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  • Battistero di San Giovanni
  • Mariano Comense
  •  
  • Italy
  • Lombardy
  • Province of Como
  • Mariano Comense

Credits

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Monuments

Periods

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Chronology

  • 400 AD - 1700 AD

Season

    • This baptistery has a quadrilobate plan, and a study of the structure has concluded that it was built in this form around the year 1025, although a plan of 1570 shows it as an octagonal building and a document of 1600 describes it thus: "Above the cemetery, to the north stands a small but complete chapel with eight corners covered by wide stones (slabs), and it is believed that in antiquity this was a temple of...". That the memory of the existence of a pagan temple was still alive in 1600 indicates that, as in many other cases during the transition from paganism to Christianity, a pre-existing place of cult had been transformed and re-used according to the new faith. This hypothesis is supported by the discovery (in 1574) of a reliquary shaped like a sarcophagus with acroteria. This contained minute fragments of a small box made of bone which must have been decorated with silver laminae with pagan motifs in relief, and which had been re-used as a reliquary. The reliquary and the laminae have been dated to the late antique period on the basis of their stylistic characteristics and it seems likely that they came from a cult building on the same site. Excavation of the entire baptistery floor revealed a complex stratigraphy with four distinct phases and a baptismal font of unusual construction. It is faced with fine opus signinum, with eight vertical string-courses which divide the exterior wall to give an octagonal appearance. The bottom of the font is formed from a slab of granite with a central hole for the drainage of the baptismal water. The font is surrounded by a sort of annular bench (sedile) with a convex surface, made of rose-coloured opus signinum. (Laura Simone Zopfi, Paul Blockley)

FOLD&R

    • Laura Simone Zopfi, Paul Blockley. 2005. Gli scavi nel battistero di S. Giovanni Battista a Mariano Comense (CO). FOLD&R Italy: 37.

Bibliography

    • P. Blockley, L. Simone Zopfi, Scavi all’interno del Battistero – C. Ansaloni, G. Brunelli, Il restauro del fonte e della capsella, in NOTIZIARIO 1999-2000, Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Lombardia: 215-220.
    • P. Blockley, L. Simone Zopfi, 2004, Lo scavo del Battistero di S. Giovanni Battista in Storia di Mariano Comense, II: 5-10.
    • M. Sannazaro, 2004, Nuove indagini sulle capselle di Mariano, in Storia di Mariano Comense, II: 11-13.