Description
The Church of the Madonna di Piazza stands inside the castle of Campi, not far from the complex of Sant’Andrea.
Founded in 1351 it was known as Santa Maria della Misericordia and had a hospital joined to it. It displays a fourteenth-century ogival portal with the Agnus Dei and a garland of leaves.
The entrance leads to the first nave with a mottled floor dating back to 1562 and a barrel vaulted ceiling resting on six pillars. The central wooden altar rests against a large arch decorated with the remains of raceme inflorescences (15th century). In the seventeenth century, panels of a polyptych attributed to Antonio Sparapane were placed here (15th century). On the right-hand wooden altar there is an interesting Madonna dei Raccomandati on canvas (locally named the Madonna “with outspread arms”), dated 1641.
The vault of the central nave used to be painted with six stories of Joachim and Ann and the Virgin Mary, of which four episodes have remained more or less intact. The painter was Giovanni Sparapane, who expresses himself here in a shrill, late Gothic style, which originated from the close geographical and cultural position of Camerino and Foligno, not forgetting his debts to Nicola da Siena. The other images appear to be by a different hand: a gentle woodman, St. Amico, who instead of an axe has a fixed bill hook and holds the rope, with which the lion, who devoured the donkey, was supposed to be tied up; and an energetic St. Anthony, in the role of abbot.