Ilaria del Carretto
Ilaria del Carretto was the second wife of Paolo Guinigi, lord of Lucca between 1400 and 1430. After her premature death (she was only 25 years old), her husband commissioned the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia to create a marble and stone sarcophagus, a funerary monument that took the sculptor two whole years to complete.
Address: Cathedral of San Martino – Piazza San Martino, Lucca
phone: 0583 490530
E-MAIL: info@museocatedralelucca.it
website: museocattedralelucca.it
accessibility: Ramps are available for wheelchair users.
timetables: variable during the year, it is recommended to see the official website
input: a is expected paid ticket for the church and the archaeological area.
The Museum and Archaeological Complex of the Cathedral of Lucca adheres to Visit Card Lucca the cumulative ticket that allows access to the main places of cultural interest and attractions of the city
Ilaria del Carretto She was the second wife of Paolo Guinigi, lord of Lucca between 1400 and 1430.
After the woman's premature death, Paolo commissioned a funeral monument for her, a marble and stone sarcophagus so that she would be remembered forever, and he commissioned the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia, who took two whole years to create it.
The beautiful figure of Ilaria She lies stretched out in her classically inspired bed, decorated with cherubs and festoons. Her head rests softly on two pillows, her eyes lightly closed, her hands delicately resting on her belly. Her robe is refined and elegant, with a distinctive cut, and her head is adorned with a crown of fabric and flowers. The dog, curled up at her feet, symbolizes marital fidelity.
The work, one of the greatest masterpieces of fifteenth-century sculpture, expresses the transition period between the late Gothic taste of the drapery with thin and parallel folds that draw with a continuous and delicate line lights and shadows that bring out the shapes of the body with an already Renaissance attitude of Florentine ancestry of the soft modelling of the face and hands, and refined plays of chiaroscuro
"... Jacopo licked the marble cleanly and tried to finish it with infinite diligence," Giorgio Vasari said about him.
The work was originally located in the Guinigi Chapel of the Church of San Francesco, where her body still lies, and remained there until 1430, the year in which Paolo Guinigi was expelled from the city and his assets were confiscated. Ilaria's sarcophagus was stripped of all the parts that referred to the tyrant: the slab with the coat of arms, later recovered, and a commemorative inscription, which has since been lost.
In 1887, after having undergone several moves, the sarcophagus was reassembled in the north transept of the church of Cathedral of St. Martin where it remained until its current location in the sacristy of the Cathedral.