Numerous unpublished documents in the archives of the church of Santa Maria delle Vigne make it possible to follow the various phases in the Baroque transformation of this medieval church in Genoa and to identify the architects — for the most part of Lombard origin — who were involved in this work. In fact, if the work has been attributed to Daniele Casella up to now, there have been doubts about his precise identity because of the simultaneous presence in Genoa of three artists with this name at the same time. If, on the one hand, the documents confirm that the one in charge of the transformation was Daniele Casella — son of Antonio, born in Carona (Lugano), d. 1646 — on the other, they are more specific about exactly what the extent of his work was, and indicate Giacomo and Matteo Lagomaggiore as the architects who finished it. The twenty grandiose columns which characterize the new interior of the church are not all the work of Giovan Battista Bianco, as has been thought up to the present. Gio Batta and Carl'Antonio Orsolino, whose involvement was previously unacknowledged, also had a role in this.

Arte lombarda

CARTE D'ARCHIVIO