Santa Maria degli Angioli church, Late Romanesque Catholic church in Lugano, Switzerland
Santa Maria degli Angioli is a church building in Lugano with a monumental wall fresco depicting the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ. This fresco covers an entire wall and features more than 150 human figures and horses arranged in dynamic scenes.
Construction of the building began in 1499 by Franciscan friars and it was consecrated in 1515 as part of a larger monastery complex. The wall fresco was created later, showing artistic developments that took place over several decades.
The name Santa Maria degli Angioli refers to the Franciscan devotion to Our Lady of the Angels. The church keeps the trigramma bernardiniano IHS, the monogram of Bernardino da Siena, repeated on the walls, and the friars of the Observant branch preached from here across the Sottoceneri and Mendrisiotto. Since 2015 the surviving convent rooms have housed a museum display, and the church hosts concerts and cultural events with MASI and the City of Lugano.
The church faces Piazza Bernardino Luini in Lugano's historic centre, on the axis toward the lake. The interior is a single aisle; the Luini fresco stands on the tramezzo between nave and presbytery, with the Last Supper on the left wall. The cloister perimeter of the former convent, restored in 2015, can be visited.
The Last Supper hangs on the left wall of the nave, not the south wall; it was painted by Bernardino Luini and came from the convent refectory. The same artist painted the monumental Passion and Crucifixion on the counter-facade in 1529–1532, and reproductions of Bernardino of Siena's IHS trigram appear in the church.
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