A sumptuous painting by Camillo Procaccini hidden in the heart of Milan: the Martyrdom of St. Theodore

The basilica of Santo Stefano Maggiore is mentioned in Milan’s guidebooks mainly for having been the church where the young Michelangelo Merisi, destined as an adult to become Caravaggio, was baptized: this was discovered in 2007, when an archival document was found that attested that here, on September 30, 1571, the future painter received the sacrament. At most, Santo Stefano Maggiore is remembered because today it is the parish of migrants, and the reference point in the Lombard capital for communities of the faithful from the Philippines and South America. It is a short walk from the Duomo, behind Piazza Fontana, yet it is almost totally unknown to Milanese tourism. Those who arrive here usually visit it together with the shrine of San Bernardino alle Ossa, which stands next to it and, with its walls decorated with bones, arouses much more curiosity. Those with little time do not even enter Santo Stefano Maggiore. A quick, somewhat listless visit is devoted to it: church where Galeazzo Maria Sforza was assassinated in 1476, the martyrs’ stone, Caravaggio’s baptism, interventions ordered by Federico Borromeo that gave it its present appearance, and things like that. A quick tour under its columns peeling from centuries of humidity, a look at the frescoes and canvases along the two naves, and off you go. Often, you don’t even get to see the Trivulzio Chapel, where Camillo Procaccini’s Martyrdom of St. Theodore , a masterpiece of Milanese Counter-Reformation art, stands tall.

In fact, the casual visitor, who perhaps enters here almost by accident, cannot be blamed, because nothing suggests the presence of this work, not a sign directing the visitor to go and see it. The chapel remains at the end of the right aisle, one has to go through it all and realize that, at the end, there is still more to see, even if that anonymous door seems to lead into one of those spaces one comes across in all churches, those where one never quite understands what is there: a confessional room? A chapel for praying without being disturbed by tourists? A sacristy? A storage room? Here, simply, there is another chapel. And one marvels at finding there such a powerful work, with almost violent colors, enclosed in a black marble frame, on the back wall of an apse crowned by a coffered barrel vault.

Procaccini’s work is also mentioned in ancient sources: already Carlo Torre, in his book Il ritratto di Milano, a kind of forward letter guide to “all the antiquities and modernities that were and are seen in the city of Milan”, published in 1674, points to the work in the chapel of Prince Teodoro Trivulzio, dedicated to Saint Theodore, “whose martyrdom he vaguely expressed in painting in the panel on the altar Camillo Procaccini with a Christ in glory.” Today we see the chapel as it had been redesigned, in 1595, by architect Giuseppe Meda, after the Trivulzio family had seen a decades-long dispute around the juspatronage of the chapel, which had previously been dedicated to St. Vincent and belonged to the Besozzi family, end in its favor. Teodoro Trivulzio, in his will drawn up in 1531, a year before his death, left the considerable sum of one hundred thousand ducats to have a chapel erected on the site of the Besozzi’s. It is not hard to imagine that the Besozzi did not like it, so much so that it took sixty years to come to an agreement: it was 1594 when the Soprastanzieria of Santo Stefano agreed to grant them another chapel and monetary compensation. Work began the following year, although Meda’s initial design was not followed to the letter, and today the chapel moreover remains somewhat dark because the sacristy was built next to it in the eighteenth century. It is reasonable to assume that Camillo Procaccini’s work dates from around the same period: we are therefore in the late sixteenth century.

A native of Parma, son of Ercole Procaccini the Elder and older brother of another great artist of the period, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Camillo had trained in Bologna and there had worked, immediately gaining the attention of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, one of the leading theorists of the Counter-Reformation, author of the famous Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane of 1582, which prescribed the need for artists to paint realistic, comprehensible images that adhered closely to the events narrated in sacred texts. Then, in the late 1580s, the move to Milan, to work in Lainate at the behest of Count Pirro I Visconti Borromeo: from there on, Camillo would settle permanently in Milan, opening a workshop from which sacred paintings came out that adhered lavishly to the lines of Counter-Reformation art. And the images of the martyrs were to be an example of unwavering faith, which did not bend even in the face of threats of atrocious death. Such as the one that, according to hagiography, Saint Theodore of Amasea would suffer.

A soldier by profession, during the persecutions against Christians under Emperor Diocletian, Theodore allegedly refused to sacrifice to the gods, and for this he was imprisoned: at first it was decided to let him starve to death, and later he was condemned to be burned alive, but not before being tortured with a hook. Camillo Procaccini summarizes the saint’s ultimate fate in the painting: dressed as a Roman legionnaire, Theodore, a good-looking young man, serenely looks up, meeting the vision of Christ in heaven, who comforts him. Along with Christ, some angels already prepare themselves with crowns and palms, the rewards reserved for saints who suffer martyrdom. All around, the torturers, who are presented with ugly and ungainly faces, an expedient to emphasize their evil, are about to begin torturing him, and one of them is already holding the hook to flay him. Below, a child is blowing on some embers: these are the ones on which Theodore will be burned. Finally, on the right, here is the judge, surrounded by some soldiers, raising his right hand to carry out the sentence.

“The canvas,” wrote Rosalba Tardito Amerio, "belongs to the painter’s most successful and intense period of activity; lively and varied in faces and expressions, pleasant and measured in colors, this ’Martyrdom’ represents a noble and typical example of religious painting in the period of the Counter-Reformation. We see in it one of the typical characteristics of Camillo Procaccini’s art of these years: the construction of the scenes on small spaces, with large figures all arranged in the foreground, grouped together to crowd every free perturbation. And then, the bright colors, the tight-fitting robes, the monumental proportions, which came from formulas already abundantly experimented with by the Emilian Mannerists: only, Procaccini emended of all excesses what he had seen in his native lands, and proposed to his numerous clients clear, reassuring images, modern because they were exemplified in the most up-to-date taste and in line with what the Church demanded of official art.

It was with scenes such as the Martyrdom of St. Theodore that Camillo Procaccini secured the success that was to grace his entire career. The works produced after the turn of the century would lose the freshness and novelty of those that the artist had been able to paint up to about the age of forty, although they continued to receive acclaim (Luigi Lanzi would write that in Milan one finds his best works, and his worst). But at the time of the painting that we observe today in the Trivulzio Chapel, in the place where it has remained for more than four centuries since it was installed there, Camillo was still a relatively young painter who had recently developed an effective language for the goals he had set for himself. And before long Camillo Procaccini would become dominant on the scenes. So much so that he would earn, as Lanzi would write, the nickname “Vasari and Zuccari of Lombardy.”

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