The "pieve" of Fonzaso is already mentioned in some documents of the late eleventh century, as already part of the diocese of Padua, which still belongs probably following the donation that King Berengario made to the bishop of Padua Stilicone in the X century, which included some territories located "in the Feltrense valley".
The reconstruction of the history of the church of the Nativity of Fonzaso is entrusted to few testimonies, also because of the fires that partially destroyed it both in 1581 and in 1609. However, it should be noted that Fonzaso was, after Feltre, the most important center of the territory and that therefore has always had a church of a certain prestige thanks to the wealth of the area founded on the timber trade, that flowed into the sawmills located on the edge of the town and whose traffic attracted important economic interests also linked to the centers of the Venetian plain.
The church of the Nativity is richly decorated with stuccoes, gilded altars and many paintings and sculptures, which refer to wealthy patrons who in Fonzaso had their commercial and economic trades.
Works of art
The big San Cristoforo, protector of travelers, frescoed at the side of the side entrance, is the first element that catches the attention of those who approach the church. The interior of the building, rebuilt after the fire of 1609, consists of a large nave on which there are eight chapels, all decorated with a dense network of stuccoes representing the Apostles and ten pairs of Angels on the vaults and around the altars, while in the apse a series of cherubs with cartouches make up the greeting to the Virgin.
The side altars still contain paintings of some interest and are documented by the pastoral view executed in 1633. The first on the right is the large centinated altarpiece attributed to the Venetian painter of the sixteenth century Girolamo Forabosco depicting the Madonna della cintura and five saints, while on the sides are two paintings by Francesco Frigimelica made in the following century. The second and third side altar on the right reproduce the typical models of the Belluno wooden altarpiece of the seventeenth century and contain recent sculptures and paintings, while the fourth frames an ex voto of the Virgin Mary, dated 1752.
The left side of the nave opens with an altar that contains a painting of 1634 by the local painter Girolamo Zigantello the Young depicting the Lament on the Dead Christ accompanied laterally by two twentieth-century paintings by the Paduan Antonio Soranzo with images of Santa Rita da Cascia. The two successive chapels present statues of the twentieth century, but the one dedicated to the Madonna is surrounded by fifteen refined miniatures painted on copper with the Mysteries of the Rosary. The last altar, dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel, is the only one not made of wood but in red and white marble and contains an altarpiece depicting the Madonna with Child, Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Louis Gonzaga. On the sides, the wooden statues painted in fake stone of San Vittore and Santa Corona, come from an ancient altar dedicated to the martyrs protectors of the diocese of Feltre documented in 1633 and are attributed in a little certain way to the sculptor Francesco Terilli, while certainly his is the Crucifix of the triumphal arch made around the third decade of the seventeenth century.
At the center of the presbytery the high altar of the eighteenth century is surrounded by large paintings of 1938 signed by Soranzo with The Sacrifice of Isaac and the Supper in Emmaus, there are a Nativity of Mary by the nineteenth-century painter Tommaso Pasquotti, and two older paintings made between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries.
Next to the parish church there is the church of the Blessed Virgin of Graces "della Scoletta"; the stone portal of 1626 introduces in the building thickly decorated in stucco and which has a sumptuous high altar with a painting of the Madonna of the vow coming, is said, from Slovenia, along with some frescoes of the late sixteenth century by an anonymous painter.
The church of San Nicolò ad Arten preserves an interesting wooden altar and in the presbytery a fresco painted between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries depicts a delicate image of Santa Lucia, accompanied, to the right of the triumphal arch, by images of San Nicolò and San Valentino dated 1584.
Also in Arten, the parish church of San Gottardo houses a magnificent Madonna with Child carved in Swiss pine wood by the artist Francesco Terilli from Feltre during his youth around the end of the sixteenth century and particularly venerated by the local faithful.
Perched on the gorge of Pedesalto, the church of Santa Giustina can be reached after a short walk. After Fonzaso, on the left of the first tunnel next to the hydroelectric power plant, take the disused section of the road to Primiero, then climb to the right along a marked path, until you reach the ancient building. The church dominated from above the area of the sorting of timber that passed along the river Cismon and tradition has it that the small building was built on the area of an ancient military garrison. Inside the church is decorated with interesting frescoes of 1457 made by John of France, a painter active in Feltre in those years and native of Metz in Lorraine, which propose the figures of the Apostles and the symbols of the Four Evangelists.
source: infodolomiti.it
