Main altar by P. Pestagalli (1835), statues by G. Monti. Claudio Parmiggiani, Crown of Thorns (2014). Ettore Frani, Glorious Sepulchre (2018).

The work Crown of Thorns on the main altar represents a reflection on the theme of the face, which is pivotal in the Christian faith: in particular, it is linked to the Veil of Veronica which, according to tradition, bore the likeness of the face of Jesus imprinted on the way to the Crucifixion. The artist focuses on the imprint of Jesus’s instrument of torture – the thorny crown. The gold that surrounds it is the only hint of the Resurrection.
Claudio Parmiggiani (born in 1943) is not new to creating art for a worship setting.
Not by coincidence he chooses an old element as framework: the main altar from the 1800s. This big neoclassic ‘machine’, meant to symbolise the transition from death to life, houses the relics of St. Fidelis (San Fedele) and St. Carpophorus, early Christian martyrs, brought to Milan by St. Charles Borromeo in the late 16th century. 
The crown stands on a silver pedestal, used in the past to expose the Blessed Sacrament. It overlooks the altar table, the silver torsos and the medallions with the apostles’ faces, and stands in front of the big golden wooden tabernacle, which is encircled by columns supporting a dome surmounted by a marble statue of the resurrected Jesus.
In the artist’s intention, all seems to emphasise the transition from death to life: the community of the faithful born out of the bodies of the martyrs, the Eucharistic table, the saints’ faces, the tabernacle, all culminating in the Resurrection of the Christ.
The torsos of the Evangelists – who carried the Message to all people - are surmounted by the halos, symbols of sanctity and glory. The whole altar speaks of sanctity. The halo, typical of the Christian tradition, is juxtaposed with the crown of thorns. We don’t see Jesus’s face; it is hidden; it is not there. We see the thorny crown, the opposite and yet the symbol of a royal crown. It hurts, it humiliates, it stabs. It is the crown of a God that partakes in human history as a servant. The Christ’s face can only be contemplated in its full glory after the Resurrection – on the dome of the altar.
The thorny crown becomes the link to the ‘beyond’.

Claudio Parmiggiani
Crown of Thorns
2014  
Barbed wire, nickel, gold
Ø 40 cm
The work Crown of Thorns on the main altar represents a reflection on the theme of the face, which is pivotal in the Christian faith: in particular, it is linked to the Veil of Veronica which, according to tradition, bore the likeness of the face of Jesus imprinted on the way to the Crucifixion. The artist focuses on the imprint of Jesus’s instrument of torture – the thorny crown. The gold that surrounds it is the only hint of the Resurrection.
Claudio Parmiggiani (born in 1943) is not new to creating art for a worship setting. Not by coincidence he chooses an old element as framework: the main altar from the 1800s. This big neoclassic ‘machine’, meant to symbolise the transition from death to life, houses the relics of St. Fidelis (San Fedele) and St. Carpophorus, early Christian martyrs, brought to Milan by St. Charles Borromeo in the late 16th century. 
The crown stands on a silver pedestal, used in the past to expose the Blessed Sacrament. It overlooks the altar table, the silver torsos and the medallions with the apostles’ faces, and stands in front of the big golden wooden tabernacle, which is encircled by columns supporting a dome surmounted by a marble statue of the resurrected Jesus.
In the artist’s intention, all seems to emphasise the transition from death to life: the community of the faithful born out of the bodies of the martyrs, the Eucharistic table, the saints’ faces, the tabernacle, all culminating in the Resurrection of the Christ.
The torsos of the Evangelists – who carried the Message to all people - are surmounted by the halos, symbols of sanctity and glory. The whole altar speaks of sanctity. The halo, typical of the Christian tradition, is juxtaposed with the crown of thorns. We don’t see Jesus’s face; it is hidden; it is not there. We see the thorny crown, the opposite and yet the symbol of a royal crown. It hurts, it humiliates, it stabs. It is the crown of a God that partakes in human history as a servant. The Christ’s face can only be contemplated in its full glory after the Resurrection – on the dome of the altar.
The thorny crown becomes the link to the ‘beyond’.

Ettore Frani
Glorious Sepulchre
2018
Oil on laquered wood 
56 x 163,5 cm
This work by Ettore Frani is based on the concept of the wait, for a revelation, an epiphany. Employing the technique of ‘oil on lacquer’ and a very subtle register finely tuned to offer a tactile version of an image, the artist presents images shrouded in secrecy and mystery, seemingly on the verge of revealing themselves to us.
The elegant plasticism of his painting, obtained by using solely black in a variety of tones on a white background, creates in turn depths and quiet ambiences, suffused and vaguely detached. 
Black’s opposite, white, emerges directly from the background: its presence and luminous charge are due to a deliberate intervention to the surface by the artist, of ‘subtracting’ from black.
In contrast to how Caravaggio draws figures out from the dark and into the light, in Frani it is as if the images were emerging from white, from the light as it meets worldly matter, being transformed in space and tangible things.
In its continuous search for a dialogue between art and faith, San Fedele trusted the artist with the production of a ‘paliotto’, an ornamental altar covering, to be used during Lent 2018 on the main altar, where the mortal spoils of the saints Fidelis and Carpophorus are laid. The theme is the Resurrection; on the tombstone lies Jesus’ shroud. In a powerful but delicate poem of light, something has just happened or is about to happen: the journey from death to life.