Enjoying great art is not just uplifting for the soul but beneficial to the health, an experiment conducted in Italy has found.

A group of 100 volunteers were led up to the cupola of a vast basilica in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, where they spent two hours admiring the cherubs and bearded prophets of an 18th-century fresco.

The Basilica of Vicoforte, near the town of Cuneo, has the largest elliptical cupola in the world and is a place of pilgrimage for Catholics.

Before the volunteers climbed the 240 steps to the top of the church, which is nearly  600 metres high, researchers took samples of their saliva and measured levels of cortisol, a hormone which is produced in response to stress. After viewing the fresco, the volunteers' cortisol levels were found to have drastically fallen, suggesting viewing the art had a soothing effect.

"On average, we found cortisol levels dropped by 60 per cent and more than 90 per cent of the participants said they felt much better at the end of the experience," Enzo Grossi, a professor of health and culture at IULM University in Milan, told La Repubblica newspaper. "The idea of art as therapy is not new. But this is the first time that the beneficial effect of art on health has been measured."

The cupola's fresco was completed in 1752 by Mattia Bortoloni, a Rococo painter, and Felice Biella, a Milanese artist. The volunteers in the Piedmont experiment were aged between 19 and 81, a mix of male and female and with different educational levels.

The impact of Renaissance art was famously documented by the 19th century French author Stendhal, who wrote of feeling overwhelmed by the masterpieces he saw in Florence in 1817. The experience of giddiness, a rapid heartbeat, fainting, discomfort and even hallucinations while gazing at exquisite art was termed "Stendhal Syndrome". "As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce (the basilica where Michelangelo and Machiavelli are buried), I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart; the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground," Stendhal recorded in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio.

Giuseppe Bertini, a neuroscientist at Verona University, cautioned that the drop in cortisol levels was not necessarily connected to the time the volunteers spent contemplating the splendours of the cupola. "Cortisol levels vary during the day. They peak in the early morning and then they begin to fall. Since three hours passed before the first measuring of saliva and the second, it's normal that there would be a drop in levels, regardless of what the people had done in the meantime," he said.

"There have been lots of studies on the relationship between cortisol and well-being while people listen to music or practise yoga or do physical exercise. It is probable that looking at the beauty of the art did have an effect, but the result should not be seen in isolation."