Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli known as Morazzone, Pentecost, oil on canvas, circa 1615 (inv. n. 414)

The canvas decorated the ceiling of the Chapel of San Giovanni Battista in Palazzo dei Giureconsulti. The building and other architectural monuments located in piazza dei Mercanti housed the most important public offices in Milan. The decoration of the chapel with stuccoes, marbles and paintings is one of the few commissions promoted by the civic community, that wanted to dedicate the cycles of paintings to the patron saints of the city: John the Baptist and Saint Ambrose. The position of the large canvas imposes a bottom up view of the work and its composition is testimony to the mastery of the scenic elements reached by Morazzone and his Baroque interpretation of space. The Pentecost offers a vertiginous view from below, with the figures of Maria and the Apostles connected one to another to form a crown along the edges of the painting. A luminous vortex expands at the centre of the scene, from whence a divine light, the real protagonist of the work, irradiates.