- Sanctuary of Vicoforte
The Santuario di Vicoforte, located in the commune of
Vicoforte in the Italianprovince of Cuneo , is among the most important monumental churches inPiedmont . It is known for having the largestelliptical cupola in Europe.History
It originated as a small medieval
sanctuary , consisting of a modest shrine containing a fifteenth-century fresco depicting aMadonna and Child . Around 1590 a shooting party passed by and a huntsman accidentally struck the image of the Virgin. According to legend, she began to bleed. It is not a legend, however, that the penitent huntsman added hisarquebus to the shrine and began to collect the large sum of money which would be needed to repair the damage and expiate his sin. Today the arquebus is preserved in a chapel of the sanctuary near the fresco which it had disfigured.In time the place became a centre of pilgrimage. An early visitor was the duke
Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia who, in 1596, commissioned the construction of a large sanctuary from the court architectAscanio Vitozzi . However the death of both the duke (who had wanted to be buried here), and of the architect, put a stop to the building work.Construction was resumed in the eighteenth century under
Francesco Gallo who built the great elliptical cupola which has major and minor diameters of 36 metres and 25 metres respectively. It is said that Gallo was required to remove the scafolding himself, as nobody thought that a structure of this type would be able to stand on its own .The decoration in
fresco of the 6,032 square metres of the cupola’s vault was completed in 1752 byMattia Bortoloni andFelice Biella , and the sanctuary finally attained its current form in 1884, when thecampanili were built along with the three façades.References
External links
* [http://www.santuariodivicoforte.com/ Il sito del Santuario]
* [http://www.piemonte-emozioni.it/cultura/ita/edifici_religiosi/edifici_culto/vicoforte.shtml Piemonte Emozioni]
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