Chiesa di San Francesco

The red route which marks the monuments of Baroque Catania includes the Church of San Francesco e dell’Immacolata with its wide stairway and its sacristy enclosed by a balustarde ( circa 1850) on which there are statues of San Giuseppe da Copertino, Santa Chiara, Sant’Agata and Santa Bonaventura. The limestone façade is closed laterally by two quadrangular towers that give the building a pronounced vertical emphasis.
The history of this church is closely linked to the figure of the queen Eleanor of Anjou, wife of Frederick II of Aragon and sister of the Minorite Friar Saint Ludovic of Toulouse. A stone plaque marks the fact that the remains of the queen, who died in 1343, are kept there. In an anonymous eighteenth-century painting ( to the left on entering) the queen is depicted together with Saint Clair, founder of  the Clarisse order.
The interior of the church is spacious and bright and the works of artistic interest include ( in the right- hand nave) a statue of the Immacolata, attribuited to the Palermitan Bagnasco ( eighteenth century); the image of the immaculate virgin corresponds fully to Baroque iconography in which she was dressed in blue, mounted on the terrestrial globe with a half moon at her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. Above the first altar is Immacolata con San Francesco e le anime purganti by P.Liotta ( 1850-1912); on the following altar is San Giuseppe da Copertino in estasi by G. Rapisardi (1799-1859) ; while San Ludovico da Tolosa e Santa Bonaventura on the third altar is by G. Zacco ( 1786-1843). At the fifth altar there is an interesting tableau by an unknown 1400s artist depicting Sant’Antonio. At the end of the nave is the chapel with the Immacolata under a small dome.
The wide presbyterial area – covered by a fake dome with pendentives painted by Francesco Sozzi, a Palermitan painter, father of the more famous Olivio – has a beautiful 1500s altar at its centre; on the backdrop is a large fresco by F. Battaglia ( 1701-1708) depicting the Indulgenza della Porziuncola.
To the right of the altar is the organ on which the young Vincenzo Bellini used to practice. He was born in Palazzo Gravina – Cruyllas which is opposite the church. Bellini’s birthplace is now a museum housing manuscripts and other objects in memory of the great Catanese musician.
Along the left-hand nave there are three altars in coloured marble. At the second of these is a particularly interesting work, the Salita al Calvario ( 1541) by Jacopo Vignerio, recovered from the ruins of the 1693 earthquake; this is a copy of a famous work by Raphael known by the title Lo Spasimo di Sicilia , because it was created for the Palermitan Chiesa dello Spasimo. At the last two altars are the canvases,  Lo Sposalizio della Vergine , an eighteenth-century work by Gramignani Arezzi and a San Francesco received the Guarnaccia stigma ( 1770). At the end of the nave is the Crucifix chapel.

The “candelore” of Saint Agatha’s Feast

Six of the eleven “candelore” that parade during Saint Agatha’s feast are kept inside the San Francesco church. These are large votive candles offered to the saint by the various commercial guilds operating in the Catanese territory. Those here belong to:  the florists and gardeners, which follows a Venetian – Gothic style and is embellished with statues of  martyred saints and Catanese bishops; the delicatessen-keepers, in Art Nouveau; and the list is completed with the innkeepers, the pasta-makers, the fruiterers and the butchers. The traditional “candelore” procession is rendered even more fascinating by the typical dancing movement of the bearers, who transmit a waving movement to the column which is emphasized by the jingling of the decorations.



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