CLOISTER OF SAINT MARY OF THE OAK

THE HISTORY
The first news of the cloister of Saint Mary of Oak was in 1479. The cloister is also known as the cistern. A document from 1481 reports how the cloister should be built, a compromise between the master masons Danese of Viterbo, Giacomo Rempiccia and Giacomo of Sermona and Bartolino of Como. The historian Mortier attributed the work to Danese of Viterbo. The document shows the cloister type had to be in an agreement between different views which explains the similarity with the cloister of Santa Maria in Gradi. According to the historian Ciprini, the project is by Giuliano of Sangallo. Some of the sketches found show the designer wanted the lower part of the arch to be round like the upper part. Evidently, the solution was an agreement between the masons because the cloister has arches with 4 centers.  Other work was done after adding a staircase connecting part of the convent. The construction of the cistern was done in 1503 by Bruno of Dominico of Settignano and the stonemason Capo Corso. In the architecture of the cistern it is sculpted: Omnis q bibit ex aqua hac sitiet iterum (Who drinks this water will be thirsty again). Above the roof of the church office stands a small bell tower detectable also in one of the frescoes of the artist Calisto Calisti in 1623.

DESCRIPTION

Antonio Mortier describes the cloister as a ‘forest of columns ordered in twos that support the multitude of arches’.  Everything is composed with a lot of elegance and a richness for detail. The play of light created by the corridor formed by the opposing columns to the light of the inner courtyard invites meditation and creates a mystical charm. The cloister has two floors, the lower part has arches with 4 centers while the upper floor has the play of lights found between two round arches. The band horizontally divides the two floors and is enriched with small rosettes and finely chiseled, probably representing a specific symbol. The cloister has three entrances, one on the side of the sacristy, one of the side of the church and the last on the side of the Convent.  The corridor of the cloister is covered with vaults, on the sides of the walls are frescoes that represent some Dominican characters or popes in the lunette stories of the light of the saint, placed there probably only at a later stage of construction. In 1602 the Council of monks of the Oak decided that the walls of the cloister had to be painted with the stories of Mary that would otherwise be lost. The task was entrusted to Pompeo Carosy who painted the first of the three lunettes. In the same year we find documents relating to the payment of other artists, Camillo Donati of Bagnaia (The expulsion of the enemies by the women of Bagnaia), Ludovico Nucci of Viterbo (The city of Viterbo with its head prior to sanctifying the Madonna of the Oak). In 1630, Pier Domenico Alberti painted his miracle. Brother Michele Zazzera (1625-6) paints the frame with double miracle of Bernardo Franceschetti and of Don Ferrante Farnese while in 1631 brother Pius Honors commissioned the episode of the battle of Lepanto with Pius V in prayer.  The last fresco chronologically is of the Count Girolamo Gabrilli of Gubbio, painted in 1663.  Eight frescoes bear the emblem of the convent of the Oak other frescoes have the Community of Canapina, of the Bussi, Nini and Poggi families. In May 1601, Cesare Nebbia received six crowns for a painting executed over the door of the cloister. According to the historian Ciprini the painting represents the miracle of Giacomo Romani fell from the cliff of Orvieto. Some of the frescoes on the lunette, decorate the rib vaults and were made in 1628 at the expense of the “Aromatarius” other frescoes were made in the eighteenth century by the Viterbo painter Costantino Costantini. The shelves below the portraits enrich the cloister across an elegant production of peperino stone In 1832 in the administration books of the Dominican fathers is a fee of three crowns to Angelo Papini for the restoration of the lunette. Angelo Papini is remembered in Viterbo’s history as the first of the Papini family that built from 1820 the macchina of Saint Rosa.

Cloister of Saint Mary of the Oak. Translation by michelle greif, University of Iowa, enrolled in the USAC Viterbo program.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

A.Mortier, Santa Maria della Quercia, Firenze 1904
G.Ciprini, La Madonna della Quercia, una meravigliosa storia di fede, Quatrini, Viterbo, 2005
B. Barbini , Il Santuario della Quercia, in “Lunario Romano”, Roma, 1992