The sanctuary of Valinotto stands in a hamlet of Carignano, a few kilometres from the centre, in the middle of what was the patron's estate. The church was commissioned in 1738 from the architect Bernardo Antonio Vittone by the banker Antonio Facio, owner of the Valinotto farm: he wanted it as a gift for the farmhands and for his land, and had it built over an existing country chapel.
What to see
Vittone works on the Guarini and Juvarra school of Turin, and the result is a building sober outside and extremely rich inside. The plan is a Latin cross with a single nave; above the transept rises a complex pierced dome, the reason this country church is held to be one of the finest examples of Piedmontese baroque. The volumes are calculated to let light in a particular way, and the effect can only be understood from inside.
Visiting
The interior decoration was completed in 1740 with a cycle of frescoes by Pier Francesco Guala, framed within trompe-l'oeil perspectives. At the base of the drum are the twelve apostles; looking upwards you reach the angels, the Virgin and the Trinity, while the Glory gathers the protagonists of the Counter-Reformation, from Saint Philip Neri to Saint Charles Borromeo. Along the walls runs the cycle of the sacraments: baptism, penance and eucharist.
Our editors' tip
The most surprising piece is in the sacristy, which in all likelihood belonged to the earlier building: a sixteenth-century fresco of the Nursing Madonna, the Virgin feeding the Child, a scene of maternal nudity that is very rare because the Council of Trent excluded it from the canon of Marian art in 1563. It is attributed to the workshop of Macrino. The sanctuary reopened to the public on 4 June 2017 after a first phase of restoration.