Via Maestra, 19c, 10050 Novalesa
Located in the heart of the village of Novalesa, the first news about it dates back to the 13th century, when it was recorded as a dependency of the nearby abbey of SS. Pietro and Andrea and officiated by the monks themselves.
The current building was built on the site of the original building in 1684, as evidenced by the date painted on the facade. The bell tower and part of the masonry of the eastern side of the ancient building remain, albeit modified in the terminal part. The main front of the church, with a gabled profile, overlooks the narrow Via Maestra and is characterised by the presence of pilaster strips and two clocks, one of which is made in trompe l’oeil. On the eastern side, there are overlapping remains of fresco decorations dating back to the 15th and 17th centuries. The northern wall of the adjacent chapel of SS. Sacramento instead hosts a fresco cycle depicting the Vices, Virtues and infernal punishments, a work by the master Joffrey from 1714 in which the author uses iconographic models that are still late medieval. Inside, the building develops according to a single-hall plan with barrel vaults and side altars, ending with a polygonal apse. A series of pilasters design three bays and separate the nave from the presbytery area.
The church preserves numerous artistic testimonies that make it one of the most significant ecclesiastical monuments in the Valley. The apse area hosts the wooden retable, late seventeenth-century by Lombard-Piedmontese craftsmen, inside which is placed the refined painting depicting the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen attributable to the painter from Cherasco Sebastiano Taricco. The coat of arms of Giovanni Battista de Castello di Caraglio, commendatory abbot of the Abbey of Saints Peter and Andrew from 1685 to 1728, stands out on the structure. Also in the presbytery area is one of the oldest artifacts kept in the parish church, the reliquary urn of St. Eldrado. It is a masterpiece of goldsmithing attributed to a Mosan-Rhenish silversmith, dating back to the 12th century and comparable to artifacts of similar provenance kept in the treasury of the Abbey of St. Maurice d'Agaune, in Switzerland.
On it are visible the Virgin, the apostles and, on the minor sides, St. Eldrado and St. Peter. The nave is dominated, at the top, by the crucified Christ, of late fifteenth-century workmanship and similar to similar examples present in Susa (baptistery) and Venaus. Also visible in the nave, above the right side altar, is the refined late fifteenth-century polyptych attributed to Antoine de Lonhy from Toulouse (documented in Avigliana in 1462), depicting at the bottom the Nativity with Saints Arnulfo and Eldrado presenting the patron, identified as a member of the Provana family, and, at the top, the Resurrection with Saints Peter and Paul. The church also houses five paintings donated in 1805 by Napoleon Bonaparte to the prior of the Moncenisio Hospice, Dom Gabet, later transferred to the Novalesa Abbey and then to the parish church. On the left, adjacent to the presbytery, you can see the Deposition attributed to the Cremonese workshop of Giulio Campi; also on the left, in the presbytery area, you can see the Adoration of the Magi, a copy of the Rubens school produced in Germany; corresponding to the latter, on the right, is the Adoration of the Shepherds by François Lemoyne (1721); on the right wall of the nave are finally visible the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, an ancient copy of the Caravaggio original from 1601, and the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, a replica of an original by Dirck van Baburen.
