TOMBA

TOMB. – The tomb interests the history of civilization as a testimony, often irreplaceable, to the creative attitudes of the most ancient peoples, constituting in itself an autonomous artistic entity, like the temple and the house for civil habitation. For more recent civilizations, it offers equally probative documents, being a complex in which architecture, sculpture, and painting converge in an interesting dialectic of exchanges.

The purpose of the tomb, expressing one of the most deeply rooted spiritual needs in the human soul and held in great honor by almost all religions, generally determines the allusive or symbolic orientation of its particular forms. Consequently, the meaning of the monument varies according to the dominant ideas and the strength and purity of the religious sentiment that invests it, in different eras and cultures. Since it was always a point of honor for the exponents of the ruling classes, in every period of history, to indicate the degree of their power and excellence through the sumptuousness, grandeur, and beauty of tombs, these became, in certain eras and civilizations, true celebratory monuments, in which homage to the deceased transcends the intention of affirming his presence as a symbol of dynastic, genealogical continuity, or of the idea that he embodied (consider the tombs of Egyptian, Babylonian, Aztec, and Inca kings; the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the tombs of Augustus and Hadrian, and up to the contemporary mausoleums of Lenin and Stalin).

The most evident differentiation of Christian civilization from others, ancient and modern, appears from its very origins in the adaptation of funerary monuments to religious buildings, with a clear criterion of subordination, both for tombs erected outside and those placed inside churches. Thus, even the Christian mausoleum (such as that of Constantina in Rome or Galla Placidia in Ravenna) and the various family chapels that constitute its modern equivalent were conceived as places of worship, in which homage is rendered to God, and human remains are piously housed. This clear organizing concept, which never waned until laws prohibited burials within churches, did not prevent the broadest variety and originality of forms: for the Church did not stifle the ambitions of patrons but contained them within the limits of propriety and decency.

Funereal art in the periods of greatest splendor of Christian civilization was, moreover, the prerogative not of artisan craftsmen (as was often the case in Greece and Rome) but of supreme artists, who frequently left their masterpieces in arks, tombs, and sarcophagi. This is the principal reason why any classification based on the affinities of profiles and outlines proves, in the final analysis, insufficient, as it does not allow for an exact progression even in chronological deviations. In any case, for the sake of synthesis, some schemes will be followed here that permit a general orientation (for the Paleochristian period and for particular forms and customs, see the respective entries, such as ARK; CEMETERIES; SARCOPHAGI, etc. See also BYZANTINE ART; ITALY, ART).

In the pre-Roman and Roman periods, tombs were placed inside churches and cloisters: either beneath the floor—distinguished by inscriptions and sometimes by graffiti and bas-reliefs reproducing the image of the deceased on the slab—or, already with monumental intent, affixed to walls, gathered within neat and sober frames (niches, entablatures, pilasters) or covered by plutei and transennae, particularly within the persistent Byzantine influence (the tomb of the Dogaressa Michiel in the atrium of St. Mark’s in Venice). Very often, reused materials (Greek, Roman) were adapted for this purpose, altering the inscription and constructing carved supports, sometimes decorated with mosaic (Cosmatesque tombs of the Savelli family in S. Maria in Aracoeli in Rome). Even tombs detached from walls assume similar characteristics. They feature a base, with or without a canopy (the latter consisting of four columns supporting a low pitched roof). Decoration is limited to some friezes or figurations on the lid or sides of the ark (tombs of the Norman kings in the cathedral of Palermo). Outdoors, some imitate ancient monuments along consular roads (the so-called tomb of Bohemond in Canosa), but the most common type is the canopy tomb, even in the blending of Romanesque and Gothic styles (tombs of the Bolognese glossators).

In the Gothic period, the architectural and consequently decorative element assumes greater development.

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8. – ENCYCLOPEDIA CATHOLICA. – XII.
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(1st. Franceschi)

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TOSBA – Enamel tomb slab of Geoffrey Plantagenet (12th c.) – Le Mans, Museum.

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(The figure of the deceased is generally shown two or three times, in the attitudes of life and death.) The impetus for these solutions is given by masterpieces associated with the names of Giovanni Pisano (see), Arnolfo di Cambio (see), and Tino da Camaino (see). The most complex example of this system in Italy is perhaps the tomb of King Robert of Anjou in S. Chiara in Naples, partially destroyed during the war, by the two Florentines Pacio and Giovanni Bertini (1343). In the tomb of Bishop Tarlati in the cathedral of Arezzo by the Sienese Agostino di Giovanni and Angelo di Ventura, documentary and celebratory bas-reliefs appear in superimposed registers.

In the Cosmatesque tombs of Rome (monuments to Luca Savelli and to Honorius IV in S. Maria in Aracoeli), the influence of Gothic culture appears permeated by a demand for clarity and compositional coherence induced by classical models. The canopies retain their primary and fundamental function as spatial partitions. Painting (fresco or mosaic) is used to complement the backgrounds and sometimes the adjacent walls (monument to Cardinal d’Acquasparta in S. Maria in Aracoeli): a practice also found outside Rome (monument to Tommaso Pellegrino in S. Anastasia in Verona), which would be transmitted to the early Renaissance (Brenzoni monument in S. Fermo in Verona, with frescoes by Pisanello). Here, painting takes the place of bas-relief, which is instead the preferred form of decoration in the late Gothic and Renaissance periods.

Even outdoors, Gothic tombs assume complex and fanciful cadences in articulated vertical sequences. More

both by Donatello; marble inlaid slab of Bishop Bartoli in the cathedral of Siena, by Federighi [1444]).

A natural development of the earthen tomb, the tomb on a base, consisting of an ark on a podium detached from the wall, with the effigy of the deceased lying on the lid, erected generally in side chapels or in the transept arms, enjoyed great popularity, especially in France. The most famous examples in Italy belong to the early Renaissance period, which understood the plastic value of the monument isolated within the architectural environment (tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in the cathedral of Lucca, by Jacopo della Quercia [1406]; double tomb with the side-by-side portraits of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d’Este, in the left transept arm of the Certosa of Pavia, by Cristoforo Solari [c. 1497]). This type, favored by ruling houses (double tombs of the French kings in St. Denis; of the Swedish kings in the cathedral of Uppsala; of Engelbert II in the cathedral of Breda, etc.), is probably related to the liturgical ceremonial of noble funerals. Between the tomb slab and the base type lies the bronze tomb of Sixtus IV in the Vatican grottoes, a masterpiece by A. Pollaiuolo (see), to whom is also attributed the wall tomb of Innocent VIII in St. Peter’s. Essentially, the 15th century does not bring significant departures from the iconography of the preceding period; it adapts to criteria of structural organicism and rhythmic articulation through precise geometric recurrences. In Florence and Tuscany, the field is dominated by Donatello and Michelozzo, Antonio and Bernardo Rossellino, Desiderio da Settignano, and Mino da Fiesole.

In the time of Pope John XXIII in the Baptistery of Florence, Donatello (with Michelozzo and Pagno di Lago Portigiani) introduces elements of clear classical morphology in the decoration, but preserves the Gothic arrangement of the wall tomb with its lofty ark and baldachin; similarly, in the Brancaccio monument in S. Angelo in Nilo in Naples (with Michelozzo), the Renaissance manifests itself only in the substitution of the Corinthian column for the baldachin’s pillars.

A place apart is occupied by the tomb of the jurist Varj in S. Domenico in Bologna, by Jacopo della Quercia, who frees the sarcophagus from the baldachin and secures it to the wall with powerful corbels. More typical of the new figurative culture, in all the details of the decoration—especially in the plastically simplified partitions contained beneath a broad arch—is the monument to Leonardo Bruni in S. Croce in Florence, by Bernardo Rossellino, which preserves the portrait of the deceased, lying upon the ark. From this tomb derive the facing monument to Marsuppini, by Desiderio di Settignano; and others by A. Rossellino and Benedetto da Maiano in Naples, by Mino da Fiesole, by A. Rossellino in Florence, by Matteo Civitali in Lucca, by Simone Ferrucci in Forlì, and so on. In the so-called tabernacle tomb, a more secure balance is achieved between horizontal and vertical lines in the rectangular façade. This is the type favored by the marble workers active in Rome in the 15th century (tomb of Eugene IV in S. Salvatore in Lauro, by Isaia da Pisa; tombs executed by Andrea Bregno [v.] and his school).

Under the influence of A. Rossellino and Mino da Fiesole, the scheme soon enriches itself with decorative elements and busts placed in niches (monument to Cardinal Albert in S. Maria in Aracoeli, by Bregno). A similar arrangement, with the variant of a frame of colored majolica panels, is presented by the Federighi tomb in S. Trinita in Florence, by Luca della Robbia. To Mino da Fiesole is owed the diffusion of another scheme destined for wide fortune: the ark, supported by corbels, without architectural framing, is set against a backdrop of marble slabs with the bust of the deceased beneath the ark (as in the monument to Bishop Salutati in the cathedral of Fiesole), or above it (tomb of Mantegna in S. Andrea in Mantua; with a medallion by M. Cavalli, 1506). The Capponi will adapt the bust portrait to the Brescian scheme (monument to the Bonsi brothers in S. Gregorio al Celio in Rome).

The most tenacious infiltration of the Gothic style in northern Italy spurs artists to compromise results.

Typical examples are the tombs by Amadeo, graceful and sensitive to Tuscan models in the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo, but unrestrained in the unbalanced, exceedingly tall, yet suggestive ark of S. Lanfranco in Pavia (1498). The masterpiece of Venetian funerary architecture (which has a Tuscan prototype in the aforementioned monument to Tomaso Mocenigo) is the mausoleum of Doge Nicola Tron, in the church of the Frari, by A. Rizzo and assistants in 1473. Overcrowded with statues in the five registers of its high and imposing façade, it will influence all funerary art in the lagoon city.

Even Pietro Lombardo and his son Tullio, though influenced by Rizzo’s lesson, created a masterpiece (tomb of Doge Pietro Mocenigo, in S. Giovanni e Paolo, 1485). Among the best examples are also the tomb on a socle of Cardinal G. B. Zeno in S. Marco in Venice, cast in bronze by P. Savin; the Roccaboncella monument in S. Francesco in Padua, with bronze bas-reliefs by B. Bellano (1498); the Onigo monument in S. Nicolò in Treviso, with frescoes by L. Lotto (c. 1502).

Derived from Gothic models is the arcosolium tomb (sepulcher of T. Pepoli in S. Domenico in Bologna), favored by L. B. Alberti (also in the exterior of the Malatesta Temple in Rimini, and within it, the monument to Sigismondo Malatesta). The bare ark is recessed into the wall, beneath a vault or in rectangular niches. A masterpiece of this type, in a variant determined by the use of bronze, is the tomb of Giovanni and Piero de’ Medici, in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo in Florence, by Verrocchio (v.).

In the 16th century, the funerary monument adapts itself to that concept of the “grand style” which will dominate all art of the century, chiefly under Michelangelo’s influence. The first decisive innovation is the triumphal-arch arrangement, articulated by subordinate lateral members (simulating the minor fornices). The definition of the type is primarily due to Andrea Sansovino (tomb of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, 1505, and of Cardinal Girolamo Basso della Rovere, 1507, in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome). The use of strongly projecting columns becomes constant; and the contrasts of light and shadow achieve the pictorial vision characteristic of Mannerist language. Dependent on this scheme are the tombs of Cardinal Michiel and of his nephew Bishop Orso (with two arks and their superimposed portraits) in S. Marcello al Corso in Rome (1503–11); the monument to Adrian VI in S. Maria dell’Anima, by B. Peruzzi; and many others of popes and eminent personalities, up to those of Pius V and Sixtus V in the side chapels of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, by D. Fontana and F. Ponzio respectively, which mark the point of suture with the Baroque.

Sansovino also renews the conception of the funerary portrait. The deceased, still lying on the ark, is however raised on his elbows and turns his face, resting on his hand, toward the viewer, as in Etruscan sarcophagi. Soon every allusion to death is abandoned, and the subjects of the tombs are presented in their typical attitudes as living figures, as already in the tomb of Innocent VIII by Pollaiuolo in St. Peter’s. The most lively and fantastic among the monuments of this type is that of Luisa Deti in S. Maria sopra Minerva (with sculptures by Nicolò Cordier), in which Baroque polychrome decoration already abounds. The scheme has examples also in other Italian regions, where, however, 15th-century tradition offers more tenacious resistance (monument to M. Ferdinando and F. D’Affitto in S. Maria Nuova in Naples; to Giacomo Medici in the cathedral of Milan, by Leone Leoni). In Venice it is introduced by Jacopo Sansovino (v.) (monument to Francesco Venier, in S. Salvatore, where, however, the deceased is still lying in the traditional attitude).

Characteristic monumental organisms of the 16th century, developed according to the dominant ideas of the century, even outside this scheme, are the Ark of the Saint in S. Antonio in Padua (worked on by A. Briosco detto il Riccio, Minelli dei Bardi, J. Sansovino, Falconetto, and Tiziano Aspetti, author of the altarpiece, throughout the 16th century); and, in another vein, the tomb of Queen Bona of Poland in S. Nicola in Bari, occupying with its columnar partitions the great curve of the apse. The queen appears at the center, turned toward the high altar in an attitude of prayer, according to a scheme that will be widely employed in the following century in Italy and abroad (tombs of Charles V and Philip II at the Escorial, by Pompeo Leoni). Alongside these grand compositions, in the 16th century small-format princely tombs with a façade-like arrangement multiply. The fundamental element is the bust or the painted portrait medallion, around which classical entablature elements, frames, corbels, volutes, pediments, load-bearing putti, and so on, are gathered. The scheme will receive its definitive formulation from G. L. Bernini with the monument to Pietro Montoya in S. Maria di Monserrato in Rome (with a bust), from which derive those of the 17th and 18th centuries, with an uninterrupted filiation that, passing through the Baroque and Rococo, reaches Neoclassicism. A fine example of this type, with a painted medallion, is in the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, the tomb of V. Ubaldini della Gherardesca. Sometimes the façade is purely architectural and frames an urn (tomb of the Ponziani in S. Andrea in Mantua) or an hourglass (monument to G. Sforzani, in the cathedral of Reggio Emilia, by P. Clementi).

Also in the 16th century dates the creation of the true and proper chapel-mausoleum, inserted as a functional unit within the religious building (and thus different from the 15th-century prototypes, such as the Pazzi Chapel by Brunelleschi in Santa Croce in Florence, or the Colleoni Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, by Amadeo). Often such constructions are entrusted to supreme artists and provide fundamental elements for the exegesis of their language. For Michelangelo (Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo in Florence) and for Raphael (Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome), reference is therefore made to the individual entries.

Here we will limit ourselves to recalling the Carafa Chapel in the cathedral of Naples, by Malvito (1497-1507), and the sumptuous and elaborate Spinelli Chapel in Santa Caterina in Formello.

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**Tomb - Tomb slab of Leonardo Dati, by L. Ghiberti (1443) - Florence, church of Santa Maria Novella.**

At Naples, the Trivulzio Chapel in San Nazzaro in Milan occupies a place of its own, originally arranged as part of the larger building (v. BRAMANTE, DONATO), a masterpiece of essential organic unity, which found no following in the grandiose era of Mannerism and the Baroque.

To Michelangelo, for his tombs in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, goes the paternity of the scheme that would prevail in the monumental constructions of the Baroque, receiving its official consecration in the tomb of Paul III in St. Peter’s, a work by Guglielmo della Porta. The pyramidal theme brings the compositional focus back to the gaze of the sarcophagus, abandoning every superfluous motif and exalting the plastic rigor of the few allegorical statues and the portrait of the deceased, placed on the sarcophagus. No new subject invention (except perhaps the architectural one of the Avila monument in Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, which reveals a Borrominian source) characterizes the Baroque, which delights in complicating, sometimes with skilful scenographic results, the already loaded iconography of Sansovino’s schemes (monument to Doge Pesaro by A. Longhena and M. Barthel, 1699, in the church of the Frari in Venice), or Raphael’s (Chapel of San Severo with the mausoleum of the Sansevero family in Naples, begun in 1590 and reaching its present form through expansions and additions of 1610 and 1799), or else distorts those of Michelangelo with the intrusion of picturesque elements, such as the Gothic curtain and elaborate drapery (monument to Gregory XV in Sant’Ignazio in Rome, by Pierre Le Gros and Stefano Monot).

The most sumptuous monuments of the 17th and 18th centuries are the tombs of the popes in St. Peter’s (monument to Gregory XIII by C. Rusconi; to Leo XI by A. Algardi; to Urban VIII and to Alexander VII, both by G. L. Bernini; to Clement X by M. de Rossi, with sculptures by E. Ferrata, G. Mazzuoli and L. Morelli; to Innocent XI by C. Maratta and S. Monnot; to Alexander VIII by A. di San Martino, with sculptures by F. della Valle; to Benedict XIV, with sculptures by A. Bracci and G. Sibilla), and in other Roman churches (monument to Innocent X in Sant’Agnese, by G. B. Maini; to Clement IX in Santa Maria Maggiore, by F. Rainaldi; to Benedict XIII in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, by C. Marchionni and P. Bracci; to Clement XII in the mausoleum chapel of the Corsini family in San Giovanni in Laterano, architecture by A. Galilei, sculptures by G. B. Maini and G. Monaldi, a masterpiece of Italian funerary art in the transition from Baroque to Neoclassicism).

Rome is thus, in this period, the city that holds an unchallenged primacy, both in number, quality and variety of funerary monuments. The greatest artistic personalities operating there all contributed to determining this primacy; but the influence exerted by G. L. Bernini—who does not depart from the great Michelangelesque model, but enriches it with the polychromy of the marbles and with marginal inventions and devices—is certainly more resounding than that of P. Borromini (Falconieri monument in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome; arrangement of various tombs in the side aisles of San Giovanni in Laterano) PIETRO DA CORDOVA (v.) and C. Maratta, and will set the standard, for monumental complexes, until the appearance of Canova. One of Bernini’s most successful inventions is that of the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, in which the members of the family are represented as if looking out from two side balconies.

The late Baroque is characterized by the extravagance of ornamental motifs and the often arbitrary arrangement of the same Renaissance and Baroque schemes (monument to Maria Clementina Sobiesky in St. Peter’s; to Maria Flaminia Odelscalchi Chigi in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome). Flying angels appear, supporting the portraits of the patrons high above the urn (monument to Cardinal Imperiali in Sant’Agostino, by P. Posi, with sculptures by P. Bracci); or it is the Virtues that perform the same office (sculptures by D. Guidi in the aforementioned Falconieri monument in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini); but the most substantial innovation is the extensive application of macabre motifs, already introduced by Bernini in the tombs of Alexander VII and Urban VIII; realized, however, in such precious material and with such resounding chromatic harmonies, as to lose any allegorical efficacy.

In the tombs of the princes of Zagarolo in San Francesco a Ripa, by G. Mazzuoli, 1713-14, a skeleton in black marble offers the medallions of the patrons, white cameos standing out against the pink of the Raphael-esque pyramid in the background and the cold patches of taste framed by arabesques in gilded metal, of the architectural partitions and the sarcophagi; in the Ghisleni tomb in Santa Maria del Popolo, a skull of yellow marble is displayed in the half-light behind a grille.

The most extravagant example of this inclination of taste is offered by the cemetery of the church of the Capuchins in Rome, where the entire decoration is executed with actual human bones. We are, as is easy to see, outside the realm of art: but the singular complex provides the most telling index of a mentality that would have manifold repercussions on works of art, spurring that search for sensational effects, of questionable taste and substantially vacuous, which would generate the saturation of the Baroque and the rigid Neoclassical reaction. Outside Rome, especially in Naples and Venice—cities boasting flourishing schools of painting—the funerary art vies with it in the search for chromatic effects (as in the enormous light curtain studded with arabesques of the monument to Patriarch Francesco Morosini in the church of the Tolentini in Venice, by F. Parodi), or in a virtuosity that becomes an end in itself (as in the sculptures of Sanmartino, Corradini and Queirolo, in the Chapel of San Severo in Naples). The Neoclassical reaction, first with A. Galilei and subsequently with Canova, achieves a return to the essentiality of architectural layouts and motifs of plastic decoration, abandoning polychromy entirely.

Even while respecting Michelangelo’s scheme of the pyramidal composition, Canova succeeds in personal inventions (monument to Clement XIV in the SS. Apostoli and to Pope Clement XIII in St. Peter’s), in the way of composing the groups in articulated cadences, restoring dignity as symbols to the statues adjacent to the sarcophagi; while the portraits, in their oratorical gesturing and simulated inner composure, retain a realistic vigour, not unaware of Bernini’s lesson. To achieve these results, Canova definitively abandons the motif of the background curtain and sets the compositions in clear, squared planes directly against the walls, or makes them project from the Raphael-esque pyramid (monument to Queen Christina, in the church of the Augustinians in Vienna).

Neoclassicism also revives the Greek funerary stele (Canova monuments to the Stuarts in St. Peter’s; to Giovanni Volpato in the atrium of the SS. Apostoli in Rome), which soon becomes the preferred scheme.

All funerary art of the early 19th century follows in the footsteps of Canova: but the epigones translate the master’s inspirations into rigid formulas, now drained of any vibration of feeling. At no time did funerary monumental art appear so frozen and vacuous in its stilted and peremptory forms, even when the executants were the most accredited masters of the moment (monument to Pius VIII by P. Tenerani; to Gregory XVI by L. Amici: both in St Peter’s). Along this line of cold and insignificant academicism the practice continued down to our own day (monument to Pius IX in St Lawrence outside the Walls, by C. Cattaneo; to Leo XIII in St John Lateran, by A. Tadolini; to Pius X by P. E. Astorri and F. di Fausto; to Pius XI by P. Canonica: both in St Peter’s).

Private tombs are gathered in the great suburban cemeteries, many of which display grand theatrical prospects (by V. BISIGNANO, in Rome, 1862; by C. Maciacchini in Milan, 1866; by C. Partini in Florence). The one that is stylistically most dignified is the Staglieno cemetery (Genoa) by C. Barabino (1835).

The funerary monuments assembled in these complexes have not yet been adequately studied, and at first glance they give an impression of inarticulate disorder, heaping together the most disparate forms of incongruous imitation (from mausolea of Romanesque or Gothic type to grand Renaissance façades and Neoclassical stelae, etc.).

TOMMASEO, NICCOLÒ - Portrait with autograph signature.

Some artists, however, produced statues that won great renown (such as the *Inconsolabile* in the Camposanto at Pisa and the group of the *Pietà* in that at Siena: both by Dupré). Lorenzo Bartolini revived the niche tomb in a most noble interpretation inside Santa Croce in Florence (monument to Princess Zamojska, with the portrait of the deceased lying on the sarcophagus). — See plates XXVII–XXVIII.