Where is the world's largest painting on canvas? A question whose answer may surprise many.
It is located in Maddaloni, inside the G. Bruno National Boarding School, an ancient convent complex whose legend attributes it to St. Francis of Assisi, who stopped in Maddaloni on his way back from the Holy Land.
The canvas covers the ceiling of the convent's immense hall of honor, with a considerable surface area of 720 square meters, painted in 1756 by Giovanni and Giuseppe Funaro and Casimiro Ventromile and surpasses the record of the work in the Church of San Pantalon in Venice.
It depicts sacred scenes, dominated in the center by a medallion on the dogma of the immaculate conception.
It is one of the many hidden treasures of Maddaloni, the ancient Calatia dating back to the 8th century B.C., which was granted the title of city by Charles III of Bourbon on November 27, 1734, a city that is truly an "open-air museum".
The monumental complex that houses the work was a Franciscan convent in the 1500s, then a boarding school from 1807 by royal decree of Joseph Bonaparte, finally a boarding school with the unification of Italy. It can be visited every Saturday.
It is said that the celebrated actor, Tom Cruise, captivated by the magnificence of the work, contributed 25 thousand euros, in favor of its restoration.
The American performer would have been in the neighborhood, during the filming of the film Mission Impossible.
