1942/50 Giovanni Muzio (1893/1982) who was also the architect
of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth
It was
built on the Gelsomino (Jasmine) Hill, a southwest extension of the Vatican
Hill
Behind the
church was also built the CURIA DEI MINORI FRANCESCANI (Headquarters of the
Minor Friars) a building in the shape of the letter C facing the garden
It is one
of the finest examples of sacred architecture of the postwar period
characterized by a sober external monumentality and a striking internal
decorative richness
“Dissociating
from the late nineteenth-century eclecticism, from Art Nouveau and from the
emerging rationalism, Giovanni Muzio's research comes close to the artistic
currents of metaphysical painting and the so called 'Novecento' (Twentieth
Century) style” (Enciclopedia Treccani)
“The church
is located at the top of the composition created by Muzio, preceded by a large
treed area, bordered by lower buildings with which it seems to reach out
towards the city. The masses of brick-coated walls are barely marked by divisions
that do not affect the grandeur. The dome with octagonal base rises with
pyramidal shape; the entrance is made out of an arch framed by a double row of
columns of Carrara marble” (Raffaella Catini - Dizionario Biografico degli
Italiani Treccani)
“Stations of the
Cross”
by Domenico Mastroianni (1876/1962)
RIGHT ALTAR
Bronze
relief “St. Francis
stigmatized” by Ivan Mestrovic (1883/1962)
“Virgin Mary Queen
enthroned between saints, prophets, angels and symbols of the Evangelists” by Giorgio
Quaroni (1907 /60), Adriano Alessandrini
and Ugo Chyurlia
Huge fresco
“The Apotheosis of
the Franciscan Order” by Gisberto Ceracchini
(1889/1982)
“In Rome he
attended a drawing school for blue-collar workers, but he should be regarded,
in fact, as self-taught. His works appeared in exhibitions of the 'Novecento'
(Twentieth Century) style, and in the most important exhibitions of Italian
art. (...) From his first exhibited work (Discord, 1921) to the last ones,
Ceracchini, widely criticized, did not change the substance of his style that
arises on the revaluation of the taste for the so called 'primitive' (early
renaissance) painters, which took place at the beginning of the twentieth
century, and for those formal features (design and color) historically
characteristic of that period. His language, somewhat naive, was a 'sermo
rusticus' (rustic vocabulary), which does not mean at all uneducated or
instinctive” (Virgilio Guzzi - Enciclopedia Treccani)
Painting “Elizabeth of Hungary” and “Blessed Giovanni
Forest”
by Francesco Avenali
LEFT ALTAR
Marble
relief “Our Lady Mediatrix” by Francesco Nagni (1897/1977)
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