SHARRYLAND
The Dance Macabre in San Silvestro in Iseo
Even life and death indulge in a dance
Where is
What it is and where it is
Iseo is a village of ancient origins. Equally ancient and mysterious are the origins of San Silvestro, a small church located on the edge of the village's religious square. Inside it preserves several layers of frescos worn by time, but perhaps also fascinating for this reason. There is something about the wall representations of this little church that intrigues and fascinates, making it almost impossible to tear one's eyes away in an attempt to understand why we feel this way. And it is in these moments that a very interesting Dance Macabre is revealed to our eyes.
Why it is special
The Dance Macabre is a representation of all social classes dancing to the same fate: from the pope, to the emperor, to the peasant, all dance accompanied by a skeleton, or a desiccated corpse, a true duplicate of the living. The underlying motif of this subject is social equality in the face of death. A number of characters are still clearly recognizable in this fresco: the merchant with his bag of denarii, the physician intent on observing the matula, the urinal jar, a patriarch, a bishop, and a king.
A bit of history
Of this fresco we can only fix the post-quem term: 1486, the date of the publication of the series of Parisian prints of Guyot Marchant's Dance Macabre, painted in the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris in 1424, from which the fresco painter drew the subjects. It seems to have remained visible for a few years before being covered by a layer of lime. To see this bichrome fresco again, one had to wait for a 1985 intervention that brought it back to light.
Trivia
The church was designed on two levels that still exist today. The Dance Macabre is on the upper level, the one that can be visited. The lower level was once accessed from the churchyard, which no longer exists today. The pavement of the square was raised and the entrance walled up. In the seventeenth century, following the terrible plague of Manzoni's memory, it was turned into a carnery and to this day it is overgrown with bones.
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