User:Feanor0/Mausoleum of Martinengo

The Mausoleum of Martinengo is a funerary monument in marble and bronze by Gasparo Cairano, Bernardino delle Croci, and possibly the Sanmicheli studio, created between 1503 and 1518 and situated in the nun's choir of the museum of Santa Giulia in Brescia.

The monument is of the highest historical and artistic value, a masterpiece of Italian renaissance sculpture in Brescia. With its focus on artistic and architectural purity and its refinement of colour, it represents the ultimate celebration of the deceased that it memorialises.

Introduction
The origins and the dating of the Martinengo mausoleum constituted perhaps the greatest misunderstanding in the historiography of Renaissance Brescian art, generating in turn another series of errors and incorrect assumptions, primarily its unfounded attribution to Maffeo Olivieri. The actual history of the monument, in many parts still incompletely understood, has only been known since 1977, thanks to the discovery by the historian Camillo Boselli of a series of documents on the subject, which rewrote the knowledge previously presumed on the work.

The original commission
The original contract of commission of the mausoleum was written on 29 May 1503 between the brothers Francesco and Antonio II Martinengo of  Padernello and the Brescian goldsmith Bernardino delle Croci. In the contract, it is specified that the monument, to be placed in the Church of the Most Holy Body of Christ, is to fulfill the will of the father of the two, Bernardino Martinengo of Padernello, who had died in 1501 or 1502.

This arrangement, in turn, is in the context of a kind of dynastic tradition initiated by Bernardino's father, Antonio I Martinengo di Padernello, the progenitor of this branch of the family. Antonio I, after having financed the work to expand the choir of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Brescia in 1464, had received from the friars the right to use it exclusively as a burial place for himself and his descendants. He, however, had later given up this right, preferring a more majestic solution such as the construction of a sort of family church: the church of the Most Holy Body of Christ. The new religious edifice and the adjoining monastery were built by the religious order of the Jesuati, starting from about 1467, almost entirely funded by Martinengo, who asked in his will in 1473, to be buried in this location. The commission of the mausoleum is therefore to be framed within this project to unite in a single location, dedicated specially, the burials of the Martinengos of Padernello.

The detailed contract describes the characteristics that the mausoleum must assume, details about the materials, and demands some figurines such as a "imagibus [...] in forma pietatis" at the top. The document also mentions a project, outlined on a sheet of paper attached to the contract and now lost. The work was agreed to be delivered within three years for a fee to delle Croci equal to 500 ducats, with the possibility of raising it to 600 according to the judgment on the finished work.

Disputes and stoppages
In 1506, the contract was still unfulfilled. Two legal documents dated to that year show the existence of a pecuniary dispute between delle Croci and the Martinengos, which led to the degeneration of the relationship between the two and the stoppage of the project. In the first document, dated May 13, 1506, Antonio II Martinengo pleads a debt to the goldsmith for 300 ducats, of which 200 were for various expenses related to the building of the mausoleum and a certain amount of silverware that Martinengo had received from delle Croci without pay for it, and 100 for a loan from the goldsmith. It is likely that the expenses related to the mausoleum concerned the procurement of basic materials, certainly expensive, whose expenditure had not yet been paid by the client. To resolve the dispute, Antonio II Martinengo revolves the debt towards the goldsmith on such a Gerolamo di Lazzaro, debtor towards the noble proper of 300 ducats. The document attests that the formula is accepted and signed by all three parties involved.

Reconciliation, however, does not last long. Six months later, in an act dated 6 November 1506, Antonio II Martinengo once again owes his debt to the Delle Croci of 1000 Venetian lira, that is to say, about 300 ducats, and for the same causal, ie various relating to the mausoleum and a loan from the goldsmith against the noble. Furthermore, the document establishes the death of Francesco Martinengo, brother of Antonio II and commissioner along with these of the monument. Also in this case, all the parties accept and sign the transfer of the debt. to Bernardino delle Croci from Antonio II to that Ottolino di Sant'Ottolino, debtor towards the nobleman of the same figure It is therefore clear that the breach of the Delle Croci in the delivery of the mausoleum was in fact caused by the non-payment of the Martinengo client, who had not even covered the first purchase costs of materials, as well as not repaying the goldsmith of two loans from he obtained.

After this act, the documentary sequence stops for a good 10 years. In this period of time, the European political climate overheats, bringing shortly to the facts of War of the League of Cambrai and the first French raids in Brescia, culminating in the terrible sack of Brescia of 1512 by the French led by Gaston of Foix, Duke of Nemours who, in addition to throwing the city into ruins, dissolves the myth of Brixia magnipotens. The Martinengo, always a Venetian wire, certainly spend obscure years, during which the great order at the Delle Croci, relating to a golden age for the economy and the arts now ended, is completely set aside.

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