Cattedrale di Sant'Ambrogio (Duomo di Vigevano)

The cathedral of Sant'Ambrogio closes the fourth side of Piazza Ducale with one of Italian Baroque architecture's most composed curves. Begun in 1532 on a Sforza commission and given its concave facade by the scholar-bishop Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, it joins Renaissance urban design and late-Baroque stagecraft in a single stage set.

Why it matters

A city square is only as good as its closing scene, and Vigevano's is exceptional. When Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz — bishop, mathematician and architect, born in Madrid in 1606 and died in Vigevano in 1682 — drew the cathedral's facade, he solved a practical asymmetry between church and square with an ellipsoidal sweep of unusual sobriety. The municipal portal ranks the result among the most refined examples of Baroque architecture, and the building remains the seat of the Diocese of Vigevano, whose patron is Ambrose himself. The porticoed square brings together the Sforza Renaissance of the 1490s and the counter-Reformation geometry of the 1680s.

What to notice

The facade's elliptical curvature corrects the church's slanted position relative to the porticoes. Within, the interior follows a three-aisled Latin cross. The cathedral's art rewards slow looking: a tempera polyptych by a Leonardesque-school painter hangs at the third altar on the left; the right transept holds paintings attributed to Macrino d'Alba and Bernardino Ferrari from the early sixteenth century; and the last chapel on the left keeps a carved and painted wood Madonna with Child dated to the first half of the fifteenth century. The cathedral's treasure collection is housed in an adjacent museum.

Context and history

The church belongs to Vigevano's second Sforza act. Duke Francesco II Sforza launched construction in 1532 from a design by Antonio da Lonate, and the building was consecrated on 24 April 1612, long before it acquired its final face. The diocese itself was new: Pope Clement VII erected the See of Vigevano on 16 March 1530 at Francesco II's request, initially with only three parishes, and dedicated the city's patronage to Sant'Ambrogio. When Caramuel reworked the square in 1680, he closed its fourth side with this Baroque facade, removed the central ramp that once led to the castle and eliminated two triumphal arches, giving the piazza its present architectural shape. Church, square and castle thus form one continuous composition across two centuries.