Hardcover
1637 · Forlì
by Bezzi, Giuliano (1592-1674), author. Del Buono, Floriano (1599-1647), artist
Forlì: Giovanni Cimatti, 1637. SOLE EDITION. Hardcover. Fine. Bound in 18th c. quarter vellum and paste-paper over boards (re-cased, possiby a remboîtage, recent endpapers.) A fine copy with just a small abrasion to the blank lower margin of the half-title and title with careful restoration, and a short, clean tear in the blank margin of leaf H2 (not touching the text.) The text is very fresh; the plates are in excellent condition. A very rare festival book, one of the most significant published in the Romagna in the Baroque period, celebrating the installation of a miraculous woodcut image of the Madonna in a newly-constructed chapel. Illustrated with 16 fine plates of parade floats, mock chariots and ships, ephemeral arches, and other decorative elements created for the event. The engraved architectural title page features the “Madonna del Fuoco” (Madonna of the Fire) and the Barberini arms.
The cult of the Madonna del Fuoco has its origin in the conflagration of 1428 that devasted a school in Forlì, sparing only a large woodcut of the Virgin Mary that hung in the classroom, which from then on was venerated throughout the region. By the 17th c., the cult of the Madonna del Fuoco had outgrown the small chapel erected to the image and, in 1636, a larger chapel was constructed in the Forlì cathedral to house the miraculous woodcut.
This book is a record of the grand festival staged for the installation of the image in its new home. Pilgrims from every part of the Romagna came to Forlì to celebrate and witness the procession. The author is Giuliano Bezzi (1592-1674), who tells us that he owed his own life to the Madonna del Fuoco, who had saved him from a near-fatal fever. The fine engravings were made by the Bolognese artist Floriano Del Buono (1599-1647).
The floats were sponsored by the leading religious confraternities. The most impressive of these, created by the Compagnia di S. Michele (the “battuti rossi”), boasted a mechanical salamander that belched water. Among the other sponsors of the floats was the Fraternity of Death, whose members consoled condemned criminals and buried paupers and plague victims. The float featured the goddess Iris spreading her rainbow over the burning school house in which the miraculous image had survived unscathed. The drawing for that print is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (64.180.1).
The book, with its detailed description of the woodcut, has been called the earliest monograph on a printed picture and “perhaps the most important piece of public writing about the Madonna of the Fire”(Lisa Pon, “A Printed Icon in Early Modern Italy”, 2015, p. 15).
The Miracle:
On February 4, 1428, in the house of the schoolmaster Lombardino Brussi “fire broke out in the downstairs classroom… When this fire had feasted on the benches and cupboards of the school, it followed its nature to ascend and sprang at the sacred paper [the woodcut Madonna]. In awe at the sight of the most holy image, the flames stopped and -wonder of wonders- like the blameless fingers of a loving hand, they detached it from the wall to which it was tacked. The fire thought the wall too base to support so sublime a portrait and longed to uphold the heaven of that likeness, like the other heaven, on a blazing sphere. Above the flames raging in the closed room the unscorched image floated as on a throne. When the fire had consumed the ceiling beams it wafted out the revered leaf, not to burn but to exalt it. With this leaf on its back it flew to the second floor, to the third, to the roof, then through the roof, and behold, the Virgin's image burst above the wondrous pyre like a phoenix, triumphant and unconsumed! The miracle drew the eyes of all the populace and came to the ears of Monsignor Domenico Capranica, the papal legate, who carried the paper in a procession, accompanied by all the people, to the cathedral of Santa Croce, where it was placed in a holy but simple chapel.”(Translation by Hyatt Mayor)
Adoration of the Madonna of the Fire:
“[By] 1619 the cult of Our Lady of the Fire had so far outgrown the ‘holy but simple chapel’ which had been her home for two centuries that Forlì started to rebuild the left transept of the cathedral into a special shrine. By 1636 eighteen thousand scudi had been spent to complete a charming chamber about twenty- five feet square under a cupola fifty feet high- the world's first and still handsomest ‘print room’. The print is still enshrined there above the altar in a carved tabernacle closed by gilded bronze plaque embossed with flames. On high holidays during mass this sparkling shutter is lowered by a concealed pulley, while all the bells ring out around the town.
The Procession & Pageant:
“On October 20, 1636, the miraculous print was ‘translated’ from its old chapel in the cathedral to the new one by being paraded through all the main streets in a fantastic procession. The town had adorned itself with a [faux] marble column, two large painted perspectives, or vistas, and four arches, three wooden and one brick…. Each important guild or organization had constructed a complicated float for the procession…
“A series of banners and floats led up to a climax of chinking censers and pungent incense around a canopy of gold and silver brocade, under which the bishop walked with the miraculous woodcut in his hands. As the procession returned to the cathedral it assembled around a huge green canvas mountain that split in quarters, spilled four mock cascades of the Deluge, and then launched forth Noah's Ark. The machine did not produce the Moses and singing cherubim that had been planned as the climax because the contriver fell ill before he could finish it. So, instead, the bishop said a prayer and blessed the people with the woodcut, while rockets sparkled and cannon boomed to welcome the Madonna of the Fire to her new home.”(Hyatt Mayor, “The First Famous Print” in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin , Nov., 1950, New Series, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Nov., 1950), pp. 73-76)
The Processional Wagons:
“In addition to banners, the confraternities marching in the 1636 translation of the Madonna of the Fire also had ‘macchine’ or processional wagons, most of which were pulled along the circuit of the city… These wagons became the setting for three distinct forms of theatrical performance. The first was an improvisatory comedy, full of physical antics, such as the lazzi or burle of traditional Italian commedia dell'arte , but involving a more pastoral setting. Characters such as the Hare, the Toad, and the Rocking Horse capered in a wood near a mountain; then the Wood and Mountain came alive and began dancing with each other. When the procession approached the piazza, a second theatrical form took over: a sacra rappresentazione beginning with an angel reciting vernacular poetry at the Gates of Paradise, which were represented by the pentagonal theater built in the piazza for the ritual display of the Madonna of the Fire. Finally, a third theatrical form took over, as the two wagons fell open: one spouted a deluge and became the scene for Noah’s Ark; the other - never completed but illustrated in Bezzi’s book - was supposed to show Moses going up the mountain. The bishop then arrived in the procession, and he carried out the appropriate sacred rites before placing the Madonna of the Fire into the temporary theater.
“The other processional wagons were mobile, most usually with the form of a wheeled cart still visible, if elaborately decorated and bearing marvelous allegorical scenes. In two cases, however, that of the Battuti Verdi and that of the Battuti Rossi, the underlying structure of the wagons were fully disguised. The Verdi’s wagon was almost thirty feet long and represented a ship sailing on the open seas, with its silvery hull rising above painted waves. A sculpted image representing the Madonna of the Fire stood atop the towering main mast, encircled by Saint Elmo’s Fire, the legendary glow, which storm-tossed Christian sailors saw as a sign of divine aid. At the foot of the mast, Saint Francis Xavier stood holding a compass and map in one hand, and a crab with a crucifix in its claw in the other. This crustacean alludes to the story that on a voyage to the Far East, Francis Xavier sought to calm a turbulent sea by throwing in his crucifix; the waters indeed calmed and upon safely reaching the shores of Malacca, a crab appeared holding the lost crucifix in its claw. These two emblems of maritime salvation were not only crowned by the image of the Madonna of the Fire on the mast but also surrounded by local Forlivese saints. Saint Valerian, the Roman soldier believed to have been martyred near Forlì, stood at the prow holding the city’s flag; Forlì’s bishop saint San Mercuriale stood at the stem. Perhaps even more spectacular than the Verdi’s ship was the triumphal wagon of the Battuti Rossi, which appeared to be:
‘A very large salamander, so well copied from reality that one would take it for a real one, if a true salamander’s smallness were not exceeded by the great size of the feigned one.... It walked on four great legs ... and then the great tail lifted from the ground, where for the most part it had dragged along, and jets of water squirted from the immense head, drenching spectators ... it carried with devoted agility in the middle of the vast field of its great back a statue of the Holy Virgin with flames at her feet and dressed in a blue mantle with gold stars.’
“This wagon appeared to be an animated being, walking on four legs, raising its tail, and swaying its head.”(Pon, p. 164-165). (Inventory #: 5218)
The cult of the Madonna del Fuoco has its origin in the conflagration of 1428 that devasted a school in Forlì, sparing only a large woodcut of the Virgin Mary that hung in the classroom, which from then on was venerated throughout the region. By the 17th c., the cult of the Madonna del Fuoco had outgrown the small chapel erected to the image and, in 1636, a larger chapel was constructed in the Forlì cathedral to house the miraculous woodcut.
This book is a record of the grand festival staged for the installation of the image in its new home. Pilgrims from every part of the Romagna came to Forlì to celebrate and witness the procession. The author is Giuliano Bezzi (1592-1674), who tells us that he owed his own life to the Madonna del Fuoco, who had saved him from a near-fatal fever. The fine engravings were made by the Bolognese artist Floriano Del Buono (1599-1647).
The floats were sponsored by the leading religious confraternities. The most impressive of these, created by the Compagnia di S. Michele (the “battuti rossi”), boasted a mechanical salamander that belched water. Among the other sponsors of the floats was the Fraternity of Death, whose members consoled condemned criminals and buried paupers and plague victims. The float featured the goddess Iris spreading her rainbow over the burning school house in which the miraculous image had survived unscathed. The drawing for that print is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (64.180.1).
The book, with its detailed description of the woodcut, has been called the earliest monograph on a printed picture and “perhaps the most important piece of public writing about the Madonna of the Fire”(Lisa Pon, “A Printed Icon in Early Modern Italy”, 2015, p. 15).
The Miracle:
On February 4, 1428, in the house of the schoolmaster Lombardino Brussi “fire broke out in the downstairs classroom… When this fire had feasted on the benches and cupboards of the school, it followed its nature to ascend and sprang at the sacred paper [the woodcut Madonna]. In awe at the sight of the most holy image, the flames stopped and -wonder of wonders- like the blameless fingers of a loving hand, they detached it from the wall to which it was tacked. The fire thought the wall too base to support so sublime a portrait and longed to uphold the heaven of that likeness, like the other heaven, on a blazing sphere. Above the flames raging in the closed room the unscorched image floated as on a throne. When the fire had consumed the ceiling beams it wafted out the revered leaf, not to burn but to exalt it. With this leaf on its back it flew to the second floor, to the third, to the roof, then through the roof, and behold, the Virgin's image burst above the wondrous pyre like a phoenix, triumphant and unconsumed! The miracle drew the eyes of all the populace and came to the ears of Monsignor Domenico Capranica, the papal legate, who carried the paper in a procession, accompanied by all the people, to the cathedral of Santa Croce, where it was placed in a holy but simple chapel.”(Translation by Hyatt Mayor)
Adoration of the Madonna of the Fire:
“[By] 1619 the cult of Our Lady of the Fire had so far outgrown the ‘holy but simple chapel’ which had been her home for two centuries that Forlì started to rebuild the left transept of the cathedral into a special shrine. By 1636 eighteen thousand scudi had been spent to complete a charming chamber about twenty- five feet square under a cupola fifty feet high- the world's first and still handsomest ‘print room’. The print is still enshrined there above the altar in a carved tabernacle closed by gilded bronze plaque embossed with flames. On high holidays during mass this sparkling shutter is lowered by a concealed pulley, while all the bells ring out around the town.
The Procession & Pageant:
“On October 20, 1636, the miraculous print was ‘translated’ from its old chapel in the cathedral to the new one by being paraded through all the main streets in a fantastic procession. The town had adorned itself with a [faux] marble column, two large painted perspectives, or vistas, and four arches, three wooden and one brick…. Each important guild or organization had constructed a complicated float for the procession…
“A series of banners and floats led up to a climax of chinking censers and pungent incense around a canopy of gold and silver brocade, under which the bishop walked with the miraculous woodcut in his hands. As the procession returned to the cathedral it assembled around a huge green canvas mountain that split in quarters, spilled four mock cascades of the Deluge, and then launched forth Noah's Ark. The machine did not produce the Moses and singing cherubim that had been planned as the climax because the contriver fell ill before he could finish it. So, instead, the bishop said a prayer and blessed the people with the woodcut, while rockets sparkled and cannon boomed to welcome the Madonna of the Fire to her new home.”(Hyatt Mayor, “The First Famous Print” in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin , Nov., 1950, New Series, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Nov., 1950), pp. 73-76)
The Processional Wagons:
“In addition to banners, the confraternities marching in the 1636 translation of the Madonna of the Fire also had ‘macchine’ or processional wagons, most of which were pulled along the circuit of the city… These wagons became the setting for three distinct forms of theatrical performance. The first was an improvisatory comedy, full of physical antics, such as the lazzi or burle of traditional Italian commedia dell'arte , but involving a more pastoral setting. Characters such as the Hare, the Toad, and the Rocking Horse capered in a wood near a mountain; then the Wood and Mountain came alive and began dancing with each other. When the procession approached the piazza, a second theatrical form took over: a sacra rappresentazione beginning with an angel reciting vernacular poetry at the Gates of Paradise, which were represented by the pentagonal theater built in the piazza for the ritual display of the Madonna of the Fire. Finally, a third theatrical form took over, as the two wagons fell open: one spouted a deluge and became the scene for Noah’s Ark; the other - never completed but illustrated in Bezzi’s book - was supposed to show Moses going up the mountain. The bishop then arrived in the procession, and he carried out the appropriate sacred rites before placing the Madonna of the Fire into the temporary theater.
“The other processional wagons were mobile, most usually with the form of a wheeled cart still visible, if elaborately decorated and bearing marvelous allegorical scenes. In two cases, however, that of the Battuti Verdi and that of the Battuti Rossi, the underlying structure of the wagons were fully disguised. The Verdi’s wagon was almost thirty feet long and represented a ship sailing on the open seas, with its silvery hull rising above painted waves. A sculpted image representing the Madonna of the Fire stood atop the towering main mast, encircled by Saint Elmo’s Fire, the legendary glow, which storm-tossed Christian sailors saw as a sign of divine aid. At the foot of the mast, Saint Francis Xavier stood holding a compass and map in one hand, and a crab with a crucifix in its claw in the other. This crustacean alludes to the story that on a voyage to the Far East, Francis Xavier sought to calm a turbulent sea by throwing in his crucifix; the waters indeed calmed and upon safely reaching the shores of Malacca, a crab appeared holding the lost crucifix in its claw. These two emblems of maritime salvation were not only crowned by the image of the Madonna of the Fire on the mast but also surrounded by local Forlivese saints. Saint Valerian, the Roman soldier believed to have been martyred near Forlì, stood at the prow holding the city’s flag; Forlì’s bishop saint San Mercuriale stood at the stem. Perhaps even more spectacular than the Verdi’s ship was the triumphal wagon of the Battuti Rossi, which appeared to be:
‘A very large salamander, so well copied from reality that one would take it for a real one, if a true salamander’s smallness were not exceeded by the great size of the feigned one.... It walked on four great legs ... and then the great tail lifted from the ground, where for the most part it had dragged along, and jets of water squirted from the immense head, drenching spectators ... it carried with devoted agility in the middle of the vast field of its great back a statue of the Holy Virgin with flames at her feet and dressed in a blue mantle with gold stars.’
“This wagon appeared to be an animated being, walking on four legs, raising its tail, and swaying its head.”(Pon, p. 164-165). (Inventory #: 5218)
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