The Suardi chapel is an oratory situated inside the villa owned by Counts Suardi in Trescore Balneario.Already six hundred years ago those who crossed Val Cavallina to reach lake Iseo met a chapel, that later became part of the possessions of Count Suardi, who commissioned a cycle of propitiatory frescoes after an astrologer had predicted floods and inundations, maybe real, possible allusion to the Protestant descent.
In order to carry out his project, the nobleman organized what today would be called an artist’s residence to paint the small Oratory in the park of his villa: he invited Lorenzo Lotto, one of the great Venetian painters of the Renaissance, who was working in Bergamo at the time, to settle in his home in Trescore Balneario.
The sacred building of rectangular shape is rustic, with wooden beams and atmosphere that the artist in his frescoes maintains by crowding the paintings with people from the most popular classes, while the ceiling is covered with intertwined vine branches.
The chapel is dedicated to Santa Barbara and Santa Brigida, the protagonists of the cycle of frescoes that the artist completed in 1524: of the former, Lotto on the left-hand wall recounts the tragic death at the hands of her father for opposing a forced marriage, a drama that the artist paints in technicolor, with vivid details and brilliant tones.
The protagonist of the right side is Saint Bridget, protector of farmers and of life in the fields, whose story is intertwined with numerous iconographic and symbolic references against Protestantism, seen at the time as a threat brought by the German armies that cyclically invaded the area of Val Cavallina.
