Contrada Colla and Via dei Pittori Baschenis

For more than two centuries, beginning in the mid-15th century, Baschenis painters succeeded one another from father to son, decorating with frescoes dozens of churches in the Bergamo area and, on some occasions, even in remote valleys of Trentino. The known artists - about fifteen - belonged to two distinct branches: the dynasty of Lanfranco Baschenis, with four representatives active between the second half of the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century, and the dynasty of Cristoforo Baschenis, more numerous and operative until the second half of the seventeenth century, culminating with the work of the famous Evaristo Baschenis, today considered among their absolute masterpieces.
Divided between production in their homeland and that in the valleys of Trentino, the Baschenis knew how to make themselves interpreters of the life and difficulties of the mountain people: with their paintings they became the expression of popular experience, the “painters of the labors and sufferings of the mountain peasantry,” giving voice to a simple world, but one rich in dignity and spirituality.