The San Carlone or Sancarlone, Arona

The San Carlone or Sancarlone or the Colossus of San Carlo Borromeo is a massive copper statue, erected between 1614 and 1698, near Arona, Italy. It represents Charles Borromeo, Catholic saint and former archbishop of Milan.

It is built on a hill overlooking Lago Maggiore near the ancestral castle of the Borromeo family. A series of chapels was planned to document the life of the saint, forming a Sacro Monte for religious meditation and veneration. Only three were eventually built.

The statue was designed by Giovanni Battista Crespi, (known as Il Cerano), and erected by Siro Zanella of Pavia and Bernardo Falconi of Lugano. It was begun in 1614, soon after St Charles Borromeo's canonization. The 23.5-metre statue is finished with sheets of hammered copper and joined with bolts. It stands on a granite pedestal, 11.5 metres high.

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the French artist who designed the Statue of Liberty, visited Arona to study the statue’s structure.

Bartholdi:

«The statue of St. Charles Borromeo is the first known example of a statue of repousse copper, worked with the hammer inside and outside, and freely supported on iron beams. The work was executed in a somewhat coarse style, but it is interesting, and has the merit of being the result of a bold initiative. The copper is a little thin, measuring only a millimetre in thickness, say, for two centuries.»[2]

The colossus of Arona is mentioned on the plaque posed at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.

Arona, statua di San Carlo Borromeo [3]

The interior can be accessed by narrow stairs and ladders, allowing visitors to peer through the eyes and ears.

Details of the San Carlo's face inside the Colossus of San Carlo Borromeo at Arona [4]

Il San Carlone - Portale Turistico del Comune di Arona (NO) \| web.archive.org Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi \| Het Vrijheidbeeld of la Liberté éclairant le monde, de bewogen geschiedenis van een onbewogen vrouw [1] Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi \| Een kleine geschiedenis [2] Het verhaal van een verbeelding. Achtergrond en inspiratiebronnen van la Liberté éclairant le monde [1] Photo released into the public domain. [2] Bartholdi, Frédéric (1885). The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. North American Review. North American Review. [3] Photo by Gianni Careddu, published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. [4] Photo's by Fabian65, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. [5] Photo's by Civvi , licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.		Sketch of the interior of the Sancarlone (Colossus of San Carlo Borromeo), Arona
	The Colossus of San Carlo Borromeo ("Sancarlone"), municipality of Arona, May 1st to September 30th 1914 schedule
This poster evokes the beautiful setting on Lake Maggiore. Behind the statue, the spiral staircase to the base of the statue is clearly visible.
Auguste Bartholdi: «It cannot be said that St. Charles Borromeo on the banks of Lake Maggiore is properly included under the head of colossal art. It is an ordinary statue enlarged, and its volume gives it its principal interest. The pedestal is deplorable, and nothing in· the whole work shows either research into the principles of colossal art or a. comprehension of them. Nevertheless this work of art has a peculiar interest in virtue of its material execution. It is, I think, the first example of the use of repousse copper mounted on iron trusses. In ancient times metal beaten out into sheets had already been used. But it was used as a covering or was modeled on a solid form of wood or stone. Gold, silver and copper were thus employed in Gredan antiquity and in the extreme Orient» [2]. .

Lago Maggiore - View from San Carlo statue in Arona [5]
This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia article Sancarlone published under the GNU Free Documentation License.