The Church of St. Giorgio in Varenna is a rare example of three naves building dated back to the fourteenth century

The church of St. Giorgio is placed in the central square of Varenna and it is a building of the early fourteenth-century, later modified in the Baroque age. On its façade is represented the patron of boatmen, St. Christopher, with a mantle lined by ermine. It was built between 1250 and 1313, when it was consecrated, to face the inhabitant’s needs.

Its style goes to the period between the Romanesque and Gothic. It has three naves and on the façade’s side there is the bell tower of 1653, which replaced the ancient Romanesque one. The church of St. George, more of its interesting structure, hosts many great artworks.

Above the marble high altar there is the Triptych of St. George (1467) by Giovan Pietro Bertani, depicting the Virgin Mary in throne with the Child, between St. George and St Peter. The central section is closed by two small columns with four saints’ figures – St. Lawrence, San John the Baptist, St. Stephen and St. Agnes –and crowned by three pinnacles with the Archangel Gabriel, the Crucifixion and the Announced Virgin. Over the altar you can admire the wooden Crucified of the Lombardy school dated back to the sixteenth-century.
On the two closest columns to the altar there are two frescoes of the fourteenth-century depicting a crowned saint with a rose in hand (on the left) and a supreme pontific (on the right). According to some interpretations the tow figures could be the Queen Teodolinda and Pope Gregory.
The left apse’s chapel hosts a great artwork: a plank depicting The Jesus’ Baptism by Sigismund de Magistracy (1533). While instead on the back of the right apse’s chapel there are some frescoes: on the left of the Cross there are St. John the Baptist, a saint bishop and St. George, while on the right there are St. Bernard with a white cowl and St. Mary Magdalen among some nuns. The picture on the right is a triptych belonging to the Lombardy School of the sixteenth-century.

Articolo aggiornato il 4 October 2023 da eccoLecco