Chiesa di San Michele

Casale Monferrato's church of San Michele is known simply as the church of the nobles. An octagonal hall beneath a frescoed dome, built by the city's aristocratic confraternity beside the Duomo, it holds six canvases by Guglielmo Caccia, called il Moncalvo, and dome decorations dated 1597.

Why it matters

San Michele tells you how Casale's patriciate worshipped. In the early sixteenth century the cathedral chapter granted the local confraternity a slice of the cemetery beside the Duomo so that the nobility could erect its own place of prayer — an arrangement reflected in its enduring name, "dei nobili," and its ownership by the city's noble families. Architecturally it is one of Casale's distinctive central-plan churches: an octagon capped by a cupola whose decoration of 1597, by the Pavia painter Giovanni Antonio Cassano, narrates the stories of the three archangels Michele, Gabriele and Raffaele. The niches hold six canvases by il Moncalvo, one of the celebrated Piedmontese painters of his generation; a preparatory drawing for the church is preserved in the Royal Library of Turin.

What to notice

The octagonal plan centres the interior beneath its dome. Cupola decorations dated 1597 show the stories of the three archangels in compartments separated by mascheroni and grotesques; Giorgio Alberini frescoed the building. Six canvases by Moncalvo occupy niches around the walls: an Annunciazione, an Annuncio ai pastori, a Natività, a San Michele Arcangelo, a Madonna Assunta with Saint Francis and a Carthusian monk, and a Riposo in Egitto. The last painting in the cycle, Il sogno di San Giuseppe of 1627 by Guglielmo Crosio, closes the sequence and shows the collection still growing a generation after Moncalvo's death.

Context and history

The confraternity of the Casalese nobility obtained the cemetery land beside the cathedral at the beginning of the sixteenth century to build its place of worship, and the church has remained in the hands of the founding families — a continuity of ownership rare anywhere in Italy. The present octagonal building, with its dome, was frescoed by Giorgio Alberini, while the cupola decorations of 1597 are the work of Giovanni Antonio Cassano of Pavia. The Moncalvo canvases anchor the decoration in the great age of Casale painting: Guglielmo Caccia, born in 1568, worked across the Monferrato and his studio supplied churches for decades. The church is recorded as the seat of the confraternity and of an ancient oratory, and it stands near Palazzo Treville, embedding the aristocratic geography of the old city. Its octagonal form, frescoed dome and canvases by il Moncalvo express the church's connection with Casale's aristocratic confraternity.