The Christ Child holds on to St Christopher’s hair while sitting on his left shoulder. Detail of a damaged medieval fresco in a Romanesque church, the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Tiglio, built in the 1100s beside Lake Como at Gravedona, Lombardy, Italy. St Christopher, patron saint of travellers, bears a heavy double burden as he fords a dangerously swollen river: the weight of the infant Jesus combined with the weight of the world’s sins. Gravedona was once an important junction and stopping-place for merchants crossing the Alps.
Gravedona, Lake Como, Lombardy, Italy: Saint Christopher, patron saint of travellers, bears a heavy double burden, the Christ Child sitting on his left shoulder combined with the weight of the sins of mankind, as he carries the infant Jesus to safety across a swollen river, in this detail of a damaged yet striking medieval fresco in the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Tiglio, a 12th century Romanesque church on the northwest shores of the Lago di Como. The position of the fresco near the church’s entrance arch emphasises Gravedona’s prime location as a stopping place and junction for traffic entering and leaving the alpine region. Like Gotthard and Lucio, two other saints depicted elsewhere in the church, St Christopher would have been invoked by medieval travellers and merchants before they set out on their perilous journeys through the Alps. Subjects of other frescoes surviving in the church from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries include the Adoration of the Magi, St John the Baptist, St Julian the Hospitaller, St Stephen and a superb early 14th century Last Judgement. It also houses a masterpiece of Lombard Romanesque sculpture, a 12th century Crucifixion carved from poplar and alder wood. The lakeside land occupied by Santa Maria del Tiglio and the adjoining parish church of San Vincenzo is believed to have been a sacred site from at least Roman times. The first Christian building, a baptistery dedicated to St John the Baptist, was probably built on the site of a pagan temple. The two churches both incorporate re-used ancient materials, including a Roman altar and a fragment of 5th century Roman floor mosaic.
Size: 4288px × 2848px
Location: Chiesa di Santa Maria del Tiglio, Gravedona, Lombardy, Italy.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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