San Marco.
We parked our car in the free parking garage called Parcheggio Mercantini and climbed the hill where the gorgeous church of San Marco is situated. The church and adjacent convent have been used by Carmelite nuns since the end of the nineteenth century. The nuns live in seclusion – they are Monache Carmelitane di Clausura – and do not have contact with other people, but fortunately they do allow interested visitors into their church. You can ring the doorbell at the convent and indicate that you wish to admire the San Marco. The nuns will then personally open the door for you. In our case ringing the doorbell was not even necessary. By chance an Italian family that we had previously met at an oratory in Pergola had also decided to visit Jesi that day and had already rang some five minutes before us. We therefore found the doors of the church open and could explore the building at leisure.
History
The present San Marco dates from the second half of the thirteenth century. According to tradition the site was previously occupied by a smaller Benedictine church, which the Benedictines granted to Saint Franciscus of Assisi (ca. 1181-1226), in persona according to the leaflet that the tourist office of Jesi gave us. Although this story is not supported by any documents, the leaflet claims it may very well be true because the official name of the church in Latin is Ecclesia sancti Francisci sive sancti Marci, church of Saint Franciscus or Saint Mark. San Marco must be the older of the two names, and in practice it is widely used. Franciscan friars resided in the complex until 1439 and then left for a new complex within the city walls where it was safer. I have not been able to establish whether the church of San Marco was still used after their departure, but what is certain is that it had become ruinous by the mid-nineteenth century.
Interior of the church.
Between 1854 and 1859 the church was restored by the architect Angelo Angelucci (1816-1891). He installed a new altar and hired painters to provide the interior of the building with new frescoes. The frescoes on the walls, arches and vaults are all nineteenth-century. The medieval frescoes that were still present in the church were restored (see below). In 1882 the Carmelite nuns of Jesi settled at the convent. Their community had been active in Jesi since 1684, but had previously used other complexes. The nuns had to wait until 1946 before the church of San Marco was also granted to them, which suggests that the church was still in use by others, perhaps as a parish church.
Things to see
The exterior of the San Marco is fairly simple. The façade has a brick rose window, two bricked-up oculi and a splendid marble portal. Below the architrave above the door we see capitals with the lion of Saint Mark (i.e. San Marco) and the Lamb of God. The real treasures of the San Marco are, however, to be found inside the church. I am referring to the fourteenth-century frescoes in the style of Giotto (ca. 1266-1337). They are attributed to painters from the school of Rimini, a city where the great Tuscan master lived and worked for some time at the start of the fourteenth century. The frescoes of the San Marco are often attributed to two specific painters, i.e. Giovanni and Giuliano da Rimini (unlike for instance Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti from Siena, Giovanni and Giuliano were not brothers!).
Crucifixion – school of Rimini.
If we enter the church, we immediately see an impressive Crucifixion in the apse. The dying Christ is hanging on the cross, and around him all kinds of things happen. Saint John and Mary Magdalene are desperately mourning at the foot of the cross, on the left the Virgin Mary has fainted and is supported by other women, and a Roman soldier on horseback pierces Christ’s side with a lance. On the other side men are fighting over the cloak of the Saviour and a man on a white horse utters the Latin words VERE FILIVS DEI ERAT ISTE. These words come from Matthew 27:54 and mean “Truly this was the Son of God!”. In Matthew’s gospel they are spoken by a nameless Roman centurion. The passage where a soldier pierces Christ’s side comes from John 19:34. Sometimes the passages are combined, leading to the assumption that the centurion and soldier were one and the same person, a man named Longinus, who supposedly converted to Christianity himself later. The Jesi fresco, however, depicts two different people, although both do have a halo.
Crucifixion (detail).
Crucifixion (detail).
Crucifixion (detail).
The other frescoes can be found at the end of the right aisle. Unfortunately it is difficult to admire them, as the choir has been closed off with a rood screen and this part of the church can only be entered by the Carmelite nuns. I was lucky though, as I found a small stepladder behind the altar that was likely put there so that visitors can take a peek over the rood screen. Once I had climbed the ladder I had a fairly good view of the large fresco of the Death of the Virgin (Dormitio Virginis) and smaller frescoes of the Annunciation, another Crucifixion and the Holy House of Loreto (the House where the Virgin was said to have been born and that was miraculously moved to Loreto by angels in the late thirteenth century). In the mid-nineteenth century, the fresco of the Death of the Virgin was in a lamentable state. About two-thirds of it had been lost and had to be repainted by the painters that Angelucci had hired. These painters did so quite competently, but the difference between the original fourteenth-century parts and the nineteenth-century additions is hard to miss.
Dormitio Virginis. On the left the original fresco, on the right the newly repainted parts.
Dormitio Virginis (detail).
Sources: Bradt travel guide Umbria & the Marche (2021), p. 239 and Comune di Jesi, Chiesa di San Marco (leaflet).