THE ROAD from Saronno to Varese leads through a distressing sequence of overgrown settlements. These do nothing to prepare us for the charm of the old town of Castiglione Olona, scarcely half a mile off to the left, on a spur above the wooded valley of the Olona. Castiglione was held from early medieval times by the Castiglioni family. Branda Castiglioni (1350–1443) had a successful career as Bishop of Piacenza, as Legate to Hungary and, from 1412, as Bishop of Vespré. Like other churchmen the cardinal, as he became in 1411, knew he had to build within his lifetime, but as he died in his nineties he had more time than could rationally have been anticipated to make his mark at Castiglione.
The road descends to the triangular central Piazza Garibaldi. On the east, set back, is the cardinal’s palace, Casa Castiglioni. On the ground floor is the small chapel, with rather worn murals by the Sienese master Vecchietta. The main stair mounts to a loggia with views out over the town and vestigial decorative frescoes, including a relatively unusual compartment with covered jars. Off this is the large hall, from which a door opens to the bedchamber, with contemporary murals of putti among trees by a local artist. Beyond is a further chamber with a remarkable panorama by the Tuscan master Masolino da Panicale, whom (with Masaccio) the cardinal had previously employed at San Clemente in Rome, showing his see in Hungary, a sizeable town in a valley between steep bare hills, some of which are crested with castles.
Across the piazza a road rises, passing the church of the Santissimo Corpo di Cristo completed between 1441 and 1444, which has been attributed to Vecchietta. The chaste classicism of the pilastered walls affirms the cardinal’s interest in contemporary Tuscan taste. The road climbs up to the gate of his most ambitious foundation, the Collegiata. Castiglioni himself is seen kneeling before the Madonnna and Child in the lunette of 1428 above the main door. The imposing brick church represents the moment when the late Gothic melts into the early Renaissance; and to experience the processional subtlety of the building (which is now entered by a side door), you should walk to the west entrance before approaching the apse. The decoration is a further affirmation of the cardinal’s leanings. The outer arch was frescoed by a lesser Florentine, Paolo Schiavo, while the vault and the upper and part of the lower register of murals are by Masolino, from whom Schiavo took over in the Stoning of Saint Stephen. The rest of the altar wall and the fictive architecture and marbling below are by Vecchietta, as is the trompe l’oeil portrait. Masolino is at his most lyrical in the narrow triangular compartments of the vault, notably the Annunciation and the centrally placed Coronation of the Virgin, with their sinuous elongated figures. The cardinal’s tomb is on the left of the choir.
Palazzo Castiglioni, staircase: Lombard School, Vessels, fresco (detail), c. 1430.
The Baptistery is to the north of the church. This is an intimate space, with an outer rectangle opening to a narrower area, in which Masolino’s murals tell to marvellous effect. Above the door there is a surprisingly accurate view of Rome, in which the Pantheon and other monuments can be seen. The frescoes represent the life of Saint John the Baptist, the Baptism itself dominating the end wall, the Jordan set in a hilly landscape which flows into that of the adjacent Preaching in the Wilderness. On the right wall of the outer section, again linked in space, are the celebrated scenes of Herod’s Feast and Salome receiving the Baptist’s Head; the loggia in which she is placed is too deep to convince. Graffiti remind us that even in the sixteenth century monuments were not invariably treated with respect.
Baptistery, sixteenth-century graffiti.
The Baptistery murals reveal the workings of a painter of ineffable charm at a moment of artistic rediscovery. The reverse might be said of the extraordinary seventh-century murals in Santa Maria Foris Portas near the atmospheric ruins of the Roman town of Castelseprio four kilometres to the south. Here we see a beautiful last gasp of the art of the ancient world, the Virgin in her fluttering robe resting after giving birth to her tremulous Child, the Magi described in bold swathes of reddish brown with a sense of movement that would be lost for many centuries.