Santa Maria in Portico
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Santa Maria in Campitelli or Santa Maria in Portico, church dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the Piazza di Campitelli, Rome.
The church contains a 25cm-high icon of the Virgin Mary dated by style and dendrochronology to the 11th century, though it had previously been claimed by tradition to have appeared miraculously in 524 at the table of Galla, a Roman woman who was helping the poor, and then carried in processions since 590. It was previously housed in the now-demolished Oratory of Santa Gala, sited at what is now the piazza's far end near the Porticus Octaviae (giving the church and icon its name of 'Madonna of the Portico').
The icon was believed to have saved the city from plague in 1656 (or 1658), when it was carried in procession through the streets. On account of this, the earlier church on this site was replaced by Pope Alexander VII between 1659 and 1667 with the present one, designed by Carlo Rainaldi in the late Baroque style.
The present church has a travertine façade with large columns against (but not attached to) it, thus giving it strong vertical lines. The interior shrine of Our Lady was created to contain the icon at the same date (to a design by the Maltese artist Melchior Cafà, or by Giovanni Antonio de Rossi), with a 'gloria' (an architectural use of light for dramatic effect as used in Bernini's statue of St Peter in the Basilica of St Peter of 1666). There is a staircase behind the 'gloria' allowing a better view of the icon, open by request only.
Works by Sebastiano Conca and Il Baciccia, and a portrait of Saint Anne by Luca Giordano, can be seen in the side chapels. Cardinal Pacca is interred in the church. Since the time of the Old Pretender, the church has been a centre of devotion for the conversion of England.
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