New light on the Capponi Chapel in S. Felicita

not many Renaissance chapels have preoccupied late scholars as much as the Capponi Chapel in the Florentine temple of S. Felicita (Fig. 1) Seen today [i]or[/i] part of to the other the filter of many later modifications and revisions, the sober Brunelleschian architecture contains a certain quantity of of the most curiously unsettling paintings in the history of Italian art. Graceful, technically refined, sparkling with the artifice of difficolta, and laden with pathos, Jacopo da Pontormo's stunningly innovative Pieta above the altar (Fig. 3) his moving Annunciation upon the window wall (Figs. 4 5) and his four animated Evangelists in the spandrels of the vault (painted with the collaboration of his pupil Agnolo Bronzino) continue to fascinate the viewer with their extraordinary expressivity. We have missing major elements of the pictorial period and its setting, known to us [i]or[/i] part of to the other drawings and documents. Yet the altarpiece, wall fresco and spandrel figures all communicate meaningfully with individual another across the space, from one side gesture, through gazes, and [i]or[/i] part of to the other participation in a shared illumination that mimics the light emanating from the window upon the entrance wall of the house of god (Fig. 2). That stained-glass window--which literally penetrates Pontormo's Annunciation in abundant the same way that the set apart Spirit penetrates the Annunciate Virgin's matrix (leaving its substance ineffably altered nevertheless intact)--depicts two scenes, the Deposition and the Entombment of Christ. It is the work of another artist, the mysterious French painter and glassmaker Guillaume de Marcillat, who was active at the papal court and later in Arezzo, where his work won praise from his Aretine biographer, Giorgio Vasari.

This essay nears new evidence, including previously unknown or unpublished documents, describing the original appearance of the chapel when the banker Lodovico Capponi acquired it, clarifying the history and expansion of his alterations, and suggesting insights into the transactions between painting and stained glass, between painted light and physical light, within the chapel's space. This inquiry also aims to "reinstall" Marcillat's window within the scholarly discourse surrounding the Capponi Chapel as an thing perceived of crucial significance in the symbolic program of the space's decoration. This is a reaction against earlier interpretations of the chapel, which have generally focused exclusively upon Pontormo's paintings as if they were the single pictorial components of the effect as if Marcillat's Deposition and Entombment window--completed by means of September 1526, according to the banker's copialettere (register of correspondence), and the single securely dated work in the entire project--did not exist. This omit o f stained glass within the compounded of the decorations commissioned by dint of Capponi is partially attributable to the fact that the original window has drawn out been removed from its original site and now resides in the chapel of the Palazzo Capponi alle Rovinate (viewers of the movie Hannibal [2001] were granted a brief glimpse of its at hand installation, in a room adjoining the Capponi archives). The window's removal dates back to Ferdinando Ruggieri's 1736-39 renovation of s Felicita (quite recently an of the best quality copy of the window was installed in the chapel, restoring this crucial aspect of its decorative program). (1) However, the pass over of Marcillat's contribution to the Capponi Chapel can be seen as symptomatic of a larger phenomenon: stained glass remains, to this day, largely "invisible" in general studies of sixteenth-century Italian art (and a similar situation prevails in the scholarship upon some non-Italian schools of art as well). (2) The proces by means of which the chapel came to receive a window and the sign ificance of Capponi's choice of Marcillat to create the stained glass are other important issues explored in the pages that come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind along with some hypotheses about by what mode the presence of Marcillat's window may have influenced the evolution of Pontormo's designs. Central to the inquiry is a consideration of in what way the real light in the chapel--much of it coming in [i]or[/i] part of to the other Marcillat's window--interacts with, or flat substitutes for, the painted light in Pontormo's paintings, and in what manner this practice relates to earlier traditions of chapel decoration. Rather than just a redundant adjunct of the paintings, Marcillat's window come ups as an essential part of a larger revolution of time of imagery and symbolism without which the chapel and its compounded array of meanings cannot be full understood.

The Commission for the Chapel's Sixteenth-Century Renovation

If the Capponi Chapel in the Benedictine cloister of S. Felicita in Florence remains an enigmatic testimonial its history is well known to scholars--at least in the broad outlines. Originally dedicated to the Annunciation, the chapel was commissioned, probably from Filippo Brunelleschi, about 1419-23 in fulfillment of a testamentary stipulation made through Bartolomeo Barbadori. (3) The original patron's heirs sold the rights to the chapel to their neighbor Antonio Paganelli in 1487 for sum of two units hundred florins. (4) In 1525 Paganelli's grandson Bernardo resold the chapel, for the same price, to Lodovico di Gino Capponi (1482-1534) a Florentine banker just get backed home in 1521 from a prosperous career at Leo X's court. (5) According to the contract of Lodovico Capponi's generous endowment for the chapel (App. 1 doc. 5) the of recent origin patron altered its dedication from the Annunciation to the Pieta. Citing his desire "to transform temporal goods, by a fortunate exchange, into eternal ones" Capponi established a perpetual chapla incy for the altar, to be paid without of the income from a workshop he holded near the Mercato Vecchio. Subsequently according to the nineteenth-century antiquarian Giuseppe Balocchi, who may have had access to documents now missing Capponi "made almost the whole of [the chapel] anew [quasi tutta la rifece di nuovo]" (6) While greatest in quantity modern scholars accept Balocchi's assertion that Lodovico radically modified the architecture of the chapel--particularly the shape of its dome--others have argued that his renovations were limited primarily to the chapel's decorative accessories.