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History Built from 1276 and, like the previous church on the site, built by the mendicant order of Augustinian Hermits and dedicated to the Apostle saints Philip and James. The church is known as the Eremitani after their adjoining monastery, which now houses the municipal art gallery and the Scrovegni chapel ticket office. Work was completed in 1306 with Fra Giovanni degli Eremitani's ceiling and façade. The Augustinians left following suppression by Napoleonic in 1806 . The church reopened as a parish church in 1808, with the complex becoming a military barracks, called the Gattamelata barracks. The church and former monastery were badly damaged by a stick of bombs on the 11th March 1944 carried out by the US 15th Air Force and targeting the railway and goods yard. Heavy damage saw the upper façade, the ceiling and parts of the apse end completely destroyed, including the Dotto and Ovetari chapels. Much restoration work followed, directed by Ferdinando Forlati. Exterior The façade was added in 1306, with the church consecrated in 1435. The loggia is later. The side entrance is known as the Door of the Months as it has four panels attached to its pillars by sculptor Niccolò Baroncelli from 1422, consisting of 12 reliefs depicting allegories of the months. Interior The nave Coming through the door in the façade the church presents huge rectangular vista free of columns and with banded red, white a yellow brick walls. The ribbed ceiling of 1306 is by Fra Giovanni degli Eremitani, using timbers from the old wooden ceiling left over after the construction of his new ceiling of the Palazzo della Ragione, given to him by a grateful city. A guidebook of the late 19th century (by Augustus J. C. Hare) reports the the ceiling was at that time painted blue and white, spoiling 'what would otherwise be a striking and beautiful building'. ![]() Further along on the left are two large Nanto-stone architectural and polychrome terracotta sculptural altarpieces. The first is called the Dossale della Madonna and the five figures may be the work of Andrea Riccio; the other is the Dossale di San Nicola da Tolentino, with three figures by Domenico Boccalaro. Along the right hand side are four small chapels, the first one is the chapel of the Tebaldo Cortellieri who died in 1370, dedicated to Saint Augustine. It was redecorated in the 17th century but still contains traces of frescos by Giusto de' Menabuoi from around 1370, his first work in Padua, depicting Saint Augustine with the Virtues and the Liberal Arts. The chapel was commissioned by Traversina, the mother of Tebaldo who had been employed by Francesco (il Vecchio) Carrara as a judge and diplomat. The second chapel is dedicated to Saint Anthony Abbot and features very damaged frescoes by Guariento, the Paduan painter who also frescoed the presbytry here. In the forth there's a Head of Christ by him (?) on the underside of the arch, all that remains of a Flagellation, and there's a Virgin and Child Enthroned over the altar by Altichiero. The east end ![]() The Giottesque frescoes in The Presbytery (see photo below right and detail of Santa Giustina nearer right) are by Guariento di Arpo, a Paduan painter who became a kind of court artist to the Carrara, going on to provide panel paintings and frescoes for the Carrara Palace. He has other frescoes here, and some painted on the wall around the tomb of Doge Giovanni Dolfin in San Zanipolo in Venice, and the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge's Palace c.1365, the first time a painter not in the Venetian Painter's Guild had been given such a prestigious commission. This last work, including a large Paradise, were seriously damaged in the 1577 fire but discovered in 1903 under Tintoretto's Paradiso. The left wall here in the apse has his four panels showing Scenes from the Life of Saint Philip and two (at the bottom) Scenes from the Life of Saint Augustine. Below the narrative paintings are allegorical personifications of The Seven Planets and The Seven Ages of Man. The scenes on the right wall and vault were also destroyed in the bombing. They included a Christ Enthroned with Saints and scenes from the Lives of Saints James the Less and Philip, and have now been replaced with Guariento's earlier Coronation of the Virgin (see below) and his Portraits of Ubertino and Jacopo da Carrara of 1351, three detached fresco f ![]() To the left of the presbytery is the Sanguinacci family chapel decorated on the right wall by Giusto de' Manabuoi in 1373 (so an early work) with a Virgin and Child, Saints and Donor. The donor might be the German soldier Heinrich Spisser, who died in September 1373 in the employ of Francesco il Vecchio Carrara. (But some sources say that this Giusto-decorated chapel was destroyed in the 1944 bombing.) Over this fresco is another, a slightly earlier (1340s) Virgin and Saints by the anonymous Maestro del Coro Scrovegni. The two chapels to the right of the presbytery are the Ovetari and Dotto Chapels - see below. ![]() Lost art Very many damaged fragments of a fresco scheme of scenes from the Life of Christ (of the early 14th century) for a chapel of the cloister here by Pietro and Guiliano da Rimini are now in the room with the Giotto Crucifix in the Civic Museum next door. There's also a damaged fragment of a fresco of Saint Augustine by an anonymous artist from the Veneto in the same museum. A plaster cast of a relief showing the Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic, Peter Martyr, John the Baptist and James the Greater is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The terracotta original (the Pala Ovetari) from 1448/50, by Giovanni di Francesco da Pisa, with traces of paint and gilding, is still in the Ovetari Chapel here, but following the 1944 bombing the cast is in better condition. A short sad story On Christmas Eve 1585 the body of Vittoria Accorambuoni, the beautiful niece of Pope Sixtus V, lay in state in this church, with the body of Flaminio, her younger brother. They had been murdered the day before by Prince Luigi Orsini. An angry mob of Paduans later besieged the Prince's palace and, having forced him to surrender, he was strangled in prison. Opening times Monday - Friday: 7.30 - 12.30 & 3.30-7.00 Saturday, Sunday and Holidays: 9.00 - 12.30 & 4.00-8.00 |
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The Ovetari and
Dotto
Chapels |
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The original
contract, signed by Mantagna's brother because the boy was only 17 and hence
underage, also included Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d'Alemagna from
Venice and the Paduan sculptor Nicolo Pizolò, who was Mantegna's friend and
partner and had been Donatello's assistant. The Venetian team had been commissioned to
fresco the right wall, main cross vault and entrance arch of this, the funerary chapel of notary Antonio Ovetari,
an active patron at the
Santo, by his
widow Imperatrice Forzaté. But, after the death of Giovanni d'Alemagna in
1450,
Vivarini quit, maybe because he was less skilled in fresco technique than
Giovanni, by which time only the vault, with the Evangelists, had
been completed (see the black and white photo of the vault taken before
destruction above). Three more painters were employed, from
Emilia-Romagna and the Marches - Ansuino da Forli, Giovanni di Girolamo da
Camerino
and Bono da Ferrara, but following the death of Pizzolo in 1454, from wounds
sustained during a quarrel, they quit too. Bona da Ferrara, a
pupil of Pisanello, did paint and sign a fresco of
Saint Christopher Bearing the Christ Child for the Ovetari Chapel
in 1451, but it too was destroyed in 1944. A black and white photo (see
left) is all that remains. So Mantegna ended up painting most of the chapel,
between 1448 and 1457. His frescoes
have been partially reconstructed and the photograph (see right) of the right-hand wall of the chapel, depicting The Life of
Saint Christopher, shows the painted restored sections and the monochrome
areas taken from old photographs. The two panels at the bottom survived
through having been removed to Venice decades before the bombing to protect them
from damp. The coloured photograph (see above right) is a pre-war image.
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