Audioguide by eArs

Contrari Chapel

You are now standing in the Contrari Chapel, a true jewel of late Gothic art. The painting cycle here was commissioned around 1425, but the name of the artist is still unknown today.Direct your gaze up to the vault.
The four sail vaults depict the Evangelists. Among them, you can recognise John from the beginning of his Gospel, who is using the skill of a scribe to write on a piece of parchment. This small but fundamental detail reveals how both those who painted and those who commissioned the work belonged to a cultured elite, capable of understanding the complex correspondence between the images and the passages of the literary sources, which combine the canonical Gospels with apocryphal episodes, the Acts of the Apostles, and other traditional ecclesiastical texts.Are you ready to embark on a small journey through the history of the Salvation? Let’s start with St John, painted in the sail vault above the entrance door. He is facing a “mandorla” - an almond shaped aura- within which we can glimpse a plant, the tree of life, from which a three-faced figure emerges, which is a reference to the Trinity. In the lunette below, which is unfortunately unfinished, you can see the dove of the Holy Spirit descending on Mary and the Apostles.Returning to the vault, you can see the evangelist Luke turning his back to the altar on which the Paschal Lamb is burning. In the corresponding lunette, you can see the episodes of the Resurrection on the left, with Christ emerging triumphant from the tomb, and the Descent into Hell on the right, showing how after having subdued the devil, Jesus freed all the righteous of the Old Testament from limbo.In the next sail vault we see St Mark sharpening his calamus for writing, combined with the figure of Christ risen. Although we can only glimpse the feet of the Saviour himself here, he ascends to heaven in the lunette below.The last sail vault shows St Matthew, who seems to be pensively watching over the cradle of Baby Jesus. The evangelist looks out to admire the Assumption of Mary beneath him. The Virgin is taken up to heaven by Christ, leaving the Apostles who had come to witness the event on the ground. Only Thomas, who had been absent at the time, asked for a sign of the miracle that had just occurred. Mary thus emerges from Paradise to throw the belt that had wrapped her body in the tomb down to the unbeliever.