This content was automatically translated. View the original text.
Overview
The Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore is dedicated to the holy bishop, patron saint of Verona, the city’s eighth bishop, who died in the year 380. Zeno was originally from Mauretania (which is why he is called “the Moorish bishop”) and is known as a highly cultured figure and author of exegetical texts. Legends recount his passion for fishing, a symbolic allusion to the apostles, the “fishers of men.” His remains are kept in the crypt of the basilica, considered one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches in Italy. The church was likely founded as early as the 4th century, while during the Carolingian period the Benedictine abbey was established. The structure that exists today was built in various phases between the 10th and 12th centuries. It has a three-aisled plan with semicircular apses. The bays are marked by large polylobed pillars. The altar area is raised above the crypt and accessed by a staircase.
The façade was decorated in 1138 with the porch and reliefs by the sculptor Niccolò, who had already been active in Piacenza, Ferrara, and the Susa Valley and who, in 1139, also created the porch of Verona’s cathedral. Niccolò was assisted by a master named Guglielmo. In the lunette of the porch, supported by two griffins, Saint Zeno tramples the devil and welcomes the citizens (knights and foot soldiers). On either side of the portal are scenes from Genesis, stories of Christ, and, in the lower band, the legend of King Theoderic, who, while pursuing a stag, ends his hunt in the jaws of the devil. Around the year 1200, Master Brioloto created the rose window on the façade, depicting the Wheel of Fortune: in the wheel of life, even the exalted man eventually falls.
The church of San Zeno preserves one of the rare medieval bronze doors. The door was made by three different anonymous masters between the 12th and 13th centuries. Its decoration consists of 48 panels illustrating episodes from the Old and New Testaments, as well as a series of miracles of Saint Zeno. The vivid storytelling of the figures stands out in the scene of the exorcism of Emperor Gallienus’s daughter, where the demon is shown twisting as it emerges from the girl’s mouth. In front of the left apse stands a statue of the saint as a fisherman, animated by a smile, popularly known as “Laughing Saint Zeno.” It was perhaps commissioned between the 13th and 14th centuries by Abbot Giuseppe della Scala, half-brother of Cangrande, a violent man inclined to sin and chastised by Dante in Canto XVIII of the Purgatorio.
On the counter-façade is a large Crucifix attributed to Lorenzo Veneziano, one of the finest Venetian artists of the second half of the 14th century, while on the walls of the aisles numerous sacred frescoes by Giotto-inspired painters can be observed.
On the main altar stands the altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna, depicting a Madonna enthroned with Child and saints, commissioned by Abbot Gregorio Correr between 1456 and 1457. It is a landmark Renaissance work for its spatial conception and perspective rendering of the Sacra Conversazione. From the left, one can recognize Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Zeno, Saint Benedict, Saint Lawrence, Saint Gregory the Great, and Saint John the Baptist. The halo of the enthroned Madonna recalls the Wheel of Fortune on the façade.
