The baronial hall at Manta Castle, on the hillsides in the province
of Cuneo, is home to one of the most astonishing testaments of
international Gothic painting: a cycle of frescoes depicting "Heroes
and Heroines" contrasting, on the opposite wall, with the mysterious
depiction of the "Fountain of Youth".
The Manta Castle complex is the
result of a series of buildings beginning with the original
stronghold of the XIII century; it was embellished in the 1500s by
the elegant "Grotesque" hall and a delightful gallery with frescoes.
The nearby parish church as precious 1400s frescoes.
Manta Castle View
An initial fortified core, standing on the top of the Manta
Hill, with a view of the Monviso group, already existed in
the XIII century.
The Manta Castle began to take on its present
day appearance under the Saluzzo della Manta in the early
1400s. The present day appearance is therefore the typical
outcome of the gradual metamorphosis of a Mediaeval castle
into a complex of buildings of different periods having
different styles, with the progressive loss of almost all
fortification features to become an aristocratic residence.
Manta Castle Baronial Hall
Valerano, lord of Manta from 1416, commissioned organic projects to
build his castle as a residential structure in keeping with the
functional and decorative styles of the late Gothic period. The most
significant testimony of this period is the cycle of frescoes that
entirely covers the large baronial hall. The series of nine heroes and
nine heroines of Antiquity and the scene of the Fountain of Youth were
frescoed shortly little after 1420 by an anonymous painter known as the
“Master of Manta”. No other works by this "master" are known.
The cycle of heroes and heroines
The social and political message entrusted to the sequence of eighteen
heroes and heroines greeting everyone who entered the hall to meet
Valerano was clearly self-celebratory. The figures, examples of virtue
and heroism inspired by classic, Hebrew and Christian traditions, have
precious clothes closely linked with the fashion of international courts
in the early 1400s and presumably refer to the protagonists of the noble
Saluzzo della Manta family.
Manta Castle Grotesque Hall
The "Grotesque" Hall, in the courtly apartment commissioned by
Michelantonio in 1560, is one of the most significant settings in the
castle thanks to its testimony of mannerist artistic culture. The vault
is a kind of crown canopy entirely decorated with paintings and
stucco-work with various themes: the phytomorphic fantasies typical of
the grotesque, scenes of classic ruins or great Renaissance
architecture, as well as the allegories of the Virtues in the ovals
between one pendentive and another.
Manta Castle Church
The castle church has two particularly prestigious chambers, in harmony
with the two most significant moments in the pictorial decoration inside
the castle itself. The apse has an important cycle of frescoes depicting
episodes in the life of Christ, painted almost simultaneously with the
cycle in the baronial hall. The funeral chapel of Michelantonio has a
square central ground plan and is surmounted by an elegant octagonal
dome; nevertheless, it has the same rich stucco and fresco decoration as
the vaults in the "Palazzo di Michelantonio" - probably by the same
artists.
