Restoring Sant'Agata

About 5 p.m. yesterday, I took a break from my Italian homework and went for a walk along the south wall of the Città Alta.  I had taken along my camera, but by the time I got up to the walls, the sun was behind the horizon and the only thing that seemed to suggest itself was a group of trees at the top of a part of the wall profiled against what light was left in the sky.  Here’s the picture.

By the time I made it around to the Porta Sant’Alessandro Gate at the west end of the walls, it was completely dark and time to turn into the Città Alta itself and head home.  But I wasn’t in a real hurry and, walking along the Via Colleoni, I stopped in at the Church of Sant’Agata al Carmine.  There wasn’t anything particular to suggest it, but churches always seem to be open and I thought why not.  It turned out to be a mini-lesson in the burdens of maintaining a cultural heritage.

It’s a good-sized baroque church with elaborately decorated chapels and side walls.  The very nice paintings along the arched ceiling showed scenes from Jesus’ life from the Annunciation to the time when he was learning his trade as a carpenter.  Interesting the choice to go only that far.  Although the colors still appeared strong, the ceiling and the paintings were not in good shape.  Several sections showed a white, chalky-looking substance on the surface; possibly damage from water leaking through the roof?

At that point, I gave more attention to a large display panel at the back of the pews, just as you came in the door.  It was an appeal for funds.  The panel explained that the church had been neglected and is now being restored.  It explained that the first phase, already completed, consisted of securing the foundation and walls and installing a modern electrical system.  The cost for this was 328,545 euros, with funds coming from the Italian Episcopal Commission, the Lombardy Region, and HCB, a hotel and entertainment booking company.  The next phase will fix the roof, restore one of the side chapels, and address delayed maintenance.  This is expected to cost 421,444 euros.  So far half of the funds have been pledged by the Cariplo Foundation (related to the Cariplo Bank based in Lombardy); the rest still needs to be raised.

A second, somewhat larger panel on the exit side of the church represented part of the project to raise those funds.  The broad panel, maybe six feet high by nine feet across was a composite of several large color photographs showing the apse and sides of the church.  Over the photos was a lucite cover cover with perhaps several hundred small, rectangular cutouts about two by three inches.  A text explained that contributors to the church’s restoration can buy one (or more) “brick’s” to fill in the empty rectangles.  The minimum contribution is five euros.  As the blanks are filled in the pictures are completed -- and the church is restored.  Yesterday, it seemed that contributors had bought about sixty percent of the bricks.

All this made me think that people responsible for maintaining or restoring baroque churches like this one must curse the original builders and especially the artists who added all the decoration; or maybe more appropriately the patrons who commissioned it.  I wonder if they envy those responsible for gothic churches?