Un ciclo datato 996: le pitture del sacello di San Michele presso il monastero dei Santi Nazaro e Celso a Verona

There are very few painting cycles that can be securely dated to around 1000, like the one in San Vincenzo in Galliano. The oldest decorative stratum in the sacellum of San Michele at the church of Santi Nazaro e Celso in Verona is one of these. It was discovered in 1885 - when the twelfth century pictorial decoration that covered it was detached - and enjoyed premature fame because of the painted inscription bearing the date 996, now preserved in very faint traces. Pietro Toesca personally saw the paintings in the sacellum in Verona and cited them in relation to the cycle in Galliano. After the interest aroused at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, critics did not pay much attention to them because of a very complicated conservation history that led to their detachment, in 1963, and storage of over thirty pieces in the store-rooms of the Civic Museums in Verona. The purpose of this contribution is to draw attention to these dated Veronese paintings, and to reconstruct, as far as possible, their artistic physiognomy and original decorative layout. Together with this cycle, the author rapidly considers other evidence in the Veronese milieu dating to the tenth and eleventh century, like the elegant painted drapery in the sanctuary area of the church of Santo Stefano in Verona and the lost decoration of the sacellum of San Pietro presso Santa Maria in Cisano, on Lake Garda.