Santa Maria Annunciata, Bienno, Roman Catholic church in Bienno, Italy.
Santa Maria Annunciata is a church from the 15th century in Bienno containing frescoes throughout its interior. The painted walls display religious scenes and figures spanning different periods of artistic development.
The church was built during the 15th century with major artistic works added by Giovanni Pietro da Cemmo and Girolamo Romani. These artists shaped the visual character of the interior significantly.
The church belonged to the community of Bienno, and its frescoes record the families who commissioned them: the vicinia, the village assembly, hired Romanino for the presbytery cycle in 1540 after the church regained from the curia of Brescia the right to administer the sacraments. The infant Simonino of Trento appears repeatedly with pincers and tongs, the instruments of his martyrdom.
The church stands in the centre of Bienno, in the spot called "in ortis" in the Middle Ages. The presbytery, where Romanino's frescoes are, is separated from the nave by an arch painted with ten Sibyls by Giovanni Pietro da Cemmo. On the right wall, just past the entrance, a staircase leads to the upper floor that once held the choir.
The two Romanino frescoes in the presbytery, painted in 1540, were his last work in Valcamonica after Pisogne and Breno. The altarpiece of the Annunciation by Giovanni Mauro della Rovere, called il Fiammenghino, was placed in 1634 over the back wall, cutting away part of Romanino's cycle; the fragments beside it are read as the Meeting of Anna and Joachim.
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