FORMER CONVENT OF SAN FRANCESCO

THE HISTORY

The construction of the cloister that we see today must have taken place in a period between the end of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century. As Chiovelli reports, “in fact, it is certainly later than the base part of the bell tower, begun in 1506, since it obstructs a window on the eastern front of the bell tower with its perimeter walls. While he certainly had to predate the frescoes in the lunettes, painted by Francesco Nasini and aids, datable to the years next to 1645, the date of the pictorial cycle of the vaults and walls of the choir of the adjacent church, also done by Nasini. The reconstruction of the pillared cloister of the minor conventuals, as we still see it today, had to follow by a few decades that of the Ionic style columns of the Augustinian convent, begun before 1580, when Monsignor Antonio Viscontini “had ashlar stone covered all the walls that are around the cloister at his expense ”. The recent restoration works have also made it possible to discover that before this pillared cloister, in the same area as the Franciscan convent, a previous cloistered structure set on columns must have existed, also resting, like the current pillars, on a perimeter wall. From the observation of the remaining traces of this previous cloister, it can be inferred that the top of its roof must have been limited to reaching a lower level than the current one. In fact, in the attic of today’s cloistered roof, along the western portion of the north side of the church nave, you can see the original horizontal protective frame for the attachment of the cloister roof pitch. This frame appears to have been built, in local tuff, at the same time as the facing, in ashlars arranged in isometric rows, of the church. As regards the dating of the late medieval cloister, it must be considered that the original Romanesque church of Santa Maria in Borgo was granted to the Franciscans in 1255, and that they soon had to reconstruct it, given the state of ruin in which the church plant. The reconstruction had to proceed from the eastern apse area to the west, as usual. About halfway along the current nave, the work was interrupted, as is evident from the walls, still visible today, on the northern side and in the attic, and then continued shortly thereafter. The protective frame of the roof of the original cloister is visible right along the north wall of this western extension, datable, according to the mensiochronology of the wall faces, to the end of the 13th century. It can be deduced that the original cloister, coeval with the enlargement of the church, must also have been erected at the end of the thirteenth century. The discovery of the cavity of the cloister well, strongly decentralized near the northern side of the church and moved towards the west facade with respect to the center of the current cloister, seems to show how the medieval cloister should have been located in a north-west position with respect to the today’s area occupied by the current cloister with pillars. ” The extensive pictorial decoration work carried out for the monastic complex by Francesco Nasini, of which the small Vision of St. Anthony of Padua is exhibited, in the art gallery housed in the former connvento, was born, about a century and a half later, parallel to the destination of the convent as a place first of novitiate (1642), and then of professed, a role exercised between 1660-64, and then after 1673. With this the monastery returns to be a center of encounter and lively cultural exchange for the religious community , at the crossroads between Umbria Lazio and Tuscany. In 1645 the painter dates the imposing decorative cycle he performed in the presbytery of the church, while about thirty years later, in 1671, he initials and dates the fresco placed on the sides of the wooden crucifix kept in the same building. Within these chronological terms, he completed the frescoes in the convent entrance hall, some lunettes in the cloister, and paintings for the convent: the beautiful Sacred Conversation now in the church, and some canvases that the small size attest to were done for the friars’ cells. The commissioning of this vast work seems to be due to Father Giulio Leonardi, Provincial of the Friars Minor, if the acronym FILA, which occurs both in the frescoes and in the canvases, must be dissolved, as proposed by Father Marcello Bisconti, religious and scholar of the convent, in Frater Iulius Leonardi Aquipendi.lla of an ancient settlement of the Franciscan order along an important border station of the Via Francigena.

DESCRIPTION

To the side of the church, on the left, a door leads to the cloister of the former convent. On the left side of the church, placed in line between the north perimeter and the left wall of the church there is the bell tower, from the first half of the 16th century, whose tower has three bells, the oldest of which was cast in 1472 by the master campanaro Giovanni da Ferentino and put into operation in 1534. The cloister, with a rectangular plan, has 5 arches on the short sides and 7 on the long ones. A simple octagonal well is located near the fourth arch on the long side. The walls of the cloister of the convent have a cycle of lunettes frescoed with the stories of St. ‘they from Nasini. Between the external arches of the cloister the plasters retain two-tone graffiti, representing busts of saints, which have remained in the wall surfaces.

In February 2011, Mons. Lorenzo Chiarinelli inaugurated the restoration works of the cloister of San Francesco dei Minori Conventuali in Acquapendente. The design and construction management of the entire restoration of the cloister and the rooms of the former sacristy were carried out by the architects Marina Anna Laura Mengali and Renzo Chiovelli, with the intention, shared by the Municipal Administration that owns the property, to use the structure as a cultural center, given the presence, on the ground floor, of the picture gallery of the Civic Museum of the City inaugurated in February 2011.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agostini, Le chiese di Acquapendente, Acquapendente 1987;

Biondi P., Le origini del comune di Acquapendente e la Madonna del Fiore, Acquapendente 1966;

Costantini N., Memorie storiche di Acquapendente, Acquapendente 1982;

Lise G., Acquapendente. Storia. Arte. Figure. Tradizioni, Acquapendente 1971;

Chiovelli R. Restauro del chiostro del convento di San Francesco, in Acquapendente Notizie, gennaio/febbraio 2011.