Sarnano: Now as Then

Another excerpt from Edward Hutton's book "The Cities of Romagna and the Marches" (1925), this time about Sarnano.

I left Amandola one morning in the public automobile for Sarnano on my way to Macerata. The road thither, delightful though it be, has not the splendour of the way between Amandola and Ascoli, but it gives you Sarnano, which is worth any trouble to see.

Sarnano, unlike almost every other city in the Marches,is not set on a great hill. The automobile passes quite through this picturesque little place with its great tower and piazza and rosy churches. Here in the Collegiata, in a niche, Lorenzo da Sanseverino, the pupil of Girolamo di Giovanni da Camerino, has painted in fresco the Madonna and Child with saints. This noble work is signed and dated 1483. A work, perhaps by Girolamo himself, is to be seen in S.Maria del Rosario, where is a Crucifixion with the Annunciation behind it, as it were the beginning and the

end, the alpha and omega of the Redemption of the world. A more curious master has perhaps been at work in S. Maria in Piazza : Niccolo da Foligno, to whom is

attributed the picture of S. John Baptist with three other Saints.