CIBORIUM. - From the Greek κιβώριον, also called fastigium, tegurium, and in the Middle Ages tiburium. It was an arched covering supported by four columns that the Romans used to protect statues, altars, fountains, and tombs, just as coverings were also placed in Syria for the protection of tombs. G. B. De Rossi holds that precisely because the altar, according to the concept inspired by the visions of the Apocalypse and according to liturgical prescriptions, is a table set above the tomb of Christ, Christian architecture used this system already in use for the protection of isolated tombs (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, III, Rome 1877, p. 437).
Indeed, the architectural type is found not only in Roman cippi or bas-reliefs but also in the Christian underground cemeteries: it is found once in Rome (the cemetery ad duas lauros), several times in Naples and Syracuse, and very often in Malta. In the Lateran Museum the inscription of Adeodata represents a ciborium with the cross in the center: (O. Marucchi, I monumenti del Museo Pio Lateranense, Milan 1910). The biography of Sylvester in the Lib. Pont. (ed. Duchesne, I, Paris 1886, p. 172) contains the description of the fastigium argenteum of the Lateran basilica; it had on one side the Savior seated on a chair between the twelve Apostles and on the other the Savior enthroned between four angels; it weighed 2025 pounds of silver. Rohault de Fleury attempted a reconstruction of it (La Messe, II, p. 3 and pl. 90). This ciborium was stolen by Alaric and replaced in the time of Sixtus III by the emperor Valentinian with another, also of silver (Lib. Pont., I, p. 233). Remains of the ancient marble ciborium donated by the presbyter Mercurius (later John II) in the time of Pope Hormisdas (514-23) are still preserved in the basilica of St. Clement.
A ciborium is represented in the mosaics of St. Mary Major. In the marble ciborium of the basilica of Sts. Nereus, Achilleus, and Petronilla in the cemetery of Domitilla, the martyrdom of the two Saints was represented on two columns; one of the surviving columns shows the scene of the martyrdom of Achilleus (O. Marucchi, Roma sotterranea, I, II, Rome 1914, p. 174, fig. 40, and reconstruction on p. 149, fig. 49).
In general, however, in the Roman basilicas the columns that supported the ciborium were of red porphyry: it was generally provided with vela, which are often mentioned in the Lib. Pont. among the donations made by the popes to individual basilicas, sometimes called tetravela because of the four walls.
G. B. De Rossi illustrated the remains of two African ciboria: Arco d'un c. presso Mediana Zabuniorum, in Bull. d'arch. crist., 3rd series, 3 (1878), pp. 115-177; id., Arco marmoreo di tabernacolo rinvenuto nella Mauretania adorno dell'immagine di Daniele fra i leoni e di altri simboli cristiani, ibid., 5th series, 2 (1891), pp. 67-72, 138.
Enrico Josi
There are rather numerous examples of ciboria dating back to the 8th and 9th centuries. One recalls that of St. George in Valpolicella, now dismembered, where the characteristics of the sculpture of that age appear clearly expressed. The inscription of 712 recalls the names of an Ursus Magester cum discipolis suis Iuwintino et Iuwiono. Characters not dissimilar are shown by some remains of a c. in the Christian Museum of Brescia and in S. Maria in Valle at Cividale, and by the c., this one still intact with its four columns surmounted by Corinthian capitals, the arcades worked in relief and the pyramid roof on a polygonal base, which was in S. Prospero at Perugia and is now in the Archaeological Museum of that city. Similar characters are also shown by some remains of a c. from the Pieve di Bagnacavallo, by the c. of S. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, from the time of Bishop Valerius (896-910), and by the other one that still covers the altar of the Miracle in S. Cristina at Bolsena; the latter, however, could belong, judging by the character of the reliefs, to the 10th century.
In the Romanesque age the c. assume, in the organization and general distribution of the architectural elements, also in relation to the setting, a greater impressiveness and correctness of proportions. Worth citing are the c. of S. Pietro at Tuscania, very simple, with masonry arches and surmounted by a square pyramid roof, adorned, in the terminal cornice, with a clear inscription that speaks of the consecration of the altar that took place in 1093, and the very beautiful one of S. Ambrogio in Milan with magnificent stucco reliefs that some scholars have believed they could attribute to the 9th century. From it derives the other one of S. Pietro al Monte at Civate. To the 12th century also belongs the c. of S. Marco in Venice supported by four historiated columns that go back to the 6th century, and the one of the cathedral of Parenzo. They reflect Byzantine manners, especially in the roofing.
Meanwhile, while in Abruzzo there spreads, almost a distant echo of Oriental suggestions, a type of c. that has lobed arcades (S. Clemente at Casauria) according to a somewhat rustic taste that is also welcomed in upper Lazio (S. Maria Maggiore at Tuscania), in Rome a type of c. is realized in which the columns, sometimes of rare marbles, are connected by architraves rather than by arches, and upon these the roof or pyramid covering is set on rows of small columns. Notable examples are in S. Clemente, in S. Giorgio in Velabro, in S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura and in the minor centers of Lazio where the activity of the Roman marble-workers extended.
And it is in Rome that at the end of the 1200s, through the work of Arnolfo di Cambio, two c. are created at S. Paolo (1285) and at S. Cecilia in Trastevere (1293) that must be placed, both for the elegance of their lines, by now Gothic, and for the vigor and beauty of the sculptures, which there assume a character of pre-eminence, among the masterpieces of Italian art. The Arnolfian models were immediately imitated; the type was echoed by Deodato in S. Maria in Cosmedin (1294), and they were still regarded with interest, but without grasping their sense of exquisite elegance, by that Giovanni di Stefano to whom was assigned by Urban V, after the fire of 1361, the cumbersome c. of S. Giovanni in Laterano.
When it was being erected in the cathedral of Rome, already a few years earlier Andrea Orcagna, in Orsammichele at Florence, had brought to completion a c. (1349-59) that can be considered a masterpiece more of craftsmanship than of Florentine art. Entirely inlaid with polychrome marbles, overloaded with ornaments, carvings, tracery, studded with mosaics and surmounted by a strange ovoid dome, which appears between two piers beyond a cusp devoid of upward thrust, it has round-headed arcades, and because of a certain deliberate heaviness of its own it could be understood, at Florence, almost as a polemical statement in opposition to the soaring of the Gothic so dear to the Sienese and Pisan artists.
With the work of Andrea Orcagna and Giovanni di Stefano, the ciborium had taken on the character of a true and proper architectural work that was inserted within the well-defined and enclosed space of the church. An architecture within another architecture, and therefore difficult to harmonize with the taste and spatial sense of the men of the Renaissance. Thus the Michelozzian ciboria of the Santissima Annunziata and of Impruneta, and the other similar ones, do not have a true and proper character of a ciborium, since they are not isolated but placed against walls. But in the second half of the 16th century it returns use returns once again of creating c. that are precisely true and proper sanctuaries erected within the interior of the church, and they are conceived and executed with architectural taste, made precious above all for the richness of the material and the refinement of technique. Characteristic: that of the Roman church of S. Alessio, which is from 1382; very beautiful and well studied, also in relation to the setting, that of the basilica of S. Agnese, which has four precious porphyry columns and which is from 1614, and the other one of the church of S. Crisogono supported by four precious alabaster columns, from the time when G. B. Soria, by order of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1623), was remodeling the ancient church in Trastevere.
Along the same path must be considered the other c. that between the 1500s and 1600s encamp with their peremptory structures in the middle of the churches; first among all that of the Florentine church of S. Spirito; a very rich and monumental work, but disharmonious with respect to the lofty music of the Brunelleschian structures of the church, a work of Giovanni Caccini, who had as collaborators here G. Silvani and A. Ubaldini.
The Baroque age, with its unitary sense of environmental decoration, gave, through the work of one of its greatest geniuses, G. L. Bernini, a new solution to the problem by creating in the Petrine basilica the famous baldachin (1624-33). This baldachin (v.) with its four bronze twisted columns and the fastigium likewise of bronze, formed by four brackets joined at the top to support the globe with the cross, with its drapes and its statues assumes, by the very character of the material, a sense of the provisional despite the gigantic structure. The great Berninian model, so new as to appear revolutionary, was immediately taken as an example and imitated in Italy and abroad, for example in the cathedral of Trent and in the church of Val de Grâce in Paris, and, still in the eighteenth century, when new intentions of architectural composure were already being announced, Ferdinando Fuga took up its fundamental theme again in the fastigium of the one he created in S. Maria Maggiore in Rome (1743-50).
The nineteenth-century c., which generally reflect the eclectic character of the architecture of the time, are often imitations of the medieval ones. - See Plates XCIX-C.
See also BALDACHIN AND TABERNACLE.
Bibliography4 works
Emilio Lavagnino