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A time capsule… just around the corner!

    It's really true: sometimes we have very interesting things right around our house and we don't even notice them until, perhaps by pure chance, we happen to fall into them!

    This is just what happened to me few days ago, at Easter: my son, who rarely goes to Imperia but (like me) is curious to discover new places, wanted to take a car ride "somewhere". Initially he was focused on rather distant places, on the opposite side of the province, and we dissuaded him for fear of car queues and crowds, so he fell back on something closer ... and in the end I went there too imagining that, even if 'I've been there several years ago, it was still worth going back again. 

    The destination we eventually chose is the Convent of San Domenico (IT) in Taggia, a medieval town in the immediate hinterland not far from Sanremo, just 20 km from home.

Technichal notes

I've collected my best photos in this Google Photos album. All were shot with my Olympus E-M5 Mk.II camera, equipped alternately with two zoom lenses, the standard Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO (IT) and the super wide-angle Zuiko 9-18mm f/4-5.6, then subjected to my "usual" post-processing treatment with Photoshop: increase of definition and contrast, white balance tunning, keystone correction, reframinga.

    From my first visit I remembered a beautiful church, decorated inside with black and white geometric shapes, but not much more. Instead, that place proved to be extremely interesting to visit: as soon as we entered the cloister we understood that we were not only in front of a monument that survived the passing of the centuries, but that has exhausted its original functions: on the contrary, the convent is still alive and inhabited, even if it is far from the presence on the surrounding territory and from the importance it had in the past.

    What struck me most was just the church, which can be accessed directly from the cloister: in its semi-darkness, without any writing nor sign to remind us that we are in 2023, with only a very few people visiting it (initially there were only the two of us and the friar who was our guide). It has come virtually intact with all of its artwork from the late XV century, when it was completed in a sober gothic style, to today: a real window into the past (that's why I talk about a "time capsule")!

    Apart from a single side altar, later transformed into Baroque style, everything has remained harmoniously preserved as it was then: the black and white geometric decorations (the ones I remembered) that finish all the pointed arches and the walls, a revealing proof of the Lombard origin of the workers who built it, match the gray slate floor and white marble rhombuses, typically Ligurian, and the high walls, of an anonymous light gray, bring out even more the brightness, the magnificence and the exceptional beauty of the 5 large polyptychs of that era⁽¹⁾ which remained almost untouched⁽²⁾, and of all the other works of art⁽³⁾ housed in the altars and side chapels. 

    Had our guide worn, instead of a sober clergyman suit, the black and white habit of the Dominicans, it would have seemed completely natural to see him moving in the magical atmosphere of that environment…

Notes

⁽¹⁾ four of these are the work of Ludovico Brea from Nice, the last one by a well-known local artist, Giovanni Canavesio

⁽²⁾ the upper central panel is missing from the polyptych on the main altar, lost due to the centuries of history the convent went through, and the entire right side part of the "Annunciation of Mary" is missing. Finally, many frescoes are ruined or only guessable

⁽³⁾ there is also a splendid "Adoration of the Tree Kings" (1529) by Parmigianino

Notes for English readers

• Where possible, all links point to a voice in English (e.g. en.wikipedia.org); otherwise I marked those links in Italian language only by following them with an "(IT)" mark
• All captions contained in the Google Photo album are in Italian only; anyway, most of them only contain the title, author and year of the paintings and other works of art, so I hope their meaning can be easily understood anyway

      (Ivan – April 15, 2023)

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