Descendre au puits, s’élever vers la Madone

Abstract

Built around 1600 in the Roman monastery of San Gregorio al Celio, the Salviati chapel houses two Marian images. According to legend, the first Madonna miraculously spoke to Saint Gregory. The artists Carlo Maderno, Annibale Carracci and Giovanni Battista Ricci, among others, brought this episode to life within the chapel’s walls. The second Marian image, at the entrance to the chapel, has until now been considered as a ‘copy’ of the Madonna di San Gregorio, and is still being questioned. This paper explores the connections between this Madonna and the ‘pozzo di San Gregorio’, located in a crypt adjacent to the chapel. Firstly, we look at the restoration work carried out by Cardinal Cesare Baronio, then Commendatory abbot and a member of the Archconfraternity of Suffrages, which organised a procession to the monastery during the Octave of the Dead. We then analyse at how the water from the well, reputed to be thaumaturgic, was used in the Marian cult and in devotional practices for the souls in the purgatory. Finally, we restore the way in which the displays of these Marian images involved and impacted the faithful within a spatial, liturgical and kinetic experience: through their movements and their bodies, they participated in the ritual efficacy in which an intense solidarity between the living and the dead was played out.

Keywords

• pilgrimage
• well
• water
• Saint Gregory
• Miraculous Madonna
• Marian iconography