Church of Santa Maria della Misericordia

Dating back to the fourteenth century, the fraternity was named after the Madonna of mercy only in the second half of the sixteenth century. The main activities for which the religious institute received sustenance from the church and from the public were those of assistance to the exposed and to the abandoned and destitute young people. The church has a plaster facade on which appears a fresco with a Madonna and Child with Saints of the sixteenth century. The massive portal (1537) leads inside the church with a single nave cross-vaulted with conchiglioni to decorate the corners of tax. At the center of the altar is a marble canopy that protects the polychrome terracotta group of the Madonna della Misericordia. On the side walls adorning the altars are two paintings by Claudio Ridolfiraffiguranti respectively La Strage degli Innocenti with the predella of the same iconography by Girolamo Cialdieri and the Visitation. Of the fourteenth-century parietal decoration I remain ample fragments. It is a Crucifixion, a scene with the Martyrdom of St. Apollonia and a Lamentation over the Dead Christ. To these are added two small fragments with the San Bernardino da Siena, and the other, opposite, Sant'Onofrio. The name of Jacopo Bedi was made for the Martyrdom of St. Apollonia, while for the remaining frescoes a stylistic affinity was identified with the paintings that decorate the majesty of the Church of Montemartello and the lacerti re-surfaced by the plasterwork of the Church of San Domenico .