SAN MAURIZIO

Description

Essentials about San Maurizio in brief

The convent church of San Maurizio from the 16th century is not without reason called the “Sistine Chapel of Milan“. Due to its complete painting with Renaissance frescoes, it is one of the most beautifully decorated church rooms in Italy and all of Europe.

The history of San Maurizio

A predecessor of the present church is mentioned for the first time already in 823. The church was part of an important Benedictine convent dedicated to Saint Maurice in 964, after Emperor Otto I donated a relic of the saint to the convent (to which one of his sisters also belonged).

The present church was begun from 1503, probably according to the plans of Gian Giacomo Dolcebuono. In 1579 the church was completed. The monastery was abolished in 1798. The church was subsequently exposed to decay, so that it finally had to be closed. The restoration of the frescoes took 25 years. In 2010 San Maurizio was reopened to the public.

The architecture of San Maurizio

The wall-pillared church with galleries is rather plainly structured on the outside. The gable façade faces north, followed on the east side by round windows for lighting the side chapels and arched windows above for the galleries. The ten bays long, steeply rising interior is divided by a rood screen into areas for nuns and lay people. Architectural remains of the convent (the Monastero Maggiore), which was first used as barracks after secularization, are still visible to the east of the church. To the west, the Archaeological Museum of Milan has moved into a modern building on the old monastery grounds.

The frescoes of San Maurizio

The extraordinary thing about San Maurizio is the fact that the church was almost completely frescoed in the 16th century by the best Lombard painters. Almost no inch of wall was left out. The row of saints in the nuns’ choir was painted by Leonardo’s successors at the beginning of the 16th century. The Passion cycle is the work of the famous Bernardino Luini. The central painting of the rood screen, which is also the altarpiece of the lay altar, depicts the Adoration of the Magi and was painted by the Mannerist painter Antonio Campi in 1579, surrounded by Luini’s scenes of saints painted around 1530. Luini also created the legend of St. Catherine in one of the western chapels around 1530. On the inside of the façade are the Return of the Prodigal Son and the Expulsion of the Changers from the Temple by Simone Peterzano, painted around 1580.