Today the 25th April the 12 Culture Week finishes in Italy. During the week there are various events organised to allow people to see places not normally open or to provide talks etc to introduce people to works of art. Pergola organised a meeting for Saturday at the Church of Mary on the Piazza. There was to be a talk about a 14th century fresco discovered in the church after an the 1997 earthquake which had badly damaged Assisi.
The meeting began at 5.00 and we got to see the fresco at 6.15. For 75 minutes we had the mayor introducting the 4 speakers. All four of the speakers were difficult to hear even with a microphone and all could have benefitted from a training course on public speaking. They all had the habit of turning to talk to the mayor and the other speakers instead of talking to the audience (100 people). All the speakers began by thanking various people, all stressed the need to inform people of Pergola’s cultural heritage and unfortunately the audience were too polite to shout out “but we’re only here for the fresco”.
We did finally see the fresco and it is worth going to see. The theme is the crucifixion complete with the devil coming to take the soul of the unrepentant thief. The fresco is probably the work of two artists. The first began work on the frescok at the beginning of the 1300s and was then continued by another artist some years later.
The central section i.e. Christ on the cross was probably destroyed when later generations wanted to create a niche in the wall for an altar. Only the head of Christ remains of this central portion.