Chiesa di S. Vigilio - Pinzolo

The history of the second millennium of the peasant populations of Val Rendena comes to life in the Church of San Vigilio, built with granite stones from Val Genova, decorated with wooden altars and marble coming from Ragoli.
The Church of San Vigilio in Pinzolo was founded in 1362, and later expanded, in 1515. The building features a rectangular plan, three aisles and ogival arches held up by granite columns. The Medieval façade is covered in frescoes of different periods. The most important and fascinating one for the subject illustrated is the famous Dance of Death by Simone Baschenis. In 1539, commissioned by the Battuti confraternity, he wished to immortalize a message of brotherly equality in front of death. The Pinzolo fresco covers a fascia more than 2 m high and more than 22 m wide, and comes with a number of inscriptions, where vernacular expressions alternate with quotations in learned Latin or vulgar language. Unlike other dances of death of the Franco-German area, in the Pinzolo fresco the texts is not a dialogue between the dead and the living, but a monologue recited only by the dead. It was completed in October 1539, and together with the frescoes that can be seen inside the Church of San Vigilio, it stands for the most important series of paintings by Simone Il Baschenis of Averaria.