Oratorio di San Girolamo

San Girolamo is the confraternity oratory beside Sarzana's cathedral. An eighteenth-century Baroque rebuilding transformed an earlier religious hall into an octagonal interior with an elliptical dome.

Why it matters

The Confraternita di San Girolamo is documented from 1470. Its oratory recalls the role of lay brotherhoods in the city's devotional life, while the later rebuilding shows the adaptation of an older institution to Baroque architectural forms.

What to notice

The main axis beneath the dome crosses a shorter axis connecting the side altars. A painted glory of God among angels decorates the dome, while the principal altarpiece depicts the Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John and Mary Magdalene. The building's compact central plan is distinct from its earlier quadrangular arrangement.

Context and history

The brotherhood received land from the Dominicans for its fifteenth-century hall. In 1584 it was associated with the Roman Archconfraternity of the Holy Trinity. A glazed terracotta Saint Jerome in the Desert, attributed to the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia or Benedetto Buglioni, was transferred from the oratory to the cathedral in 1903. The processional Flagellation of Christ, attributed to Pietro Galleano and long associated with the oratory, later entered the Diocesan Museum's collection.