Cupola vault

After the magnificent church cupola frescoes of the seventeenth century by Lanfranco, Pozzo, Baciccio, Pietro da Cortona, and others, the eighteenth century achieved its own spectacular effects with cupola frescoes enlivened by the infusion of natural light. Cupola painting was still the painter’s greatest challenge. Conquering such tall spaces was made easier by a more modern scaffolding design widely employed following the building of the new Saint Peter’s. The cupola fresco in the pilgrimage church of Regina Montis Regalis, erected on the site of an appearance of the Virgin near Vicoforte, in Piedmont, serves as an example of how, thanks to technical and artistic innovations, architecture and decoration led to a solution virtually impossible to outdo in theatrical opulence.

The Venetian Mattia Bortolini and the virtually unknown quadratura painter Felice Biella painted the shell of the cupola, which rises above a tall, light-filled drum and presents a surface area of more than 6.000 sq.m in a mere three years, using the simulated coffering that had already been painted for an Assumption of the Virgin which they kept.