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Lentate sul Seveso (Monza e Brianza, Italy): Oratory of Santo Stefano
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 The Oratory of Santo Stefano in Lentate sul Seveso is a treasure of art and history of the first magnitude, although located in a small town about thirty kilometers north of Milan.
The oratory was built in 1369 on commission from Count Stefano Porro, a very powerful and important man of confidence of the brothers Gian Galeazzo and Bernabo Visconti, Lords of Milan, and ambassador of these at the court of Emperor Charles IV of Bohemia.
The building, made entirely of brick, respects the typical plan of the gentilitial chapel, as the larger Church of San Gottardo in Corte in Milan or the most famous Scrovegni chapel in Padua in 1300: single nave and presbytery. Usually these chapels did not stand isolated but part of a Lord palace. Indeed evidence suggest that close to the oratory there was the castle or fortified house of Stefano Porro.
The oratory has a single nave with a raised presbytery and a triumphal arch between the two zones. The roof of the nave is a wooden one, and is said to be still original.
The interior is completely covered with frescoes, the presbytery of artists of the school of Giotto (including perhaps Anovelo da Imbonate), the other walls of the church by masters of the area. In fact, the colors of the representations of the presbytery are more determined and the figures more distinct, the emotional impact and the effectiveness of the frescoes in the nave is nevertheless not lower.
The sails of the vault of the presbytery host in particular two pairs of Evangelists, Saints Ambrose and Augustine, doctors of the Church, and the Coronation of the Virgin.
In the nave it is told, in 43 separate panels, the life of St. Stephen.
Prestigious also the fresco in the lunette above the entrance door.
The oratory was only recently restored to its original splendor (reopened to the public on 21 October 2007), after centuries of neglect. The Christ on the Cross on the back of the building has unfortunately a long vertical scar, due to a past partial collapse of the wall.
Woth to be noticed the elements in common between the Oratorio di Santo Stefano described here and the Church of Santo Stefano in Soleto (Lecce), of the same age and of comparable size, in which the same theme is treated according to a different stylistic rules.
Further info and opening times
Categories: Places of historical value of artistic value
P. San Vito 1, 20823 Lentate sul Seveso, MB |
Further pictures of Oratory of Santo Stefano in the section Photography |