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Churches of Lugnano in Teverina

[image ALT: A detail of an exterior ledge on the church of S. Agostino in Lugnano in Teverina, Umbria (central Italy): from an upper molding of the stone ledge a small human head serves as a gargoyle; under the lowest molding, a nominally supporting corbel in the shape of a cow's head.]
Gargoyles don't have to be Gothic; this small head in the Romanesque style on the façade of S. Maria Assunta, dating to the 11c, serves the function nicely. The cow-headed corbel on the other hand surely can't be supporting much weight, and is mostly decorative. Two more photographs of the exterior of the church can be found onsite: the photo of the upper story of the façade in the index that follows, and an overall view of the building is found on the Churches of Umbria page; see the navigation bar below.
[image ALT: A small but very solid-looking stone church with a pitched roof. It is windowless on the long side we see, along a country road with two tall trees in the background; on the façade the door is flanked at about waist height by two square windows about 30 cm on a side, and above the door a round window not very much larger. A bell-tower no more than about one meter high completes the building. It is the church of the Maestà in Lugnano in Teverina, Umbria (central Italy).]
The Maestà
[image ALT: A very plain plastered two-story church on the side of a paved road. It has a small rectangular entrance door, a proportionately small round window some distance above it, and a blank pediment above that. It is the church of S. Antonio in Lugnano in Teverina, Umbria (central Italy).]
S. Antonio
[image ALT: A small ellipsoidal cupola, surmounted by a solid lantern topped by a ball with a cross, and below it a glimpse of what must be the upper story of a belfry. It belongs to the church of S. Francesco in Lugnano in Teverina, Umbria (central Italy).]
S. Francesco
[image ALT: The large and elaborate 16‑column Gothic tracery rose on the upper story of the façade of the church of Lugnano in Teverina; it is flanked by two thin bifora windows.]
S. Maria Assunta

Only an attempt at fairness, and the acute consciousness that a place cannot be reduced to its famous tourist attractions, has me collecting these churches on an apparent plane of equality, when the parish church of S. Maria Assunta is one of the most beautiful medieval buildings in all of Umbria; and as this site gets built, she will get several pages no doubt, to cover her architecture, her sculpture and her decoration — and her sister churches will almost certainly not: for one thing, they were closed during my visit to Lugnano (S. Francesco is actually a former church, now private condominiums) and the parish church, the pride of the town, with an interior well worth visiting, is open every day.

[image ALT: A square pavement, a little more than a meter on a side, consisting of two broad concentric lozenges with a circle in the center, and four smaller circles in the remaining corners. The spaces between the principal figures, and inside them, are filled with an intricate tesselation of contrasting small triangles, lozenges, and squares. It is one pane of the Cosmatesque pavement in the church of S. Maria Assunta in Lugnano in Teverina, Umbria (central Italy).]
Pending the complete site, a sample of the Cosmatesque pavement of S. Maria Assunta: recently restored, as the substitution of red brick for porphyry in the central rosette shows. A less narrowly detailed photo of part of the interior can be seen illustrating the July 22, 2000 entry of my diary.

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Site updated: 6 Mar 07

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