Santa Maria Incoronata.
Santa Maria Incoronata is perhaps the cutest little church in all of Milan. With its unique double façade, it invites the occasional passer-by to pop in and have a look around. The left part of the building is the oldest part and was once a church in its own right. At the start of the fifteenth century an Augustinian convent was added to this church, which nowadays houses the Biblioteca Umanistica di Santa Maria Incoronata. The church, which had already been dedicated to the Virgin Mary for ages, was christened Santa Maria Incoronata – or ‘the Crowned Mary’ – in 1451, because around the same time Francesco Sforza was officially recognised as the new Duke of Milan. Both the duke and his wife, Bianca Maria Visconti, were closely associated with the church. It was Bianca Maria who, in 1460, commissioned a second church next to the first one. According to my travel guide the architect of this second church was Guiniforte Solari (ca. 1429-1481). By 1468 work was completed and the two churches had been united into a single building, with a double façade, two naves and two apses. The union of the two churches also symbolised the union of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. The website of the church compares Santa Maria Incoronata to a married couple that has locked arms and observes the people passing by in the Corso Garibaldi.
As was the case with so many other churches in Milan, Santa Maria Incoronata was frequently remodelled. Renovations took place in 1654 and 1827. The church was later deconsecrated, used for various secular purposes and ultimately re-consecrated as a church. The double façade that we see nowadays is largely the result of a restoration that was carried out in the early twentieth century. The style of the façade is neo-Gothic, and there are not a lot of decorations. We do see the Visconti snake on the column separating the left and right parts of the façade, while in the lunettes above the two entrances there are reliefs of the crowned Mary (left) and of a male saint (right; probably Saint Nicholas of Tolentino).
Do not expect any great works of art inside the church either. A fresco of Christ under the Cross in the first chapel on the left is of good quality, but unfortunately it is in a fragmentary state. The fresco is attributed to Ambrogio Bergognone (died ca. 1524). What is remarkable is that in this case the cross is not a real cross, but part of a grape press. Christ is pressing his own blood with his feet. The blood is collected in a chalice that is surrounded by the four Doctors of the Church, of whom two are still visible, Saints Augustine and Jerome. The other frescoes in the church date from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. They have also survived in a fragmentary state and do not warrant further discussion.
Christ under the grape press – Ambrogio Bergognone.
In the right part of the church, we find a number of interesting funerary monuments. One of these is the tomb slab of Gabriele Sforza (1423-1457), which has been incorporated into one of the walls. Sforza served as Archbishop of Milan between 1454 and 1457. The reason why he was buried in the church of Santa Maria Incoronata, and not in the cathedral of Milan as one might have expected, is that he happened to be the (half)brother of the aforementioned Francesco Sforza. Gabriele Sforza was actually named Carlo, but he took the name Gabriele when he gave up his military career and entered the Augustinian order. He became Archbishop of Milan when he was just 31 years old, but his episcopate was brief. When he returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Mary three years later he was already very ill. Not much later he was in his grave. What remains of Gabriele Sforza is his tomb slab, which is attributed to Francesco Solari (ca. 1420-1469), the older brother of Guiniforte Solari.
Sources: Dorling Kindersley travel guide for Milan and the Lakes (2010), p. 113, Santa Maria Incoronata – Santa Maria Incoronata Milano and Chiesa di Santa Maria Incoronata (Milano) – Wikipedia