La Gloria di San Benedetto

The fresco measures 40 square metres.

Between reality and imagination lies the "Saint Benedict" of the Abbey of Montecassino. A grandiose fresco that envelops the saints of the cenobi in the luminosity of paradise: "Coelestis urbs Jerusalem beata pacis visio". The wall on which Annigoni worked highlights three iconographic moments. The two half-moons at the top present Abraham and Moses. The central section is reserved for Saint Benedict, immersed in a radiant sky, surrounded by a host of monks, martyrs, doctors, bishops, abbots, missionaries, nuns and virgins. In the foreground are - circumscribed in a triangle - Popes Gregory the Great, Victor III and Paul VI. Only Montini is not a Benedictine, but it was he who, immediately after the Anglo-American bombings, supported the reconstruction of the monastery, which he reconsecrated in 1964.

Cattedrale di Montecassino