The church of Santa Maria in Silva, the primitive core of the sanctuary, was probably built in the 8th century on the same site occupied by the present building, near the Garza stream, in the populous north-central district of the walled city.

[3] Ramperto, elected bishop in 815 and a great promoter of the cult of the patron saints, underwrote donations in 841 in favor of an establishing "cenobium monachorum"[4] near the little church, probably boosting an already existing religious community.

[3] Most likely, Ramperto did not limit himself only to this, but planned a real operational program: to enforce and better administer the bequests of the faithful, to lead to better preservation of relics, and to have from the exemplary behavior, which would be imposed on the newly established monastery, stimulus for the population to do good.

[16] The community seemed to spend the first two tumultuous decades of the fifteenth century unscathed, when Brescia passed from the hands of the Visconti to those of Pandolfo III Malatesta, and a few years later to the domains of the Republic of Venice.

[18] Fate was favorable to him and, to the already fervent devotion due to the miracle of 1438, another event shook the citizens' attention to the monastery: on December 11, 1455, the sepulchral ark of the two saints made by Ramperto in his time was found behind the crypt's high altar.

The situation, by now intolerable and also impractical after the recent events that had diverted the faith of the population to the church,[18] finally found a definitive solution on March 24, 1490[20] when, by a bull of Pope Innocent VIII,[21] the monastery was united to the Congregation of St. Justina of Padua.

This was the end of a long period of decline: a month later, the friars of the Benedictine Order took full possession of the facilities, immediately launching a major campaign of rehabilitation and modernization, with numerous interventions to achieve a better use of the complex.

[28][29] Meanwhile, master builder Geronimo Tobanello, who was already working in other areas of the monastery, took care of the first adaptations of Renaissance architecture inside the church, affixing on the walls of the aisles, around the chapels, a rhythmic succession of marble lesenes, all designed by Giovanni Maria Piantavigna.

The first reconstructions planned by Piantavigna, the expansion orders of St. Charles Borromeo, and the new structures of the monastery now successfully completed must have instilled in the monks of St. Faustinus the inspiration for a true, radical renovation of the interior of the church as well.

[34] The final impetus for the continuation of the renovations came unexpectedly from the Municipality of Brescia, which on November 14, 1609 resolved to build, using public money, a new sepulchral ark of the two saints, in the opinion of the councilors by then unsuitable and worthy of greater attention to keep up popular devotion.

This architectural device, already tested and introduced in the Po Valley area by Giulio Romano in the first half of the previous century, had not yet found practical applications in Brescia, except in decorative details and facades.

The solution was not a foregone conclusion, since it solved the arduous problem of having wide, unobstructed views inside church buildings while maintaining the three-aisle system, without necessarily having to resort to the single hall.

It should be noted, moreover, that Comino was engaged at the same time at the construction site of the new cathedral, which had recently come under the control of Lorenzo Binago, who in turn was familiar with the Venetian window having applied it a few years earlier in the church of Sant'Alessandro in Zebedia in Milan.

Certainly, the economic basis to support the project was provided by the donation of Abbot Faustino Gioia, then head of the monastery, who, on June 16 of the same year, had signed the assignment of all the proceeds of his merchant family to the building site of the new church.

[38] Conversely, it is not known from which figure, internal or external to the monastery, pursued the idea of initiating the renovation: a role on the part of Carra himself cannot be ruled out, who, having to build the new sepulchral ark of the saints, probably wondered whether the monument would have found a worthy home in a Romanesque-Gothic church with Renaissance decorations.

[37] Attempting to reconstruct the facts, the construction site was interrupted basically for two reasons: to ascertain the availability of funding from Abbot Gioia and to verify, before advancing too far with the work, the static validity of the project, as there were doubts about the correctness of Comino's design regarding the size of the serlian columns, which seemed too low.

The lower level is decorated by a series of lesenes of Tuscan order, resting on a unified pedestal and supporting an entablature whose frieze is occupied by the dedicatory inscription recalling the fundamental bequest of Orazio Fenaroli, who in fact allowed the construction of the facade.

In the central panel is the Martyrdom of Saints Faustino and Giovita by Santo Calegari the Elder, a marble high relief with iron inserts, usually remembered as one of the great masterpieces of Brescian Baroque sculpture.

The lesenes on the walls of the side aisles that respond to this composition, moreover, predate the colonnade by about fifty years, being those already designed and made by Giovanni Maria Piantavigna in the late sixteenth century and later reused for the purpose.

"[79] As mentioned, the ceilings of the side aisles, covered by cross vaults in succession, are also frescoed by Tommaso Sandrino, who arranged calibrated architectural spaces where the narrative panels, the work of Camillo Rama and Antonio Gandino, could be inserted.

[82] Surrounding the central scene are precisely these decorations, partially covered, and the four faux statues, in which the four Fathers of the Latin Church are represented in monochrome: St. Gregory the Great, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome.

There are also clouds of three-dimensional consistency, endowed with their own shadows and with fluttering angels, which surround the various elements and emerge from the frames, a clear reference to Tiepolo's great illusory decoration that opens a few meters away.

Colonna's work is also the decoration of the walls under the chancels, where he painted realistic niches containing fake marble cartouches bearing the figure of St. Benedict on the left and St. Scholastica on the right, all accompanied on the sides by geometric and floral motifs.

The altar is set on lines markedly of neoclassical art, and the elegance of the composition, already remarkable for the alternation of pinkish breccia and white marble, is reinforced by the numerous gilded inserts that complement the high refinement of the colors.

[93] In the large central panel is placed perhaps the most singular altarpiece in the city's artistic history:[94][95] a statue of St. Benedict kneeling and praying, with his pastoral staff, mitre at his feet and a raven offering the saint a bread held in its beak.

[101] Of very fine workmanship and conception is the statue of the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist around which the entire apparatus revolves, the work of Paolo Amatore, an artist who lived in the early seventeenth century with a fairly vague biography.

On the counterfacade wall of the right aisle hangs the Apparition of Saints Faustinus and Jovita during the siege of Brescia by Nicolò Piccinino, a canvas by Grazio Cossali dated 1603 that takes up the theme of the miracle that took place in 1438 on the Roverotto terraces, the same one reproposed by Giandomenico Tiepolo a century and a half later in the left fresco of the presbytery.

[109] The painting's notable fame is mainly due to the fact that, until the first half of the twentieth century, it was customary to hang it on the southern exterior side of the church on February 15, on the feast of the two patron saints.

The workmanship of the wooden artifact denotes great technical mastery and capacity for sentimental rendering: the limbs of Jesus are firm and placid, and a strong symmetry prevails on the sculpture, clearly evident in the identical regularity of the two arms spread apart.

[135] Other pieces include chalices, monstrances, services for incensation and ablution, candelabra, candlesticks, processional insignia, reliquaries, chasubles, and altar cloths, all made mainly between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.