Santa Maria in Via.
The church of Santa Maria in Via is not a building that you visit for art with a capital A. It is a church where you hop in because it has a special history. The first church on this spot was built at an unspecified moment before the year 1000. No one really knows why the church is called “Saint Mary along the Road”, and the risk that the church is confused with the almost eponymous church of Santa Maria in Via Lata is, for reasons that are quite understandable, very high. In the thirteenth century a cardinal called Pietro Capocci (ca. 1200-1259) lived next to the church. On his property there was a well, which flooded on 26 September 1256. When servants of the cardinal went outside, they saw an image of the Virgin, painted on a terracotta tile, floating by. It was obviously considered miraculous that such a heavy object did not sink, and the miracle was confirmed by Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261). The cardinal was ordered to build a chapel next to the church where the Madonna del Pozzo – Madonna of the Well – could be venerated.
Between 1491 and 1513 the church was rebuilt on the orders of Pope Innocentius VIII (1484-1492). The Santa Maria in Via was subsequently granted to the Servite Order. This Order of Servants of Mary had been founded in 1233 by seven Florentines who had simultaneously experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary. It was certainly no coincidence that the decision to assign the church to the Servites was taken by Pope Leo X (1513-1521): his real name was Giovanni de’ Medici and he was himself from Florence. The Servites first had a convent built (demolished in the twentieth century) and then began rebuilding the church. For this project they hired the architects Francesco Capriani da Volterra (1535-1594) and Giacomo della Porta (1532-1602). Their colleague Carlo Lombardi (ca. 1545-1619) then left his mark on the church interior, which was remodelled in the nineteenth century by Virginio Vespignani (1808-1882). The rebuilding of the Santa Maria in Via was completed in 1609.
Interior of the church.
It took much longer to complete the façade of the Santa Maria in Via. Above the central entrance it mentions the year MDXCVI, so 1596. This must actually be the year that Giacomo della Porta started the construction of the façade (Francesco Capriani da Volterra was already dead). In the end the façade was only completed in 1681 by Carlo Rainaldi (1611-1691), after which it was restored in 1900. It is an impressive element of the church and extends well beyond the roof of the church, something that is best viewed from the Piazza di San Claudio to the north of the church. The text of the architrave of the façade, by the way, also mentions the year 1256 (MCCLVI in Roman numerals). This is, of course, the year of the finding of the miraculous Madonna del Pozzo.
The relatively small church has a single nave. Its interior is nice, but rather dark. Very little light enters the building through the small windows. The most important chapel is the first on the right, the Cappella della Madonna del Pozzo. Note that it is almost twice as deep as the other seven chapels. Obviously the Madonna del Pozzo itself serves as the altarpiece of the chapel. The chapel furthermore has several works of Giuseppe Cesari (1568-1640), also known as the Cavalier d’Arpino. However, it is rather difficult to admire them at leisure, as the chapel is used to provide the churchgoers with water from cardinal Capocci’s well. The sacred water still draws scores of people, although admittedly my only visit to the church took place in January of 2022, when COVID-19 still held the world in its grip. A maximum of four people were allowed to be in the Cappella della Madonna del Pozzo at the same time, so I decided to let the faithful go in first.
Cappella della Madonna del Pozzo.
The church has a second Madonna, which is known as the Madonna of the Fire (Madonna del Fuoco). This is a remnant of a fifteenth-century fresco of a Madonna and Child. The name sounds a bit odd, as fire is nowhere to be seen, but there is a simple explanation. For some time the Santa Maria in Via was used by people from the town of Forlì, of which the Madonna del Fuoco is the patron saint. In Forlì a similar image of the Madonna is kept in the local cathedral, which is said to have miraculously survived a fire.
In this Servite church there is obviously a place for Filippo Benizi (1233-1285), a general superior of the Order in the thirteenth century. He was beatified in 1516 and then canonised in 1671. Long before the canonisation Antonio Circignani, nicknamed Il Pomarancio (ca. 1567-1630), painted an altarpiece of Benizi in ecstasy for the second chapel on the right. We again see the saint in the large fresco that embellishes the barrel vault of the nave, a work of Giovanni Domenico Piastrini (1680-1740).
More information about the church: Santa Maria in Via | Churches of Rome Wiki | Fandom