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The main scenes painted on the nave vault of San Sigismondo, near Cremona, are The Descent of the Holy Spirit (1557-59) by Giulio Campi, The Ascension of Christ (1549) by Bernardino Gatti, and The Resurrection of Christ and Jonah and the Whale (1540) by Domenico de Siccis.
The traditional vault decoration of the fifteenth century was still a painted blue firmament, it might have evangelists, church fathers, prophets, sibyls, or saints, enthroned or merely floating. In the Sistine Chapel in 1508-12, Michelangelo painted illusionistic architecture filled with figures to serve as the frame for a cycle of biblical stories. This innovation did not find many followers at first. However, around the middle of the sixteenth century, barrel and cloister vaults were increasingly decorated with works that responded to Michelangelo's system for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Painted ornamental articulations run across the entire vault and began to mark off fields for pictorial narratives and accompanying figures. One of the most astonishing solutions can be found in the monastery church of San Sigismondo, near Cremona. Transverse arches divide the main vault into three sections, each of which opens up to form a large pictorial filed on the ceiling panel. They were frescoed in sequence, starting from the crossing and moving toward the entrance wall.
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