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Località: Via G. Garibaldi, 10 - Isola Dovarese - Cremona

Church of St. Nicholas

Slightly set back from the actual center of the village, the Church of San Nicolò remains secluded beyond the archway and faces what was once Corso Maggiore. The building’s external appearance, as sober as ever, is the result, as is the interior, of a continuous reworking of the structure to run to meet the demographic growth that has affected the village over the past centuries.

The present result is the result of the last major mid-18th-century reworking of a building that was already undoubtedly present in the 15th century, when documents indicate a plebian church, called Santa Maria in Insula, located at a raised point that provided shelter from the frequent flooding of the Oglio River.

The building had to adapt to urban layout that did not foresee its expansion, and therefore the church of San Nicolò presents the anomaly of the main entrance on the major side, the one that faced the corso.

The faithful, upon entering, would find themselves facing the altar of the Virgin and not the apsidal area. The latter, in the mid-18th century, was enriched with stained glass windows housing the figures of St. Nicholas the Bishop and St. Catherine, the dome, the chancel and the splendid organ of the Montesanti school.

The presence of religious confraternities in the town allowed the acquisition of some important works from dismissed places of worship. This is the case of the Madonna in Glory between Saints Dominic and Pius V by Camillo Procaccino, a work present in the apse.
Among the church’s pictorial works, the highlight is undoubtedly Bernardino Campi’s “Ecce-Homo”, painted on site in 1575 and placed in the altar of the patronage of the Gonzaga family.

The townspeople also show great fondness for the work now attributed with certainty to Altobello Melone: the Annunciation or Madonna of the Cat. The painting interprets the theme of the Annunciation to the Virgin with a more intimate, domestic setting without detracting from the intensity and solemnity of the moment depicted, thanks to a skillful use of light and shadow.

Further valuable elements in the church are the altars with splendid marble inlays of the 18th-century Brescian school and the wooden statues, among which the representation of the Virgin attributed to the sculptor Bertesi stands out.

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