Description
In the hamlet of Ponte, the church of Saint Mary is an example of Romanesque sacred building with an unusual plan for Umbrian architecture. It has a single nave with apse, projecting transept, lantern and dome on the crossing of the arms. Another small nave, enlarging the original church, is leaning against the right wall.
On the facade is a carved rose adorned with mosaic elements, evangelic symbols and, at the bottom, two telamons. The portal, made up by concentric arches with archivolt, preserves remains of a fourteenth century fresco depicting Our Lady and Angels in the lunette.
The apse is decorated by a Lombard band supported by protomes, pilasters and semi-columns. External walls are an example of Romanesque well-preserved masonry. However the peculiarity of this building is the “layout of the rose”, engraved and never realized on the surface of the inner right wall, near the entrance. On the right chapel the Evangelists are frescoed (on the vault), Christ on the Calvary (in the lunette), Christ in the garden and Saint Michel (intrados) from the sixteenth century. On the apse is a Nativity from the sixteenth century and the Marriage of Saint Catherine (1519); on the top, at the side, Angels from the beginning of the fourteenth century. On the left side of the transept Our Lady and Saints from the sixteenth century.
Going up along the left wall are a Crucifix and Saints, detached fresco from the fifteenth century; a female Saint (?) and Saint Augustine from the fifteenth century; Our Lady of the Rosary from the seventeenth century.
Belonging to the artistic heritage of this church (the former Pieve owned a notable and rich patrimony) remains two wooden statues of Our Ladies from the fourteenth century, a painting with the Deposition (derivation from Daniele from Volterra) and some fragments of the fresco decoration. Used as a baptismal font was a huge roman monolithic cup (labrum) in basalt stone. Interesting is an Our Lady in throne with Angels and Saints, a large fragment of a distempered altar frontal (preserved in the diocesan collection in Spoleto), work of the anonymous umbrian artist known as the Maestro di Cesi, who lived and worked in the fourteenth century.