Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista (dei Battuti)

Consecrated in 1361 and built by the Battuti, the flagellant confraternity that nursed Spilimbergo's sick, this church beside the cathedral carries a baroque ceiling painted in 1746 after Tiepolo, a 1588 altarpiece by Gasparo Narvesa and a doorway still marked with the confraternity's sign.

Why it matters

The Battuti were a penitent confraternity whose members also ran hospitals. At Spilimbergo the confraternity, documented from the 1320s, erected a hospital and hospice near the cathedral for the poor, pilgrims and sick, and built this church between 1346 and February 1361, when it was consecrated. The hospital passed to the Augustinians in 1340.

Later changes to the church included: a new bell tower in 1487, baroque remodelling of the interior, demolition of the Gothic loggia in 1875, wartime requisition as a warehouse between 1915 and 1918, restoration and reconsecration in 1946, and earthquake damage in 1976 followed by roof repairs in 1979 and 1980.

What to notice

Above the stone portal’s architrave is the inscription Parate viam domini — prepare the way of the Lord — and the Battuti’s emblem, a hand with the index and middle fingers raised.

Inside, the single baroque hall is crowned by the 1746 ceiling frescoes of Giuseppe Buzzi: the Assumption of the Virgin flanked by the Almsgiving and the Beheading of Saint John, based on designs by Giambattista Tiepolo. Against the polychrome marble high altar survives a Crucifixion fresco by a fifteenth-century painter from beyond the Alps, uncovered in the twentieth century. On the altar walls hang Gasparo Narvesa's Visitation of 1588 and two Adoration canvases; a wooden crucifix carved by Giacomo Onesti stands among three eighteenth-century altars.

Context and history

The building also had a civic role. The Gothic-arched loggetta that once fronted the church served as a gathering place for protests against feudal power. It was demolished in 1875–76, when the facade was rebuilt. Earlier Baroque remodelling had transformed the original Romanesque-Gothic hall into the rectangular, single-naved room seen today, crowned by the ceiling frescoes of 1746.

After the church was used as a warehouse during the First World War and restoration was completed in 1946, it was dedicated to the fallen of all wars. The earthquake of 6 May 1976 damaged the structure; the repair campaign of 1979 and 1980 concentrated on the roof, and the bell tower was encased for safety.