Cappella di San Bernardo

Above Dolceacqua, the Chapel of San Bernardo preserves a fresco cycle uncovered beneath limewash in 1952. An inscription dates part of the decoration to 26 August 1513 and names the two wardens who promoted the work.

Why it matters

Two distinct painting workshops contributed to the chapel’s decoration, reflecting the encounter of late-Gothic traditions from Piedmont with Renaissance influences from Lombardy. The first workshop’s inscription provides a rare documentary date for a rural fresco commission in the western Ligurian hinterland.

What to notice

The iconography combines two saints named Bernard. On the left wall, Bernard of Menton chains the devil to a column at the pass of Monte Giove. The first workshop also painted the central altarpiece, with the titular saint between Jerome and Nicholas of Tolentino beneath an Imago Pietatis, and the Conversion of Saul. Bernard of Clairvaux appears on the back wall with a book, pastoral staff and demon on a leash.

A second workshop painted Saint Anthony of Padua, the Madonna and Child on the vault, the Resurrection and a fragment of the Crucifixion. Its frescoes use blue hill backgrounds associated with Renaissance ideas about atmospheric perspective. The lower walls also preserve a Cavalcade of Vices and a gallery of Virtues. A window opening damaged much of the Imago Pietatis; the former apse was adapted as a small sacristy in the eighteenth century.

Context and history

The frescoes were discovered by Dolceacqua painter Mario Raimondo, known as Barbardirame. The first workshop’s style remains rooted in late Gothic painting, with affinities to Giovanni Canavesio of Pinerolo; the second shows connections with Lombard Renaissance painting. Conservation addressed structural cracks, detached plaster and vandalism. Removing limewash from the side walls also revealed the Vices and Virtues scenes. The former apse, adapted as a sacristy in the eighteenth century, preserves part of the earlier decorative cycle.