THE Piceno was the Roman name for what is now the southern half of the Marche, and Ascoli was a stronghold of the Piceni who controlled much of this area long before Rome’s conquest in 286 bc. Some twenty-eight kilometres from the Adriatic, the city is on a promontory above the confluence of the river Castellano with the Tronto. The Ponte di Solestà across the latter was built early in the imperial era, and much of the plan of the Roman town survives in the tight grid of the existing streets. But is it for its Romanesque churches, built of travertine stone, and her many later palaces that Ascoli is now remarkable.
The Renaissance arcaded Piazza del Popolo lies at the centre of the town. This is dominated on the west by the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, a medieval structure which was altered to the design of the local painter Cola dell’Amatrice in 1520 and partly remodelled in 1535; Cola’s rusticated door-cases on the west façade are particularly striking. To the north is the flank of the major Gothic church of San Francesco. A circuit beyond this might take in no fewer than four of Ascoli’s Romanesque churches, Santa Maria inter Vineos, Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio, San Pietro in Castello and San Pietro Martire, en route for the Ponte di Solestà. Two hundred and fifty metres west of San Francesco is another late Romanesque church, Sant’Agostino, with the fourteenth-century Fabrianese Francescuccio Ghissi’s Madonna of Humility on the right. A block to the south is another Romanesque church, San Venanzio, incorporating the south wall of a Roman temple, with a cerebral if little-known masterpiece of the Roman baroque, Baciccio’s Death of Saint Francis Xavier. South of the Piazza del Popolo is the smaller Piazza Roma, dominated by the dignified façade of Santa Maria della Carità, begun in 1532 to the design of Cola dell’Amatrice.
The Piazza Roma is linked to the east by the Via XX Settembre to the Piazza Arringo. On reaching this, turn right, up the narrow Via Tornasecco, to San Gregorio, another Roman temple recast as a Romanesque church. At the further end of the piazza is the Duomo and, on the right, the Palazzo Comunale and the Palazzo Vescovile. The former, an agglomeration of earlier structures, was refronted in the seventeenth century and houses the Pinacoteca Comunale with a notable holding of local works and one exceptional treasure, the opus anglicanum cope. This was given to the Duomo by Pope Nicolas IV in 1288; stolen in 1902 it was returned to Ascoli by the American philanthropist J. Pierpont Morgan three years later. The animated embroidered designs stand comparison with the finest English illuminations and stained glass of their date, soon after 1265. The collection of pictures ranges from the masterpiece of the Quattrocento Paolo da Visso by way of a tender Annunciation by Reni to an Assumption by the nineteenth-century Domenico Morelli. In the Palazzo Vescovile, the projecting wing of which has also been attributed to Cola, is the Museo Diocesano with more Marchigian pictures. Across the piazza is the exemplary Museo Archeologico with exceptional Iron Age metalwork.
The Duomo was enlarged in 1482; the massive façade was constructed to the design of Cola in 1529–39. On the left is the free-standing octagonal Romanesque Baptistery, crowned by a loggia. The scale of the church is impressive; the Gothic choir stalls are fine, but much else is best forgotten. In the Cappella del Sacramento, on the right, however, is the splendid polyptych of 1473 by the most eccentric of late fifteenth-century Italian painters, the Venetian Carlo Crivelli, who had settled at Ascoli some years earlier and remained there until his death in 1494/5. This was originally on the high altar and retains its intricate Gothic frame. The main tier shows the Madonna and Child between Saints Peter, Jerome, Emidius – the patron of the city – and Paul; above is the Pietà and further saints, and below, in the predella, Christ and the apostles. Crivelli’s Paduan training is tempered by experience of local painters from Camerino and Foligno. None of his contemporaries knew better how to paint fruit realistically, but realism was not Crivelli’s prime objective. His Madonna is at once elevated and poignant, his Child aware – not only from its weight – that the enormous apple he holds is the symbol of the Passion and of mankind’s subsequent redemption. As if to intrude on the spectator’s space, the left feet of both Saint Peter and Saint Paul project beyond the platform on which they stand. It is unfortunate that this masterpiece is placed too high to be fully appreciated.
Palazzo del Popolo, west façade by Cola dell’Amatrice.
The patrons of the Marche were dazzled by Crivelli’s proficiency – and by his colours. Until his death in 1495 he had no challenger; his brother Vittore and close follower Pietro Alemanno would adhere to his model until the end of the century. Ascoli is fortunate that its greatest altarpiece survived both the depredations of revolutionary France and later Anglo-Saxon shopping.
