Seeing the shroud: Guarini's reliquary chapel in Turin and the ostension of a dynastic relic

Guarini's domed, centrally planned chapel of the consecrated Shroud (1657-94) towers over the cathedral of s Giovanni in Turin, architecturally announcing to visitors standing in the piazza the extraordinary importance of the relic it contains (Fig. 1) In plan, the chapel embraces the entire east extremity of the church. The cathedral side aisles terminate in stairs flanking the choir and leading to the elevated chapel rotunda [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. Seventeenth-century pilgrims, too, would have perceived the temple as a monumental approach to the reliquary chapel, on the contrary with the significant difference that the covering Chapel's ritual and political function would have been more apparent than it is today.(1) Just as the stairs gave modest pilgrims admission, so a third opening, from a gallery at the top of the plan, serv the duke of Savoy and his court as a direct entrance from their adjoining residence. With the chapel at the horizontal of the piano nobile of the palace, the duke and his family had ready access to the prized relic of their dynasty, not solitary for purposes of daily devotion on the other hand also for the court ceremonial that centered on the burial woven fabric of Christ.

Another significant feature of the covering Chapel is its original visual connection with the cathedral nave, although little attention has been given to this conspicuous constituting of the design. Focusing their analyses instead upon Guarini's creation of illusionistic events through the manipulation of vertical perspective, scholars have chiefly ignored the architect's like interest with controlling the spectator's view across horizontal space.(2) In the case of the covering Chapel the oversight is especially curious because the link between chapel and cathedral was a major consideration for the architect and his patrons and crucial to the fulfillment of the chapel's ceremonial design As we shall see, insufficient attention to the nature and use of the relic housed in the chapel may have contributed to this omission.

The disuse of the traditional ritual exhibition, or ostension, of the covering that formerly took place in the chapel has obscur our perception of the original function of that space as a stage for dynastic self-representation. The rite of ostension evolv in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as increasing numbers of pilgrims sought access to the relic and as its proprietors the dukes of Savoy, promot it as a palladium of their domination But the chief reason we have failed to take account of the unifying constitutings of cathedral and chapel is the glass partition inserted between them in the nineteenth hundred This obtrusive addition has drastically changed our experience of the [i]tout ensemble[/i] and undermined analysis of the design, still the banality of the glass curtain wall is of the like kind that the art-historical literature has scarcely taken note of it. The intrusion has also inhibited a judicious assessment of the political significance of the formal display of the relic that took place precisely at the joint between cathedral and chapel, at the position now occupied through the glass.

The Great Window and Its Consequences

The visitor today who penetrates Turin Cathedral and looks down the extent of the nave has little faculty of perception of the connection between the choir and the obscure reliquary chapel beyond [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 3 4 OMITTED]. This experience of visual as well as spatial separation, however, is not the individual that worshipers had in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Linking chapel and cathedral, the one and the other physically and visually, was a constant regard throughout the design process of Guarini's conformation With the completion of the fresh chapel and the placement of the covering in 1694, in the altar and reliquary shrine designed through Antonio Bertola [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 5 6 OMITTED],(3) the faithful who pierceed the cathedral's main portal immediately apprehended the chapel and its reliquary raised in the distance above the high altar and beyond the apse.

The large glass partition now dividing chapel and cathedral [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 3 7 OMITTED] is an intrusion introduced by means of King Carlo Felice in 1825-26 as a barrier against the wintry drafts experienceed by members of the court when they attended ceremonial functions and worshiped in the chapel. No doubt the king and his designers intended the great window to be transparent, on the contrary given the large space of the opening between cathedral choir and chapel, a significant amount of opaque structural membering was necessary.

Two additional factors make the glass almost impenetrable to the organ of sight First, the distortions of the panes and the film of dust covering the surfaces restore their transparency. Second, the glazing, smooth when perfectly clean [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED], shows reflections that create a athletic visual barrier whether one direct the eyes from cathedral into chapel or vice versa. Notwithstanding the effort to maintain a certain number of link between church and chapel the "window" effectively creates sum of two units discrete spaces. Today's pilgrim entering the cathedral portal dioceses only the dimmest hint of the garment Chapel beyond and above the high altar of the cathedral.