Issogne Castle
Issogne Castle is a castle in Issogne, in lower Aosta Valley, in northwestern Italy. It is one of the most famous manors of the region, and is located on the right bank of the Dora Baltea at the centre of the inhabited area of Issogne. As a seigniorial residence of the Renaissance, the Castle has quite a different look from that of the austere Verrès Castle, which is located in Verrès, on the opposite bank of the river.
Issogne Castle is most noteworthy for its fountain in the form of pomegranate tree and its highly decorated portico, a rare example of medieval Alpine painting, with its frescoed cycle of scenes of daily life from the late Middle Ages.
History
Middle ages
The earliest mention of the castle of Issogne is in a papal bull issued by Pope Eugene III in 1151, which refers to a fortified building at Issogne, the property of the Bishop of Aosta. Some walling discovered in the cellars of the current castle may be evidence of a Roman villa, dating from the 1st century BC, on the site.Tensions between the Bishop of Aosta and the De Verrecio family, lords of the nearby town of Verrès, reached boiling point around 1333, when the castle of Issogne, the episcopal seat, was attacked and damaged by fire. Issogne remained the seat of the bishop until 1379, when the bishop of Aosta submitted to the jurisdiction of the then lord of Verrès, Yblet of Challant. Ibleto transformed the episcopal stronghold into an elegant princely residence in Gothic style, with a series of towers and buildings enclosed by an encircling wall.
When Yblet died in 1409, the feud and castle of Issogne passed to his son Francis of Challant, who in 1424 received the title of Count of Challant from the Duke of Savoy. Francesco died in 1442, leaving no male heir. A long succession struggle between Francesco's daughter Catherine of Challant and her cousin James of Challant-Aymavilles was won by James, who thus became the second Count of Challant and the new lord of Issogne.
Renaissance
From about 1480, further alterations were made to the Castle by James's son Luigi di Challant, and continued after his death in 1487 by his cousin, the prior George of Challant-Varey, to whom James's wife Marguerite de la Chambre had granted custody of his sons Philibert and Charles. George had new wings erected to connect the already existing buildings, unifying the complex into a single horseshoe shape surrounding a central courtyard. The decorations of the portico and the celebrated pomegranate fountain date to this period. The Castle hosted many illustrious guests, including the future emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg as he returned to Germany in 1414, and King Charles VIII of France in 1494.Work on the Castle ended with the death of George of Challant in 1509. Philibert of Challant became the new lord of Issogne, and made the Castle a residence for himself, his wife Louise d'Aarberg and his son René of Challant, under whom the Castle reached its greatest splendour and hosted a rich and refined court.
Decline and rebirth
Renato di Challant left no male heir at his death in 1565. His possessions passed to Giovanni Federico Madruzzo, husband of René's daughter Isabelle, giving rise to an inheritance dispute between the Madruzzo family and Isabelle's cousins of the Challant family that lasted for more than a century. The lordship of Issogne and its Castle passed from the Madruzzo family to the Lenoncourt family, then in 1693 to Cristina Maurizia Del Carretto di Balestrina, and was finally returned to the Challant family in 1696.In 1802, the last count of Challant, Giulio Giacinto, died, and the Challant family was extinguished. The Castle, already abandoned for some years, fell into decay and its furniture was removed. In 1872 the owner of the Castle, Baron Marius de Vautheleret, was forced to sell it at auction. It was acquired by the Turin painter Vittorio Avondo, who restored it, furnishing it with some of its original furniture bought back from the antique market, and with copies of furniture of the period. Avondo donated the Castle to the Italian state in 1907; in 1948 it passed to the Aosta Valley region.
The Castle may be visited by guided tour.
Interior of the Castle
From the exterior, the Castle looks like a fortified residence of fairly unprepossessing appearance, without any particular decoration, with angular turrets a little higher than the rest of the building. The Castle is situated at the centre of the inhabited area of Issogne.The Castle was built to a quadrangular plan, three sides of which are occupied by the building and the fourth, oriented towards the south, comprises an Italian Garden, enclosed within a surrounding wall.
The courtyard and portico
The internal courtyard, enclosed within the three sides of the building, and the garden form one of the most interesting spaces of the Castle. At one time, one reached this space by passing from the countryside through principal gate and under a portico. Today, for practical reasons, the secondary entrance on the west side is used. This entrance faces an expansive field.On the facades that face the courtyard, one finds the so-called "Miroir pour les infants de Challant", a series of frescoed heraldic arms that show the diverse branches of the Challant family and the principal matrimonial alliances of the house. The "miroir" was created in order to preserve a record of the family history and to transmit it to future generations. The surrounding wall of the garden, on the other hand, was decorated with monochromatic images of legends and heroes of antiquity, now unfortunately almost entirely obliterated.
At the centre of the courtyard, one finds the celebrated 'pomegranate fountain'. From the octagonal stone bowl of the fountain emerges a pomegranate tree made of wrought iron from which jets of water are sprayed. Strangely, although the fruit of the tree is clearly to be understood as that of the pomegranate the leaves, perhaps for symbolic reasons intended by the artist, are those of another tree - the oak. George of Challant probably had the fountain constructed as a wedding gift for the wedding of his favourite, Philibert of Challant, when Philibert married Louise d'Aarberg in 1502. It appears that the tree is to be read symbolically as the expression of the desire to unite the fertility and unity of the family represented by the pomegranate, with its seed-filled fruit, with the strength and antiquity signified by the oak. Amongst the branches of the pomegranate-oak, and somewhat difficult to discern, tiny dragons have been inserted.
The east side of the courtyard is occupied by the portico with its round arches and cross-vaults. The principal entrance of the Castle opens onto this portico and the interior of the building is nowadays also reached from this portico. The geometric decoration of the ribbing of the cross-vaults is typical of the rate of the fifteenth century.
The lunettes of the portico are decorated with frescoes giving realistic and humorous depictions of scenes daily life and the trades of the period. They represent an important iconographic testament to life between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The 'lunette of the guard house' shows some soldiers, accompanied by some prostitutes, seated at a table and intent on playing cards or tric-trac. Their weapons and armour are hung up on a rack attached to the wall. In the 'lunette of the bakery', recently kneaded bread is being pushed into an oven; a butcher turns meat on a spit while a cat tries to steal it from him. In the 'lunette of the tailor's shop', pieces of cloth are measured and cut, while on the shelves of the rear of the apothecary's shop, numerous jars of herbs and other medicines are shown. The 'lunette of the market' shows a fruit and vegetable market busy with numerous customers and vendors dressed in costumes of the period. Lastly, in the 'lunette of the small goods seller's shop', some forms of the typical Fontina cheese are shown; these are considered to the oldest representations of this cheese.
Besides their æsthetic function, these frescoes probably have a celebratory function, and are probably intended to show the abundance and peace obtained in the region thanks to the leadership of the lord of the Castle. The entire cycle has been attributed to an artist known as 'maître Colin' due to a graffito in the 'lunette of the guard house' that identifies 'Magister Collinus' as the author of the work. The same artist is known as the author of some paintings in the chapel on the first floor of the Castle.
The ground floor
The Castle comprises a total of about fifty rooms, although only about ten of them may visited with the guided tour. A door in the portico leads to the dining room, roofed by a vault and furnished with nineteenth-century furniture that Vittorio Avondo had made on the basis of Renaissance models. The dining room was joined to the kitchen by means of a service-hatch. The kitchen is divided into two parts by a wooden grate, creating two distinct spaces probably originally intended for the preparation of different types of food. The larger space, adjacent to the dining room, is provided with a large fireplace and an oven, while the smaller part includes a fireplace of smaller dimensions and a sink.On the northern side, next to the staircase that leads to the second floor, one finds the so-called 'hall of justice' or 'lower halls', the principal presentation space of the Castle. It is a large hall on a rectangular plan, with the walls completely covered in a fresco of a fictive loggia with columns of marble, alabaster and transparent crystal. Scenes of the hunt, courtly life and northern landscapes are represented. The cycle of decoration culminates with the judgement of Paris, in which the commissioner of the work, George of Challant, is actually represented as Paris. The frescoes of this hall, probably completed before the death of George of Challant in 1509, have been attributed to the Master of Wuillerine, an artist thought to have been of the Franco-Flemish school, as may be deduced from the presence in the landscapes of houses with sharply-pitched roofs and windmills of the type typical in northern Europe. The Master of Wuillerine is also the author of an "ex voto" for the collegiate church of Saint Ursus at Aosta. The ceiling is of wood with the trusses left exposed. Placed along the walls on the long sides of the hall are placed carved wooden stalls, nineteenth-century recreations of the late-Gothic originals conserved in the Turin City Museum of Ancient Art. The rear wall of the hall is pierced by a large stone fireplace decorated by a griffin and a lion that hold the arms of the Challant family aloft.
The other rooms of the ground floor, which may not be visited, house the dispensary of the Castle, service rooms for the use of the kitchen, the prisoner, the room reserved for the use of pilgrims, and rooms for the falconer, the guards, as well as other service rooms.