The church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary is the parish church of Cerano. The original church, probably of the fifteenth century, was consecrated in 1488 by bishops Gerolamo Pallavicini and Antonio Caccia. After remodelling in the seventeenth century, between 1873 and 1877 it was rebuilt in neo-Renaissance style to a design by Ercole Marietti, and on that occasion the nave was lengthened by eleven metres.
What to see
The gabled front faces west and is preceded by a porch marked off by pilaster strips, with two columns carrying a round arch crowned by a semicircular pediment. At the centre stands the main portal; in the side wings, two secondary entrances surmounted by semicircular windows set in arches. On the front there are statues: angels and, in terracotta, the Madonna, Saint John, Saint Joseph, Saint Roch and the Blessed Pacifico, patron of the town, to whom the little temple against the right flank is also dedicated. The bell tower is of brick, on a square base, with a two-light window per side in the belfry and a spire on a circular base.
Visiting
Inside, three naves on a Latin cross plan, divided by piers carrying round arches and cross vaults, with Corinthian capitals and cornices; over the crossing rises a dome decorated with seventeenth-century stuccoes, and at the end the presbytery closes with a polygonal apse. Among the works are a polyptych of the Madonna and Child by Sperindio Cagnoli and a wooden statue of the Ecce Homo.
Our editors' tip
Above the altar is the reason to go in: the Last Supper painted in 1595 by Giovanni Battista Crespi, the painter who took from the name of this town the name everyone knows him by, il Cerano. It is an early work, and it hangs in the church of the place the artist came from: you rarely get to see an important painter in the town that gave him his name, and with a picture painted when he was still nobody. Look at it thinking that whoever commissioned it was not buying a name, but giving work to a local lad.