Desiderio. La basilica di San Salvatore di Brescia: dal monastero al museo

The book, the result of a decade-long survey of the historical-archival sources and the transformations of the royal and imperial monastery of San Salvatore-Santa Giulia in Brescia, investigates the complex architectural stratification of the cloistered complex from the Lombard foundation to the last museum destination. The result is an original and diversified evolution which, in many cases, overturns and specifies the previous dates, highlights the religious and ideal assumptions of certain architectural structures of the female cenoby and focuses on both the transformations due to military occupation, after the Napoleonic suppression of the monastic community, and the exhibition aims realized in the last decades of the nineteenth century, with the opening of the “Museo Cristiano”, up to the profound renewal of the Reconstruction years, directed by Gaetano Panazza, and that of the nineties of Twentieth century with the creation of the “Museo della città”. Architectural structures, monastic spaces, pictorial decorations and liturgical furnishings are thus inserted into a coherent cross-section, derivation, first, of the changing needs of the nuns and of the articulated community liturgies; then, of the subsequent recovery and functional use to tell the religious and artistic glories of the city in the wider homeland identity project of the new kingdom of Italy.