Santa Maria in Provenzano, Siena

Santa Maria in Provenzano, or the Insigne Collegiata di Santa Maria in Provenzano, is a late-Renaissance-Baroque style, Roman Catholic, collegiate church in Piazza Provenzano Salvani, in the Terza Camollia, just northeast of the basilica of San Francesco, in the city of Siena, region of Tuscany, Italy. This Marian shrine was built around a 14th-century terracotta icon of the Madonna, that had performed miracles. The Palio of Siena takes place on the day of veneration of this Marian devotion.

The church was consecrated on October 16, 1611 by the archbishop Camillo Borghesi. The translation of the image, which originally was in an aedicule on wall next to a house into the church on this day was painted by Taddeo Gregori, the painting is presently in the Sacristy of the Collegiata. The procession included the widowed former grand-duchess Cristina of Lorraine and the reigning Grand-Duchess Maria Maddalena d'Austria

A number of omens and events had fortified the faith in the power of the 14th-century icon. The rambling prophecies of Brandano, il pazzo di Cristo (the madman of Christ), who just before 1555 decreed that: Siena, I see your evils and cannot heal you, because God is too angry with you, Siena! ... Run the Signoria through the sieve, or it will go into the brothel! Siena! ... Send your daughters barefoot to do penance in Provenzano, because a great drowning flood nears... Senesi! Your well-being rests with Provenzano and our Majestic Queen who has guarded Siena, and will protect her forever Tradition holds that the lackluster faith of the Sienese led the Madonna to quit her protection, and thus to the ultimate subjugation of Siena by the emperor and his Florentine allies.

The Madonna di Provenzano terracotta was shattered, putatively this occurred by an either errant or impertinent shot by a Spanish soldier in the occupying army of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Supposedly the event caused a change on the soldier. He either died or repented from the event.

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