In Piacenza for three months you can climb the dome of the cathedral to see Ludovico Carracci's frescoes

From Sept. 22, 2019 to Jan. 6, 2020, a new stage along the ascent to the dome of the cathedral comes to Piacenza: after the 2017 climb, when the protagonist was Guercino with the frescoes of the dome’s sails, now the focus is on Ludovico Carracci (Bologna, 1555 - 1619), who between 1605 and 1609 frescoed the presbytery and apse together with Camillo Procaccini (Parma, 1561 - Milan, 1629) and his collaborators, the younger Lorenzo Garbieri (Bologna, 1580 - 1654) and Giacomo Cavedoni (Sassuolo, 1577 - Bologna, 1660). The climb was designed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Ludovico Carracci’s death.

The new lighting of the Cathedral’s nave, which affects both the liturgical hall and the presbytery, restores the proper perception of this cycle of frescoes after the large seventeenth-century windows were closed in the late nineteenth-century restoration work, depriving them of much of the natural light. In addition, in collaboration with Cooltour s.r.l., guided tours will be organized to the detached frescoes of the cycle, which have been kept in the hall of the Bishop’s Palace since they were placed there after the restorations between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so that it will be possible to learn more about these parts that are usually hidden from the public gaze.

Also during the same period, it will be possible to visit the exhibition Ludovico Carracci in Piacenza. The Art of the Counter-Reformation at Kronos - Cathedral Museum. The exhibition, conceived by the Cultural Heritage Office of the Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio and curated by Manuel Ferrari and Susanna Pighi, under the patronage of the Municipality of Piacenza, with the support of the Fondazione di Piacenza e Vigevano, in collaboration with Cooltour s.r.l., intends to give an understanding of the role and influence that the Bolognese painter had in the Piacenza area and the unquestionable fame that the paintings left in the city by Ludovico Carracci must have enjoyed locally. The ascent to the dome is considered an integral part of the exhibition.

As part of the exhibition, it will be possible to fully enjoy the view of the canvas of St. Martin giving his cloak to a poor man, until now kept in the cathedral in an inaccessible position, and now the subject of a new display within visitors’ reach. A special section covers the original documents existing in the Cathedral’s Capitular Archives and the Piacenza Diocesan Historical Archives on Ludovico’s work for Piacenza Cathedral. Didactic apparatuses illustrate the local activity of the artist and the impact on the pictorial context of this northern Emilian area, going on to propose the figurative reconstruction of the cycle for the cathedral in its entirety, as it appeared prior to the dismantling of the Scalabrinian era, in the nineteenth-century context.

Finally, the initiative will experience a moment of study with the conference Omaggio a Carracci (Homage to Carracci), scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 19, 2019, in the Palazzo Vescovile in Piacenza, in which some aspects of Carracci’s Emilian activity, the coeval pictorial culture and the Piacenza work of the Bolognese master will be addressed.

Hours: until Sept. 30 on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., from Oct. 1 on Saturdays and Sundays from 3 to 6 p.m. Last admission one hour before closing. Tours of the Bishop’s Palace leave at every full hour. For all info you can visit the Piacenza Cathedral website.

Pictured is the presbytery frescoed by Ludovico Carracci and, in the background, the dome with frescoes by Guercino.

In Piacenza for three months you can climb the dome of the cathedral to see Ludovico Carracci's frescoes

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