Il Duomo di Monza

The Monza Cathedral, or minor basilica of San Giovanni Battista, was built between the 14th and 17th centuries. The main front with salients is a two-tone 14th-century one with bands of white and green marble, the subject of the important restoration carried out between 1892 and 1908 by the architect Luca Beltrami. The portal has small columns and pillars with Corinthian capitals in the intrados and culminates with the lunette made in 1420 where the baptism of San Giovanni in the waters of the Jordan is depicted in the lower part. The 78 m high bell tower was begun on 23 May 1592 and was completed in 1620. From the second half of the 16th century to the mid-18th century, a series of decorative campaigns followed in the Monza Cathedral that radically changed the interior appearance, both by filling free surfaces with paintings and by erasing almost all the pictorial testimonies of the 14th and 15th centuries, with the use, from time to time, of the most prominent artists of the Milanese environment. Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Giuseppe Lomazzo, better known as Meda, painted the vault of the southern transept and the head, respectively with the Evangelists and the Tree of Life of Christ. The Tree of Life stands out in the centre of the wall: on the trunk, at half height, is painted the crucified Jesus, below, on the sides of the tree are depicted the Madonna and St. John the Evangelist. Among the leafy branches of the cedar tree, twelve kings of Judah sit on thrones of clouds, each holding a tablet with the name and title of "REX". Above, partially destroyed by the enlargement of the fourteenth-century window, a pelican injures itself while feeding its chicks. An episode of primary importance in early Mannerist Lombard painting, the fresco could be linked to the cult of the Holy Nail of the Iron Crown, venerated in the adjacent chapel until the end of the nineteenth century. The assignment of the fiefdom of Monza by Philip IV of Spain in 1648 to the Durini family coincides with the start of a decorative campaign involving the presbytery and the new choir of the Cathedral. Stefano Danedi, known as Montalto, began work on the southern wall of the presbytery with the Stories of the New Testament, signed and dated 1648. The quadraturist Francesco Villa executed the architectural fifth that links the scenes. On the opposite wall, Villa also created the monumental frame, within which Ercole Procaccini the Younger, fifteen years later, painted the Stories of the Old Testament. Stefano Maria Legnani, known as Legnanino, between 1690 and 1693 decorated the vault of the central nave with a Glory of the Mystic Lamb, St. John the Baptist and other saints, in the basin above the organs, and the Glory of the Baptist, in the center of the nave, within two smaller medals with Angels in glory. The ten large paintings in the central nave with Stories of Theodolinda and the Iron Crown, created between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, belong to various painters, including Sebastiano Ricci, Filippo Abbiati and Andrea Porta. The cathedral houses the very famous Iron Crown, used for centuries in the coronation of the kings of Italy, which, according to tradition, contains one of the nails used in the crucifixion of Christ. The Monza Cathedral is the only church in the world (apart from St. Peter's in the Vatican with the Vatican Swiss Guards) that can have its own armed guards during the most important functions: twelve Halberdiers in total plus a Commander. Wikipedia Source: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo_d... Music by Whitesand Title: Get Busy Living Link: Website - https://whitesandcomposer.com/ Support making these tracks -   / whitesand   Buy My Music - https://whitesand.bandcamp.com/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3GXun... Filmed with SONY RX10M3.