During our last vacation in Italy we really wanted to do something “local”, to see things that other tourists would not see so easily, to talk to the Italians, to be pleasantly surprised. When we visited the charming town of Pergola, we were handed a sheet of paper that announced that the festival of Palazzi e chiese aperte would take place in just a few days. In the evening of 14 August 2024 a large number of palazzos and (former) churches in the town would open their doors, and there would be volunteers to provide the visitors with information. This was exactly what we were looking for, and on the 14th, well before 9 PM, we parked our car in Pergola. Palazzi e chiese aperte was about to begin.
Santa Maria Assunta.
When we walked into the first church of the tour, the Santa Maria Assunta dell’Oratorio, it immediately became clear to us that the festival allowed us to get into churches that normally keep their doors closed. According to the information sheet that we got, this church had recently been restored and was generally only open by request or for special events. Santa Maria Assunta was built by the Oratorians or Padri Filippini. The Congregation of the Oratory was founded in 1575 by Filippo Neri (1515-1595), nicknamed the Apostle of Rome. Neri was a Florentine by birth. He had arrived as a pilgrim in Rome in 1534 and was ordained as a priest in 1551 at age 36. The future saint was quite a phenomenon. He demanded of his followers that they humiliate themselves by dressing in rags and even wearing a foxtail between their legs. Many of his followers were young Roman nobleman and Neri ordered them to do manual labour, which was unheard of in that era. Filippo Neri was not afraid to be controversial (see Rome: Chiesa Nuova).
The Oratorians arrived in Pergola in 1678 and remained there until 1806. The construction of their church started in 1722 and in 1752 the building was consecrated. A miraculous image of the Virgin Mary is kept above the high altar. She is called the Madonna del Rifugio (Madonna of the Shelter). Tradition dictates that in 1796 she opened her eyes for multiple days, and that her face changed colour. The stucco decorations in the church are nice, but not very special. The paintings on the walls were made by Antonio Concioli (1739-1820), a local painter who also worked in Rome and died there.
Duomo of Pergola.
Interior of the Duomo.
The next church we visited was the Duomo of Pergola, also known as the co-cathedral of Sant’Andrea. The building has had the status of a cathedral since 1819, when the diocese of Cagli-Pergola was created (which became the diocese of Fano-Fossombrone-Cagli-Pergola in 1986). The new diocese had big consequences for the Duomo. The original building dated from the thirteenth century and was a collegiate church of the Augustinians, dedicated to – surprise, surprise – Saint Augustinus of Hippo. Between 1819 and 1841 the Duomo was almost completely rebuilt in neoclassicist style. Very little of the medieval building was preserved; only the Romanesque bell-tower and – by the looks of it – some of the fabric of the outer walls survive. The construction of a new Duomo was made possible by financial contributions from Pope Gregorius XVI (1831-1846). This explains why we find a bust of this pope above the main entrance. The Duomo is currently dedicated to Saint Andrew the Apostle, and has a subsidiary dedication to Saint Secundus, patron saint of Pergola.
A friendly volunteer in the Duomo showed us some of the artistic highlights in the building. The first attraction was a crucifix by the fourteenth-century painter Mello da Gubbio. Unfortunately the work is no longer intact, as the panels with the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Baptist and Christ (or God the Father) giving his blessing have not survived. Mary Magdalene is, however, still visible at the foot of the cross. Next the volunteer took us to the Cappella Graziani, where an enormous wooden aedicule catches the eye. The altarpiece is the so-called Madonna della Ghiara (Madonna of the Gravel), painted by the French master Jean Boulanger (1606-1660), who got his commission from the poet Girolamo Graziani (1604-1675), who was a native of Pergola.
The Duomo possesses two works by the local painter Giovan Francesco Ferri (1701-1775). Both tell stories of Saint Secundus, a martyr who lived in the third or fourth century and should not be confused with Secundus of Asti. Much more beautiful is a painting of the Last Supper. It is a contemporary copy of a famous work by Federico Barocci (ca. 1535-1612) and probably made by one of his students. Barocci was a painter from Urbino, and it is in the cathedral of Urbino that we find the original work. The last works of art we admired were the beautifully carved and painted wooden decorations of the choir, representing the patron saints of Pergola. These were made by one Carlo Calandri from Gubbio, about whom hardly anything is known.
Cappella dei Re Magi.
For a visit to the Cappella dei Re Magi we merely had to cross the street again. To be honest, the building looks more like a tower than a chapel. The Cappella dei Re Magi is all that is left of a church dedicated to Saint Peter, which was demolished at the end of the 1830s to make way for a seminary (above the gate to the left of the chapel we read the words VEN.SEMINARIO.1861; apparently the seminary was opened in 1861). After the church was demolished the chapel served as the baptistery of the Duomo for a long time. I was more than willing to believe that the Cappella dei Re Magi was left standing because of its interior, as that is truly splendid.
Starting in 1648, the chapel was fitted out on the orders of the Gervasi family. The beautiful stucco work was made by Tommaso Amantini (1625-1675). He made four large statues of prophets and four of sybils (pagan prophetesses who supposedly foretold the coming of Christ). On the ceiling of gilded stucco we see the four evangelists and God the Father in the centre. The two paintings by the aforementioned Giovan Francesco Ferri are not that interesting, but a canvas by the painter Aurelio Lomi (1556-1634) from Pisa certainly is. Save a few minor details, it is a copy of a canvas from 1604 that hangs in the church of San Frediano in Pisa. Lomi was probably commissioned to paint the copy by Girolamo Gervasi when the latter was in Tuscany for business. The information panel in the church goes to great lengths to stress that this is Lomi’s only work in the Marche.
Interior of the Cappella dei Re Magi.
Ceiling of the chapel.
Saint Ursula – Giovanni Domenico Cerrini.
We continued our tour and arrived at the deconsecrated church of Sant’Orsola. Saint Ursula was a martyr who is said to have lived in the fifth century. She and her ten virgin servants supposedly became the victims of Attila the Hun when this “Scourge of God” besieged Cologne. There are, by the way, versions of the story that feature 11,000 murdered virgins, but that is a mistake by a copyist who confused Latin XI M (“eleven martyrs”) for the number 11,000 (M = mille = 1,000).[1] It seems fair to conclude that Ursula is an extremely obscure saint of doubtful historicity, but she was definitely very popular, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1535 the future Saint Angela Merici (1474-1540) founded the order of the Ursulines.
The church of Sant’Orsola dates from the second half of the seventeenth century. The building has a nice and colourful altarpiece of Saint Ursula, painted by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini (1609-1681). The theme of the dome fresco is also the martyrdom of Ursula and her virgins. Unfortunately it is quite damaged. The maker was Giovanni Anastasi (1653-1704), a painter from Senigallia.
The former church of Santa Maria di Piazza was our personal highlight of Palazzi e chiese aperte. Santa Maria di Piazza therefore deserves a separate post. The church was built in the first decade of the eleventh century and is by far the most ancient church in all of Pergola. The artistic highlights of the building are a crucifix by the aforementioned Mello da Gubbio and a large (but damaged) fresco that is usually – though tentatively – attributed to Giovanni Antonio Bellinzoni da Pesaro (ca. 1415-1478).
The church of San Marco is also quite old. Pergola was founded as a town in 1234 by inhabitants of Gubbio in Umbria, and it is usually assumed that the San Marco dates from the thirteenth century. In other words, the San Marco was built shortly after the founding of the town. At the time the church was a priory of the abbey of Nonantola (near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna). In 1776 the San Marco was thoroughly remodelled, and as a consequence not much is left of the medieval building. The most interesting artwork in the church can be found above the high altar. It was painted by Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri (1589-1657) from Fossombrone, who signed the work on a sword in the lower right corner. The friendly volunteer in the church drew our attention to an impressive wooden crucifix, made by a Sicilian monk. A rather odd object is the baptismal font with two lids. Is the larger of the two water bowls perhaps intended for late converts, to give them an extra dose of holy water when they are baptised?
What impressed us most about the church of San Vitale was the large procession cart with the very lifelike body of Jesus Christ. The church belongs to the Confraternita del Santissimo Crocifisso (or Confraternita del Cristo Morto) and the cart is no doubt used for the annual procession on Good Friday (the day that Christ was crucified). The church of San Vitale dates from the end of the thirteenth century and is dedicated to the well-known patron saint of Ravenna. In its current form, however, the church dates from the second half of the eighteenth century. The stucco decorations are by one Benedetto Silva, while the church also has a number of paintings by Antonio Concioli, already mentioned above.
Face of Jesus Christ.
A church that we had already visited during the day was the former collegiate church of Sant’Andrea al Corso. This church was founded in the thirteenth century by monks from the convent of Fonte Avellana. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the church was remodelled. The bell-tower of the Sant’Andrea is currently the Torre Civica. This tower is largely a twentieth-century reconstruction. The church has a single nave and a rather sober interior. The artistic highlight is the altarpiece above the high altar, which was painted by the Venetian master Palma il Giovane (ca. 1548-1628). It features the Madonna and Child with Saint Andrew and Saint Nicholas of Bari. In the lower left corner Palma painted the archpriest Andrea Balduzi. The church moreover possesses works by Claudio Ridolfi (ca. 1570-1644) and Giovan Francesco Ferri.
Not part of Palazzi e chiese aperte, but certainly worth a visit, is the Oratorio dell’Ascensione al Palazzolo. This small oratory, which is situated quite far from the centre of town, deserves a separate post. It was built in the fifteenth century and has a large fresco by Lorenzo d’Alessandro from San Severino. If you want to visit the oratory, you can contact the Museo dei Bronzi Dorati in Pergola.
More information about the churches of Pergola: Pergola bella
Note
[1] John Man, Attila. A barbarian king and the fall of Rome, p. 293-295.