Still visible today from the road linking Val Trompia to the Franciacorta area and Lake Iseo, with its soaring Romanesque bell tower, the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta, in the hamlet of Pi\u00e8 del Dosso, is the oldest building in Gussago and one of the most picturesque in the Brescia area.<\/p>\n
Dating back to the early Middle Ages, the building now appears, both externally and inside the nave, in its Renaissance form, the result of the architectural refurbishment commissioned by Provost Paolo Guaineri and dating from the 1470s. The building is dominated by the imposing quadrangular fa\u00e7ade, which rises higher than the structure behind it and the pre-existing front, which we must imagine as gabled and perhaps featuring a rose window, replaced in the new fa\u00e7ade by a single quadrangular window. With its simple lines, the fa\u00e7ade is devoid of decoration, with the exception of the elegant central portal, featuring pilasters decorated with candelabra motifs, terminating in crochet capitals that support a festooned lintel. The portal is crowned by a triangular pediment, already fully in keeping with the new Renaissance stylistic elements, featuring a cornice of ovules and small leaves, which indicates a rediscovery of classical architectural styles in the Brescia area.<\/p>\n
Whilst the exterior bears the hallmarks of a renewal in artistic style, the interior is rich in Gothic heritage: for worshippers entering through the main entrance, a view opened up of a spacious and soaring single-nave space, divided into four bays by transverse pointed arches. The gaze is drawn towards the chancel, a vaulted sanctuary with a ribbed cross vault terminating in the apse, which was once covered by a ribbed umbrella vault. The upper part of the chancel is crowned by a series of corbels, which were once integrated into the main ribs of the vault and upon which the painted narrative unfolds, dominating the entire architectural space. The entire chancel is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, to whom the church is dedicated: behind the post-Tridentine altarpiece, the figures of the Apostles and Angels who were meant to accompany the figure of Mary being assumed into heaven can still be made out. Above, further hosts of angels occupy the corbels, playing various instruments and flanking the figure of God the Father, ready to welcome Mary\u2019s soul and crown her. The entire cycle was commissioned by Paolo Guaineri, whose family coat of arms appears in several places within the chancel; his commitment to the commission is also evident in the employment of a highly skilled master painter, trained in the tradition of Vincenzo Foppa and Paolo da Caylina the Elder.<\/p>\n
Next to the entrance archway to the presbytery chapel, two cross-vaulted structures in the form of chapels were added in the mid-16th century, which were built against the walls covered with 15th-century frescoes. The chapel on the right, which has its own altar, was the seat of the Disciplini, members of a lay confraternity dedicated to the Cross. They were responsible for the cycle of frescoes decorating the two walls of the chapel, dating from the last decade of the fifteenth century: above the altar, in the manner of a false polyptych, stands the figure of the Madonna della Misericordia, spreading her mantle to protect the members of the confraternity, flanked by Saints Emiliano and Antonio, in armour and dressed in elegant \u2018giornee\u2019 and red tights. Their placement within a perspective niche reveals an awareness of the solutions adopted by Bramante in Milan, in the cycle of “Uomini d\u2019Arme” that once decorated the “Camera dei Baroni” in Palazzo Visconti, later known as Palazzo Panigarola.<\/p>\n
The Parish Church of Gussago houses another important historical and artistic treasure: the Maviorano Pulpit, consisting of two slabs and two small pillars dating from between the 8th and 9th centuries, a perfect example of Lombard sculptural decoration. The so-called pulpit did not originally belong to the parish church, but most likely comes from the important monastery of Leno, an early medieval monastic foundation to which the parish church of Gussago originally belonged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":754,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categorie_arte":[418],"comuni":[123],"class_list":["post-5133","arte_e_cultura","type-arte_e_cultura","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categorie_arte-parish-churches-and-sanctuaries","comuni-gussago"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n