PARACCA, Giovanni Antonio

The marble reliefs decorating the tombs in the Cappella Sistina of the Santa Maria Maggiore are typical of sixteenth-century papal tombs in containing both illustrations of important events in the individual papacies and personifications of virtues. They are therefore much like Roman imperial historical reliefs: conventional in their iconography and didactic in their intentions. In the case of Sixtus, the reliefs depict his attempts to make Rome a safe city. Thus, Sixtus freed the countryside from bandits and attempted - with only partial success - to make it secure.

The relief, which is a detail of Tomb of Sixtus V represents soldiers carrying the severed heads of bandits, against whom Sixtus was especially severe.

The Tomb of Sixtus V was commissioned by Sixtus V himself. The design is by Domenico Fontana. Sixtus employed an international group of artists for the sculpture of the Chapel. In addition to the Italian Paracca, both Egidio della Riviera (Gillis van den Vliete) and Niccolò Pippi (Nicolas Piper) came from northern Europe and brought with them traces of a Flemish style.

The Lombard sculptor Paracca (called Valsoldo) took the lion’s share among the sculptors of the Sistine Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore. Pope Sixtus V was thinking about his tomb even before he was elected, when in 1568 he commissioned the twin tombs for Pius V (1566-72) and himself. This was begun the following year, but Sixtus did not see it completed. Vasoldo was charged with completing it by Sixtus’s nephew, Cardinal Alessandro Damescini Peretti, in 1591.

Vasoldo was not alone in the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo Sarzano was sculptor of a statue of Pius V. The historic reliefs are by Egidio della Riviera and Nicolas Pippi. The statues of Dominican saints on the monument to Pius V were divided between Vasoldo (St Peter Martyr) and Giacomo della Porta (St Dominic). On the monument to Sixtus V the statue of the pope is by Vasoldo, the reliefs by Egidio della Riviera and Nicolas Pippi. The statues of the saints of the Franciscan order are by Pier Paolo Olivieri (St Anthony of Padua) and Flaminio Vacca (St Francis). An exuberant colouring characterizes these tombs, inserted into an architectural context invented by Domenico Fontana, with Prospero Bresciano in the role of iconographic designer.

The statue of Sixtus V shows the patron of the chapel at prayer, an act directed towards the sacramental ciborium and the reliquary. The statue was conceived as a counterpart to the tomb of Pius V, Sixtus V’s predecessor.

Giovanni Gerolamo Albani (1509-1591) was an Italian Roman Catholic cardinal of Albanian descent. He participated in the papal conclave of 1572 that elected Pope Gregory XIII and that of 1585 that elected Pope Sixtus V.

His monument in Santa Maria del Popolo is linked to the tombs in the Cappella Sistina in Santa Maria Maggiore and reveals an opening to the novelties of the new generation of sculptors, in particular to Nicolas Cordier to whom the tomb was also attributed in the past.