The technical lighting project for the Chapel of San Giuseppe da Tolentino, perhaps the most important chapel of San Marco Church right in the heart of Brera, Milan is surely a triumph of ornamentation enhanced.

This wing of the Church has undergone a major restoration which has necessitated changing the type of lighting units to highlight the painstaking, arduous work of the restorers on the endless variety of decorations and paintings.

The difficulty of the project was not just that we had to create a highly detailed 3D representation of the spaces in order to design the new lighting, but that we had to provide the right light from just two areas located at two different heights, due to problems with the wiring.

A ring of tracks was therefore created 12 metres off the ground with some of the lights pointing upwards onto the vault and the Saints, and some down onto the paintings.

The upward light emphasises the imposing construction: as you raise your eyes it seems as if the vault is so high as to be unattainable, almost part of heaven.

At the same time the lower part is suffused with a softer light that picks out the pictures and all the gilt decoration of the ceilings.

The hardest task was dealing with the reflections on the paintings. It was impossible to eliminate these, and they were difficult to control: it took many hours of aiming and testing to achieve the excellent final result.