Lotto's marquetry
Biblical scenes in coloured wood in the choir stalls.
Cherie.greene — CC BY 3.0 · Le correcteur automatique — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kent Wang — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Monica Rondoni — CC BY-SA 4.0
**Romanesque outside, overwhelming gilded Baroque inside — and with no main façade at all** — at the heart of the Upper Town. Building began in **1137**, ⚠ **and a main entrance was never built into the front**: **you go in through side doors** under porches carried on marble lions. ⚠ **The contrast between outside and inside is startling**: austere **Romanesque stone** without, and within a surface **entirely covered** in gilded stucco, painted ceilings and huge **Flemish and Florentine tapestries**. ✅ **Its greatest treasure is the wood inlay**: the choir stalls are **marquetry** to designs by **Lorenzo Lotto** — **complete Old Testament scenes rendered in coloured wood** — ⚠ **kept covered for protection** and revealed only at set times. ✅ It also holds the **tomb of the composer Gaetano Donizetti**, a son of Bergamo.
Biblical scenes in coloured wood in the choir stalls.
Huge Flemish and Florentine hangings covering the walls.
The Bergamo-born composer's tomb inside the church.
Piazza Duomo, 24129 Bergamo, Italy
**Painting in wood rather than pigment — and Bergamo's is among the greatest ever made.** ✅ **What it is**: **intarsia** is an art in which a scene is built from **precisely cut pieces of different woods**, **fitted together like a puzzle** into one surface. **The colour is the wood's own** — not paint: walnut for darks, maple for lights, olive, pear and lemon for the tones between, **some scorched or chemically treated** to darken them. ⚠ **Its difficulty**: you must **build shadow, depth and perspective** from a material that does not blend — **every change of tone is a separate piece, cut and fitted**. **A single scene may contain thousands.** ✅ **What distinguishes Bergamo's**: **Lorenzo Lotto drew the designs** — one of the great Renaissance painters — **and the craftsman Giovan Francesco Capoferri executed them** over years. **The result is a major painter's work translated into wood**, in Old Testament scenes of full movement and expression. ⚠ **Hence the covers**: **light fades the wood and distorts its colours irreversibly** — **protection is the condition of their survival**, and they are uncovered only on set occasions.
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