The Cathedral of Santa Maria Maddalena
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The Cathedral of Desenzano, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, was built from 1586 to 1611 based on a design by the Brescian architect Giulio Todeschini. Inside, the works of Andrea Celesti (1637-1712) stand out, one of the main representatives of seventeenth-century Venetian painting, a master of modulating brightness and colours, with an almost “impressionistic” expression of form. In the chapel of the SS. Sacramento it is possible to admire “The Last Supper”, a notable work by G.B. Tiepolo followed in 1738. In the nineteenth-century chapel dedicated to S. Angela Merici there are six paintings by Pietro Calcinardi dedicated to the life of the Saint from Desenzano.
The sacristy houses the large canvas of the “Deposition” by Francesco Zugno from Brescia, one of Palma il Giovane’s best disciples, painted for the Municipality of Desenzano in 1608; in it, on the right, St. Angela Merici is depicted.

The masterpieces of Andrea Celesti in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Maddalena.

(1690) Celesti creates for the Desenzano presbytery canvases depicting episodes which bring together evangelical stories in the name of the Magdalene: on the back wall there are the “Last Communion of the Magdalene”, the “Magdalene at the tomb” and the “Meeting of the Magdalene with the Risen One.” The altarpiece highlights the theme of penance, reiterated several times by the cross, the crown of thorns and the scourge held in the hands of the angels, emblems of the saint’s repentant life.