Swollen with wind in their clothes and hair as if they had just glided (observe the columns that rest on their knees, as if in precarious balance), these two valuable sculptures of angels, unknown in the art literature, date with certainty to the first half of the sixteenth century: lively in poses and with fleshy faces, evoke the language of the workshop of Gian Giacomo and Guglielmo della Porta, when father and son worked on various important Genoese commissions
Gian Giacomo, born on the shores of Lake Lugano, initially worked between the Certosa di Pavia, the Duomo of Milan, Cremona and Casale Monferrato; his style, characterized by an elegant, subtle and calligraphic classicism, is very similar to that developed by Bambaia. In 1531, having left all other positions and more than forty years old, Gian Giacomo arrives with his son Guglielmo in Genoa, where he spends the rest of his life enjoying great success and obtaining orders of absolute importance: in the chapel of the Cathedral dedicated to San Giovanni with his son he executes a cycle of sixteen Prophets in relief for the Baldacchino, the result of a very close collaboration between the two, which was followed by another important commission, that for the Cybo Chapel (1532-34), where the two created a rich sculptural complex that includes seven statues and eight reliefs.
And it's it is precisely in the context of these works performed together by the two Della Portas that the angels are inserted, which are characterized by a remarkable dynamic vitality that animates their poses and makes their ruffled tunics vibrate, similar to that worn by Temperance in the Cybo chapel; even more significant, also given the more similar dimensions, is the comparison with the reliefs that accompany the statues of the same chapel: one of all, the relief with Moses receiving the tables of the Law, represented in a dynamic pose with a precarious balance, which it almost feels more like a stride than a kneel. Furthermore, the physiognomies of the two young and chubby angels, likewise, are found similar but varied, as if they were close relatives, in the two putti of the Cybo relief with Temperance and Prudence: the small and slightly close eyes, then, are a characteristic of Genoese works, including those that Gian Giacomo executed after his son's departure for Rome in 1537- such as the Jupiter in the fireplace of Palazzo San Giorgio (1544), the Portocarrero monument (1548-1549) and the Evangelists in the Cathedral (1551- 1553).
Undoubtedly these two vivacious angels add an important page to the Della Porta catalogue. Lastly, it is interesting to note how, in the profile dedicated by the historian from Arezzo to Guglielmo, enclosed in the Life of Lione Lioni and other sculptors and architects (ed. 1568), between the mention of the sixteen Prophets and that of Moses in the Cybo chapel, we find the following statement: "he led two marble angels, which are in the Compagnia di San Giovanni”. And if – something that has not yet been able to prove – the pair of winged creatures could be identified with the two angels mentioned by Giorgio Vasari, it would undeniably acquire an even greater relevance in the panorama of Genoese Renaissance sculpture. Extract from the critical study of prof. Aldo Galli.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1973 – Hanno-Walter Kruft and Anthony Roth, The Della Porta workshop in Genoa, in “Annals of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa”, III, 1973, pp. 893-954.
1985 – Alessandro Nova, From the Ark to the funeral. Aspects of sculpture in Cremona in the sixteenth century, in The Fields and the Cremonese artistic culture of the sixteenth century, catalog of the Cremona exhibition, edited by M. Gregori, Milan 1985, pp. 409-430 (particularly 415-418).
1996 – Vito Zani, New questions around the Lombard phase of Gian Giacomo Della Porta and the problem of the ark of Sant'Evasio in Casale Monferrato, in “Prospettiva”, 1996, 82, pp. 31-58.
2008 – Yasmine Helfer, Guglielmo della Porta: from the Cathedral of Genoa to the Cathedral of Milan, “Perspective”, 2008, 132, 61-77
2012 The Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa ('Mirabilia Italiae', 18), edited by AR Calderoni Masetti and G. Wolf, Modena 2012, I, pp. 300-302
2012 – Marco Collareta and Cristiano Giometti, Architectures, sculptures and paintings of the sixteenth century, in The Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa ('Mirabilia Italiae', 18), edited by AR Calderoni Masetti and G. Wolf, Modena 2012, pp. 101-110
Cover artwork:
Gian Giacomo and Guglielmo della Porta
(c. 1490 - Genoa, c. 1555); (c. 1510 – Rome 1577)
Pair of candle-bearing angels
1532-1537 about Carrara marble – 35,5 x 46h x 20 cm
