Serra San Bruno

“Serra San Bruno is the town of Calabria where one would like to stay. It has an alpine color and the air of the sea comes to you spiritually. And then it is in the atmosphere of one of the oldest traditions of Calabria, monasticism”: so wrote, several decades ago, Corrado Alvaro, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. And with Alvaro’s words, this itinerary begins, starting from the long street axis of Corso Umberto I, paved in granite in the second half of the 19th century, which runs through the historic center of Serra San Bruno, skirting the eighteenth-century late Baroque churches. The tour through the churches of Serra constitutes, at the same time, a journey into an eminent craft tradition of cabinetmakers, marble workers, and stonemasons and an itinerary into the great artistic history of the Carthusian Monastery, whose works, after the earthquake of 1783, partly flowed there. Taking the main entrance to the course, coming from the north, the visitor almost immediately finds, on the left, the Chiesa Matrice (late 18th century), documented as early as the beginning of the 17th century as a church dedicated to St. Blaise. In the nave he is greeted by four marble statues: St. John the Baptist, St. Stephen, St. Bruno, and the Virgin and Child. Serving as a counterpart to the statues of St. Bruno and the Virgin are two authentic masterpieces: the bas-reliefs The Conspiracy of Capua and The Nativity finely carved by David Müller and dated 1611.

Stopping to admire the former, one almost seems to witness live the scene described there: in the military camp of Roger the Norman, Saint Bruno appears to the Great Count and reveals to him a conspiracy hatched against him, thus enabling him to foil it. In the second bas-relief, however, a nativity inspired by “Nordic” stylistic canons, chiseled in detail, creates an atmosphere of inner recollection from which it is not easy to escape. After passing the 19th-century altar and admiring the tabernacle by brothers Alfonso and Giuseppe Scrivo, one enters the chancel, where two large canvases-the Martyrdom of St. Stephen by Bernardino Poccetti (c. 1608) and Trinity with Carthusian saints by Tropean Francesco Caivano (1633)-stands opposite each other. Both came from the Carthusian Monastery, like the statues in the nave, and they too document the monastery’s golden age from an artistic point of view, which became a magnet for craftsmen, painters and sculptors from all parts of Europe. But it is in the chapel at the end of the right aisle that is the church’s most astonishing work, an imposing reliquary, dating back to the 11th century and remade in the 18th, given, according to tradition, by Roger d’Altavilla’s third wife – Adelaide del Vasto – to St. Bruno of Cologne. Relics and the reliquary that contained them were certainly among the most venerable treasures kept by the Brunian Carthusian monastery and, as such, were repeatedly recalled by the scholars and travelers who had occasion to deal with the Calabrian monastery. The reliquary – according to the description of the Carthusian historian Tromby – “held about 7 palms high, and wide in proportion. Everything stood contrived of Ebony with several registers of Niches supported by two small columns, each with their bases, and capitals; marvelously worked of the same material. In the middle of each one of them stood a little jar with its ivory lid. And in it stood with their little cards the names of the above-mentioned SS. Relics. Some, however, of the same were enclosed in silver Thecae, which interspersed with art from end to end in certain compartments between one Niche, and the others made a most graceful prominence. But in the middle, lodged in the form of a Cross, a most notable piece at the length of a finger of the Most Holy wood, in which Jesus our Savior offered to the Eternal Father in redemption of the human race, admirably contributed to promote piety, and devotion.” Leaving the Chiesa Matrice and going up the course for a few dozen meters, one encounters, on the same side of the road, the church of Maria SS. dei Sette Dolori, also home to the archconfraternity of the same name. The Church of Our Lady of Sorrows is a true jewel, an architectural and artistic gem, with its semi-elliptical facade (designed by Biagio Scaramuzzino) and small, cozy interior filled with works of art, almost as if it were a treasure chest. The works are almost all of Carthusian provenance, and among them the ciborium by Cosimo Fanzago and Andrea Gallo in mixed marbles stands out, with the precious tabernacle made by Innocenzo Mangani, Raffaele Maitener, and Sebastiano Scioppi and the sculptures of saints by the hand of Cosimo Fanzago. Fanzago’s ciborium is a Baroque “machine” – to which the two spectacular putti seated on the side doors almost seem to act as sentinels – and, although it has undergone dismemberments and remodeling of its primitive conformation, it represents one of the highest pages of seventeenth-century artistic history in the Italian South. Nobly surrounding them are the two canvases placed above the marble altars of the side chapels, the Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Bruno (Paolo De Matteis, 1721) and the Death of Saint Anne (1645), an expression of refined figurative culture recently attributed to Reynaud Levieux (1613-1699), while not to be forgotten on the walls of the nave are the four marble medallions of the 17th-century Neapolitan school depicting Saint Bruno (?), St. Gennaro, St. Peter and St. Paul, also originally in the Charterhouse as well as the canvases, altars and marble balustrade (17th century) placed in the arms of the transept. Belonging to the local artistic production, however, are The Seven Florentine Founding Saints of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Seven Sorrows (Giuseppe Maria Pisani sr., 1902) in the central lunette of the choir, the four sails surrounding the dome (Stefano Pisani, 19th century), the precious stuccoes on the walls, and the bronze exterior door dedicated to the Seven Sorrows of Mary (Giuseppe Maria Pisani jr., 1961). Carthusian legacies in the artistic and architectural history of Serra San Bruno are further visible in the Church of Maria SS. Assunta in Cielo, and not only because it was anciently called the church of the “panella,” as the monks went there to distribute bread to the poor. It is its very frontispiece, elegant and linear, that testifies to the Carthusian monastery’s legacies that have enriched the urban fabric, with the use of reused materials as much for sacred places as for civilian dwellings. Inside, behind the magnificent wooden high altar, still an important painting by Bernardino Poccetti-The Annunciation-inspired by a canvas of the same subject preserved in the Church of the SS. Annunziata in Florence, but also a 16th-century St. Bruno, which represents the prototype of the so-called “Calabrian” St. Bruno. In fact, the painting summarizes the fundamental iconographic attributes recognized in Calabria for the Carthusian patriarch: the bearded face with the head slightly recumbent, the hood of the monastic habit surmounted by the seven stars, the tau-shaped staff held delicately, and the bishop’s mitre and crosier laid at the saint’s feet. Having left the Church of the Assumption in the Terravecchia district and crossed the bridge over the Ancinale a little further on, visitors can reach the other Church of the Assumption in the Spinetto district in a matter of minutes. Dating back to the 19th century, the church is most notable for the works of Serbian craftsmen, such as a wooden crucifix from the Scrivo workshop, a statue of St. Joseph by Antonio Scrivo, statues of St. Francis of Paola and Our Lady of Mount Carmel by Raffaele Regio, but also for the extraordinary Maria SS. Assunta of the early 18th century Neapolitan school, carried in procession on Bruno Barillari’s valuable mid-19th century “varia.”