The stained glass window evokes the Guanellian invocation to Saint Joseph as the "true husband of the virgin Mary"
by Lorenzo Cappelletti
Starting from the entrance of the Basilica, the first, in the logical order, of the stained glass windows dedicated to the life of Saint Joseph, along the two walls of the Basilica del Trionfale, is located in the penultimate place on the left wall. It depicts it Marriage of the Virgin, according to the common name of this iconographic subject.
The stained glass window (362 x 136 cm) was offered by Maddalena Fantini and is dated 1935. Although it is not signed, like others in the Basilica, it can be assumed, based on its characteristics, that it was created by the famous German company Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich.
The style of this, like the other 1930s stained glass windows of Bavarian origin, seems to be romantically inspired by Renaissance art; starting from the "candelabra" (this is the name of the ornamental motif of the frame), up to the harmonious and idealized appearance of the figures. Given the provenance of the stained glass window, it could almost be said to be an evocation of the refined Bavarian Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer, but perhaps even more so of the less calligraphic art of Raffaello Sanzio.
The elongated shape of the window is the obligatory space of the composition, which therefore does not develop horizontally as usual (in the case, for example, of the same subject represented in the mosaic on the left of the apse circuit of our Basilica in the 1960s , v. to the left). The characters are thus represented "climbing", almost as if they were on the steps of the Temple of Jerusalem, which forms the background. Above all, in the centre, between the two spouses, stands the high priest, who wears the robes described in the Book of Exodus in chapters 28 and 39: in particular the turban, with the golden diadem in the center; the square pectoral; the belt; the tunic and an embroidered apron. He holds the Virgin Mary's arm still so that Joseph can put the ring on the ring finger of her left hand. The Virgin is dressed in a mantle and tunic in traditional colors evoking the incarnation: cobalt blue and wine red; and with a veil also of the traditional whiteness of immaculateness. We will find these colors, even if not with the same shades, in all the windows. We will not always find Saint Joseph dressed in the same way, however, who here wears a long amaranth cloak, because his iconographic tradition is more recent and less obligatory.
Further down, aligned with Mary and Joseph, respectively, are a richly dressed young girl - one might say a handmaid of the Virgin - who observes with a look of commiseration a good-looking young man who is also richly dressed, who makes a gesture simple to decipher but not easy to interpret. By leveraging his own feet, he is in fact breaking a long stick. Well, it was thus chosen to depict one of David's celibate or widowed descendants who, according to the apocryphal Gospels - taken up in the Middle Ages by Golden legend, a collection of fictionalized biographies of the saints completed in 1298 by the bishop of Genoa Iacopo da Varazze -, would have been summoned to the Temple at the time of the Virgin Mary's fourteenth year. To see who would get married, each of them had to carry a stick. He, in fact, whose staff had prodigiously flourished in the manner of Aaron's rod, of which in Book of Numbers 17,16-26, he would have been the chosen one. This is what happened to Joseph's staff. Joseph's flowering staff does not appear in our window. But it doesn't matter for the purposes of comprehensibility of the story through images. In fact, it is clear that the handsome young man's stick remained dry. So this man, even if with an extremely composed and harmonious pose and look, as befits the evocation of Renaissance art done in the stained glass window, breaks the stick that has not flourished.
It is a typical element of the iconography of the Marriage of the Virgin, amply illustrated, for example, in Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, just after the Golden legend, and also in the most famous of all representations of the Marriage of the Virgin, Raphael's altarpiece currently preserved in the Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan), but originally created for an altar dedicated to Saint Joseph in the Franciscan church of Città di Castello. And it is an element that we also find in the previously mentioned mosaic of our Basilica. Indeed, here this iconographic element is presented in an even more expressionistic way, we could say, because not only does the young man behind Joseph break the stick, but he does so with angry jealousy, so much so that a bearded companion has to intervene to stop him from hitting Joseph. Strange and perhaps unnecessary emphasis, in this modern mosaic, on a traditional iconographic fact which, together with other dissonant elements, leaves the observer a little perplexed. De gustibus...