Gaetano Rocca. Description of the Churches of Reggio in Lombardy

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Gaetano Rocca

Descrizione delle Chiese di Reggio di Lombardia

(Description of the Churches of Reggio in Lombardy)

Transcripted and edited by Maria Montanari

Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Reggio Emilia Pietro Manodori, 2010

Façade of the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia (Santa Maria Assunta)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[1] A vibrant example of an (excellent) publication, originally purported to circulate only in the circles of the beneficiaries of gift from credit institutions. It does not have any price nor has any isbn. I purchased it via e-bay. To better clarify: 'Reggio di Lombardia' nowadays is 'Reggio Emilia'. We are quoting the title of the frontispiece. The title shown on the front-cover is absolutely different: "Splendori di Reggio. La più antica guida artistica della città" (The glories of Reggio. The most ancient guide of the town"

Façade of the Church of San Prospero
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[2] The (hitherto unpublished) Descrizione (Description) dates back to 1782 and can certainly be framed within that broad phenomenon of local artistic production of guides that thrilled the scholar world worldwide, at the end of 1700. The Panizzi Library in Reggio Emilia preserves two copies of a manuscript entitled Descrizione delle Pitture e Sculture esistenti nelle Chiese della Città di Reggio di Lombardia nell’anno 1782 (Description of Paintings and Sculptures existing in the Churches of the City of Reggio di Lombardia in the year 1782), respectively with the collocations BPRE, Mss. Regs. C 280 and BPRE, Mss. Turri E 3. Although anonymous, that manuscript had always been attributed to Prospero Fontanesi (see. p. 40). However, Maria Montanari - who had studied the text for his university thesis - was able to trace the presence of an additional manuscript, preserved in the Archiginnasio of Bologna (ms. A 2834), which proved to be the original from which the two specimens of Reggio Emilia are drawn. On this manuscript, where the authorship of the work appears explicitly (which is due to the Canon from Reggio Gaetano Rocca), this edition has conducted, precisely edited by Maria Montanari.

The Church of Santa Maria della Ghiara
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[3] There is no doubt that Rocca (then twenty-six year old) worked at the publication of the work. He himself clarifies the reasons for the missed publication in a Memory, placed immediately after the dedication and the information to the reader: "While I was about to deliver to the presses this booklet, I saw that some among the mentioned churches were closed, suppressed and demolished, while not a few of the most famous paintings were conveyed in the Ducal Gallery of Modena. So this booklet shall remain hidden from the public and, if it is not worth more, it will serve for memory and education only" (p. 47). From this point of view it is good to refer to the initial survey of Angelo Mazza, who highlights how the case of Reggio Emilia differs somewhat from that of other cities of Emilia, where the bulk of the losses of the artistic heritage (especially ecclesiastical) was due to the Napoleonic pillage (see about Paul Wescher, I furti d’arte. Napoleone e la nascita del Louvre - Art theft. Napoleon and the birth of the Louvre); it is true that, when passed by, the French plundered the art works from Reggio, but those works were located at that time in the Galleria Estense in Modena. To set in motion a real impoverishment of the city's artistic heritage was precisely the closure of several church institutions made in 1783 by the Duke Ercole III, which led many art works in the Ducal Gallery of Modena, with a clear intention to restore the ancient splendour of the Este collections, splendour which had disappeared after the known events of the sale of the art collection to Dresden. It was for this reason that Rocca decided not to publish his manuscript: the substance had become useless or, at least, unreliable. So much so that he himself realized that his effort would serve only as a "memory" and that he did not arrange any new attempts of publication.

Internal wiew of the Church of Santa Maria della Ghiara
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[4] We can reasonably say that the one by Rocca is the oldest artistic guide drafted on Reggio. What is certain is that the first guide to be printed was published only in 1873 by Giuseppe Ferrari. Reading today again the notes by Rocca, several features common to many other guides can be recognized, like an accurate filing of ecclesiastical heritage, but without the presence of any critical judgments nor any special attention to the so-called "primitives". In this sense, the author was perfectly son of his era. The publication of the manuscript, however, returns now in all its fullness the artistic richness of Reggio, immediately before the events that in fact upset that town.