The Confraternity of Disciplinants

It rises almost in front of the parish church and its external appearance does not give the impression of being a small casket containing numerous and remarkable works of art.

It was raised at the beginning of the 17th century in Piazza San Sebastiano in Coldirodi on the initiative of the local Confraternita dei Disciplinanti, distinguished for having carried out a particularly intense activity during the 17th and 18th centuries, when it organised numerous pilgrimages to sanctuaries near and far, including that of Laghet in 1653, religious ceremonies and processions, charitably assisting its sick confreres and accompanying the deceased to the burial place.
The oratory, which has a refined fresco on the lunette of the façade and two small belfries on either side of the building, was immediately adorned with the collars with an artistic altar in polychrome marble and with the ancona Educazione della Vergine (Education of the Virgin), made by an unknown painter of the Genoese school of the 17th century and currently placed above the altar of the presbyterial area, in which the titular saint is depicted, portrayed together with St. Joachim and an unknown figure, while she teaches the Madonna child to read.

In 1668 the confreres had commissioned a fresco painted with St. Anne in the vault of the nave, while exactly one hundred years later the painter Maurizio Carrega painted the Four Evangelists in Glory in the vault of the presbytery in 1768 and was also the author of the paintings depicting St. John the Baptist and St. Bernard on either side of the high altar. 

Inside there is also an eighteenth-century work of Ligurian origin, consisting of a Wooden crucifix with phytomorphic golden apexes placed on the left side of the nave.

The oratory as a whole is very harmonious and well preserved despite dating back to the beginning of the 17th century.

(source text: Ernesto Porri - source images: Group archive and Web)