Miniature Buildings

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Saints with Buildings

This article is a bit different from most.  I travel a lot and my travels always include churches and museums.  At the moment I am in Italy where the museums not filled with Roman stuff are filled with artwork saved from churches.  One recurrent theme that catches my eye, as a miniature buildings enthusiast, is of images (2D and 3D) of saints holding models of buildings.

This example is of San Pietro Celestino holding an impression of the City of L'Aquila in central Italy.

The stone statue from the second half of the 15th century came from the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemagio and is attributed to Silvestro di Giacomo di Paolo da Sulmona otherwise known as Silvestro dell'Aquila.  Now I know that is more information than you or I really needed but I wanted to record the detail somewhere.  And if you ever find yourself in the Abruzzo region I can thoroughly recommend L'Aquila and its basilicas - a city slowly and stylishly restoring itself from a devastting earthquake in 2009.   There will be more in my travel blog.

It isn't the greatest model but it caught my attention and for 15th century stone carving it's quite lovely (IMHO).

The same theme was then repeated in a series of pictures on display in the town museum.  Not actually models but pictures of models.  Sorry if that's a step too far but it's my website ...

The pictures are of four different saints.  What is clever about the series is that the model in each picture is subtlety different.

The city is reorientated to feature the church dedicated to the saint holding the model.  Clever huh.

During the same trip around central Italy I also stumbled on this pair in the Chiesa di San Francesco in Popoli, though I don't know if their models are meant to be of anywhere specific.  One of them is San Emidio, the other I don't have a name for.

Next a different kind of representation, half way to being a model, is this 3D relief on the tympanum above the main door of Abbazia Di San Clemente a Casauria.  It shows Abbot Leonate presenting to the church's patron San Clemente a model of the rebuilt abbey church.  An event dating from the late 12th century. Thanks Wikipedia.  The abbey is worth a visit if you are in the area.

A second panel shows an expanded version with a bell tower which, like the rose window, no longer exists.

The next one has the saint, Barbara in this case, next to an unspecified tower:

Seen in the museum within the Castel Nuovo in Naples

As always, please e-mail Miniature Buildings if you have something to add. Comments, criticisms, extra thoughts, pictures, or even complete articles for inclusion in the Miniature Buildings site are all welcome. Or if you would like to be added to my mailing list to hear when a new article is published.

David, February 2025