Wood

WOOD. - From the earliest manifestations of Mediterranean civilization, precious wooden material found use in the applied arts. During the Early Christian and Byzantine periods, noteworthy are the doors of St. Ambrose in Milan, and above all the splendid one of St. Sabina in Rome (5th century), in cypress wood, with panels of biblical figurations and frames with vegetal motifs.

In the full flowering of the Romanesque, there are then expressions of authentic polychrome statuary with the Madonna in Throne of St. Mary Major in Alatri, with that of the parish church of Acuto now in the Museum of Palazzo Venezia and with the pathetic, popular Depositions of the cathedral of Tivoli and the cathedral of Volterra. Even in German lands, wood sculpture, even before the greatest Gothic flowering, was cultivated with success, as demonstrated by the Madonna of the Treasury in the cathedral of Essen, the Crucifix in the cathedral of Brunswick, the door of St. Mary in the Capitol in Cologne. But it was the 14th century that was to favor an extraordinarily fertile and multiform development of the art of wood; with beamed and coffered ceilings, with stalls and lecterns in church choirs, with pulpits, altars, cathedras, altarpieces, furniture of every kind and use. In Italy the Pisan sculptors prevailed with their tender Annunciations and the builders of carved stalls, such as those of the cathedral of Orvieto (designed by the Sienese Vanni di Tura), of the cathedral of Siena (due to Francesco del Tonchio) and of St. Dominic in Ferrara, in which shines the exquisite skill of Giovanni da Baiso, master of church cabinetmaking in the Po valley. Toward the end of the 1300s, in Burgundy, the Fleming Jacques de Baerze was in vogue with his carved altarpieces.

At the beginnings of the Renaissance and for several decades still, the structures and ornamentations of Gothic taste continued everywhere, as seen in the carved choirs of the chapel of the Palazzo della Signoria in Siena (1428), and of the church of St. Stephen in Venice (end of the 15th century); in the very fine polyptych of the cathedral of Piacenza, executed around 1480 by Antonio Burlenghi; in the rich ceiling of the former hall of the Chapter of the Carità in Venice, executed by the Vicentine Marco Cozzi, also author of the choir of St. Mary of the Friars. But certain great artists of the Tuscan Quattrocento did not disdain wood sculpture, and it suffices to cite the two celebrated Crucifixes of Filippo Brunelleschi and of Donatello, respectively in the churches of St. Mary Novella and of St. Croce in Florence, the ascetic Donatellian Magdalen in the Baptistery of that city, and the statues of the pupils of Jacopo della Quercia in Siena. It was also up to Tuscan masters to renew cabinetmaking carving, not without vague pictorial applications, obtained with the use of long and flexible sheets, curved and twisted in every direction. In Florence excelled Giuliano and Benedetto da Majano, with the decorations of Palazzo Vecchio and of the sacristy of St. Mary of the Flower, with putti and festoons of Robbian grace; the artisan dynasty of the Del Tasso, among whom the greatest exponent was Domenico with the marvelous, flowered Audience Hall in the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia (around 1490), Baccio d'Agnolo, prolific builder of furniture and carved chests, and Battista del Cinque, working in the Laurentian Library, on designs by Michelangelo. In Siena, Antonio di Neri and Giovanni, called Barile, enjoyed high renown (to the latter are owed the beautiful doors of the Vatican Rooms in Rome), Giovanni Pifferio, author of the organ in the chapel of the Palazzo della Signoria, and Bartolomeo Neroni, called il Riccio. In northern Italy triumphed the inventiveness and technical ingenuity of fra' Giovanni da Verona, with the pupils fra' Raffaello da Brescia and fra' Vincenzo delle Vacche, of fra' Damiano da Bergamo (where Gianfrancesco Capodiferro also emerged), of Marcantonio Zucchi in Piacenza, of the Marchesi da Formigine in Bologna, of the Mandelli and of Prospero Clementi in Reggio Emilia, of the Frenchman Riccardo Taurino in Padua, of Ambrogio Santagostino and of Anselmo and Virgilio Del Conte in Milan. The polychrome inlays accompanied splendidly the developments of Renaissance forms, with their admirable pictorial and perspectival effects, through the work, at first, of the aforementioned Giuliano and Benedetto da Majano, of Domenico d'Antonio Indivino da Sanseverino (stalls of the upper basilica of St. Francis in Assisi), of the Modenese Bartolomeo dei Polli (choir of the charterhouse of Pavia, on a design by the painter Borgognone), of Lorenzo and Cristoforo Canozi da Lendinara, under the influence of Piero della Francesca (cathedral of Modena), of Baccio Pontelli who directed the works in the famous studiolo of Duke Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino (the figures of the three theological virtues are believed to have been executed on designs by Sandro Botticelli). And in the following Cinquecento, the aforementioned fra' Giovanni da Verona, with the choir stalls in the cenobium of Monteoliveto, and fra' Damiano da Bergamo, with the doors of St. Peter in Perugia, and with the stalls of St. Dominic in Bologna, brought inlay to the summit of picturesque refinement and executive mastery, achieving effects even of aerial perspective. In this same period there flourished in Germany, with pronounced national characteristics, the sculptors Lucas Moser, Grasser, Michael Pacher, Hans Leimberger and then, in Nuremberg, the leader Veit Stoss, while the 15th-century stalls of the cathedral of Ulm and the altars of Bamberg and of Heilbronn attest to the flourishing of cabinetmaking skill, especially in the sphere of sacred art. No less appreciable appear, in France, the choir stalls in the cathedrals of Rouen and of Amiens. Spanish art, after Burgundian and Flemish influences, underwent those of the Italian Renaissance, especially through the work of Alonso Berruguete, who resided in Italy.

The general characteristics of the Baroque age are also reflected in wood sculpture and in carving, which manifest a great variety of stylistic motifs and executive devices, expanding the conquests of the late Cinquecento. In our peninsula, at the head of those of the other regions, the 17th-century Venetian and Lombard masters established themselves, principally: Francesco Planta the younger and Giacomo Piazzetta (father of the celebrated painter Giambattista) in Venice, with the figured backboards of the school of St. Roch and of the sacristy of Sts. John and Paul; G. B. Salmoiraghi, working in Milan and in Valtellina, Giacomo Bertesi and Domenico Capra in Cremona, Giuseppe Bulgarini in Brescia, and the very fertile dynasty of the Fantoni (eminent above all Andrea) and of the Caniana inlayers in the Bergamasque region. In Genoa are remembered Filippo Parodi and Antonio Maria Maragliano; in Rome are imposed the executors of the still classical decorations in the choir of the canons in St. Peter's and in the cabinets of the sacristy of St. Francis a Ripa; in Lucca the gilded splendors of the alcove in the Palazzo Mansi astonish. No less prestigious and, toward the end of the century, more elegant and sober, the 18th-century activities. In Venice the Bellunese Andrea Brustolon, a fanatic of Bernini, creates a world renown, who educates in his eminently plastic taste Giovanni Marchiori; in Piedmont work with proven zeal G. L. Bosso, Pietro Piffetti, Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo; in Liguria G. B. Girolamo Pittaluga; in Rome D. Antonio Colicci, author of the very rich choir of Montecassino, and the executors of the organ and the other furnishings in the characteristic church of the Maddalena, of the ceiling of S. Clemente and of the organ of S. Maria in Vallicella; in Abruzzo Bernardino Mosca, to whom is attributed the most graceful ceiling of S. Bernardino at Aquila; in Naples, the carvers of the tribunes and the choir lofts of S. Chiara and of the spectacular Bourbon berlines. Throughout the whole eighteenth century, partly under French influence, furniture displayed the most varied qualities, especially in Venice, with polychrome lacquers, imitated in the Far East, in Piedmont, in Liguria and in Bologna, while in the second half of the century the Lombard Giuseppe Maggiolini asserted his own particular type of floral and landscape marquetry, inserting himself amiably into the all-too-austere linearity of Neo-classical taste. The art of furniture found its most distinguished champions above all in France, from the period of Henry IV to that of Louis XVI inclusive, with renowned cabinetmakers such as André Charles Boulle and Charles Cressent. - See pl. LXX.

Alberto Neppi