San Giovanni's church
A dome for Saint John
“more than 20 meters up you will be able to see the dome from close range, thanks to purpose-built scaffolding equipped with a lift”
In the breeding ground of young talents that is the benedictine Church of San Giovanni, a voice resounds loudly, it is that of Correggio. Between 1520 and 1524 he was entrusted to celebrate the Evangelist St John to whom the whole complex is dedicated. He is faced with a central space. The round dome is based, in a theological sense, on four pendentives; each one has beside it an Evangelist or a Father of the Church. Antonio (who makes it look easy), creates and realises an illusionary and truly virtual effect: looking at the dome from the nave the main character is Christ. For those who stand in the presbytery, (the Benedictine friars), the principal figure is John himself, to whom, while he is dying, Christ appears in all his splendour; tremendous and dazzling, set inside the round and eurhythmic crown of the Apostles. They appear to the visitor’s eyes to have the appeal of beautiful males, plastic and monumental, comfortably laid down, as if on sofas and triclinia, on swollen grey clouds. And here they are, for the first time, the clouds of Correggio: not light clouds of the Romanesque Baroque sky, but Po valley clouds, dense and opaque, real vehicles capable of going up and down from the sky. Curtain clouds, threshold clouds between the earth and the sky. St James crosses his legs on the cloud, St Philip leans on one elbow as if on a sofa and angels and putti come in and out, pushing themselves in an unceasing hustle and bustle into the soft but dense layer of clouds. Furthermore we are surprised by the confidence of his hand, the felicity and expressive immediacy, the self consciousness in resolving the strongest proof of ability, like that foreshortened Christ who seems to be falling onto the altar; in being able to compare himself with the Great masters. On those high scaffolding of the dome, went, is possible, also the young Parmigianino, maybe frightened by the capacity of daring of the master, maybe stimulated by ambition and emulation.
