Creating Sanctuary Before and After Trent. The Architectural Screen at The Santuario Di Mongiovino

Abstract

This article takes as its point of departure an unusual architectural screen to be found in one of the many sanctuary churches erected in Central Italy in the early Cinquecento. Begun in 1524, the Santuario di Mongiovino, in Western Umbria, was built to enshrine a late medieval fresco of the Virgin and Child, which had purportedly begun performing miracles towards the end of the previous century. The image had already been enclosed in a basic oratory in 1513, after the cult was given papal approval, but a larger church was soon needed to accommodate the increasing number of devotees that flocked to the site. Rather than dismantling the earlier structure, however, the architect of the new foundation incorporated it into his design as the ‘Cappella della Madonna’, and erected an imposing marble screen to separate it from the main centralised body of the church. With no obvious extant parallels in contemporary architecture in this part of Italy, the chapel façade raises a number of questions around both form and function, which I seek to address here. For instance, while apparently unique, the screen should be viewed in relation to other types of dividing structures in churches, and may well have conformed to wider experiments in shrine architecture taking place at the time that are simply no longer visible. Indeed, the very survival of the screen at Mongiovino prompts further exploration of the varied uses and fortunes of sacred spaces more generally during the sixteenth century and beyond