The Last Ascent – The Via Crucis by Beniamino Simoni takes us in the heart of the 1700, in Valle Camonica, where the artist by Fresine was commissioned by parish priest Gualeni 14 chapels of wooden and stucco statuettes on the Christ Calvary.
Once more, in this third episode, we follow the path showed by Giovanni Testori, among the first, if not the first indeed, to enter the mysterious world of the artist from Valsaviore and to interpret the paradox of this great masterpiece of the Italian sculpture, the Via Crucis, suddenly abandoned and then finished, in loco, by Fantoni brothers. The film restores for the first time the fullness of the Via Crucis, like it had to be in the original project by Simoni. Actually, it does shownot only the sidereal distance between Simoni’s dramatic, tragic, revolutionary and breath-taking manufactures, and those by Fantoni brothers, always weakened in the forms of the grotesque; but it also put the pietas by Simoni in its right place, the 14chapel, now inhabited by a nineteenth century sculpture: the Pietas on the Dead Christ, last station of the Via Crucis, was never accomplished in Cerveno and, after Simoni was driven away, was purchased, in changing fortunes up to present day, by the neighboring Breno.