It is undoubtedly the masterpiece of Renaissance painting of the 'school' of Camerino by Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio, who is portrayed in the lunette above, with his head covered by a black felt cap, his beard little shaved and bright eyes turned. towards the spectator, called almost to be a witness of the representation.

In the lower part of the painting, in an articulated setting, there is the scene of the Annunciation: on the terracotta floor painted in perspective the archangel Gabriel is kneeling, just landed with his iridescent wings in front of the house, the precious damask of the robe embroidered with golden roses that slides from the shoulder, the lily that reaches out its buds. Maria seems not to have noticed the announcement. She is still immersed in reading the book that she holds with her beautiful hand against the prie-dieu: she has a very pure profile that seems almost embossed with a chisel and golden hair wrapped in a braid and held by a ribbon in the shape of a headband, which he discovers the spacious forehead. She is not intent on spinning linen or working with the spindle, but cultivates her otium in the intimacy of a study cluttered with little books placed on a shelf, in the prie-dieu compartment, as was the custom of the meditative life in the past, the prerogative only of men, of philosophers and humanists.

The background consists of a fascinating urban setting between buildings whose perspective escape is interrupted against a smooth ashlar wall, beyond which stands out - depicted in cut - a high tower, surmounted by a dome, flanked by some trees. In the crowded lunette, Jesus, dressed only in the loincloth, rises from the tomb, pouring copiously blood from the wounds of his hands and side; The Virgin and John the Evangelist lovingly take his hands. Higher up against the backdrop of a beautiful blue sky, the instruments of the passion stand out: the column, the whip, the sponge and the cross, boldly portrayed in foreshortening. On the sides of the sepulcher, two Franciscan saints whose strongly characterized faces seem to conceal a portrait intent: St. Francis, recognizable by the sore on his right hand, and St. Anthony of Padua.

The work symbolically summarizes the characteristics of Camerino's painting in the fifteenth century, full of ideas and perspective quotations, of references to the 'painting of light' of Florence in the early fifteenth century and to the experimental forge of Masaccio and Donatello. A painting that, however, remains intimate, thoughtful and deeply tied to the land that produced it and to some of its rough edges.

Great leader, capable administrator, and powerful patron, Julius Caesar dominated the splendid period of the Camerte renaissance. Having escaped the massacre of his family in 1434, he returned to Camerino in 1443 and ruled first together with his cousin Rudolph IV, then as the only lord. In 1451 he married Giovanna Malatesta, daughter of the great Sigismondo Pandolfo Di Rimini. He was in the service of the popes, from whom he obtained permission to transmit dominion to his heirs and established diplomatic relations with all the powerful of the time. He created around him a rich court frequented by humanists, promoted the arts, built the magnificent courtyard of his palace, the churches of Santa Chiara and the Annunziata and the hospital of Santa Maria della Pietà. Once the state was occupied by Cesare Borgia, son of Alexander VI, once again the Da Varano family was decimated: Julius Caesar and his sons were captured and killed. The old gentleman was strangled in 1502 in Pergola by the hand of Micheletto da Valenza.

The character is identifiable by the writing IULIUS Cesar engraved along the collar of the cuirass.

Originally the bust surmounted the main entrance of the ducal palace of Camerino, perhaps recessed in a niche as suggested by the rough workmanship of the nape. The lord of Camerino is represented truthfully in his features as an already elderly man, even if the image was perhaps sculpted after 1502, the year of his violent death, on the decision of his son Giovanni Maria da Varano, who in 1503 reconquered the state and from 1515 he became duke.

Archangel of Cola is the most exquisitely late Gothic representative among the Cameroonian painters. The relationship with Gentile da Fabriano, who in the twenties of the 1400s was the most famous painter in Italy, constitutes a fundamental node for understanding the artistic personality of Arcangelo. He arrived in Florence in 1420 and remained there until 1424, meeting a surprising fortune, obtaining important commissions, interrupted to rush to Rome in the service of Pope Martin V; in 1425 he returned to his homeland, where he probably died shortly after. The Virgin is seated in a large marble throne, which stands out on a gold background, architected between Gothic and Renaissance forms, finely carved on the sides with the presence of very thin twisted columns. At the base of the throne between the mantle of the Virgin and the angel on the left there are some cosmatesque inlaid decorations, customary among our painters.

The divine Child, half naked, tries to embrace the Mother with both hands, in an affectionate pose, ancient but still in vogue in the fifteenth century, as revealed by the Madonnas of Masolino and Masaccio, masters who conquered and shocked our painter.

One of the angels carries the offering of the vase, filled with flowers, granite and painted on gold; the other, caught still in flight, has exaggeratedly elongated hands, gathered to the chest.

The Bust of Pope Urban VIII of Camerino dates back to 1643, the year preceding that of his death, and was commissioned to the genius of Baroque art by the Municipality of Camerino, thanks to the intercession of Angelo Giori, who proposed the text for approval to the pontiff of the dedicatory inscription in plaster (which fell to the ground and shattered with the 2016 earthquake), placed below the niche where the bust was originally located, in the Representation Hall of the Town Hall.

A native of Torricchio di Pieve Torina, formerly a seminarian in Camerino, then called to Rome as tutor of the sons of Carlo Barberini, Angelo Giori was appointed by Urban VIII as chamber master of the pontiff. He joined the Camerte aristocracy together with his brother Prospero, between 1639 and 1643 he promoted the construction and decoration of the church of Santa Maria in Via. The personal acquaintance of Gian Lorenzo Bernini dates back to 1628, when he was commissioned to supervise the construction of the Baldacchino di San Pietro. Considering this personal frequentation of the artist, a wall drawing is attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, made in the summer residence of the Giori family in the locality of Maddalena di Muccia and also depicting the portrait of Urban VIII, according to what is attested by an inventory of 1712.

The two paintings were donated as an inheritance to the collegiate church of Santa Maria in Via by Cardinal Angelo Giori, (+1662), who not only erected at his expense, splendid and fragile, the temple of S. Maria in Via, but wanted to enrich it with apparatuses uncommon: in particular to the beautiful altarpieces he added, as a treasure of the Sanctuary, a picture gallery for the sacristies. Thus we read in the testament of Cardinal Angelo Giori left on January 2, 1655 in the Church of Santa Maria in via di Camerino: "the painting of San Giovanni Battista and S. Girolamo large in life, made by Monsù Valentino". They can be traced back to Valentin's artistic maturity when he painted for Cardinal Francesco Barberini or through his mediation. It is known in fact that the prelate Angelo Giori was very attached to the Barberini family; tutor of Francesco and Taddeo and secret waiter of Maffeo (who will be Pope Urban VIII in 1623) later became the secretary of the memorials and the superior for the work on his tomb, commissioned to Bernini since 1627. He was elected cardinal in 1644 becoming himself a collector and patron of artists.

One portrait represents St. John the Baptist, the other St. Jerome: the combination of St. John the Baptist - St. Jerome in Valentin's mind was perhaps not of a devotional character: the soft and almost feminine body of St. John the Baptist is to the old but still vigorous one of St. Jerome, how adolescence is to undone maturity, spring to autumn and - why not? - as the Forerunner is to the compiler of the 'Vulgate'.

The Saint John the Baptist that the artist poses in a declamatory gesture to communicate a feeling of noble grandeur, attenuated by the delicate placing of the other hand on the nape of the lamb, is made with loose brushstrokes and modeled with subtle glazes that give volume to the shapes (we look at the saint's bare knee). It is undoubtedly a poetic painting as denoted by the delicacy of the chromatic accords in the coat and in the complexions and above all in the intense and luminous face. The San Girolamo, set up according to the Caravaggesque tradition, is nevertheless conceived in the light of a more mature classicism which translates into a great composure and solemnity of the Doctor of the Church. It is rendered by the artist with a light pictorial material, spread through glazes that give transparency and relief to the figure silhouetted against the dark background.