Restoration of 16th c. organ uncovers lost frescoes

The Antegnati organ in the Duomo Vecchio of Brescia is one of the greatest surviving instruments from the Italian Renaissance for both the quantity and the quality of the original materials preserved. Built in 1536 by Gian Giacomo Antegnati, the organ still retains 1,300 original tin pipes, the oldest and largest group of Antegnati pipes in existence today, and much of its original wooden case, carved by sculpture Battista Piantavigna in 1537.

Also known as the Rotonda, the Duomo Vecchio (Old Cathedral) is a rarity in its own right: a Romanesque circular church from the 11th century that is one of the only ones of its kind to survive in Italy. It also bears the distinction of standing right next to what in most circumstances would have been its replacement, the Duomo Nuovo. They are officially co-cathedrals, the old known as the Winter Co-Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the new as the Summer Co-Cathedral.

The Duomo Vecchio was the sole Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta when the organ was built. (Construction of the Duomo Nuovo began over the demolished San Pietro de Dom in 1604.) The organs made by the Antegnati family were famed for their exceptional quality, and 50 years after the cathedral organ was complete, Constanzo Antegnati boasted that “the organ that is now played in our Domo is considered one of the best and most famous that can be heard today in all of Italy.”

Girolamo da Romano, known as Romanino, was engaged to paint the organ doors in 1539. He painted both the interior left and right doors, visible when the doors were open and the organ was being played, and the exterior doors forming a single double-wide composition when they were closed. The interior left door features the Birth of the Virgin Mary, while the Visit to Elizabeth is on the interior right door. The big scene on the closed double doors is the Marriage of the Virgin.

Romanino integrated the Marriage scene, and therefore the monumental façade of the organ itself, into the architecture of the church, extending the visual motif to frescoes on the walls flanking the organ. In a 17th century catalogue of the churches of Brescia, Bernardino Faino describes Romanino’s painting of the doors and flanking walls:

The doors of this [organ] are painted in oil both inside and outside by the hand of Girolamo Romanino also from Brescia, soft and full coloring that imitates Titian. Painted on the inside are the Visitation of a Woman and the Nativity. On the outside the Marriage of the said Blessed Virgin is represented, with a quantity of figures, and on the façade where the organ is mounted many figures made by the aforementioned in fresco that accompany the said story.

The “many figures” on the frescoes to the left and right are musicians. They flank the depiction of the Marriage of the Virgin painted on the exterior of the double doors of the organ so you see the scene only when they’re closed. (When they’re open they obviously obscure the walls on either side.) The musicians match the wedding scene, a sort of live band for the central festivities, and Romanino matched the revolving columns on the sides of the organ that opened and closed the doors with painted columns in remarkably lifelike realism and perspective. The musicians play percussion and wind instruments only, including a Renaissance cornetto. There are no string instruments, almost certainly a deliberate omission to connect the painted musicians to the sounds produced by the organ. Scholars hypothesize that the two bystanders on the left wall represent Gian Giacomo Antegnati and Giovanni Piantavigna, makers of the organ and case, and the bystander on the right wall is a self-portrait of Romanino, tying the art of the organ, both the painting on it and the music from it, to its creators.

This marvelously unified vision was split up and hidden over the centuries as the organ underwent numerous modifications and restorations. The original organ doors were moved to the Duomo Nuovo when it was finally completed 200 years ago, framed and mounted on a chapel wall as a triptych. The frescoes were whitewashed into oblivion. The organ was enlarged in 1826 by organ-makers the Serassi Brothers of Bergamo. They were contractually obligated to preserve all of the sound materials, most importantly the Antegnati tubing.

Less than two centuries after that restoration, the precious pipes were in parlous condition, attacked by “tin cancer,” a type of corrosion frequently seen in historic organs in northern Italy. In 2014, the parish, city and non-profit organizations began to raise and allocate funds for an emergency intervention to address the corrosion before it ate away at the pipes. Conservators found many other issues that needed addressing including gaps and dents at the base of the pipes and rotted leather gaskets and bellows.

The damage required that the organ be dismantled and restored by specialists off-site. In 2017, the comprehensive restoration began. The Piantavigna case, which remained in the cathedral, was restored in situ. It was during work on the case that restorers removed the whitewash on the walls to the side of the organ and revealed the long-lost Romanino frescoes last mentioned by Faino. Twelve figures emerged from the white-out: eight musicians and four bystanders.

The original organ doors were reclaimed from the Duomo Nuovo and returned to their proper placement on the revolving columns. The columns were repaired and a new remote-controlled system installed to open and close them. Another historic gem was found inside one of the columns: a note folded 32 times that had been hidden by the craftsman who made the column. It reads: “Mi Pasì da Pasira si fat questi coloni de l’orgen del dom / El dì 12 de aprilil mili 538,” meaning “I, Pasino da Passirano, made these columns of the organ of the Duomo/The day 12 of April 1538.”

The organ has been completely restored by the Fratelli Mascioni company and reassembled. The large bellows have been placed in the specially prepared room behind it. The windchests (boxes that receive the air introduced by the bellows to transmit it to the pipes) of the double basses (the pipes of the lowest registers) with the long wooden pipes have been positioned inside the ancient case, freeing the view of the rediscovered frescoes by Romanino. The master windchest and the auxiliary ones have been connected to the keyboard and pedal board. Most of the pipes, after the meticulous restoration, have been placed in their original positions.

The bellows were opened and cleaned and re-cased after removing the old exhausted skins. The wind pipes were restored by repairing the cracks, replacing the gaskets and restoring the original paint. The mechanics were restored and integrated where missing. The keyboard was rebuilt according to the original measurements and shapes, the natural note keys were covered in ebony and those of the altered notes in walnut, with ivory plating kindly donated by a private individual.

The pedalboard was rebuilt according to the “lectern” type, with measurements taken from the Serassi organ in the church of S. Oliveto. The restoration of the pipes required a great deal of effort to remove the “tin cancer” that had attacked a good part of the “Antegnati” pipes.

On November 19th, 2023, the restored Antegnati organ played again after six years of silence. You can hear its restored sound in this Italian news story:

* This article was originally published here