St. CATHERINE OF SIENA

S. CATERINA DA SIENA

Via Giulia 152

1526 maybe by Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481/1536) for Cardinal Giovanni Piccolomini and  the banker Agostino Chigi (1466/1520) on the Castrum Senense (Siena's camp), the area where since the Middle Ages the Sienese carried out their business activities

Rebuilt 1766/75 by Paolo Posi (1708/76) with the help, as foremen, of Luca Sardi and Giuseppe Sardi (1680/1753)

Oval panels in stucco on the FAÇADE “Seno and Aschio with the wolf and the writing S.P.Q.S.” 1770 by Wander Elsken

According to legend, Seno and Aschio were the twin sons of Remus who, having escaped from their uncle Romulus who wanted to kill them as well as he did with their father, took refuge in Tuscany, where Seno would found the city of Siena and Aschio the town of Asciano

Marble decorations on the façade (heraldic shield, flaming pots) and stoups inside the church by Francesco Antonio Franzoni (1734/1818)

It is the regional church of the Sienese people

“The church stands as one of the most interesting monuments produced by the Roman artistic culture of the late-eighteenth-century during the transition from the last stage of the Baroque to that of the nascent Neoclassicism. A formal unity of intent involves both the architectural structure and the pictorial, from the stuccos to the church vestments, that would complement a thematic decorative unity almost entirely devoted to the glorification of the Sienese saint” (Federica Papi)

VAULT

“Angel Musicians” by Ermenegildo Costantini (1731/91)

“The collaboration of Costantini with Kuntz, which was renewed later also in the church of St. Stanislaus of the Polish people, shows an affinity of style between the two artists which is indicative of the formal scope in which Costantini operated. Kuntz is in fact the painter who 'definitively concluded the Roman rococo' (Schleier). So, while working in St. Catherine alongside artists such as Lapis, Monosilio, Corvi, La Piccola, transitional painters who were making their first neoclassical experiences, Costantini did not draw from this closeness any incentive for a formal updating of his style, remaining an isolated representative of a decorative language substantiated by the Rococo grace” (Marina Coccia - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

Monochrome figures giving the optical illusion to hold the frames by the Polish Tadeusz Kuntze aka Taddeo il Polacco (1732/93)

NAVE

Stucco decorations 1770 by Wander Elsken

OVAL PANELS ON THE WALLS

The first on the right “St. Catherine receiving the Stigmata” is by Giovanni Sorbi (1695/about 1764), the one in front “Christ gives his heart to St. Catherine” is by Tommaso Maria Conca (1734/1822)

Above the confessionals on the right “Christ gives to St. Catherine a pectoral cross” and on the left “St. Catherine communicated by Christ” by Etienne Parrocel (1696/1774)

Above the doors by the presbytery, on the right “St. Catherine as a young girl in prayer” and on the left “St. Catherine's renunciation of the golden crown for that of thorns given to her by Christ” by the classicist painter from Bologna Pietro Angeletti (about 1737/98)

1^st CHAPEL ON THE RIGHT

Altarpiece “Preaching of St. Bernardino” about 1770 by Salvatore Monosilio (active from 1744/d. 1776)

2^nd CHAPEL ON THE RIGHT

Altarpiece “Apparition of Christ to the Blessed Bernardo Tolomei” 1774/76 by Niccolò La Piccola (1727/90)

“He reveals, in the search for an intense luministic weft, his openness towards the new chromatic experimentation by Domenico Corvi” (Federica Papi)

PRESBYTERY

On the high altar “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” 1768/69 by Gaetano Lapis (1706/76), a pupil of Sebastiano Conca

Oval panels on the doors of the presbytery on the right “Christ carrying the Cross appears to St. Catherine in penance” and on the left “Christ shows to St. Catherine the wound in his side” 1768/69 also by Gaetano Lapis

“These works are carried out in a language that, filtered through the work of Maratta, refers to the seventeenth-century Bolognese classicism, hence the nickname 'Carraccetto' given to the painter” (Federica Papi)

APSE

“St. Catherine welcomes Gregory XI Beaufort (1370/78) on his return to Rome from Avignon on January 17th, 1377” 1773 by Laurent Pécheux (1729/1821)

2^nd CHAPEL ON THE LEFT

Altarpiece”Assumption” 1768/70 by Tommaso Maria Conca (1734/1822) who was a pupil of his uncle, the great Sebastiano Conca

1^st CHAPEL ON THE LEFT

Altarpiece “Gregory VII (1073/85) puts out the fire set by the troops of Henry IV in the Vatican” 1769/70 by Domenico Corvi (1721/1803) from Viterbo

“For this painting the customary reference is to the work with the same subject painted by Raphael in the Stanze. It appears built on the recurring scheme of the diagonals and on the strong chiaroscuro contrasts that accentuate the dynamism of composition” (Federica Papi)

On the left wall “Memorial plaque with bust of the architect Paolo Posi” 1778 by his pupil Giuseppe Palazzi

SACRISTY

Vault “Angels with liturgical objects” by the Polish Tadeusz Kuntze aka Taddeo il Polacco (1732/93)

ORATORIO

“Resurrection of Jesus” about 1530 by Girolamo Genga (about 1476/1551). It was formerly on the high altar of the previous church built by Peruzzi

“View of Rome” in the antechamber and decorations with “Fake windows with views” by G.B. Marchetti

“Plaster Statue of St. Catherine” 1662 by Ercole Ferrata (1610/86). It was the prototype for the statue to the Chapel of the Vow in the Duomo of Siena

ORATORY OF St. CATHERINE OF SIENA

ORATORIO DI S. CATERINA DA SIENA

Piazza di S. Chiara 14

Also known as CHAPEL OF THE TRANSIT S. CATHERINE OF SIENA

It is the house where St. Catherine of Siena died on April 29, 1380, only 33 years old

The companions of St. Catherine, after her death, founded in the house the first community of the Sisters of Penance of St. Dominic

In 1480, for the centenary of her death, Antonio Aquili aka Antoniazzo Romano (about 1435-40/1508) and the assistants in his workshop frescoed the chapel with “St. Catherine of Siena with Saints”

The frescoes were removed in 1637 and divided between the Chamber of St. Catherine at the Minerva and the Convent of St. Catherine of Siena at Magnanapoli

“Today we can only imagine what the room would have looked like in the fifteenth century (...): scenes and isolated figures of saints arranged with bright blue skies in the background within frames that gave the illusion of opening to the outside, according to the criteria of the painting fashion of the late fifteenth century. (...) The choice of holy men and women of the cycle is explained in the biography itself of Catherine. The saint from Siena in fact lived a life both for charity and for militant political action shared with other saints in the cycle such as Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Alexandria, kept today at Magnanapoli. In the choice for the other saints the dominant theme is the aspiration to a pattern of life of penance and eremitic asceticism and it is clear therefore the thin thread that ties the cycle: not only celebratory - Catherine saint among saints - but also an allusion to an active commitment in the Church and to a life of poverty” (Anna Cavallaro)

In 1573 the nuns moved into their new convent in S. Catherine at Magnanapoli

St. Catherine of Siena is the patron saint of Italy and Europe and is the only saint with St. Francis of Assisi and St. Pio of Pietrelcina to whom the Catholic Church has officially recognized the authenticity of the stigmata

She was buried in the nearby church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, but her head was severed in 1381 at the behest of Pope Urban VI (1378/89) and taken to the Basilica of St. Dominic in Siena where it is also kept a hand thumb with which the saint's blessing to Italy and Europe is given each year on her feast day

A foot of St. Catherine is preserved in the Church of Sts. John and Paul in Venice while a rib and a scapula are in the Shrine of St. Catherine in Astenet in Belgium

In 1579 the ORATORY was enlarged by Francesco Capriani aka Francesco da Volterra (1535/94) for the College of the Neophytes

It was renovated in the years 1638/39 for the Confraternity of the Annunciation, whose activity was to adopt poor girls

The wooden CEILING is the original one of the fourteenth century

On the WALLS seventeenth-century paintings with “Stories from the life of St. Catherine”

First painting on the left “Return to Rome of Gregory XI” 1980 Arcangelo Longo

ALTAR

“St. Catherine” a late work by Giuseppe Cesari aka Cavalier d'Arpino (1568/1640)

Beneath the altar relics of St. John the Martyr

In the two side arches sarcophagi made out of jasper with the relics of Sts. Euraclio and Esuperanzia

The building is part of the 1874 TEATRO ROSSINI (Rossini Theatre) by Virginio Vespignani (1808/82)