Composition Study for 'The Miracle of the Madonna of the Snow'

Author: Albert Elen

This is one of eight compositional studies by Maganza, all part of a group of thirteen sheets which came to Rotterdam with the Koenigs Collection in 1935 (S 18-30). At the time attributed to El Greco (1541-1614), most of them are now considered the work of Alessandro Maganza because some can be connected to paintings by him (see the entry for S 20) and they all share the same stylistic features.

The present drawing is typical of Maganza: a preliminary sketch in black chalk partially worked up with the pen in rapid swirling lines, without much interior modelling, the heads merely indicated. At right a vertical line in black chalk delineates the format of the design. The vertical composition is divided into two sections, the upper part containing a group of six figures in the clouds, the lower part showing a pope standing under a baldachin, looking at a ground plan of a church in front of him. The pope’s entourage includes a bishop and a cardinal, recognizable by their hats, on the left, and a figure pointing to the ground plan, on his right. We owe the identification of this mysterious scene to Matarrese (2002): The Miracle of the Snow.

According to early Christian tradition, on 5 August 352 a rich Roman patrician called Giovanni had a dream in which the Virgin Mary ordered him to build a church where he would find snow the next morning. He contacted Pope Liberius, who had had the same dream, and they indeed found snow on a spot on the Esquiline Hill, a miracle in the heat of summer. In our drawing, the pope appears to be discussing with Giovanni the ground plan for a church which he has just delineated in the fresh snow. Giovanni had the church built at his own expense and named it the Basilica Liberiana after the pope. Eighty years later, Pope Sixtus III had the church rebuilt and enlarged, renaming it Santa Maria Maggiore. In our drawing the Virgin Mary, the ‘Madonna della neve’, is depicted in the clouds, accompanied by angels. It is the compositional design for a painting, now lost, mentioned by Giovanni Battista Carboni (1725-1790) in 1760 as Miracolo di Santa Maria della Neve in the church of the Madri Cappuccini in Brescia and fully described in the inventory of the paintings and sculptures of the city.^[1]