Oratorio di San Giovanni Battista

The Oratory of Saint John the Baptist in Urbino preserves a signed and dated fresco cycle by Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni. Completed in July 1416, the Crucifixion and Stories of the Baptist are major works of late-Gothic painting in the Marche.

Why it matters

The cycle preserves the artistic culture of Urbino before the city's Renaissance rebuilding. The Salimbeni brothers painted the Crucifixion and scenes from the life of John the Baptist for the confraternity dedicated to the saint. Their work is a significant example of late-Gothic narrative painting and survives in its original setting.

What to notice

The Crucifixion fills the apse with soldiers, mourners, horsemen and other onlookers gathered around the crosses. Along the nave walls, the Stories of the Baptist follow the saint's life from his parents' household through his preaching and imprisonment to his death. The scenes are densely detailed in costume, architecture and gesture. Above them, the polychrome timber ceiling is shaped like an overturned ship's hull. The brothers' signature and the date of July 1416 appear on the Crucifixion.

Context and history

The oratory was built for a lay confraternity on ground that had previously held a hospital. Its construction dates to between 1365 and the late fourteenth century. Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni came from San Severino Marche; Treccani places the Urbino cycle among the principal works of their partnership and compares its refinement with contemporary transalpine Gothic art. The historic centre's 1998 UNESCO inscription names Urbino's complex of oratories among the notable buildings within its Renaissance walls.