Basilica of Mary of the Assumption and St. John the Baptist, Minor basilica in Clusone, Italy.
The basilica of Mary of the Assumption and St. John the Baptist is a single-nave Baroque church built between 1688 and 1698 to a design by Giovanni Battista Quadrio, 50 metres long, 18 wide and 20 high. Its barrel-vaulted ceiling is painted in pale tones with framed panels and scrollwork, and the pinkish-beige stone walls carry pilasters with gilded capitals. Eight side chapels open off the nave under lowered arches on Corinthian columns 8.30 metres tall, and the high altar, designed by Andrea Fantoni and executed by the Corbarelli family of Brescia, frames a painted panel with columns, statues and a gold tabernacle.
A church is documented at Clusone from the 9th century, when a testament of 828–837 names Santa Maria in Clisione; by 1260 it was listed as caput plebis. The old single-nave pieve, described after Carlo Borromeo's 1575 visit, was replaced from 1659 under archpriest Alessandro Ghirardelli. The present church was built between 1688 and 1698 to a design by Giovanni Battista Quadrio, consecrated on 6 July 1711 and raised to minor basilica in 1961.
The church is dedicated to both the Assumption of Mary and St. John the Baptist, and a statue of the Baptist crowns the dome placed in 1624. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament was founded here on 19 April 1495, when its statute was drawn up; it became the largest and most important congregation of the church.
The church stands on the northern slope above Clusone, reached by a staircase decorated with balustrades and four statues of the Evangelists before the portico. The campanile beside the apse rises 66 metres. The single nave is 50 metres long, 18 wide and 20 high, with side chapels set behind lowered arches on Corinthian columns 8.30 metres tall.
The high altar was designed by Andrea Fantoni and executed by the Corbarelli family of Brescia; the organ, built by the Ruffatti brothers in 1960, has 65 registers and is split across two choir tribunes flanking the choir, played from a separate console on the left.
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