Raffaella Poltronieri

The essay presents the results of a study conducted upon the recently restored frescoes by the Natali brothers in the church of San Giacomo in Soncino (1695-96). New discoveries from contemporary sources and a document found in the church archive finally allow an all-around knowledge of the cycle. The analysis of Giuseppe Natali’s quadrature decorations, which compares them to some of the artist’s most famous works, is paralleled by an inquiry on the activity of the two unknown figure painters who took part to the project, Antonio Sirone and Pietro Ferrari, the latter evidently connected with the production of Francesco Boccaccino. The author also suggests a new interpretation of the iconography, in which the main characters of the whole representation are the virtues mentioned by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, a clear benchmark for the Dominican friars of the convent of San Giacomo. Finally, the author presents a newly retrieved inventory of the properties owned by the church and the convent at the time of the Napoleonic suppression of 1798, now kept in the Archivio di Stato in Milan.