Santa Maria Assunta in Cremona, among the great Romanesque cathedrals of the Po Valley in northern Italy, is not only one of the most renowned for its artwork, but also one in which the slow stratification of time is most evident. The names of the greatest masters, in the first person or in the medieval sense of workshop, follow one another in quick succession: Wiligelmo, Antelami, the excellent Marco Romano, the Campionesi, enrich the façade with grandiose and superb sculptures, aristocratic and earthy. In the interior, the cycle of frescoes in the main nave with the Stories from the Life of the Virgin and Christ shows, as nowhere else, the symptoms of the pressing renewal taking place in early 16th century Italian painting, from the faultless classicism of Boccaccio Boccaccino to the eccentric Altobello Melone and Gianfrancesco Bembo, the Brescian Romanino and the Friulian Pordenone, who is given the grand finale with the resounding Crucifixion on the counter façade. Alongside these two poles, the façade and the nave, there are masterpieces from all centuries: paintings, sculptures, and goldsmithing, including frescoes and canvases by the Campi, the greatest exponents of the 16th-century Cremonese school of painting. AUTHORS: Francesco Frangi is full Professor of Modern Art History and Museology at the University of Pavia (Cremona campus). He is one of the leading experts on 16th- and 17th-century Lombardy. Marco Tanzi is full Professor of History of Modern Art at the University of Salento. He mainly deals with figurative culture in northern Italy from the 15th to the 17th century, with wandering artists along routes that are by no means canonical in the artistic geography of the boot and, more recently, with the Renaissance in the Terra d'Otranto. SELLING POINTS: . A book full of high-resolution photographs that allow you to see previously unseen details of the cathedral's frescoes and sculptural reliefs . Slim format that can be taken along on a visit to the church . In addition to detailed historical and iconographic explanations, there are planimetric maps that make it possible to trace the current location of all the works described in the volume . The volume is edited by two of the leading experts on 16th-century Lombard art, university professors at the head of a team of young scholars 117 colour, 3 b/w illustrations
