Francesco Repishti

The lost Tower of Boethius in Pavia is mainly remembered because linked to the memory of Severinus Boethius’ imprisonment and for the well-known drawing by Giuliano da Sangallo contained in the Vatican codex Barberiniano Latino 4424 (f. 15v). In 1925, Faustino Gianani studied the events surrounding its history and the state of the art in an article published in the «Archivio Storico Lombardo»...

The notary deed of confessio, preserved in the State Archives of Milan, between Caradosso’s brother Nicola Foppa and Antonio and Vittore Martinengo, dated 28 of November 1509, relating to a debt of 500 ducats, calls for a series of issues only partially identified. The absence of other documents leads us to formulate three possible hypotheses regarding the object of this large payment: the first one is to recognize in the notarial deed the payment for some parts (perhaps those in bronze) of the Martinengo monument for the church of San Cristo, now in Santa Giulia in Brescia, which had not yet been completed in 1509...

A drawing for a fireplace, today preserved at the biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (codex F 252 inf., f. 637), deserves to be again discussed for the mythological subjects which enrich its decorations and for its possible patrons at the beginning of the 16th century. the scenes and figures represented permit perhaps to recognize a cultural context other than the Milanese one, where scenes coming from classical mythology were less common...

A letter by baldassare taccone, now preserved in the section Autografi at the Archivio di Stato in Milan and sent from bologna on May the 30th 1498, gives news to Ludovico Maria Sforza on the setting for some statues, portraits of Ludovico and his son Massimiliano, maybe made of wax, inside the church of Santa Maria di Galliera in bologna. According to the text, the two Sforza’s portraits were life size, coloured and dressed and they were really verisimilar...

The Oratory of San Rocco dei Miracoli in the Corso Porta Vercellina must be added to the rich catalogue of church-projects designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi in Borromeo’s Milan. The building, which was demolished after the suppressions in the late eighteenth century, stood next to the Monastery of San Maurizio Maggiore, and included an unusual hexagonal plan juxtaposed with a second rectangular area where the main altar was housed...

Luigi Vanvitelli and a newly discovered drawing for the Sanctuary of the Crucifix in...

An unpublished document from the Chapter’s Archive of the Duomo of Milan certifies the offer of a tabernacle to be placed in the Cathedral, upon a drawing by Michelangelo («tabernacolo di metallo da porsi in Duomo giusta il disegno di Michel Angelo Buonaruota»), thus adding new facts to our knowledge of a tabernacle realized by Giacomo Del Duca upon a drawing by Michelangelo for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Del Duca’s work described in the document is very similar – even in size – to that offered to Philip II for the church of Saint Lawrence of El Escorial, thus allowing to say it is the same tabernacle; a relation to the one now placed in the Charterhouse of Padula, formerly at the Museum of Capodimonte, is less likely. The tabernacle offered to the Duomo has an octagonal shape, a stone pedestal and a metal body with a total height of 50 hands. On one of the eight facets of the pedestal there is a door which takes along a stair to the octagonal reliquary guarding the Blessed Sacrament, illuminated by eight windows, some with red stained glasses, with six corresponding figures; both on the upper and in the lower sides are fourteen bas-reliefs with the Stories of the Passion. A Crucifix and a Resurrected Christ are embedded in the two main windows. Underneath, a second octagonal bronze element constitutes the base of the actual tabernacle, while the upper side culminating in an eight-sided vault with a balustrade, a globe and an image of Christ ascending into heaven («Cristo […] il qual sta in atidudine di ascendere in cielo»).