The Martinengo mausoleum is a funerary monument made through the use of various marbles and bronze (465x360x126 cm) by Gasparo Cairano, Bernardino delle Croci and probably the Sanmicheli workshop, dated between 1503 and 1518 and preserved in the museum of Santa Giulia in Brescia, in the nuns' choir.

The origins and dating of the Martinengo mausoleum have constituted perhaps the greatest misunderstanding in the historiography of Brescian Renaissance art, generating in turn another series of errors and erroneous presumptions, first among them the unfounded attribution of the work to Maffeo Olivieri.

[1] The real history of the monument, still partially incomplete, has only been known since 1977, due to a discovery made by historian Camillo Boselli: a series of documents in this regard[2] have profoundly distorted the knowledge acquired about the work until then.

Two subsequent deeds dated to that year demonstrate the existence of an economic dispute between Delle Croci and the Martinengo commission, the causes of which had led to the degeneration of the relationship between the two and the blocking of the project.

Six months later, in a deed dated November 6, 1506, Antonio II Martinengo again attests that he owes Delle Croci 1,000 lire, i.e. about 300 ducats, moreover for the same reason, i.e. various expenses related to the mausoleum and a pecuniary loan from the goldsmith to the nobleman.

[10] Therefore, it becomes clear how Delle Croci's failure to deliver the mausoleum was actually caused by the non-payment of the Martinengo commission, which had not even covered the first expenses of purchasing materials, in addition to not repaying the goldsmith two loans he had obtained.

[note 1] The Martinengo family, which had always been pro-Venetian, experienced difficult times, during which the commission to Delle Croci, concerning a golden age for the economy and the arts that had come to an end, was completely shelved.

In the deed, dated August 6, 1516, one finds a now exhausted Antonio II Martinengo going so far as to cede to Delle Croci two masonry houses owned by him, worth 800 lire each but offered at the price of only 200, in exchange for the goldsmith's "solemn promise" to complete the work within a year and a half, thus by January 1518.

On July 24, 1526, about ten years after the conclusion of the previous documentary events, cavalry captain Marcantonio Martinengo della Pallata was severely wounded while fighting against the Spanish army around Cremona.

Pandolfo Nassino, a Brescian historian of the time, relates the episode and describes the solemn funeral, celebrated by Mattia Ugoni,[14] during which the captain was buried in the church of the Most Holy Body of Christ, inside the Martinengo family mausoleum in Padernello.

[11] The frieze with the Triumphs, on the other hand, is drawn intact, although only the parts that remain are fairly faithfully reproduced, while the currently missing features are much more approximate and almost incomplete, as if the monument lacked them even then and the author of the watercolor freely interpreted them for completeness of design.

Meyer, like everyone else, considers the mausoleum executed for Marcantonio Martinengo and even postdates it to around 1530, saying that he deduces this information from Federico Odorici's writings;[24] he also brings it closer to Stefano Lamberti, to whom he attributes the marble ornamentation, judging it to be correctly more modern than that of the facade of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli.

Knowledge about Olivieri at the beginning of the 20th century, before the unprecedented transformation of this sculptor into the undisputed protagonist of Brescian Renaissance sculpture, is very limited and related only to the production of a few medals, a wooden altarpiece in Condino, and the two signed bronze candelabra in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice.

And I was thinking about the architectural relations of the monument with the portal of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, catching in it some leading threads that well clarify its northern origins, when, as I approached to examine the bronze medallions embedded in the plinths, I had the sensation that I was facing creations of the master I was researching.

with its dry, sharp, sour character, which was exaggerated by certain followers such as the Mantegazza.In the 1939 volume devoted to Brescia of the Catalogue of Things of Art and Antiquity in Italy, Antonio Morassi no longer has any doubt in attributing to Olivieri the qualification of sculptor and, therefore, proceeds to define his catalog of Brescian works in marble, of much greater quantitative and qualitative proportions than the medals and the wooden altarpiece assigned up to that time.

"[32] All works not in keeping with the style of the new sculpture master are simply hinted at as anonymous if not belittled or panned, committing various errors of evaluation and often going so far as to neglect even contemporary sources that specifically indicated their quality and authors.

[30] From Antonio Morassi's reconstruction, the complex panorama of currents and artists of Brescian Renaissance sculpture turns out to be downplayed and not addressed with due accuracy, as well as hinged around a bronze and wood carver relabeled as master of marble, with a catalog of works based solely on the attribution of the Martinengo mausoleum, and on nothing else.

This preeminent position assumed by Maffeo Olivieri finally lapses in 1977, when Camillo Boselli, in the Regesto artistico dei notai roganti in Brescia dall'anno 1500 all'anno 1560, the result of research in the then unfathomable notarial fund of the State Archives of Brescia, partially reconstructs the Cairano family tree[36] and publishes the series of fundamental documents, presented in the chapter on the history of the monument; they reconstruct the Martinengo mausoleum commission, starting from the 1503 contract between Bernardino delle Croci and the brothers Francesco and Antonio II Martinengo of Padernello, to the two acts of economic disputes, to the last contract of 1516.

[37] It is Boselli himself who first noticed the very heavy significance of his findings, writing at the end of the transcription of the original 1503 contract: Document of extreme importance for the history of Brescian sculpture of the first half of the 16th century.

Thus also its most current chronology (1526) is denied, lowering the date of design to 1503, and this goes back to the advantage of the homogeneity of Brescian sculpture in that it stands next to the tomb of S. Apollonio in the Duomo Nuovo (1504-1510) and that of S. Tiziano in S. Cosma (1503) [...].

[17] The Martinengo mausoleum stands out as one of the greatest masterpieces of the Brescian Renaissance in the field of sculpture, in which all the main elements characteristic of the new art, new interests and new trends of the time from central Italy converge: architectural and artistic purity, refinement of chromatics, recourse to ancient marbles, many of them probably salvaged, mythological iconography and high celebration of the deceased for whom the monument is intended.

[53] The Martinengo mausoleum shows stylistic affinity, admittedly quite generic, with at least two Milanese sepulchres, both referring to the Cazzaniga-Briosco workshop and dated to the 1480s: the tomb of Giacomo Stefano Brivio in the basilica of Sant'Eustorgio and that of Francesco Della Torre in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

[21] A closer correlation, both in structure and in the presence of historiated bronze panels on the front of the funeral monument, is found instead with the tomb of Gerolamo and Marcantonio Della Torre in the church of San Fermo Maggiore in Verona, attributed to Andrea Briosco.

[54] The two sepulchres are evidently very similar, so much so that the chronological problem of the precedence of one over the other has been raised, since the dating of the Veronese monument is also very doubtful, even if one were to assert the hypothesis put forward in 2008 of a terminus post quem at 1511, since this does not resolve the issue.

The Scene of Sacrifice depicts a fairly rare theme, at that time widespread only in bronzes and according to different modes of representation, as can be deduced from the specimens collected by Fritz Saxl in a 1939 essay,[59] among which those by Andrea Briosco for the Easter candle in the basilica of St. Anthony in Padua and for the already mentioned Della Torre funeral monument in San Fermo Maggiore in Verona stand out in particular.

Considering these elements, one can conclude how this Scene of Sacrifice is really the result of an original elaboration of the iconographic theme, i.e., devoid of specific references, apart from some suggestions from similar works of the time, making the marble tondo a specimen of remarkable merit for its mastery of the ancient style, the most successful outcome of a Classical culture inaugurated in Brescia twenty years earlier with the worksites of the Sanctuary of the Miracles and the Loggia.

[60] In contrast, the group on the left, depicting a soldier on horseback impaling the defeated enemy on the ground, takes up a very frequent subject in the monumental art and numismatics of imperial Rome.

This particular composition, repeatedly reproduced by Lombard sculptors of the Renaissance period, is first found among the basement decorations of the facade of the Certosa di Pavia and later also in a Brescian example not coincidentally attributable to Gasparo Cairano, namely on one of the friezes of the pillars of the portico of the Loggia, where, moreover, the soldier standing in front of the horse is also depicted.

[60] Therefore, according to the references adopted for the execution of the two tondi, they are likely to be dated to a little after 1510, although the Battle Scene remains closer to the style expressed during the great Brescian public building sites, which had closed a few years before.

[note 8] The issue of the lost central crowning of the Martinengo mausoleum, placed between the two apex statues of St. Peter and St. Paul, has raised the questions of critics for years,[45] at least since Antonio Morassi's work on it in the 1930s.