La camera di San Paolo

The first work painted by Correggio in Parma was the fresco decoration of a room of the private apartment of Giovanna Piacenza, abbess of the Benedictine convent of San Paolo, today concisely named Camera di San Paolo. The fresco was probably painted in 1518 or 1519 (no documents have been found). Despite the efforts of different distinguished scholars, its symbolic meaning remains quite ambiguous, just as there are no certainties, but only speculations, as to who prepared the cultured and cryptic program that Correggio translated visually, what was the artist’s contribution to the design and who recommended Antonio Allegri (Correggio) to Giovanna Piacenza. Whatever its background, the result is magnificent, as regards both the overall pictorial image, as great as any of the more famous contemporary art rooms in aristocratic palaces, and beautiful details such as the cherubs peeping out of from the ovals set in the lush and festive greenery of the dome, and Diana, painted on the fireplace in what appears like a very modern photographic style. “A supreme elegance,” Longhi wrote, “at once intellectual and Arcadian, hunting and convivial, which has no comparable example in our Renaissance. Neither Isabella’s art rooms nor the “Stufetta” of Cardinal Bibbiena could compare.” [1] And if there were no imitations or particular echoes of the Camera di San Paolo in the following years, this is due to the fact that very soon after (in 1524) a very strict regime of seclusion was imposed on the convent: for two and a half centuries nobody, except of course the nuns, was able to enter the magnificent rooms.[2]

The Convent of San Paolo, at that time, was one of Parma’s richest and “fashionable” convents, together with those of Sant’Alessandro, San Quintino (ruled by the Sanvitale family), and Sant’Uldarico (Carissimi family). Founded at the end of the 10th century, in 1187 it was exempted by Pope Gregory VII from all episcopal control; more privileges were granted by Frederick II. Abbesses of convents were appointed for life and ruled as sovereigns, choosing the administrators, disposing freely of the convent’s assets and revenues without having to account to anyone, and holding legal power over the people subject to the convent. Women from the Bergonzi family succeeded each other as abbesses of the convent of San Paolo. Cecilia, in 1494, had the convent premises partially rebuilt and enclosed by high walls, bearing in different parts her coat of arms and the inscription «Caecilia antistes nulli virtute secunda fecit, Bergonzae gloria magna Domus» (Cecilia Abbess second to none in virtue made this to the great glory of the Bergonzi house). When she died in 1505, she was succeeded by her niece Orsina: during her brief rule she had the church restructured and commissioned Araldi to paint its chorus. Orsina died on April 25, 1507, and on the same day Giovanna Piacenza, daughter of Marco (called de’ Baroni and connected with the Sforza family) and of lady Agnese Bergonzi was appointed as the new abbess. Giovanna swore a solemn oath on Mary 24 before Niccolò da Bracciano, Bishop of Lidia. Twenty-years old, with a strong character and well-educated, she ruled the convent of San Paolo for seventeen years like a great Renaissance lady. She showed immediately what stuff she was made of. As soon as she was elected, she removed the management of the convent from the Garimberti family and gave it to her brother in law, Scipione Dalla Rosa (also said Montino, his mother’s surname) and wrote to the Pope to complain that part of the convent’s assets (fields, vineyards, and livestock) had been taken by its enemies. In response, the Pope appointed on August 18 the canonical protonotary Bartolomeo Montini, uncle of Scipione, and the general vicar of the diocese, Lattanzio Lalatta, as guardians of the convent. The dismissal of the Garimbertis (followers of the Guelph Rossi family) gave rise to a number of disputes with the Dalla Rosa family (followers of the Three Parts – Sanvitale, Pallavicina, da Correggio – which constituted the Ghibelline party, described in these incisive terms by the contemporary chronicler Smagliati[3]: “Because Orsina Bergonzi had enriched the Garimbertis, now the Young Piacenza, abbess, was enriching her brother in law Rosa and this, out of envy, was their quarrel.” A truce between the adversaries was reached in early 1510, but lasted less than six months, as on July 22 “the royal tax commissioner, Francesco Garimberti, was killed and 4 members of his family were wounded.” The assassin was Scipione Dalla Rosa, who at the time of the murder was with Cesare Piacenza, Giovanna’s brother. Scipione was exiled and only four years later was readmitted to Parma after signing a peace accord with the Garimberti family (April 5, 1514).

In the meantime Giovanna had proceeded with her plan of embellishing the monastery and making it the best in the city. She confirmed Araldi’s[4] commission to continue with the choir frescoes (completed in January 1510 and now lost) with a depiction of the Last Supper, the Capture and Redemption; while Luchino Bianchino – who had rebuilt the doors of the Cathedral and of the Baptistery and had completed the work of the Lendinara brothers in the Cathedral choir, was commissioned to paint the choir stalls, which are now in the Oratorio dei Rossi, inscribed with «Lucinus Blanchinus Parmen. Ioanna Placentia Abbat. moderante MDX» .Giovanna wanted to have a great apartment built for herself, and entrusted the project to the architect Giorgio da Erba, the same who had designed the small Eucherio Sanvitale palace in which, just as in the one designed for the abbess, rooms with three lunettes on each wall ending in a flat vault alternate with rooms with four lunettes on each wall divided by thin ribs that rise up to the keystone like the ribs of an umbrella.

In 1514 the construction of the new residence was completed. It consisted of six rooms[5]: a hall 10 metres by 20 metres, accessed from the outside, followed by two rooms, which would be decorated respectively by Araldi and Correggio; from the last room one went into a small room with a wooden ceiling (where Giovanna’s private servant slept); from here into the dressing room/bedroom of the abbess herself and finally, into another cell, used as the abbess’s private chapel, which also communicated with the room decorated by Correggio. Ireneo Affò recalled that a portico of Serravalle stone columns, carved by Francesco d’Agrate, and bearing the coat of arms of the Piacenza family (three crescent moons), used to run along one side of the hall, of the two rooms and of the oratory. Different mottos were engraved over the doors and fireplaces. […].

As soon as the wall was completed, the abbess commissioned Alessandro Araldi, the best and most highly paid in Parma at the time, to paint the frescoes in the first room after the hall, according to a program whose real meaning has been lost. A scholarly interpretation of it has been provided by Giuseppa Zanichelli, according to whom “the twelve lunettes and corresponding panels and ovals of the vault represent as many stages leading to the Council of the gods, to the refreshment of the Psalmist, and to the final victory: the journey unravelled in two dimensions, the temporal one, punctuated by profane examples that are yet imbued with mystic religiosity, and the eternal journey, marked a succession of biblical events, by now beyond history, projected onto the vault of the room, symbol of the atemporality of the heavens; the earthly journey of the abbess, so closely linked with the events that shocked the city of Parma between 1507 and 1514, concluded with victory over her enemies and the inscription over the fireplace “transimus per ignem et aquam et eduxisti nos in refrigerium” (we passed through fire and water then you led us out to the place of refreshment) seals the proud certainty of triumph. However, the spiritual journey that each one of the faithful must undertake still lies ahead. The dragon, custodian of the water of life, with its circular movement reconnects with the wells of the Samaritan woman to point the way that through Pietas, Castitas and Veritas leads to Sanctitas and that every man must walk with their minds and with their hearts; putting oneself, with the help of God, under the protection of Saint Benedict and Saint Paul, provides the penitent soul with the assurance of victory.” [6]

Once the first room was completed, the second one needed to be frescoed: and here Antonio Allegri da Correggio comes on the scene. […] Correggio was faced with two problems: the connection with the previous room and the still Gothic-like structure of the room, with those thin ribs crossing the vault. He solved the former question together with those erudite people who visited the abbess; as for the latter, it was something he had to deal with alone, and he did it masterfully, proving that he already had in his mind the idea of a pictorial space that did not necessarily have to coincide with the architectural one, even though at that time he was still indulging it. Araldi had a flat ceiling to work with and had filled with “old fashioned” grotesque motifs, using classical themes with Gothic nuances, and opening up at the centre an oculus with cherubs that echoes, albeit in a minor way, Mantegna’s idea for his Camera degli Sposi (Bridal Chamber) in Mantua. Correggio also, we may say, refers to a subject by Mantegna, that of the funerary chapel in the Church of Sant’Andrea in Mantua, but he re-interprets it with a quite different imagination and aesthetic sense. The idea of a stiff wicker framework as support to garlands of fruit and greenery is here transformed into an architectural triumph of vegetation, with festive, large festoons of fruit hanging down. Two thin reeds run along the length of each of the ribs, lightening their angular severity, and the thick foliage emerging from the rhomboidal patterns softens the curving of the sixteen segments, giving the whole a sense of greater unity, crowned by the dense interweaving of the ribbons, joined at the top in a rosy garland arranged around the golden coat of arms with the three crescent moons, the insignia of Giovanna’s family. And in the vegetation that envelops the room like a dome, 16 oculuses open towards the sky, from which chubby cherubs with golden hair and engaging smiles are “caught” in different poses. To each oval, framed by a garland, corresponds a monochrome fictive marble lunette painted to simulate sculptures depicting a mythological subject; each lunette is framed by an arc of seashells resting on hanging capitals, supported by pairs of rams’ heads whose spiral horns are adorned with hanging necklaces of precious stones, pearls and amber. Stretched between the pairs of heads are strips of canvas holding plates, vases, jugs and a small hatchet: still lifes that some scholars have defined as dining room objects, because of the room’s function as refectory; others, on the other hand, see them as sacrificial objects. On the trapezoidal chimney Correggio painted Diana on her chariot pulled by two female deer, of which, in a bold arrangement, only the hind legs are seen. The image seems to be taken from the poet Callimachus, who sang: “Artemis, Lady of Maidenhood, Slayer of Tityus, golden were thine arms and golden thy belt, and a golden car didst thou yoke, and golden bridles, goddess, didst thou put on thy deer.” The goddess is wearing a white dress with many folds and slung on her shoulders is the quiver with her golden bow and arrows, and on her head, held in place by a pearl, a half moon, while with her left arm she holds a blue cloth: an excellent scenic expedient that balances chromatically the space in which the figure is inserted, and at the same time alludes to celestial space.

[1] R. LONGHI, Il Correggio e la Camera di San Paolo, Genoa, 1965, p. 23.

[2] About the history of the monastery and the rediscovery of Correggio’s frescos see I. AFFò, Ragionamento del padre Ireneo Affò sopra una stanza dipinta del celeberrimo Antonio Allegri da Correggio nel monastero di San Paolo in Parma, Parma, 1794, re-published in F. Barocelli in Il Correggio e la Camera di San Paolo, Milan, 1988, pp. 37-62.

[3] S. DI NOTO, Leone Smagliati, Cronaca parmense (1494-1518), Parma, 1970, p. 140.

[4] S. DI NOTO, Leone Smagliati, Cronaca parmense (1494-1518), Parma, 1970, p. 140.

[5] A reconstruction of the apartment and the events surrounding it can be found in P. Catellani, Lo smembramento del San Paolo e un inaudito progetto per la Camera, in “Parma per l’Arte”, 1974, II, pp. 75-88.

[6] G. ZANICHELLI, Iconologia della Camera di Alessandro Araldi nel monastero di San Paolo in Parma, Parma, 1979, p. 57.