Oratorio dei Bianchi

Behind Rapallo’s town hall, the Oratory of the Whites preserves the history of a confraternity documented since the thirteenth century. Its furnishings include processional crucifixes, a statue by Anton Maria Maragliano, choir stalls from the Cervara and an eighteenth-century organ in its Baroque case.

Why it matters

Rapallo’s confraternity of the Disciplinanti is documented from the thirteenth century. The brotherhood of the Disciplinanti — penitents in white capes who practised self-flagellation under the influence of Franciscan and Dominican preaching — was active in Rapallo after 1250, under the title of Santa Maria e Santo Stefano. The members were the i Bianchi, the Whites, from the colour of their robes, The confraternity’s records include property documents from the fifteenth century and statutes approved by a cardinal in 1655. The furnishings also reflect the development of Genoese sculpture.

What to notice

• The great processional Crucifixes, the Cristi — enormous ornamented crosses carried by hand through the town during feast days; the oldest dates to the eighteenth century.
• A white marble bas-relief of the fourteenth or fifteenth century beside the minor portal, showing two hooded Disciplinanti in the act of penance — rare evidence of the brotherhood's original practices carved in stone.
• Anton Maria Maragliano's statue of Saint Sebastian inside its case, commissioned by notarised agreement of 31 May 1700 for 400 Genoese lire and restored in 1995.
• Sixteenth-century choir stalls transferred in the nineteenth century from the monastery of the Cervara.
• A wooden Madonna and Child of the fifteenth century, attributed to a Pisan workshop, and an Addolorata of 1908 by the Rapallo sculptor Antonio Canepa above the inlaid-marble altar.
• The organ of about 1779 in its baroque case, attributed to Tomaso II Roccatagliata of nearby Santa Margherita Ligure.

Context and history

The brotherhood worshipped first in the pieve of Santo Stefano, then in the chapel of the hospital of Sant'Antonio, before settling in the late fifteenth century near the site of the present oratory; tomb rights in Santo Stefano were being requested by its members from 1485 onwards. The building seen today took shape between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a single nave with a small bell tower, first dedicated to the Virgin and later to the Santissima Trinità, when the brothers took on the teaching of Christian doctrine to the town's youth. A staircase once linked the oratory to the hospital's dormitory. Its institutional standing was formalised early: new statutes were approved by Cardinal Stefano Durazzo on 2 August 1655, and on 2 September 1647 the confraternity had been aggregated to Rome's Arciconfraternita del Gran Gonfalone di S. Lucia. The state heritage catalog records the oratory as an eighteenth-century work of local builders, protected by the Liguria superintendency.