Staffarda Abbey (Abbazia Santa Maria di Staffarda) is a Cistercian monastery located near Saluzzo in north-west Italy; it was founded as a daughter house of Tiglieto Abbey in 1135 by Manfred I, Marquis of Saluzzo. The abbey became an important local centre for agriculture and held a flourishing market. It was placed in commendam to the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus in 1750.
A portrait of Cesare Alessandro Scaglia di Verrua, abbot of Staffarda, painted by Antony van Dyck in about 1634, is now in the National Gallery in London.[1]
An important musical manuscript, the Codex Staffarda, dating to the 1480s or 1490s and containing reference to the commandatory abbot Brixianus Taparelli, is now in the National University Library of Turin.[2] It includes polyphonic works by Renaissance composers such as Jacob Obrecht and Antoine Brumel, as well as the earliest surviving example of a polyphonic Dies Irae by an otherwise unknown composer, Engarandus Juvenis.