LA CHIESA DI SAN MARCO

Sul Col de la Spina

Il progetto di valorizzazione

La chiesa di San Marco a Revine sorge sul Col de la Spina e il toponimo ci evoca uno spazio strappato faticosamente ai rovi per essere coltivato, un fazzoletto di terra assolato e prezioso: nel 1532 questo luogo era chiamato il “Campo” della Spina.

Siamo in un privilegiato punto panoramico a 260 metri slm: da qui lo sguardo si distende ad abbracciare la mole del Pizzoc e, verso nord, la Val Lapisina. Verso sud lo sguardo abbraccia le colline moreniche di Tarzo e del vittoriese. Ma è verso ovest che l’orizzonte diventa ampio, comprende l’intera Valsana fino a scorgere il Cesen, la montagna di Valdobbiadene.

I video realizzati per valorizzare la chiesa sono il frutto di una ricerca che nasce dell’intervento di restauro. Da quel punto di partenza lo sguardo si è allargato a comprendere il sito dove sorge questa chiesa campestre, precisandone la geografia, i percorsi antichi, gli eventi storici. La chiesa nasce quale meta processionale delle Rogazioni, un’antichissima manifestazione devozionale che si innesta nella straordinaria presenza e qualità dei segni del sacro di questo territorio. Non a caso Revine è nota anche per aver mantenuto viva la tradizione delle sacre rappresentazioni, il Presepe Vivente e la Passione di Cristo.

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ALTRI LUOGHI DEL SACRO DA SCOPRIRE

I brevi video per scoprire i luoghi del sacro non sono una novità nel territorio vittoriese.

Questi dedicati alla chiesa di San Marco seguono quelli che hanno valorizzato il Santuario di Santa Augusta, la chiesa della Madonna delle Tosse e quella di San Giorgio a Manzana.

Si tratta di edifici e contesti che sono stati oggetto di restauri che riprendono vita, si riappropriano di un ruolo all’interno della propria comunità religiosa e cittadina e desiderano anche farsi conoscere da un pubblico più vasto, rivolgendosi al turismo di prossimità, ma non solo, a tutti i visitatori attenti che cercano e apprezzano i piccoli luoghi ricchi di storia, arte, bellezza.

Perché la modalità di questi video, a cui si può accedere da mappe cartacee grazie ad un’agile app oppure entrando nel sito (www.bags4dreams.com), risulta particolarmente efficace: osservando ciò che la voce narrante spiega, comprendiamo il luogo, l’edificio e le opere d’arte in esso conservate.

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CHIESA DI SAN GIORGIO MARTIRE IN MANZANA

Il progetto di valorizzazione

Su una delle dorsali che collega la pianura veneta alle Prealpi trevigiane, immersa in un paesaggio vitivinicolo davvero unico, si incontra la chiesa di San Giorgio di Manzana. Un piccolo edificio, affiancato da un campanile romanico, che ha almeno mille anni ed è collocato in posizione rialzata rispetto ad una strada che ha un tracciato molto antico.

Ma è all’interno che scopriamo davvero la sua lunga storia. Le murature in pietra a vista sono qua e là intonacate per accogliere degli affreschi e nell’abside scopriamo ben tre cicli pittorici sovrapposti: il più recente è della metà del Quattrocento, il precedente si data alla metà del Trecento e il più antico risale alla fine del Duecento.

Sono interventi oggi frammentari, ma raccontano l’impegno delle comunità che qui si sono succedute nel rappresentare la propria fede su queste pareti. Una scoperta recente, un tassello importante nella lunga tradizione dell’affresco che è un carattere distintivo di questo territorio, una storia che dal Duecento arriva i giorni nostri.                                                 

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ARTISTS’ ROADS

in the area of Unesco site of the Prosecco hills of Conegliano Valdobbiadene

The Artists’ Roads

The Artists’ Roads project invites us to discover the artistic treasures of the Prosecco Hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019. 

Painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as distinctive landscapes and urban settings, are brought to life through short videos that, thanks to augmented reality, offer an emotional and immersive experience.

Each municipality has chosen an artist or a work of art to represent the history and culture of its territory, thus outlining a continuous journey that spans from the thirteenth century to the present day.

Each stop includes in-depth insights and becomes a starting point for original thematic itineraries, creating a dense network of opportunities to explore the area. 

One soon discovers that this land has truly been fertile ground for art.

Here, “art in the landscape” genuinely exists, because the undeniable beauty of the surroundings also stems from the marks that art and history have scattered across it over the centuries.

But there is also “landscape in art,” as fragments of this territory appear as co-protagonists in numerous paintings, evidence of the significance that landscape began to assume in art throughout the Veneto from the 16th century onward.

User Guide

The interactive map showcases photographs of the 30 locations featured in the La Via degli Artisti project. By downloading the free bags4dreams [B4D] app on your smartphone or tablet, you can scan each image, which is used as an interactive tag, to launch a short, immersive video that highlights the distinctive features of the corresponding artwork.

This method offers a simple yet engaging way to explore each piece, starting from a printed image. You can have the same experience by scanning the actual locations depicted on the map in person, allowing you to uncover the artistic value hidden within each site. The journey provides a continuous stream of rich visual, narrative, and audio content, merging real-world and digital experiences.

Access a dedicated section of the website www.bags4dreams.com by selecting the menu button in the top right corner of the app interface,

where you will find the map, artist and artwork profiles, videos, additional content, and a variety of other resources.

This project was produced with the support of FUNT (Fondo Unico Nazionale del Turismo) 2023 and IPA Terre Alte della Marca Trevigiana.

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LE VIE DEGLI ARTISTI

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VITTORIO VENETO: SERRAVALLE

Vittorio Veneto. Titian in Serravalle: The Church Tells Its Story

The link between Titian and Serravalle is well documented.

This was the route to Pieve di Cadore, and in those days, travelling was never a swift affair: the artist built relationships with the noble families of Serravalle and the bishops of Ceneda.

In 1555, his daughter Lavinia would marry Cornelio Sarcinelli and settle in Serravalle, on the Calgranda.

On 29 May 1542, the Greater Council of Serravalle, meeting in the Palazzo Pubblico, resolved to commission an altarpiece for the high altar of the town church. It was to depict “three large figures: Our Lady, Saint Andrew, and Saint Vincent.”

The Madonna, to whom the church was dedicated, the titular saint of the parish church, and the saint after whom the then podestà, Vincenzo Ghisi, was named.

Such intertwining of civic and religious life was common practice at the time.

Six days later, the commission was awarded to Francesco da Milano, the same artist who, fifteen years earlier, had painted the church’s organ shutters.

Twenty-two days later, the contract passed to Titian, the official painter of the Venetian Republic.

The artist travelled to Serravalle, measurements and colour schemes were discussed, and a contract was drawn up between the civic community and the painter.

But then Titian departed for the court of Charles V and painted for the Pope, delaying delivery of the work.

He would later be asked to replace Saint Vincent with Saint Peter, as the podestà had changed in the meantime.

Thus began a long and complex dispute, over payments, over expectations, revealing the cultural mindset of the day.

The painting would not be delivered for more than ten years, and the final cost was astronomical.

Of the church that once housed the altarpiece, only the bell tower remains, the rest lost in the devastating flood that struck Serravalle in 1521.

In 1779, the new neoclassical building was consecrated, designed by Domenico Schiavi, the same architect who created the new church in Pieve di Cadore. A thread connects them.

And it is Saint Peter, symbol of the Roman Catholic Church, who unlocks the meaning of this work.

His white-haired, noble face directs our gaze to Mary. With powerful gesture, he presents the keys. Only she, from Heaven, can aid the Church on Earth.

This was the age of the Council of Trent, the great assembly of Christendom that issued stern responses to the claims of Protestant reformers.

His brother Andrew, representing the local church, holds firmly to a great cross, which also offers a chronological clue.

The Council of Trent would later replace that symbol, so directly evocative of Christ, with the X-shaped cross we know today.

Between the two saints, the Miraculous Draught of Fishes unfolds.

A tribute to Raphael, who depicted the same scene in tapestries for the Sistine Chapel.

But here, there’s a variation: Peter stands behind, perhaps a subtle challenge to ecclesiastical hierarchy.

The two apostles dominate the foreground: monumental, Michelangelesque.

They shape a pyramidal space that Andrew invites us to enter because the faithful are meant to participate. This is a principle Titian had already made central in his sacred art. 

The triangle rises from earth to heaven and enters the circle of divine light.

Out of the depths emerge angelic figures.

Flecks of gold, gilded clouds, chubby cherubic heads.

And then there is colour, not confined within outlined forms, but poured freely.

This is the art of Titian.

Below, there is a carved stone fragment that evokes the name of Peter, a moulded remnant that seems to rise from the Roman age, the time of Christ and the apostles. We find the painter’s signature.

PHOTO 360 Serravalle di Vittorio Veneto.   Move the mouse over the image

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Il Mondo di Tiziano:

• La sua casa, Villa Fabris sul Col di Manza
• A Ceneda, l’arco del cardinale che gli fu amico
• Revine e i suoi laghi, presenti nell’Amor Sacro e Amor Profano?
• A Meschio, la pala del Previtali che tanto ammirava

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VIDOR

Vidor: Guido Cadorin, the Courage of Reconstruction

The Great War ravaged this land that flanks the River Piave, as it emerges from the Belluno valleys and enters the plain.

But even the immediate post-war period left a deep imprint. To the names of local towns was added the tragic suffix “della Battaglia,” of the Battle. The River Piave permanently changed grammatical gender. And part of its riverbed became the “Island of the Dead.”

Reconstruction came swiftly, in a dialogue between “as it was, where it was” and new choices that gave form to bold ideas, especially in art.

Sacred art was no exception.

A major innovator was the Venetian painter Guido Cadorin, who reinterpreted the ancient tradition of fresco painting in a modern key.

San Pietro di Feletto, Follina, Soligo, Farra di Soligo, Col San Martino, and finally the Abbey of Santa Bona in Vidor: these are the milestones of a fresco tradition stretching from the 13th to the 15th century.

In 1921, Cadorin arrived at the parish church of Col San Martino, leaving behind frescoes with an elegant graphic style.

In 1925, he painted the Pentecost in the dome of Moriago della Battaglia.

Between 1922 and 1926, he was active in Vidor.

The town, once a crossing point and of strategic importance during the First World War thanks to its bridge, had been left in ruins.

Cadorin painted in the parish church, in the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows on the hill of the castle, by then transformed into a war memorial, and decorated Villa Zadra, home to a prominent family in the silk industry, with imaginative Art Nouveau motifs.

During this period, he was also called to work at the Vittoriale by Gabriele D’Annunzio.

Cadorin’s work, and the collaborations he fostered, went on to inspire other artists who later worked in this area: from Giovanni Zanzotto to Bepi Modolo, Carlo Donati, Valentino Canever, Carlo Conte, and Marta Sammartini.

The ceiling of the single-nave parish church, dedicated to the Holy Name of Mary, is graced with a monumental Ascension.

Below, in the darkness, we glimpse three sleeping soldiers.

Their sleep symbolises humanity’s inability to grasp the mystery of the Resurrection.

The Three Marys appear as shadowy figures standing at the dawn of a New Day.

Before them, a massive, solemn angel of light sits atop the empty tomb, gesturing decisively toward the upper register.

Here, the Resurrection becomes an absence transformed into presence on Mount Tabor.

The guiding elements are light and colour.

The clouds part to reveal the mountain crowded with Apostles, and above it all, the dazzling white figure of Christ seems drawn upward by a vortex of clouds and angels.

From the darkness of the barren earth, now that time and history are suspended, we are led toward the most intense light.

Guido Cadorin was a Venetian painter.

He trained in that lively city at the dawn of the twentieth century.

He studied under Duilio Korompay, met Modigliani, and by the age of sixteen was already exhibiting at Ca’ Pesaro.

In the early maturity of his thirties, he could conceive grand visionary works where abstraction and realism coexisted.

He saw himself as heir to the purest tradition of the Quattrocento, from Piero della Francesca to Fra Angelico.

But he rejected the academic painting of the time, with its sentimentalised depictions of sacred figures.

His treatment of the sacred was imaginative and free, yet always the fruit of considered thought. He took the themes of tradition and reinterpreted them in the forms and colours of modernity.

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Il Sacro nella ricostruzione:

• la parrocchiale di Moriago
• il Monumento ai Caduti di Segusino
• il campanile di Valdobbiadene
• il duomo di Pieve di Soligo

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VAZZOLA

Vazzola. A Piece of Heaven: Duilio Corompai

We are in Visnà. On the dome above the presbytery is depicted the Glory of Saint Martin, the French saint to whom the church is dedicated.

The space is dominated by clouds that emphasise the curvature of the vault, where the Trinity and angelic hosts appear in monochrome.

The narrative unfolds on one side: putti and cherubim in flight carry the bishop’s crozier and mitre.

The lace-trimmed surplice, the chasuble and the maniple flutter in the air. His outstretched arms and upward gaze trace the ascensional path of Saint Martin.

He is shown as a bishop, not in the more familiar iconography in the act of dividing his cloak with a beggar.

The blue of his chasuble echoes that of the angel with great wings who welcomes him and ushers him into the presence of the Trinity.

Striking in both form and colour are the Four Evangelists depicted on the pendentives.

Their faces are vigorous, earthy. The careful composition clearly defines their positions.

The naturalistic rendering of their gestures as they write in large books, and the vibrant tones of their robes, expand the sense of space, even though the actual volume they inhabit is rather confined.

Close attention is also given to the animals that accompany them:

a lion, calm yet alert,

an ox that meets our gaze,

an eagle, just about to land.

The way the angel beside Saint Matthew leans in gently tells us at what stage in the painter’s artistic journey this work was created.

At the base is an inscription: Duilio Corompai

30 November 1925.

Until 1920, the painter signed as Korompay. He was born in Venice in 1876, but his family was of Hungarian origin.

After the Great War, he Italianised his surname, being of imperial stock was no longer a good passport in post-war Italy.

His father worked for the railways, and the family moved early on to Milan.

At the age of fifteen, he was already enrolled at the Brera Academy.

These were the years when the Impressionists were in Paris and the Milanese academicians were observing them with interest.

They borrowed the use of juxtaposed colour touches, though they did not share the idea that art should speak only of its own time and only in serene settings.

Among the painters who in some way guided him were Gaetano Previati and Giovanni Segantini.

Symbolist painters, attentive to transcendent values.

It was a language Corompai carried with him to Bologna, and then back to Venice, where he took part in the artistic discourse and, from 1905, began exhibiting at the Biennale.

In the angel with elegant gestures and a feminine face, we see again Previati’s great wings.

By now a mature painter, Corompai confidently outlines the figures with a red brush, just like Giotto at the Scrovegni Chapel.

This fresco at Visnà is the first of his tempera murals in sacred art, a field to which he would dedicate himself until 1947, working in the province of Pordenone, the Veneto, and Trentino.

In 1935, he would leave another work at Visnà: a delicate oval of Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary as a Child, where his confident, tactile brushwork gives structure to every detail.

Yet his output was varied, weaving a deep sensitivity for landscape into his portraiture.

Children’s faces, views of the Dolomites, stretches of the vast Venetian plain, the summer light of his garden in Cimpello, and Venice, unusual, and often clothed in night.

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Sugli Altari del Novecento:

• Giovanni Zanzotto nella parrocchiale di Barbisano
• Carlo Donati e Giuseppe Modolo nell’arcipretale di Sernaglia
• Gli altari dell’abbazia di Follina
• Piero Dalle Ceste nella parrocchiale di Refrontolo

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VALDOBBIADENE

The Sun and a Gnomon to Capture Time

Sundials are captivating instruments.

They represent one of the most practical and ingenious ways humankind has devised to capture time, to give it a visual form and to better understand its natural flow. The invention of mechanical clocks has not diminished their value. Mechanical clocks rely on a conventional time. Sundials, on the other hand, are more “precise”, because they are made to measure, based on the latitude and longitude of the place where they stand.

The principle is simple, yet brilliant: a small arm called a “gnomon”, from the Greek for “the one who indicates”. When struck by sunlight, it casts a shadow, ever-changing and untiring, that moves across a surface in step with the sun’s motion.

Its movement is confined to a defined space, known as the “solar quadrant”. They are graphically arranged in a radiating pattern, with each mark corresponding to an hour. Sometimes, you’ll spot a sort of elongated figure eight: the “lemniscate”. This traces the midday point, according to how the sun’s height shifts throughout the year in relation to the horizon. Naturally, sundials can be “out of service” in poor weather, but this, too, is part of their charm, their genuineness.

A working sundial depends on the skill of a specialist, a “gnomonist,” who calculates and designs each one individually.

Sundials are useful, but they are also beautiful. They are a match of science and art. They are often colourful, richly decorated. And they speak. Vivere memento: Remember to live. Omnes vulnerant. Ultima necat: Each one wounds. The last one kills. The sun often takes centre stage in these mottos: Sine sole sileo: Without the sun, I am silent. Nihil sine me: Nothing without me. They bear brief yet incisive mottos, in Italian, Latin, and at times in dialect, that question us, challenge us, and call us to account in our relationship with time.

It is no coincidence that many sundials appear on sacred buildings, or in religious contexts.

The poet Andrea Zanzotto, from Pieve di Soligo, had a passion for sundials. He once wrote, “They offer a lesson in reality, the clear and precise sense of the earth’s smallness and insignificance, like a speck of straw lost in the vastness of the universe.”

The province of Treviso has the third-highest number of sundials in Italy.

Their spiritual ancestor stands in Valdobbiadene, on the bell tower of the cathedral.

It was built in 1862 by a distinguished local figure: Abbot Giovanni Follador, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and for thirty years a professor at the Episcopal College of Padua. Above all, he was an author of treatises on solar quadrants.

He could hardly have failed to build one, of the highest precision, in his own native town!

His great sundial appears in a photograph dated 1872.

It was destroyed in 1918 by Italian artillery and faithfully rebuilt only in 1998. From its place high above the town, it stands as a monument to its original creator. It marks five hours, from ten o’clock to two, indicates the months of the year, the signs of the zodiac, and reminds us that TIME AND LIFE NEVER STAND STILL.

Valdobbiadene thus reveals another of its many gifts: it is the guardian of a fascinating heritage of solar timekeeping. That’s why it was chosen in 2017 as the venue for the 21st National Gnomonics Seminar.

And in the light of this tradition, renewed in the present, a group of Venetian gnomonists launched a new initiative: the creation of a dedicated gnomonics room within the public library of Valdobbiadene.

Here, books, solar instruments, and a meticulously designed teaching display welcome visitors into the complex world of sundials, those extraordinary instruments that capture time and remind us, with artistry… That all things flow.

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Sine sole sileo. La magia degli orologi solari:

• Sarmede
• Nell’arcipretale di Mareno di Piave
• Nel duomo di Serravalle
• Nella cattedrale di Ceneda

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]]> https://www.bags4dreams.com/partner/tarzo-en/ Sun, 03 Aug 2025 14:19:12 +0000 https://www.bags4dreams.com/?post_type=partner&p=2178 ARTISTS’ ROADS

LE VIE DEGLI ARTISTI

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TARZO

Tarzo: Colour and Sound, The Shapes of Memory

Every civilisation has produced great works of art so that future generations might know the lives, hopes, and sorrows of those who once lived in a place.

Before books or films ever existed, it was painting that fed the desire to tell stories.

Panels and canvases have long served this purpose.

But before them came the walls.

Of caves, of houses, and of churches.

In 2008, in the hamlets of Fratta and Colmaggiore, two villages overlooking the lakes of Revine Lago and Tarzo, people became aware of an inescapable reality.

These were no longer the villages of a hundred, or even fifty, years ago. The farming world had vanished, swept away by the rush of modern life.

True, the houses, the streets, the fountains and footpaths were still there, but they were becoming silent spaces.

The people, the trades, the smells and the sounds had disappeared.

And so the “Via dei Murales” was born, bringing together thirteen artists to fill the streets with colour. It’s as if the walls had melted away, revealing the life once lived in that home, that courtyard, that workshop.

Mural painting may have its roots in Latin America, but it has found fertile ground in Italy too. From the dreamlike murals of Dozza, to the politically charged walls of Orgosolo, to the poetic images of Cibiana di Cadore.

To truly appreciate these works, one must walk with “slow and quiet steps.” They cannot be glimpsed from a car window.

The images gradually reveal themselves, flling today’s silence with the echoes of yesterday’s sounds.

We discover traditional crafts still practiced, albeit with the tools of modernity.

Others have disappeared altogether: felling a woodland is no easy task. It must be done with skill, so that other trees may grow. One had to know how to gather and bind slender marsh reeds to make woven mats, called grisioe here. One had to know how to knead and shape clay to make roof tiles of just the right thickness and proper curvature. One had to know every step in rearing silkworms to keep this delicate moth alive, feeding it mulberry leaves and sheltering it with warmth or cool depending on its life cycle.

Our civilisation knows everything but it cannot do everything.

We must also speak of painful things like emigration, a harsh reality for this land from the mid-1800s to the end of the Second World War.

Then came sharecropping which forced families to leave their meagre land on Saint Martin’s Day, the eleventh of November, and chestnuts, which were once a precious staple food.

But there is also chatter by the fountain or a family gathered in front of their home, where no one is idle. 

The mother knits, someone winds wool into balls, someone sweeps, someone tidies the house, another cares for the little ones, another returns from the vegetable garden.

Later, as night draws in, they’ll tell the children tales of the mazariol.

Not far away, through the rows of osiers by the lake, a small boat drifts silently. Two young lovers, hidden by the dark and lit by the stars, have slipped free from their parents’ watchful gaze to draw close to one another.

A beautiful idea, these murals and perhaps without realising it, they’ve placed themselves in the wake of a long tradition.

For among these hills are churches that preserve remarkable frescoes, like the fifteenth-century paintings in the Church of San Martino in Fratta. And nearby, there now stands a mural of the saint himself like the sinopia beneath an ancient painting.

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L’Arte racconta la civiltà del passato:

• Il Cristo della Domenica nella pieve di San Pietro di Felletto
• A Follina, il chiostro è il luogo della vita
• Cave e cavatori: il campanile di Fregona
• Un assaggio di preistoria al Livelet

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SUSEGANA

A Masterpiece To Proclaim The Sacred: Pordenone in Susegana

The sky is a deep, vivid blue. Billowing cumulus clouds bathed in light. A patch of flower-strewn grass.

Nature bursts into this scene. It welcomes and enfolds a solemn event: The Madonna, her Child, and four saints, caught in the midst of a sacred conversation beneath the open sky.

And if we look closely, nature has already begun to reclaim the work of man. On the semicircular architecture in the background, lush shrubs are taking root.

The materials themselves offer tactile sensations. We can feel the coldness of the stone, where it forms buildings, paving, or the steps of the throne. And the warmth of the wood, in the severed branch crafted by John the Baptist into a processional cross, in the broken wheel held by Catherine of Alexandria. And again, in the lute the angel is tuning to bring music to the gathering.

The four saints stand like living pillars. Their bodies are wrapped in sumptuous, vibrant fabrics. Their faces are strongly defined. Their feet firmly planted.

John the Baptist is mirrored by Peter. Catherine by the prophet Daniel.

Daniel is a key figure. The oldest among them. A lion sits at his side, recalling the den where he was imprisoned by Darius, king of the Persians. Through divine inspiration, five centuries before Christ’s incarnation, Daniel had foreseen its revolutionary power: Out of the ruins of a fallen world, the Church would rise, radiant. This is symbolised by the monumental colonnade, to be read from right to left, from shadow to light, beginning with Daniel’s raised finger and ending with the Baptist’s, directing our gaze towards the Virgin and her Child.

Jesus kicks playfully in Mary’s arms, grasping her veil with his tiny left hand. Mother and Son both have auburn hair and pearlescent skin. The liveliness of the Child contrasts with Mary’s wistful gaze, as she keeps this great mystery hidden in her heart.

A parchment bears the artist’s signature: Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, known as Pordenone.

When he paints this altarpiece, probably around 1514, He is already a great master. A bridge between Venice, Friuli, and Central Italy. Between the legacy of Giorgione and the genius of Michelangelo and Raphael. Combining powerful colour with anatomical force. A brilliant orchestrator of space, filled with crowds of figures, Pordenone may have grown up in a provincial setting, but his talent brings him prestigious commissions: from Umbria to Lombardy, from Emilia to Liguria, in dialogue with a host of artistic languages.

In Susegana, he is commissioned by the Counts of Collalto, undisputed lords of these lands, eager to celebrate their presence through works of great artistic value.

Pordenone is already frescoing the church at nearby Castello di San Salvatore for them, with his unmistakable creative fervour.

This altarpiece for the high altar completes the renovation and adornment of the ancient parish church of Santa Maria. The project falls to the Collalto family, who at that time hold the patronage rights over the church.

And the bond with the noble family marks the painting deeply. The two saints on the left evoke Giovanni Battista I of Collalto and his wife Caterina Trissino, parents of Giovanni Antonio, likely the patron of this work.

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I dipinti su tavola:

• Il Pordenone a Moriago
• Francesco da Milano a Lago
• Il Cima a Conegliano
• Francesco da Milano nella parrocchiale di Anzano

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]]> https://www.bags4dreams.com/partner/sernaglia-della-battaglia-en/ Sun, 03 Aug 2025 14:18:15 +0000 https://www.bags4dreams.com/?post_type=partner&p=2176 ARTISTS’ ROADS

LE VIE DEGLI ARTISTI

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SERNAGLIA DELLA BATTAGLIA

1) DUE ARTISTI, DUE EPOCHE, DUE LINGUAGGI

2) FALZE’ DI PIAVE

3) FONTIGO

1) Sernaglia della Battaglia

Two Artists, Two Eras, Two Languages To Express The Sacred

The River Piave is the backbone of these lands. An ancient artery for trade, a source of sustenance.

In the autumn of 1917, in the wake of the Caporetto defeat, its wide, gravelly bed becomes a bloody theatre of war. It brings devastation to the riverside villages.

Sernaglia will henceforth be called Sernaglia della Battaglia, a name that becomes a monument in itself, lest we forget.

The parish church is reduced to rubble.

The Belluno-born architect Alberto Alpago Novello is commissioned to design the new one. By 1922, the construction is complete.

But a new image of the Virgin is needed for this space dedicated to her.

In 1928, the task is entrusted to the artist Carlo Donati, who also paints the altarpieces for the four side chapels.

Born in 1874, he is a renowned painter, trained in Verona, then a “city of vibrant stylistic and intellectual exchange”. His work is an original blend of ancient and modern, of Renaissance art and Art Nouveau atmospheres. He handles both small panel paintings and vast, complex mural cycles with equal mastery.

And here is his Assumption for the high altar.

Mary is dressed like a bride of the time. A veil frames her face, and her billowing white gown envelops her.

She ascends into heaven, borne aloft in a ring of angels. They lift the edges of her fine organza as if they were flawless page boys.

Below, the apostles gather around the empty tomb. Standing side by side, like a single body. Gazing upwards, they are spellbound by the vision. Their garments are richly detailed, the fabrics abundant. They wear elaborate frisé hairstyles, wildly fashionable and particularly favoured by Donati.

But the altarpiece sparks debate. It is praised for its “inspiration, layering, delicacy and softness” but criticised because “the figures are too evanescent; the Virgin should be dominant, and the angels less crowded, more joyful and triumphant”.

Such is often the fate of art: it demands time to be understood.

The controversy drags on, and the painter from Verona will never complete the mural decoration that had initially been planned to accompany his work in this church.

A twist in the tale. In 1945, the archpriest Don Luigi Balasso commissions a new altarpiece, “…to replace,” the record says, “the current one on the high altar”.

This time, the artist is Giuseppe Modolo of Santa Lucia di Piave. He is 33 years old and has cultivated his calling as a painter alongside a sculptor, his fellow townsman Riccardo Granzotto, today Blessed Brother Claudio. And Bepi, as he often signs himself, seems to sculpt with colour.

His Assumption arrives in Sernaglia in 1949. He respects the iconographic tradition. Modolo has Titian’s Frari altarpiece in mind. A more familiar and recognisable composition.

Mary is solid, soaring against a break in the golden sky. A shaft of light floods a patch of cloud. Its whiteness sets off the red of her robe, the blue of her mantle.

On earth, the apostles are seized by a whirlwind of emotion. John, in the centre, seems like the needle of a scale. Another burst of blinding light. It illuminates the burial cloth that one of the twelve is lifting from the empty tomb.

Another twist. Even this second painting will not take the central position.

Today, both altarpieces are mounted on the lateral walls of the sanctuary. Each mirrors the other. Over three metres high. Monumental.

A compelling and distinguished dialogue between two artists, two eras, two languages, each expressing the same truth of faith.

MORE EXPERIENCES!

Vis à vis: Artisti a confronto:

• Tiziano e Francesco da Milano nel duomo di Serravalle
• Strati di affreschi nella pieve di San Pietro di Felletto
• Fra’ Claudio e la sua immagine nell’arcipretale di Santa Lucia di Piave
• Francesco da Milano e Francesco Frigimelica a Sant’Andrea di Bigonzo, Serravalle

2) Falzè di Piave (Sernaglia della Battaglia)

Within History: The Way of the Cross at Falzè di Piave

“Dearest friends,

Having returned home for good after five months spent in Falzè creating the monumental work of the Way of the Cross, I feel compelled to send Don Piero and yourselves my deepest and most heartfelt thanks for offering me the chance to realise a work that had accompanied me for years, through my journeys across Italy and abroad, as a hope and a certainty that one day I might leave in the church of Falzè the very best of my hard-won experience.

Your church was, as they say, my first love. I began with the angels bearing grace and peace, and I ended with the certainty of the Resurrection.

Creazzo, 16 December 1972.”

These were the words of painter Bepi Modolo, written to Don Pietro Velo, parish priest of Falzè di Piave, and to his collaborators, together with his Christmas greetings.

Words that speak of a profound bond with the place, and with the people.

It was Don Pietro himself who, in 1948, first commissioned him. A fresco of the Crucifixion for the counter-facade. At that time, the walls were still white in that sacred building, proudly facing the River Piave, designed by the architect Domenico Rupolo of Caneva after the Great War.

Over time, the painter returned to develop, little by little, a true iconographic programme.

The Way of the Cross was to be its worthy, monumental culmination.

The Passion of Christ was a theme dear to Modolo. From his youth. But in Falzè, it would take on a wholly new and original meaning.

He pondered it for years. He conferred with Don Pietro.

They exchanged letters, even clippings from the daily press. What they saw in those pages were the dramas of the day: ongoing conflicts, injustice, acts of barbarity that, even in the early 1970s, still bled across the world. On those two long white walls, still blank, still to be inscribed, the Passion must resound in its universal value. A story for everyone, of all people, of all time.

The vast space invited ambition.

The first sketches were born.

Then came the models: two extraordinary panels, each two metres wide. The vision gradually took form. “From now on,” Modolo would say, “everything is clear. All I have to do is to move my hands.” 

He, a clear soul, free from pretence, dedicated to sacred painting and to the sacredness of his craft, was a master of technique. In the tradition of the greats, he painted strictly in buon fresco. Lime and sand, mixed with coloured pigments, became storytelling. The result is direct, essential, suffused with golden light, suspended in time.

An invitation to walk, with our own story, along the Via Dolorosa. Time flows on without pause.

Delicate and powerful, the figure of Christ returns, seven times, and seven again. His robe, dazzling white, is already a sign of hope. Flares of brilliant yellow ignite his halo.

The cross moves dynamically. As if captured in a series of frames. But it is a fleeting presence, soon to leave the scene.

In the background unfolds the human story, with its tragedies. The harshness of emigration, the devastation of the Great War— still an open wound for Falzè. The concentration camps of the Second World War, the story of Father Kolbe, a modern-day Simon of Cyrene, and the brutal Nazi reprisals. Other gallows, other burdens to carry.

But in the end, the two paths become one. Humanity, with its story and its suffering, comes face to face with the Risen Christ. And dwells with Him in the Light.

PHOTO 360 FALZE’ Move the mouse over the image

MORE EXPERIENCES!

Ritratti “ti vedo non ti vedo”:

• Guido Cadorin a Moriago della Battaglia
• Marta Sammartini a Pieve di Soligo
• Don Cumano al Santuario di Revine
• Annamaria Trevisan a Lago

3) Fontigo (Sernaglia della Battaglia)

Fontigo and Sailing the Piave under the Protection of Saint Nicholas

Fontigo. The very name of this village, nestled in the heart of the Quartier del Piave, evokes its unique character and its deep, ancient bond with the river.

By the time it reaches Fontigo, the River Piave has already travelled more than a hundred kilometres. Flowing down from the mountains that gave it birth, it gradually softens its pace.

Beyond the narrowing in Vidor, having reached the broad gravel flats of Moriago, the river spreads into a dense tangle of winding branches. And it is precisely at Fontigo that the Piave is reborn, fed by the Fontane Bianche.

Natural springs of astonishing clarity whose fresh, bubbling waters still echo through the silence of this enchanting area. Natural white springs, so called for the limpidity of their waters.

Mirrored pools and patches of woodland dot a classic floodplain landscape, guardian of a precious biodiversity.

Not far downstream, the river flows gently.

For centuries, it served as a major thoroughfare for the floating of timber, using rafts built to carry logs from Cadore all the way to Venice.

These rafts were piloted by skilled raftsmen whose daring voyages led them through rapids and swirling eddies.

For the communities along the banks, the passage of these rafts must have been a sight to behold.

At Fontigo in particular, one can imagine the commotion as crew and passengers prepared for their imminent arrival at the port of Falzé. There, the tired raftsmen, worn out from the journey, would disembark and hand over the raft to a fresh crew, before returning on foot to their native Belluno area.

On their way back, they would stop at local inns, and, upon reaching Fontigo, give thanks to their protector, Saint Nicholas, in the church that bears his name.

That Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra, in what is now Turkey, who lived between the 3rd and 4th centuries, is better known in Italy as Saint Nicholas of Bari, ever since 1087, when sailors from that Apulian city stole his relics and brought them home.

We do not know what the original church in Fontigo looked like.

We do know that it was already standing in 1224 and that it fell under the mother church of Sernaglia. We also know that it was rebuilt in 1887.

It can be glimpsed in a postcard from 1918, at the end of the First World War.

The church was in ruins. All that remained was the elegant façade. And little else.

The current parish church was erected between 1921 and 1926, based on plans by the engineer Giovanni Schiratti and the architect Alberto Alpago Novello. Between 1949 and 1954, architect Luigi Candiani oversaw the raising of the nave.

But the interior remained bare.

Giuseppe Modolo, a painter from Creazzo with a flair for both small canvases and monumental frescoes, had recently worked in nearby Falzé and Sernaglia. In 1950, he was commissioned by the Fontigo community to devise an ambitious iconographic programme. The scheme culminated in the Annunciation, painted on either side of the triumphal arch, and Saint Nicholas in the apse’s conch.

A first preparatory sketch of the Saint survives. It reflects the final work, with one exception: in the sketch, the artist included a large architectural screen in the fresco, an artifice meant to emphasise the figure of the saint.

Saint Nicholas stands at the centre of the composition, clad in episcopal robes. He blesses the crowd gathered before him: mothers with their children, clergy, youngsters, sailors…

At either side, two scenes from his life unfold. On the left, young Saint Nicholas has just gifted three bags of gold to the daughters of a man fallen on hard times. As he walks away, the grateful father kneels in thanks, with the three girls at his side. They now have a dowry so they may marry.

On the right, Nicholas, now bishop of Myra, saves three innocent men who were about to be executed by order of the governor Eustace. He seizes the sword from the executioner’s hand and bursts into the governor’s palace unannounced.

In the background, mountains and sea frame the narrative.

A photograph from 1950 shows the finished work. What stands out is the sky. Pierced open, revealing the Holy Spirit as a dove descending upon the earth. Sadly, a later alteration would erase this powerful spiritual message.

Fontigo is also associated with two other saints. Not far from the parish church stands the church of Saint Roch, today a war memorial dedicated to the fallen of both world wars. Further down the same road is the oratory of Saint Libera, a popular destination for pilgrims.

(pause)

…not far from here, the river flows on…

PHOTO 360 FONTIGO Move the mouse over the image

MORE EXPERIENCES!

La pittura sacra di Bepi Modolo: 

• … a Sernaglia della Battaglia
• … a Falzè
• … a Santa Lucia di Piave
• … a Moriago della Battaglia

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