Perspectival Geometries in the Sacred Mount of Ossuccio

The holy path up to the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Soccorso di Ossuccio (Como) is one of the Sacred Mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy, part of the UNESCO site of the nine Sacred Mountains of Northern Italy: a sequence of small religious buildings that host the representations of the Mysteries of the Rosary, in a hybrid of sculpture and painting, an illusory set which melts with architecture’s geometry. The morphological configuration and the figurative contents of each chapel require a specific analysis addressing the four thematic layers of geometry, perspective, painted architecture and landscape. The buildings stress the relationship with the landscape in an original interpretation of perspective-based composition and painted decoration (the baroque quadratura), which conceals the shapes of the chapels’ interior. The aim of this study, part of a national search started in 2013 about illusory perspective in architecture, identifies the workflow to describe the perspectival geometries of the chapel entitled The Jesus' dispute with the doctors in the Temple, an application of painted perspective to the octagonal shape of the building to improve the perception of the space.