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CORBARA  The hamlet, home to crows, emerges from a broad and solemn natural scene dominated by substantial sandstone prominences that have been polished and corroded by the slow, peremptory action of wind and rain. The presence of this continuous, impassable spur has influenced the positioning and the configuration of the settlement, which is compactly drawn along the directrix in line with the flow of the rock. The close interdependency of the settlement and its dominating backdrop create building and environmental situations of great significance.
The solid, peremptory front wall of an important tower house, raised over three floors and dotted by single-lancet windows, competes with the severe and irregular rocks in the background, bending the configuration of the place to the assertive and taxing dictation of the building artifice. A slightly descending lane runs along the more imposing banks of rocks. Alongside the road, a long string of constructions that was used for housing equipment still has its original roofing of limestone slabs and leans against the living rock, exploiting it as a perimeter wall. In this way a subtle co-penetration is created between the building and the bulk of the sandstone mass, with a force of suggestion that offers few terms of comparison. Within Europe, a scene of this type is only to be found in Sardinia and Portugal. A house with a wall that was originally marked by wide single-lancet windows presents a charming fragment of fresco in which the figures of the Madonna with Child and of S. Francesco are still discernible. The delicacy of the details, the clarity of the faces, the intense red filling in dotted by floriform stars immediately draw one’s attention and astounds you. Contact with such a fresco, in a building context of skilled essentiality, is completely unexpected, above all given the quality of the work, which ably and sensitively reinterprets the forms of the best XIV century painting. In the harshness of the scenery of Corbara, the figure of Poverello d’Assisi is particularly significant, ideally leading back to the presence of the nearby Franciscan hermitage, enriching the fascination of the places with a vein of serene mysticism. A stupendous façade marred by external casings and crowned by a concrete floor presents the telling remains of an extremely elegant sculptural decoration based on the prototypes spread by sacred and civil architecture of the XIV century. In particular a double-lancet window stands out, with trilobed pointed centering, framed by a round archivolt decorated by a string of three-pointed palmettes; the whole is enriched at the centre by an oculus with a floriform transenna. The bulk of the solid tower house that belongs to the Bonelli family since at least the XVIII century plays pendant opposite the tufa massif that brings the hamlet to a close. Fireplaces of Corbara The first fireplace, of solid appearance, tarnished and compact, presents as usual the central medallion with the monogram JHS that breaks the following inscription into two parts: OMNIA MODERATA DURANT A(nno) D(omini) 1638 (all things done with moderation last. The year of the Lord 1638). Below the medallion the initials of the person who commissioned it can be read: M.P. Dominated by a hefty overhanging cornice defined by six mouldings, the lintel rests on two posts chamfered at the front to suggest the form of as many small columns with semi-polygonal shafts, placed on carefully moulded bases. (In the same building, on the ground floor, another rough fireplace can be seen, the lintel of which carries a difficult to decipher inscription and is placed on two formidable brackets with a circular profile). The second fireplace presents a softly elegant formality. The central medallion with the JHS monogram is flanked by the fluid delineation of two flowering shoots, carved with an elegance that cuts out the superfluous. At the sides, the inscription DIO MI VEDE transforms the central image into the tangible emanation of a conceptual and physically-present being, luminous and persuasive, ready to recognise devotion, the hard work and the talent of the commissioner. Below the medallion the date in which the work was carried out can be read: 1717. The object of the excellent moulding gives life to the length below without imposing or parading values that clearly follow a framework. The brackets, of classically styled sober lines, are formed by a cyma and a cove. Casone Bonelli On the brow of a slope between the centre of Corbara and the church of S. Maria in Lapide, along the old directrix that followed the course of the Rio, the watchful and solitary bulk of Casone Bonelli appears. It is an isolated building, on the edge of a vast and picturesque plain that over a great range leads the eye towards the mountain landscape. Its name is a living reminder that it belonged to the noted family of the poet Francesco “Checco” Bonelli, a son of Corbara. At present it belongs to the Miconi family, who have recently undertaken strengthening and recovery of the roofing: an intervention that for the moment has been done to avoid the dangers of complete abandon. The building immediately attracts attention because of the compactness of its appearance, exalted by a stupendous building device of almost homogenous rows of limestone ashlars carefully squared and polished on the quarry face. In this way you have the impression of a compact building block and the impression is reinforced by the severe muteness of the short sides of the building, which have no doors or adequate windows. Its isolated position explains the necessity of such a rough configuration, which had to inspire awe in any possible assailant. The heavy presence of slits and firing holes leaves no doubt as to the implicit motivations of this constructive solution. The façade of the building, on the other hand is removed from any possible line of fire thanks to the projecting wings of the short sides of the building, one of which has a slit. The projecting wings on the other hand play a secondary role to the small vaults that support the two access stairways to the upper floors of the building: and the small vault of the left entrance is still visible, even if it has deteriorated and no longer has any steps. The wings themselves produce a “scenographic” effect; they delay the appearance of the refined, formal elaboration of the façade. The façade itself mirrors in its symmetrical division the internal division of the building, which served to distinguish the living quarters of two different families. Downstairs two doors placed side by side, with a lintel surmounted by a flat arch, gave access to the cellars. The already mentioned doors backing onto the wings of the short sides of the building gave access to the first floor; to the side of each door a refined little window appears that breaks the peremptory impressiveness of the wall. The second floor is highlighted by a solid cornice that runs along three sides of the building: an aesthetic relief motif that ties in ideally to the defensive and rural building that was often characterised by structures that prevented assailants and predators from climbing up the building, be they man or beast. On this stringcourse four windows take shape on the façade and another four that mirror them open up the long wall opposite. The left side shows the housing of the trusses of another building, now lost, that was annexed to the construction, perhaps the stable. The inside originally had a false ceiling: barrel vaults and barrel vaults with lunettes placed on elegant archstones on the first floor. The top floor has always had exposed wooden trusses. The building is completed by the charming decorative and epigraphic device of the façade, which wins the severity of the building in an eloquent aesthetic and symbolic way. The constructive solution of the doors already has a clear aesthetic virtue, where the monolithic lintels, even if underlined by two opposing ashlars to form a flat arch, only involve the external cornice of the wall, and do not therefore perform their flaunted static function. The aesthetic meaning was, as usual, exalted by the decorations that adorned half of the quarry face of the lintels themselves; they were heraldic figures, which atmospheric agents have now rendered illegible. The lintel frames of the doors that give access to the first floor are enriched by small consoles that are carefully profiled by a fine volute. The trilithic windows of the first floor are better preserved, with the window sill elegantly emphasised by moulding and the lintel decorated at the centre and fitted on the wings with an epigraph. The left window displays a floriform oriflamme of S. Bernardino da Siena, with JHS circumscribed by a circular profiling and squared by four angular leaves. The inscription reads: SERVITE D(OMI)NO CUM TIMORE (serve the Lord with fear). The right window displays a decorated shield that can just be made out. It is completed by an inscription to the sides: NIHL DEEST TIMENTI DEUM (He who fears God lacks nothing). The stringcourse is profiled with a good four mouldings of an ostentatious classical tone: from the bottom upwards, a listel, a cove, a listel and a final cyma. The second floor windows are also trilithic and are elegantly squared on the model of a decorative form that is typical of renaissance architectonic sculpture and even more so of XVI century Montegallo building. The lintels, finely punctuated by small roses, lilies and by small disks with spiral spokes, are all enriched by epigraphs. Let us remember in particular those that decorate the first and the fourth window: MENSURATA DURANT (things done with rigour and with moderation are the things that last) and NON SENZA FATIGA (what you are seeing has not been accomplished without effort). The second inscription, very worn, is not easy to read. The third inscription reads: PER BE FAR SE ACQUISTA (doing good you earn). A table in relief hung on the façade conserves, fragmentarily, the date of construction: 159[ ]. The essential principles of a constructive practice wholly centred on the effect of compact building and trilithic openings merge with the delights of a sober but elegant renaissance decorative apparatus. The eloquent appearance of carefully structured epigraphs is charming, following a style that clearly refers to the minor building trade of Ascoli of the XVI century (the inscription Non senza fatiga, in particular, is met in Via Annibal Caro 44); a taste, it should be made clear, that is enriched and qualified with a syncretic sensibility that is really original, that does not exist to imitate the lintels with their coats of arms of noble residences. The insertion in such a context of the rough doors lintels with flat arched mute is worthy of note, a conscious citation of a typical form of noble lintel of the Ascoli Medieval period: architecture of civil towers based on the powerlessness and the fascination of a solid building apparatus. The happy union between architecture of housing and entertainment and architecture of an exquisitely defensive nature, the accuracy of the details, and the charm of the environmental background make Casone Bonelli of Corbara the culmination of Montegallo architecture in the XVI century, and it is also one of the more significant episodes of Italian civil architecture. Page 31 It is raised on a mighty system of arcades that enter into a broad opening of the ground floor: paved with smooth slabs of stone, it has always housed timber and equipment. A steep little alley flanks the building which then enters a charming covered passage, squeezed between the Bonelli house and the adjoining building. It is from the structures that can be observed here – in particular two bracketed linteled portals stand out – that we can deduce that the Bonelli house reuses some components of a pre-existing XVI century building. This is confirmed inside the house by a further portal that is easily observed and which carries the date MCCCCC (1500) and includes the usual JHS monogram. The external walls of the building present here and there some sculptural elements that have been reused: a small rose, a window lintel with the monogram JHS within a medallion flanked by strange volutes, a fragment of moulded cornice, a further window lintel with bracketed ends. Inside there are two fireplaces of interest. On the first floor, the fireplace, wider than the other, has a stretch with the monogram JHS within a central medallion at the sides of which there are two tablets that include respectively, the name of the commissioner V(ince)NZO B(onelli) and the date the work was carried out, 1799. Of particular interest are the decorations of the two supporting brackets which show the crossed keys of S. Peter, the coat of arms of Montegallo and above all the stupendous stylised image of a horse. On the second floor the smaller fireplace, which is older, presents a medallion with the monogram JHS in a much simpler and rougher style; lower down, divided into two parts the year in which the work was carried out, 1687 can be seen. The building is topped by a loft with dove house which is highlighted in the external tympanum thanks to the branches on which the birds perched with the relative system of small compartments and thanks, above all, to the characteristic cartwheel. Even if no valid chronological detail has been passed down to us for the entire structure, the date on the smaller fireplace can be extended to all the building, above all in consideration of the fact that its prevalent characters can easily be attributed to the XVII century. Remaining on the theme of fireplaces, it is right to remember two other notable examples. Bibliography:
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