The Colleoni Chapel was built in 1472 when Bartolomeo Colleoni, already a famous condottiere in the pay of Venice and General Captain of the Veneto army decided to build his mausoleum. Overcoming the refusal of the canons of the basilica, Colleoni had his soldiers demolish the sacristy of Santa Maria Maggiore, thus starting the works.

                                

Cultivated and modern, Colleoni designed a monument which, standing in the heart of the urban space, was to have created new perspectives (it was for this reason that the demolition of the Palazzo della Ragione had been planned since 1474). The chapel was built by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, a sculptor-architect working on the Certosa di Pavia. However, the task was very complex: a sacred space had to be organized for the remains of the captain and it had to be suitable to celebrate divine offices and, in the last place, have a formal agreement with the basilica alongside. And thus the octagonal tambour of the chapel and the sharp cusps of the lantern recall the inventive endings of the basilica, whilst the exuberant polychromy of the façade echoes, in the colours and materials, the 14th century portal of the basilica by Giovanni da Campione. “The intellectual interests of Colleoni meet and finally are integrated with the openness to figurative experimentation of Amadeo, giving rise to the Colleoni Chapel: a remarkable work, made up of rigour and transgression, refinement and exhibitionism.” (Walter Barbero).
Inside, the monumental tomb of Colleoni presents two superimposed arches inserted in a triumphal arch, a reworking of the monumental Gothic tombs but the more outstandingly Renaissance features can be recognised in the low-reliefs and in the sculptures, evidence of the extraordinary plastic capacities of Amadeo. On the second sarcophagus, a wooden equestrian statue of Colleoni by Sisto and Siry of Nuremberg in 1501.In the dome, in the pendentives and in the lunettes of the vault, there are splendid frescoes by G.B.Tiepolo (1733) illustrating virtues and episodes from the life of St. John the Baptist.
On the left wall, the Tomb of Medea, the favourite daughter of Colleoni, by Amadeo: on the front, in high-relief, La Pietà (1470). Below: a walnut bench with Biblical intarsia by G. Caniana (1785).
In the presbytery there is an altar by B. Manni 1676 with a table designed by L. Pollak; in the lunettes the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by G. B. Tiepolo and St. Mark the Evangelist by Tiepolo. On the walls: The Holy Family by M. A. Kauffmann; wooden pews with carvings by G. A. Sanz and Biblical intarsia by the Canianas of 1773.


COLLEONI CHAPEL : information

Address
Piazza Duomo, tel. 035 210 061
opening times :
March - October: every day, 9.00 a.m. -12.30 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. -6.30 p.m.;
November - February: 9.00 a.m. - 12.30 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. - 4.30 p.m.
Closed on Mondays.