San Sisto (Piacenza)
San Sisto is a Renaissance church in Piacenza . The monastery belonging to the church was founded in 874 by Empress Engelberga . The Sistine Madonna hanging in Dresden today was painted for the high altar of this church.
history
Engelberga was the wife of the Carolingian emperor Ludwig II († 875). In 868 she became abbess of San Salvatore in Brescia , in 874 she founded the abbey of San Sisto in Piacenza , consecrated to Pope Sixtus I , of which she became abbess. In 1129 the nuns were replaced by Benedictines from Polirone near Mantua.
The current church of San Sisto is a building from the Renaissance, the architect was Alessio Tramello (1455–1535). The church was built in 1499–1511 in place of the original abbey church.
The Abbey of San Sisto was the most important Benedictine monastery in Piacenza for centuries until the French dissolved the monastery in 1809. The abbey was then largely used as barracks, and the abbey church became a parish church.
architecture
You enter the abbey through a portal from 1622 and reach a cloister from the second half of the 16th century. Behind it is the church, the facade of which was completed in 1591, renovated in 1755 and restored in 1969. It has three aisles with chapels on the sides and a spacious crypt. At the ends of the transept there are two more chapels. The wooden choir stalls are the work of Pietro Gio Pambianco da Colorno and Bartolomeo da Busseto from 1512 to 1514. In the left apse is the unfinished tomb of Margaret of Parma (1522–1586), Duchess of Parma and Piacenza.
Sistine Madonna
The Sistine Madonna was created in 1512/13 by Raffaello Santi for the high altar of the monastery church of San Sisto. The client was Pope Julius II , who with this work celebrated the victory of the Papal States over the French invaded Italy and the incorporation of the city of Piacenza into the Papal States in 1512. In 1753/54 the painting was made by August III. Acquired by Poland and Saxony and brought to his collection in Dresden , where it can be viewed again today after it was looted in Moscow from 1945 to 1955 . There is a copy of the picture in the Church of San Sisto.
In addition to the Madonna and Raphael's angels , the picture shows Sixtus II and Barbara of Nicomedia , relics of whom have been kept in the church since the time of Emperor Ludwig II . Since that time, relics of Fabian , Timotheus , Symphorianus , Marcellus , Apuleius , Germanus , Macarius Romanus , Felix , Martina and four of the innocent children of Bethlehem as well as an arm of Sebastian have been venerated in the church .
literature
- Various authors: Storia di Piacenza , 6 volumes, ed. from the Cassa di risparmio di Piacenza 1980-2002
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marielene Putscher: Raphael's Sistine Madonna. The work and its effect. 2 volumes (Vol. 1: Textband. Vol. 2: 195 sheets (in a folder)). Hopfer, Tübingen 1955 (at the same time: Hamburg Univ. Diss., November 1, 1955), p. 193, preview in the Google book search
Coordinates: 45 ° 3 ′ 25.5 " N , 9 ° 41 ′ 34.7" E