Church of Sant'Angelo Minore

The concession granted by the Lateran chapter in favor of the confraternity of Sant'Angelo dates back to April 7, 1362, for the construction of a church and an adjoining hospice. The purpose of the confraternity was in fact the reception and mutual aid to the needy and destitute, supported thanks to bequests and municipal subsidies. The church's layout dates back to the late-fourteenth century foundation with subsequent modifications over the centuries. The main front has an elegant sixteenth-century loggia, for whose invention has been made the name of architects of the caliber of Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola without reaching any verifiable attribution. The performance is to be referred, around the middle of the 1500s, to "M. Giambattista di M.ro Angelo scarpellino". The decoration of the façade, above the portal, is the presence of two bas-reliefs. The first describes a Saint Michael who kills the dragon. The second presents the crossed keys under the papal tiara as testimony to the submission of the church to the Lateran chapter. The environment is a single room surmounted by a barrel vaulted lunette. The extreme austerity and rigor of the decorative apparatus is softened by the precious table that shows itself on the main altar table. This is the Noli me tangere, one of the most successful works by Timoteo Viti. The artist became one of Raphael's collaborators. On the sides the Saints Michael Archangel and Anthony, in the center, bounded by the ruins of classical architecture, the main scene takes place with the encounter between Christ and Mary Magdalene, which opens onto a vast natural landscape. The urban aggregate described in the background recalls the town of Cagliese in its sixteenth-century forms.