Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo (San Michele di Pagana)

On a rocky inlet between Rapallo and Santa Margherita Ligure, the medieval parish church of San Michele di Pagana preserves an important altarpiece by Anthony van Dyck among paintings associated with the region's artistic history. The small fishing settlement's church stands above a bay with a long record of maritime life.

Why it matters

Two inscriptions by the doorway date the church's foundation to 1133. The parish served the borgo marinaro of San Michele di Pagana for centuries, and finds of amphorae offshore point to Roman-era seafaring in the bay. The church's fame rests above all on the Crucifixion painted by Van Dyck for local donor Francesco Orero during the artist's Italian years. The panel is dated to 1627 and depicts Orero kneeling before the Crucified Christ with Saints Francis and Bernard.

What to notice

The single-nave interior has three altars on each side, each crowned by a large painting. Van Dyck's composition brings the dying Christ together with the kneeling donor and the two saints, in a palette shaped by the artist's study of Titian. Two fifteenth-century Flemish panels were donated by the Spinola family. Other canvases are attributed to Guido Reni, Luca Giordano and Guercino. In the apse are Santino Fortunato Tagliafichi's Noli me tangere and Bernardo Castello's San Michele psicopompo. Francesco Baracca made the white Carrara marble high altar with polychrome inlays; a Maragliano crucifix and an eighteenth-century carved walnut choir complete the interior. The rose window, given by the Figari family in the 1950s, depicts the apparition of the Madonna di Montallegro.

Context and history

Although the foundation inscriptions date the church to 1133, its present form reflects later changes, including alterations in the early seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. A fire damaged the sacristy and its furnishings in 1872. The Spinola family brought canvases from Genoese religious houses suppressed in the early nineteenth century and supported an early restoration of the Van Dyck. The village's coastal history is also visible in the nearby Saracen tower, decided by the Genoese Senate in 1562, and the Castello di Punta Pagana, built in 1625. The church's feast of St Michael on 29 September is associated with a regatta of Ligurian gozzi.