SHARRYLAND
A Romanesque jewel in the shadow of the lakefront
At the churchyard of St. Andrew's, the light from the lake plays with the marbles and then creeps through the alleys of the village.
Where is
What it is and where it is
The church of St. Andrew is a remarkable piece of architecture that the restorations of the second half of the twentieth century restored to its original Romanesque appearance. Very particular is the facade, first of all because of the use of different stone materials of local origin - Botticino marble, Seasso gray, and Verona red - that give the surface a delicate polychromy. As for the widespread carved decoration, suffice it to say of the portal, where it is spread over five orders of crescents, depicting foliage and intertwining, symbolic animals such as the eagle, dove and lamb, and mythical creatures such as a mermaid and winged, rampant griffins.
Why it is special
The term picturesque does not suffice: the church of Sant'Andrea is rather a vision, as it appears to those who walk along the Riviera, framed by the pines of the lakefront, illuminated by the light that reverberates on the water creating plays of shadows... One would say Tuscany, except to be corrected when the robust accent of Brescian passersby reaches one's ear. Then one crosses the threshold and the light bouncing softly on the churchyard accompanies one between the archaic bays to the high altar. Here one turns back, and the cares of earthly life, out there, are almost imperceptible for a moment.
Not to be missed
The church preserves only small part of the wall paintings. What remains, however, is of such stature as to leave room for imagination of its former splendor. On the second left altar, in particular, is a 15th-century fresco depicting Saints Bernardine of Siena and Catherine of Alexandria shown alongside the sarcophagus from which the risen Christ emerges. And of the same tenor, on the first pilaster of the same nave, is a female figure that tradition holds to be St. Apollonia, although the saucer attribute with the torn eyes suggests the martyrdom of St. Lucy.
A bit of history
Maderno is a center of Roman foundation, associated with the figure of the bishop of Brescia , Saint Herculaneum, who lived in the 6th century and ended his life as a hermit on the shores of Lake Garda. According to legend, his body was entrusted to the waters on a boat that landed right in the Gulf of Maderno. Thus it was that the town had the honor of guarding the mortal remains of the saint whom at the same time the people of the Riviera had chosen as their patron saint. The relics were placed in a shrine, in place of which the church was built at the beginning of the 12th century, which still preserves the patron's sarcophagus in the crypt.
Curiosities
On the third left pillar of the nave, at the entrance to the crypt, is visible a small but valuable painting, Madonna Enthroned with Blessing Child and Two Donors, by Paolo Veneziano, a leading artist in the painting scene of the mid-14th century. The panel, the subject of a commissioned theft in 1975, was found almost 30 years later in the hands of a Turin antiquarian. A fictional affair, long followed by Brescian newspapers and revealed only after the death of its protagonist.
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