On the face of Saint Catherine, in a Crucifixion painted by Emanuele Macario da Pigna, the blows struck by Barbary corsairs during the raid of 1564 are still visible: nobody has ever smoothed them away. That detail says more than anything else about the convent of San Domenico, founded in 1459 by the Dominican friar Cristoforo da Milano and built between 1460 and 1490 by the Comacine masters Gasperino da Lancia and Filippo da Carlono. It now holds one of the largest collections of Ligurian and Nice-school painting.
What to see
The heart of it is Ludovico Brea, represented by five works. On the high altar stands the polyptych of the Madonna of Mercy, painted between 1483 and 1488 with his brother Antonio: the Virgin, out of all scale, opens her cloak over the kneeling faithful, among whom the pope and the emperor can be picked out. Then comes the polyptych of Saint Catherine of Siena between Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy, commissioned in 1488 by the Dominican tertiary sisters, followed by the Baptism of Christ of 1495 and finally the Madonna of the Rosary of 1513, where an open landscape replaces the gold ground.
Beside them hangs Giovanni Canavesio's polyptych with Saint Dominic and the four Fathers of the Church: the saint has the features of Blessed Cristoforo, and the coats of arms of the patron families were scraped off in the days of the Ligurian Republic. The church, dedicated to Santa Maria Misericordiarum, has twelve altars, an Adoration of the Magi attributed to Parmigianino and a Madonna of the Rosary in Carrara marble by Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli. The cloister has five arches a side, groin vaults and lunettes with the Stories of Saint Dominic painted in 1613.
Visiting
The convent is in piazza Beato Cristoforo, at the edge of the old centre of Taggia. From the cloister you reach the church, the sacristy, the chapter house and the weekday chapel now used as a museum; in the north wing is the refectory, with the Crucifixion frescoed by Canavesio around 1482, in which Saint Dominic again wears the founder's face. This is a working religious community: opening hours are limited, so check them beforehand, and better still let them know you are coming.
Our editors' tip
Give the high-altar polyptych far more time than seems necessary, and look at it from below, the way those praying saw it: the upper registers, with Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena and Vincent Ferrer, are attributed to brother Antonio and show a different, drier hand. Then go back to Macario's Crucifixion: those cuts across the face are the only visible record of a sixteenth-century day that Taggia has never forgotten.