THE PARISH COLLEGIATE CHURCH: SOLE TESTIMONY OF EUROPEAN LATE GOTHIC IN MARCHE.
by Tiziana Marozzi.
It closes the beautiful view of the square, that in 1475 was wanted to be bricked with adobe as far as the church of San Agustin, attributed to the ilustrious fellow citizen Alberico Gentili (1552-1608) author of the De Jure Belli and teacher of Law at Oxford, dominating in the center by the representation of the Guastalla, the splendid late gothic facade of the parish collegiate church of San Ginesio, flanked by the civic tower and the palace. The new imposing frontispiece of the collegiate church, the only regional example of european late gothic, was made in 1421 by the bavarian Enrico Alemanno (Herrigo di Fapicho) by the price of two hundred ducats of gold, architect already active in Picen, by order of the parish member Porfirio Salimbeni of Camerino in times of the Pope Martino V (1417/1431) as documents the inscription made on the superior registry of the fourth facade. In the contract written up in the house of a certain Buzi in the month of March, are described the constructive particularitities, the characteristics of the materials used in the execution of the work and the way of payment (the first one hundred ducats in three terms with deadline in may / july / september; while the rest of the amount would be satisfied “work done " with a delay of six months for last the fifty ducats). In addition, the same contract advanced that at the top of the new frontispiece it’d be placed a stone sculpture that represented the Virgin with the Infant Jesus, reintroduced already in the 18th Century as the watercolor of Morichelli documents. Of the preexisting romanesque church it was only left the foundations with the curved portal splayed slightly off-centered. Therefore, the late gothic style of the superior level of the facade with six sections in five perspectives, laid out on two registers, each one of which welcomes a worked gothic arc in brick relief, is completed by four niches decorated with columns in spiral and a window with pointed arc – it isn’t superimposed to the inferior romanesque that reveals older origins. The parish, founded on 1098 in the district of Trensano, one of the original noble families of the castrum, according to the historical premises, was built on the rests of a dedicated temple to the Roman martyr Ginesio of whom would be left the niche on the right of the romanesque portal. The altar of such niche, protected to the sides by an iron balustrade, was added in the middle of the fifties of the last century in the context of the demolition of the narthex of the 19th Century, projected by the ferman engineer Carducci and put in front of the portal in 1840, which with all probability went to replace that one of two arcs, now already in ruins, constructed in 1367 by Rodolfo II of Varano that was still conserved in the 18th Century, as it’s demonstrated by the Morichelli watercolor. Such watercolor, conserved in the ex- augustinian convent of the Institute of the Magistrature, offers also the confirmation in the 18th Century of the Romanesque-Gothic facade, that ends with a tympanum decorated with flying buttress and a spire. In 1398 the parish priest Angelo Bussi had already extended the church of "three vaults" adding the three apses to it as is shown clearly at the crypt known as oratory of Saint Biagio. In 1433 the parish priest Oliviero Paolo made construct the front; in 1441 the parish priest Giacomo Berardi made add the decorated lateral doors "with foliage carved in wood", no longer existing. In 1449 the apse was decorated with fresco paintings of which hasn’t been conserved any trace by will of the Captain Trovarello di Paolo. In 1589 they added to the central aisle the chapel of the right and the roofing with cross vaults was redone since the original one with trusses had been damaged in a fire.
The church, of basilical plant with three aisles and triple apse, separated of the secondary naves with round-headed arcs of passage supported on columns and beamed pillars and octagons, conserves numerous and appraised paintings and fresco paintings.
Entering the church - to the left of the main entrance there is an aedicule of the ginesian Stefano Folchetti; to the right, the Baptism of San Ginesio of the ginesian Domenico Malpiedi and near the right lateral door the Virgin with Child and the Saint Patron playing the rebeck, from the area of Perugia - calls the attention the splendid Crucifixion from the area of Rimini-Marche, tranfered from the near church of Saint Michael that looms up from the depth of the apse, adorned with a precious wood choir of the 18th Century of Francesco Amiliani. It’s flanked at the left by the Virgin of the Mercy (1458) of Pietro Alemann of Gottweich and, at the right, by the Virgin of the Rosary of Simone de Magistris of Caldarola (1585). The painting of Alemanno was ordered by the ginesian community as a tribute to the Virgin Mary for the liberation of a hard plague and it occupied the chapel of the Virgin of the People built at the end of the 15th Century shortly after the demolition of the tribune of the 4th Century built during the rectorate of Angelo Bussi.
Descending into the crypt that is underneath, also called oratory of Saint Biagio which was joint after the reconstruction of the 14th Century, with the stairs that are near the Chapel to the Fallen in World War I, painted in fresco in 1924 by Adolph de Carolis with the tree of the life next to which a Vesperbild of the 15th Century is situated; it can be admired the series of fresco paintings about the life of Saint Biagio signed by Lorenzo Salimbeni in 1406. From the crypt it’s also possible to go outside through a door that opens in front of the ex - romanesque church of Saint Sebastian, today seat of the civic picture-gallery, which in 1564 was given by the canons of the collegiate church for use of Monte Frumentario in exchange of a wax candle to give in the Capitol during the Christmas celebrations.
The church, made up as a true gallery of the painting of Marche, exposes the most significant works of the 16th and the 17th Centuries throughout the chapel of the nave with the paintings of Federico Zuccari, of Cristoforo Roncalli called the Pomarancio, Simone de Magistris and Domenico Malpiedi.
To the right of the greater altar, under the altar of which excels the huge iron box that contains the relics of both compatriots SS. Ginesio and Eleuterio with the humerus donated in 1601 by Pope Clemente VIII Aldobrandini, opens the Chapel of Saint Peter of the Tamburelli family. Embellished with a precious golden wood carved and lacunar ceiling, there are conserved the Pietà and the Consegna delle Chiavi of Malpiedi, who has also decorated with a gallery of saints, the rectangular panels used like parapet of the dominant organ constructed by Morettini in 1844. At the same period of the lacunars belongs the decoration of the octagonal pulpit of Romanesque style. In the adjacent sacristy there are, in addition, the rich parish file of the collegiate church and the called "Room of the Treasure" in which there are keeped appraised monstrances and reliquaries in addition to precious painting pieces of other ginesians churches, among which we honore the Virgin and Saints of Folchetti and the analogous subject of Giacomo da Recanati, a Virgin of the milk originated of the church of the Virgin of the Snows, as well as a Crucifixion of De Magistris that served as drop curtain to the wooden Crucifix, of sienese origin of the 15th Century, bound to the well-known episode of the three hundred ginesians exiled from Siena supporters of the reestablishment of the seigniory of the Varano and exposed in the homonymous chapel. This work introduced by the Last Supper and a scene of the Via Crucis of Simone De Magistris, of octogonal plant, was constructed using the premises of the Holy Annunciation of the Old Capitol. This one, located next to the third chapel of the lateral nave of the right side, is set against the Virgin of the Mercy, erected in 1873 after the prodigious opening of the eyes of the Virgin of the Ascent of Malpiedi (originally in the chapel of the Suffrage).
Then, the stuccoed chapels of the Annunziata, with the Annunciazione of Federico Zuccari flanked by the Wedding of the Virgin and of the Madonna that reveals the authenticity of the Holy House of Malpiedi, and of the Virgin of Loreto with the homonymous subject painted by Malpiedi as well as the laterals Natività di Maria and Visitazione. Followed by the chapel dedicated to the Souls in purgatory, the Resurrection and the Pentecost, always by Malpiedi. The last chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph, that until 1745 has welcomed the wooden Crucifix now in the sacristy, is decorated by the Pious Passing of Saint Joseph with to its sides the Battle of Lepanto and the decapitation of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (1606) of the ginesian Rusiolo Mercury. |
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