St. Mary in Favento: a small church made big by the faith of the people who painted its walls - Nigoline: English, Armenian and Rumanian names on the nobles’ tombs around the frescoes by Floriano Ferramola

The town of PARATICO was defended by an important Castle, built in the 13th C. Its ruins can still be seen, from a distance, on top of a little hill on the right of the road to Capriolo. When - according to legend - in 1311 the local Princes Lantieri hosted Dante, the castle must have appeared more looming and imposing. The circle of walls was much more extensive and perhaps the well preserved tower among the houses under the hill was part of it. It was only meant as a defence, not as a residence: there were only three habitable rooms.
During the Middle Ages, the Lantieris, the Ochis and the Paraticos were the nobles in CAPRIOLO. The Castle, built before the year 1000 AD to defend the Brescia border on the Oglio river from the attacks from Bergamo, has been a nunnery since the end of the 17th C and at present you can recognise its defensive origin only by its massiveness which stands out over the town. You can get there with a climbing-walk along the steep via Castello: you will find elegant palaces (16th C) and older mighty residences, built with rough-hewn masses of stone, with heavy portals made of local stones such as the green one from Sarnico.
On the lower side of town, there is the Parish of St. George, rebuilt at the end of the 19th C, where a recently restored Resurrection by Romanino glows (in one of the chapels on the right). The Martyrdom of St. Gervase and St. Protase by Callisto Piazza is noteworthy, as well.
The town hall of ADRO is in the Bargnani Dandolo Palace (17th C), which hosted such celebrities as Cavour, Boito and Verdi. Next to it is the Bargnani Small Church, with an unusual elliptical shape.
The Sanctuary of the St. Mary of Snow (18th C) is considered as one of the abbot-architect Gaspare Turbini’s masterpieces. It is in the hamlet of TORBIATO, with a central plan with a dome, erected on top of a small church, which recalled the miraculous apparition of the St. Mary to a deaf-mute.
The frescoes in the small Sanctuary of St. Mary in Favento (see box on the page 31) are the little big treasure of the town.
The four hamlets (Timoline, Borgonato, Nigoline and Colombaro) that form CORTE FRANCA encompass the hillsides, which maintain the mild lake climate in a large hollow. Here, among the vineyards, we find villas and palaces erected in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries by the nobles from Brescia. In BORGONATO there is Lana-Berlucchi’s Palace, formed by two main parts (16th C) with an elegant little loggia that you can see from the road. The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, lived here in 1497. In her court in Asola, she hosted major men of letters of the time.
On the slopes of a highground, in the NIGOLINE cemetery, is the Church of St. Euphemia (before the year 1000 AD, rebuilt in the 15th C). In ancient times it was an annexe to the Iseo parish and later it became the first parish in Nigoline. It is in the final stage of restoration. The frescoes on the walls are by the refined artist Floriano Ferramola: in the apse there are episodes of the Life and Martyrdom of St. Euphemia. In the central fresco the Saint appears between the bishop St. Martin and another character, who could be the deacon St. Laurence or St. Faustino. In 1702 other older frescoes were discovered under the strange plaster of the reconstruction in baroque style. In the nave and in the cemetery there are nobles’ tombs, on which we can read names of representatives of the English, Rumanian and Armenian aristocracy. They were brought over to be buried by the international relatives of the barons Monti della Corte and by the earls Zoppola.

The long horse and the marble cloak