The Quadratura of Francesco Natali

Francesco Natali created these wonderful baroque quadratura and wall frescos in a little church in Pontremoli, Italy. I'd hoped to write a lengthier post about this church, its fabulous history, and the charming work of this lesser known Italian artist, but I think you'd rather just see the photos. So here they are.

I uploaded a ton more photos of the Church on my Flickr page, here.

Remove the stone lintel in the small niche (above) and it reveals a deep crawl space used to secrete
dissidents and refugees during World War II.

Incidentally, this church weathered Allied bombardment and was even liberated by the Buffalo Soldiers, America's historic all-Black Infantry (originally Cavalry) division in World War II. They stormed the town only to free a group of jews hidden in a specially-designed crawl space disguised behind one of Natali's decorative niches in the church sacristy (photo above).