Following up on yesterday’s post about the Oratory of St Pellegrino in Bominaco, Italy, here are some pictures of the main church of the monastery to which the oratory was attached, which is dedicated to Our Lady’s Assumption. The church was built sometime around 1200 in the Romanesque style; subsequent interventions have not modified is basic character very much at all. (All images from this page of Wikimedia Commons, by Pietro, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The façade is a classically Romanesque nearly solid wall.
As in many Romanesque churches, the windows are quite small, making for a very dark interior.
The clerestory windows are also small and few. Originally, all of the white stone work seen here would have been frescoed over.
The abbot’s cathedra.
Bare remains of fresco work towards the back of the church; the walls of the nave would have been completely covered with such decorations. The individual sections were almost certainly commissioned as votive offerings by the faithful, rather than laid out in a specific program like those of the oratory we saw yesterday.
