Chiesa di San Matteo

Muslone, a village under its own feudal lord from 1421 until it joined Gargnano in 1817, gathers around the church of San Matteo. Tradition credits the building to the first feudatory, Maffeo de Medalli. Inside, an asymmetrical presbytery is traditionally interpreted as recalling the bowed head of Christ on the cross, near canvases by Bertanza and a 1521 statue by Pietro Bussolo.

Why it matters

Muslone’s church reflects the village’s distinctive political history. The settlement was constituted as an autonomous fief in 1421, when the Visconti duke of Milan invested Maffeo de Medalli with the land, and it did not join Gargnano until 1817, four centuries later. The building tradition attaches the church itself to that first lord, and its furnishings show a village of modest size commanding serious art: two canvases by Andrea Bertanza and a wooden Madonna carved in 1521 by the Milanese sculptor Pietro Bussolo, a Lombard Renaissance sculptor.

What to notice

The presbytery is offset to the left; a traditional interpretation relates this asymmetry to Christ’s bowed head on the cross. On the high altar, set within a stucco soasa, hangs the Madonna in Glory with Saint Matthew and two bishop saints, painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Andrea Bertanza; the same painter's Baptism of Christ adorns the baptistery. The side altars include the altar of the Madonna of the Rosary with a seventeenth-century pala, the altar of Saints Roch and Anthony, and the altar of the Immacolata, which preserves a wooden statue of the Madonna carved in 1521 by Pietro Bussolo of Milan. The church faces the village piazzetta and remains part of Muslone’s civic setting.

Context and history

From the twelfth century Muslone developed as a self-governing vicinia, and on 10 June 1421 Duke Filippo Maria Visconti invested Maffeo de Medalli with the fief, including homage and an annual gift of a trained falcon; Venetian rule later curtailed the feud, and the community's autonomy endured in substance until the union with Gargnano in 1817. Local tradition attributes the present church to Medalli, and the village developed between the feudatory’s palace and the church of San Matteo, which remains its geographic and symbolic centre.