Chiesetta di Santa Maria della Pietà

Where the Ponte della Pietà crosses the Livenza, a hexagonal church rises on a double loggia straight from the river. It was built from 1611 after an image of the Pietà near the bridge was said to have wept in 1609, and it guards a fifteenth-century Vesperbild sculpture still at the centre of local devotion.

Why it matters

The church's history brings together the river, Marian devotion and civic politics. In August 1609 an image of the Pietà near the bridge was said to have begun to weep; reports of healings drew crowds from neighbouring communities, and the Magnifica Comunità di Sacile, after a prolonged dispute with the Venetian Senate and the diocese of Aquileia, obtained permission to build a church to house the miraculous statue. The result, begun in 1611 and consecrated in early 1616, stands directly on the water, its double-loggia atrium rising from the Livenza itself, and it remained for centuries the focus of the town's Marian devotion.

What to notice

The church's hexagonal plan is articulated by smooth pilasters with pseudo-Ionic capitals and a double entablature. Round, deeply splayed oculi punctuate the walls. A single vaulted hall opens toward a deep presbytery with its altar, carved around 1626 by Valentino dell'Huomo of Udine. Above it stands a fifteenth-century Madonna holding the dead Christ, a Vesperbild type widespread in Veneto-Friuli. The sculpture is made from an artificial gypsum-and-sand compound using the German technique Gußstein; its surface is now whitish-yellow, with only traces of the earlier painted layer.

Context and history

The chiesetta belongs to the Counter-Reformation wave of miracle shrines, but its civic framing is specific to Sacile. The community's council had to negotiate with both the senate of the republic that had ruled the city since 1419 and the diocese of Aquileia, to which the town's church life belonged, before building could start in 1611 beside the bridge of the pianche, the wooden crossing that then gave access to the duomo's little square. The church was consecrated in early 1616, and furnishing and decoration continued from 1623 to 1645. Marian feasts here were once celebrated with great solemnity, and the riverfront position, next to what is now the Ponte della Pietà, kept the church embedded in the daily life of the centre, between the duomo and the walls.