The church stands on the edge of Cavagliano, a hamlet of Bellinzago, and is Romanesque in origin. In the past it was very likely the hamlet's parish church; today it serves the cemetery. The first mention is from 1193, in a deed selling to monks the small community that ran it; in the thirteenth century it passed to the monastic complex of Saints Felinus and Gratian of Arona, and with it to the diocese of Milan, which opened a long quarrel with Novara over the payment of tributes.
What to see
From outside it promises little: a gabled front, a single nave, forms of rustic plainness. The apse has kept its Romanesque dimensions, narrower than the hall, and on its outer wall you can see terracotta tiles with fifteenth-century floral decoration. The present structures date from that century, when the church passed with all the Cavagliano property to the Caccia family and was enlarged and raised: the nave was divided into three bays by pointed transverse arches resting on low pilasters, which carry the exposed roof beams, and a pointed triumphal arch joined it to the old apse.
Visiting
The reason to go in is inside. The nave walls carry the saints of popular devotion, the healers Sebastian and Roch and the blessed Panacea, the shepherd girl from the Valsesia killed by her stepmother. But the part worth the journey is the apse, painted by an unknown artist, a follower of Gaudenzio Ferrari, working in different shades of red: in the semi-dome God the Father wrapped in a cloud among musician angels, in the drum the Madonna surrounded by the Apostles with scrolls now illegible.
Our editors' tip
Look at the triumphal arch from the back of the nave. Along the top run the scenes of the Passion, with a Crucifixion at least four times the size of the others: Flagellation, Ascent to Calvary, Resurrection and Deposition stand around it as supporting players. It is the same effect as the frescoed screens of Franciscan churches, and the declared model is Gaudenzio's screen at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Varallo.
