Two stained glass windows in the Basilica del Trionfale present and invoke Saint Joseph
by Lorenzo Cappelletti
It can well be said that the stained glass windows present in the Basilica of San Giuseppe al Trionfale not only characterize its aesthetics, but also offer, along the two minor naves, an interesting presentation of the figure of Saint Joseph. In the 2022 year, in La Santa Crociata we will dedicate ourselves to the illustration of the latter, which amount to 15 in total, leaving out the 18 purely decorative stained glass windows present in the upper register of the central nave and another 9 of various thematics to which we will perhaps return on another occasion.
The analysis of the stained glass windows dedicated to Saint Joseph will help us retrace the evolution of the forms of Christian art over approximately half a century, but above all the history of the Patron Saint of the Basilica. In fact, these are stained glass windows, containing episodes ("stories") of the life of Saint Joseph as they have been transmitted to us by the scriptural and iconographic tradition.
We begin the review with two representations of Saint Joseph in standing figure, which do not actually illustrate episodes of his life, but constitute a concise presentation and invocation of his sanctity. It can be said that these two windows open and close the exhibition both chronologically and spatially.
Let's describe them.
The first (454 x 177 cm), which is currently in the sacristy but was probably originally on the apse wall of the Basilica, is the oldest of all the Josephite windows. It has a vague Art Nouveau flavour. It was created in 1927 by the Giuliani glass art workshop and offered in memory of Gerardo and Doralice Lucarelli by their sister Egle (in 1967, after the move from the first location, it was restored by her children). It presents Saint Joseph as Ecclesiae Patronus. This title stands out at the feet of the Saint on a sort of base. The figure of Saint Joseph, in fact, is imagined almost as a polychrome statue inside a niche with an apse and floral frame, where 8 busts of angels appear among the lilies, within roundels.
Above the fake base, Saint Joseph, with sandals on his feet and a strange flowered stick in his hand, seems at first to be resting on brown clods of earth. In reality they are clouds, which take on the features of 8 other angels in a characteristic coincidence of the physical sky with the spiritual one, as is often seen in Renaissance art (in Raphael, for example). Joseph's sanctity is not only signaled by the sky that surrounds him, but also by the whiteness of the nimbus and the "mandorla" that surround him (indeed, the strange color of the sky - a "burnt sienna" - serves precisely to highlight such whiteness), as well as royal robes: golden mantle, bearing a significant cross decoration, and purple jeweled robe.
The most interesting iconographic element is the flowering stick. Well, this emblem, which often characterizes Saint Joseph (it is found, for example, widely in Giotto's famous frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua), comes from the stories of the apocryphal Gospels, which speak much more extensively compared to the four canonical Gospels, but also fabulously, by Giuseppe. Like Aaron in the book of Numbers (17,16-26), it is said there that Joseph would have been indicated as God's chosen one thanks to the prodigious flowering of his staff. What says that Joseph is not dry wood, incapable of sprouting, but on the contrary is precisely that descendant of David's father, Jesse, through whom the prophetic promise of Isaiah 11,1 is fulfilled: «A sprout will emerge from the trunk of Jesse, a shoot will sprout from its roots." If the story of the apocryphal Gospels has fabulous features, the underlying reality is in conformity with the faith of the Church and so the symbol of the flowering staff, in addition to Aaron, was traditionally assigned to Saint Joseph.
The second stained glass window depicting Saint Joseph in a standing figure (220 x 130 cm), without any flowering stick, is the one above the small chapel at the beginning of the left nave of the Basilica which houses the statue. Although not dated, based on the style it could be assigned to the XNUMXs/XNUMXs; and it could be the work of the same Bottega Giuliani, where Julius Caesar's daughters, Maria Letizia and Laura Giuliani, continued to work.
This is a work that has some compositional and iconographic traits similar to the other, which was certainly kept in mind both in the colors of the mantle (golden) and the robe (purple) of Saint Joseph, (deliberately poorer than those worn by the Saint in the older stained glass window), as well as in the arched floral frame where lilies stand out. Saint Joseph, however, here breaks through the outline of the frame, towering in a gigantic figure over the dome of Saint Peter (symbol of the Church that he protects), and is not presented, but invoked through nine of the litanies dedicated to him; first of all the one, written on a scroll held up by two angels kneeling at his feet: Sancte Joseph protector S [anctae] Ecclesiae o [ra] p [ro] n [obis]; and then, others, written in scrolls intertwined with the lilies of the frame: Custos virginum (Guardian of virgins); Exemplar opificum (Workers' Model); Amator paupertatis (Lover of poverty); Speculum patientiae (Mirror of patience); Familiarum columen (Support for families); Solatium miserorum (Consolation of the miserable); Spes aegrotantium (Hope of the sick); Patrone morientium (Patron of the dying).
This second stained glass window pleading the intercession of Saint Joseph, to which the Saint responds with a gesture of generous donation, is intended to be more sparse and angular than the other; and it is, not only for the style, but also thanks to a compositional scheme based on the number three. In fact, there are three angels, three and of three different colors the concentric frames of the nimbus, nine cartouches of the litanies. Different iconography and different artistic sensitivity.