in Amandola.
And, finally, we would like to add that, actually, the order of this company is adjudgeable to a legacy of individuals and not to the minorithical Order since, in diferent documents, the narrowness in which the convent lived is confirmed “... a century and a half from their creation...” (1463 ndr) as much that in the Council of the 20 of February 1474 it’s deliberated that the forty necessary beams for repairing the roof would have to be offered by the five towns and since in a granting of 1439 is written: .”.. et tu locho (convent ndr) non aj tanta intrata che ce pozza vivere li frati che ce sono....”.
In conclusion, the will made by Ser Cola di Ser Onofrio of the Gualtieri family confirms a conspicuous legacy to the convent in exchange of a chapel in Saint Francis.
The activity of the illustrators of the popular Pietà had to be therefore, for the Sparapane, quite beneficial even in those fraternities, even if its not very far away of the mind the devotional images represented throughout the external wall of Santa Maria Pie d’Agello, not very far away from Amandola throughout the provincial highway in Fermo direction. In the face of the Saint, at the right of the entrance, are recognized the same carastheristics of Saint Lucia in Saint Augustin of Norcia made by Giovanni Sparapane in the successive decade of the middles of the 15th Century, so similar styles define to the Virgin with the Child in arms, next to the first one, partly destroyed by the opening of the front door. |
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