The ancient altar of the chapel dedicated to San Gregorio Magno was privileged for the indulgences to be applied to the deceased (Bull of Pope Gregory XIII, 31 July 1593, as per information reported in the Casulli manuscript); marble, like the others of the Neapolitan school of the eighteenth century, presents in the center of the frontal the beautiful relief image of the Assumption, in memory of a chapel existing in the church since 1500 dedicated to her and for that, evidently, in a first moment commissioned.

 

The architectural elements that set the canvas are made of stucco in 1783 by the hand of local artisans.

 

The canvas depicting San Gregorio is admired for the airy compositional scheme in which the various characters are placed. Above, is the SS. Trinity, resting on dense clouds from which the heads of contemplating cherubs peep out. Between the Father and the Son, bare-chested and with the signs of martyrdom highlighted, is the emblematic radiant dove, which unifies, so to speak, in a symbiosis of divinity, the two figures indicating each other with a broad gesture of the left arm. Accompanied by a slight torsion of the bust, the movement of the heads of the Father and the Son takes place towards the outside, facing the figures of the Virgin and St. Gregory, arranged diagonally frontally, kneeling and suppliant. In the center, a large angel indicates with one arm the celestial world towards which a penitent with scapular and ecclesiastical tonsure is about to lift, placed among the others in the place of expiation, marginalized in the lowest part of the canvas.

 

A careful stylistic examination of this leads us to attribute it with some validity to the painter Andrea Miglionico or to his school. In fact, the typology of the Virgin's face, which is recurrent, seems to have been directly borrowed from the "Virgin of the Rosary" that we find in the Bari art gallery, where we also find the joined hands, and in the same location, as those of St. Gregory interceding, from the sumptuous papal cloak.

 

St. Gregory himself recalls the figure of the bishop of the canvas «The Madonna and the Bishop» that we see in Bari in the basilica of San Nicola;

The aforementioned typological characteristics in addition to the stylistic ones, such as the monumentality of the figures built with dense brushstrokes and popularizing in the attitude, lead us to date the canvas, in this case, around 1708-9, that is, before the realization of the larger ones of S. Teresa dei Maschi di Bari and our chapel of the SS. Sacrament.