Specific type: church Structural configuration: of the primitive Romanesque church, built in the second half of the 12th century, only the slender gabled façade, in well-squared local stone, remains. In the center it has a large "French" portal with a round arch, composed of several "bundle" elements, with splayed semi-columns crowned by capitals decorated with floral motifs and with "nailed" bases with allegorical figurines. Interesting, on the facade, two small eye windows and a cross opening. It is the most complex and best preserved Romanesque portal in the entire Intelvi Valley. The building was enlarged in the seventeenth century and then remodeled in the eighteenth century. The bell tower also has Romanesque foundations, but is largely a seventeenth-eighteenth century renovation. Around the building, Bishop Niguarda recalls in 1593 a walled cemetery with three doors and, on the sides of the main door, the small painted chapel dedicated to San Rocco. The Romanesque apse and the oratory of San Rocco were demolished at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1893 other remodeling works were carried out, directed by the master builder Somaini and the painter Inganni di Dizzasco. Inside there are a series of baroque interventions, preceded by sixteenth-century frescoes (on the left wall, Madonna Enthroned, with Child and Saints Bartolomeo and Antonio Abate, with the Baptism of Christ alongside) and seventeenth-century (on the right wall, Madonna del Rosary with Child and Saints Domenico, Lucia, Catherine of Siena and Saint Dominican). In the first chapel on the right, evidence of the cult of San Carlo after his beatification in 1610, we find an altarpiece, stuccos and frescoes dating back to the first half of the 17th century, while the scagliola frontal dates back to the 18th century. The first chapel on the left houses many works: the seventeenth-century altarpiece of the Madonna with Child and Saint Catherine of Siena on the right, the altar with the eighteenth-century statue of the Madonna del Rosario and the contemporary scagliola frontal (1741); the set of stuccos and frescoes (Adoration of the Shepherds, Coronation of the Virgin, Pentecost); the seventeenth-century baptismal font.
The Annunciation in stucco on the triumphal arch is notable (Barberian, attributed to Ferradini), while in the presbytery there remain remains of the balustrade, a statue of St. Anthony the Abbot and a contemporary processional cross, but above all the vault with stucco decoration and fresco ( Trinity, Angels, Saints Anthony and Paul, Saints George and Mark) from the early seventeenth century.
The furniture in the sacristy is eighteenth-century, with baroque, neoclassical and eclectic treasures; The main altar is neoclassical and is among the most impressive in the area.
For more information visit:
By Simona Castelli – ARTEVALLEINTELVI: Saint Anthony the Abbot
By Simona Castelli – ARTEVALLEINTELVI: The faces of motherhood (min. 1:10)
(news taken from: GUIDES OF THE PROVINCE OF COMO, FROM CERNOBBIO TO VALLE INTELVI ed. NODO LIBRI, VALLE INTELVI by F. CAVADINI and P. CAIROLI – Como)
