View of the Sanctuary

The origins of the city of Loreto date from the first half of the 14th century, contemporaneous with the rise and spread of the Loretan cult of the Virgin. The cult derived from the claim that the house of the Virgin (the Santa Casa) was miraculously transported from Nazareth to Loreto. The sanctuary of Santa Maria (begun 1469) was built over the Holy House and attracted numerous pilgrims.

In 1509 Pope Julius II commissioned Donato Bramante to construct a rectangular structure within the basilica of Santa Maria to enclose the Santa Casa. Bramante gave the small, humble house (c. 9.5 x 4.0 m internally) an elegant marble shell. He used fluted Corinthian half columns resting on pedestals and supporting an entablature, cornice, and balustrade to articulate the main storey. The structure has two doorways on each of its long (north and south) sides, with an altar set against one of the short ends. Work continued after Bramante's death in 1514, the richly perforated architectural revetment being installed only in 1532-34; the balustrade was added in 1537.

The casing is an oblong structure with two long sides and two narrow ends. Each end is flanked by superposed niches between heavy columns, and is filled with wide narrative reliefs, while each of the long sides is punctuated by three superposed niches, with doorways in the intervening wall surfaces, above each of which is a relief. The sculpture of the Holy House comprises in all twenty figures in niches and nine exceptionally large marble panels carved in a horizontal format in high relief depicting scenes from the Life of the Virgin.

The nine marble reliefs seem to have been begun before Bramante's death (1514) and are conceived in a single style. Two of the reliefs, the Adoration of the Shepherds (#1) and the Annunciation (#2), were carved by Andrea Sansovino between 1518 and 1523. The Marriage of the Virgin (#3) was begun by Sansovino and completed by Tribolo. The Birth of the Virgin (#4) was begun by Baccio Bandinelli (1518-19) and completed by Raffaello da Montelupo (1533). The Adoration of the Magi (#5) by Raffaello da Montelupo dates from the period when he and Baccio Bandinelli worked on the Birth of the Virgin. In 1533 Tribolo and Francesco da Sangallo collaborated on the Translation of the Holy House of Nazareth (#6). In the same year Montelupo completed his Visitation (#7) and Sangallo added the relief of Mary and Joseph Completing the Census (#8). The last narrative, the Dormition of the Virgin (#9) was finished by Sangallo in 1536.

The reliefs are framed by ten pairs of statues placed one above the other in niches flanked by half columns, with the lower niches containing seated prophets, the upper niches standing sibyls. The prophets date from the 1540s; they echo the high relief of the narrative panels, as they project from the niches, but they also disrupt the harmony of the architectural planes. The sibyls were added in the 1570s. The figures were sculpted by Girolamo Lombardo, Giovanni Battista della Porta and Tomaso della Porta.

The Santa Casa was completed by bronze doors (installed 1568-76) with their eight scenes from the Life of Christ by Girolamo Lombardo and his brother Ludovico Lombardo.

The photo shows one of the two long sides with doorways used as entrance.