San Francesco.
Underrated. Very few visitors. Ignored by travel guides. This basically sums up the church of San Francesco in Brescia. I did not encounter any other visitors in the building and even the custodian had gone outside for a smoke. Meanwhile, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, as there is much interesting art to see in this thirteenth-century church. A tour of the building starts at the façade. Although it is a simple construction, it has an impressive rose window. Inside we stumble upon the remains of medieval frescoes and works of famous local painters, such as Girolamo Romani (ca. 1484-1566) and Alessandro Bonvicino (ca. 1498-1554), alternatively known as Romanino and Moretto. I tried to take as many photos as possible, but unfortunately at some point I exhausted the battery of my camera. I then took some more photos with my smartphone.
The church of San Francesco was built between 1254 and 1265, and frequently expanded in the centuries that followed. The large cloister next to the church (which was regretfully closed during my visit) for instance dates from 1394, while the aforementioned rose window was added when the nave was raised in the fifteenth century. In the French era – late eighteenth, early nineteenth century – the church was deconsecrated and the Franciscans were expelled from their convent. The church was later consecrated again and, starting in 1838, remodelled in the neoclassicist style by Rodolfo Vantini (1792-1856), the man who was also responsible for the dome of the Duomo Nuovo in Brescia. In 1926 the convent was given back to the Franciscans, who will this year no doubt celebrate the fact that they were allowed to return home one hundred years ago. During World War Two, the church was heavily damaged by an aerial bombardment on 2 March 1945. When it was restored in the post-war period, the choice was made to give the building back its medieval appearance. As a consequence, very little of Vantini’s neoclassicist interior survives.
San Francesco is a fairly dark church. Columns with Gothic pointed arches divide the interior into a nave and two aisles. Only the left aisle has proper chapels, but the right aisle does have altars with sometimes interesting art. It is also in the right aisle that we encounter the remnants of medieval frescoes. Once the entire interior of the church must have been covered in frescoes, and the remnants make clear that these were good-quality frescoes, although unfortunately we do not know the identity of the painters. The frescoes date from the fourteenth century and imitate the style of Giotto, the great Florentine master. Among other things we see an Entombment, with above it a gathering of various monks and laymen. Up another level is a remnant of what was once a Last Judgment. A bit further down the aisle we find more fourteenth-century frescoes, including a fresco of the Madonna and Child with Saints Anthony the Abbot and Antonius of Padova. The two saints introduce a nobleman with a sword on the hip to Jesus and Mary.
A passageway on the right side gives access to a small cloister, also known as the Chiostro della Madonnina. Regretfully not much has been preserved of the frescoes by the local painter Pietro Marone (1548-1603). I therefore quickly re-entered the church and came to the chapel to the right of the choir, the Cappella di San Pietro. The works from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that we find here are less interesting than the altarpiece, which is a panel painting of Saint Peter with two angels. The work still breathes the Byzantine style, flat and rigid, and it therefore should not come as a surprise that it dates from the thirteenth century. A bit more modern is a piece of fresco featuring a group of angels making music, attributed to Andrea Bembo, a fifteenth-century painter. More medieval work can be admired in the Cappella del Crocifisso on the left side. The large painted crucifix of the Suffering Christ (Christus Patiens) is dated to ca. 1310-1320.
On the left side we also find the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception. It was built in 1477, but the opulent decorations are Baroque and largely date from the eighteenth century. One of the most famous works in the church is the altarpiece of the high altar, the Pala di San Francesco di Brescia, painted around 1517 by Romanino. He depicted the Madonna and Child surrounded by Franciscan saints and also included the Franciscan who commissioned the work from Romanino, Francesco Sanson. Lastly, I would like to draw attention to the altar of San Girolamo on the right side, where we find an altarpiece by Moretto. His Saint Margaret of Antioch with Saints Jerome (Girolamo) and Franciscus of Assisi dates from 1530, as we may read on the ground before Saint Margaret (MDXXX).
