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St Paul’s Church in Poggio Mirteto: Old Sabine verses and Torresani frescoes
The Church of San Paolo is among the oldest buildings in Poggio Mirteto. It predates the village itself, starting out in life as a rural chapel, then becoming a hermitage around the year 1000 before being expanded in the 13th century. The exterior is austere: a stone portal, a modest rose window, and a bell tower (currently without bells) featuring mullioned and single-light windows. Conversely, the interior was once entirely frescoed; what remains today are occasional figurative and linguistic testimonies.
The Knight who speaks Sabine
On the counter-façade, a Crowned Knight on horseback meditates before a corpse in three stages of decomposition: the medieval theme of the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead. Between the horse's legs is an inscription in the Old Sabine dialect written in crude, irregular characters: "La vita me scura. La morte dura. Perdutu aio risu e gioia" ("Life is dark to me. Death is hard. I have lost laughter and joy"). This rare linguistic document was transcribed at the end of the 19th century by philologist Ernesto Monaci, and sits beside a Giottesque-school Deposition.
The Torresani Apse
In the apse, the Veronese painter Lorenzo Torresani executed one of the first documented works in the Sabina region: the Coronation of the Virgin, with angels playing the zither, lute, flutes, and violin, and below it, the Conversion of St Paul.
The final stop for the "Bianchi”
In 1399, the "Bianchi" (White Penitents) marched toward Rome for the Jubilee. Poggio Mirteto was one of their final stopping-off points. Three panels on the left wall tell their story.
