Description

The Church of San Benedetto, now part of the walls surrounding the cemetery of Cerasola, used to be the parish church.

The layout was originally Romanesque. Inside, it contains some interesting 15th and 16th century frescoes depicting the Redeemer between Saints Benedict and Scholastica, by the Valnerina school of artists. In mock niches in the walls we find other 16th century votive paintings by the Sparapane workshop. One large niche has a painting of the Enthroned Virgin Mary between Saints Benedict and Rocco. The pillars bear votive pictures and to the right we can glimpse an elegant St. Sebastian. The right-hand chapel is also decorated and shows an Annunciation between Saints Anthony Abbot and Luke, a work by Antonio di Benedetto da Usigni in 1599. A 13th-century wooden Madonna comes from this church (now held at the Castellina Museum in Norcia).

This kind of seriality was very common in Umbria and especially so in Valnerina. It unites the substantial rigidity of the structure, with the polychrome and vivid ornamentation of the backs or volets, which contain the image.