The Virgin Mary whit Jesus

St Rocco

The Tabernacle

The angels

The Virgin Mary in the Throne

The annunciazione

The nave, first nucleus added to the chapel of the Assumption, has a barrel vault. Built with calcareous stone, once it had to be plastered: we can deduce it from some remains maybe part of a complete cycle removed during one of the many restructures. Behind the entrance door, on the left, there is a fresco dedicated to St. Rocco. This votive image, repeated many times in the church, witnesses that the client had escaped plague. Nearby the first column, on both sides there is a holy-water font in polychromatic stone. On the right one they preserve Our Lady with the Child and, at her feet, you can see some deferential angels. Inside the columns, always on the right, we appreciate in the order a risen Christ keeping the Cross, St. Peter martyr and a tombstone with the coat of arms of a noble family and the name of Petrus De Bicis. Arrived in front of the last pier, a little altar in calcareous stone is overhung by a series of refined frescos: a Nativity with the Madonna keeping in Her arms the Child nude, but adorned by a red coral necklace and two praying angels. At their sides, St. John the Baptist and the Blessed Pietro Crisci looking with a fixed gaze at the sun. Above these shrines the Sts. Peter and Paul; on the side, Our Lady of the Milk and, in the terminal part of the superior arch, the Annunciation with Mary, the announcing Angel and, in a corner, God’s blessing hand. The arch is completed by some delicate friezes. On the opposite pier, in a niche, there is the Hecce Homo: it is a polychrome “papier-mâché” bust of the XVI century that represents Jesus with the tied hands and the thorn crown wreathing his head. Above Him, the remains of two angels. Always on the left, two images of Saint Rocco, one in front of the other; while on the right S. Girolamo, Doctor of the Church and St. Catherine from Alexandria represented with her martyr signs. Two steps lead to the presbytery, where dominate a big altar recently built. Noteworthy are the tabernacle and a crucifix. The tabernacle has the shape of a little temple with a tympanum, two side-columns and a portal overhung by a refined shell. The friezes representing the grapes, the olive and the chalice are there to show its sacred use: at the beginning it had to contain the holy oils, as you can read in the caption “Oleum Sanctum”; in a second time they kept there the Eucharist. In the entablature, the client’s name: VERONICA DI VINCENZO. The crucifix, in decorated wood, is placed behind the altar and proposed again with a liturgical function. All the mentioned works are awarded to the Umbrian school and they can be placed between the XV and the XVI century. The presbyter ends with St. Peter and St. Paul’s statues, positioned into two opposite niches and with a big window that imitate a mullioned one, recently substituting the precedent apse.

Trasleyt to

Sara Scarabattieri