Cemetery of Mortorino (San Fiorano, Italy)

The ancient Cemetery of Mortorino is halfway between a burial ground and a temple.

About the cemetery

In 1684, Count Giorgio Pallavicino Triulzio donated a plot next to the church to be destined for a cemetery. The cemetery was then  built in 1765 by Vincenzo Ghisalberti, rector of the church. The cemetery is delimited
by a side-wall with only two windows with wrought-iron grating. The inner
space is square-shaped and it is surrounded by a four-sided portico with five
spans each side. It is a place where faith, art and pity are combined in perfect harmony.

It is a symmetrical and harmonious environment and the walls
are magnificently decorated with a fresco of Via Crucis (the fourteen Stations of the Cross), made by Giovanni Battista Ronchelli, a painter from Varese. Under the main altar there is also a fresco reproducing Saint Fiorano and the souls in Purgatory.  Beside the entrance, a name can be read – Cannon Cavalier. That could be the architect’s name.

During 1859 the
Austrian troops stayed at the cemetery and seriously damaged the site. In 1883 pictures
of Via Crucis, gift of Luigia Sfondini, were saved in parish church. In 1986, the restoration of the site began. Those pictures
needed more than one painter to do the reconstruction and Ronchelli’s style appears evident in the central
figures. Faces are deeply expressive-and sculpted by the light; some lines
call Tiziano to mind and one of the paintings reminds of Michelangelo’s “Pietà”.