+6 Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Uncovering the Past
Halfway down Via Giuseppe Mazzini sits the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola, a small, unassuming church lost within the multitude of bright doorways. The church holds more than four hundred years’ worth of Urbino’s history, and is home to the Confraternita del Corpus Domini.
The church’s main hall, though small, is full of religious treasures. Low wooden pews line either side of the room, drawing the eye to an altar framed by a hanging censer on each side. Stretching across the entire ceiling are oval frescoes, the figure of San Francesco di Paola only just visible through the dust and faded paint. Each side wall contains three niches for statues, which stretch almost to the ceiling. The statues are of bishops and saints, colored to resemble stone, with halos and staves painted an antique gold. The center statue on the right is entirely obscured by scaffolding, displacing the symmetry of the church interior.
In the humble adjoining office, Giuseppe Cucco, the head, or prior, of the confraternity, sits and sifts through the church archives. The shelves behind him hold boxes upon boxes of scrolls, parchments, and old leather-bound tomes, some of which date back to the 1200s. He flips through them slowly, carefully, running fingers over the looping script and ink blotches, digesting everything, however trivial. Sometimes, he stops and crinkles his salt-and-pepper eyebrows. It can take Cucco up to thirty minutes to decipher a single word, but he always forges on.
“If we’re able to let them view it for as long as possible, why close the church?” says Matteo Bacchiocca.
“When I started researching these records, my curiosity made me dig deeper every single time,” says Cucco. “At one point, I had so much information that I said, ‘Let’s write a book, so that everybody will know what I know.’”
In total, the prior spent upwards of a year gathering data from the archives and poring through old documents to chronicle the history of the confraternity and the church. The research began as a necessity to bring about the restoration of the church and the statues, frescoes, and artwork within it, but what began as an obligation soon became a labor of love and personal interest.
The book, titled La Confraternita del Corpus Domini di Urbino: Scrigno di arte storia e umanita, or “The Confraternity of Corpus Domini of Urbino: a trove of art, history and humanities,” details Cucco’s findings in the church archives, including the history of the construction of the church, restorations and maintenance, and the artwork associated with the building.
The book also chronicles the history of the confraternity, founded in 1340 and once a well-known brotherhood with members such as artist Raffaello and his father, Giovanni Santi. The confraternity was funded by wealthy patrons, and used this money to pay the dowries of poor girls so that they could get married. Today, donations largely benefit those affected by economic hardship, including students who have trouble paying for an education. Although the confraternity plays a smaller role in today’s society, they hold mass weekly on Wednesday nights.
The Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola was ceded to the confraternity in 1708, when their old headquarters in the nearby piazza was demolished to make way for the Collegio Raffaello. Since then, generations of priors have made changes to the church interior by repainting the statues and architectural elements, either to fit the aesthetic sensibilities of the time, or to save the walls of the church from the humid Urbino climate.
Cucco, however, intends to break with this tradition. He has employed restorers to return all six statues in the church to their original condition, by peeling off the layers of paint to uncover the past.
—
It is 10 a.m. at the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola, and restoration of a statue is under way. The pews are arranged haphazardly, with one set directly in the middle of the floor to create a barrier. Behind this barrier, Isidoro and Matteo Bacchiocca, a father-son art restorer duo, have set up shop atop the two-story metal scaffolding. The structure is draped in white plastic, shrouding the statue of San Filippo Neri, the last of six to be restored.
Isidoro, the father, uses a scalpel to chip relentlessly at the paint, which can be five or six layers thick. He is white-haired, bearded, and bespectacled, and wears a long white lab coat. His son, Matteo, is dressed more casually, his brown hair and beard contrasting with his father’s features. He takes a cotton swab soaked in solvent, and carefully swipes it along the curve of a decorative border to reveal a flash of gold from underneath. It’s quiet, focused work, disturbed only by the scratch of scalpels and faint rustling of paint chips falling to the floor below.
Removing the old paint may be a tedious process, but it certainly doesn’t compare to trying to fix previous restorers’ efforts.
“The most difficult part is getting rid of the previous parts that were badly done,” explains Matteo. “When the other restorers used materials that weren’t right for the job to create new parts of the statue, we have to get rid of them and create a new part that looks good with the whole.”
He motions towards the restored statue on the left, which depicts San Crescentino, the patron saint of Urbino, squashing a morose-looking dragon underfoot.
“For example, the tail of the dragon isn’t entirely original; there are some parts that were made with chalk, and we had to create continuity by fixing some sections,” says Matteo.
The humid Urbino weather also affects how the statues have aged. Isidoro points out the condensation forming on the floor of the church, just inside the inner door. Apparently, the situation used to be even worse. Water used to flow beneath the church’s foundation, and had to be drained to create a suitable environment for the old statues and artwork.
The statues depict local religious figures such as Beato Mainardi di Urbino, a famous 11th century abbot. Each of the six is constructed with an iron core that is covered in plaster, and then painted to look like terracotta or marble. The moisture in the church has warped and rusted the cores, as in the case of San Crescentino’s dragon’s tail, and cracked the outer layer of plaster. Cucco is entirely familiar with this phenomenon; in fact, he keeps the fragments of rusted cores in a plastic cup in the back room of the church.
At night, pedestrians can step up to the glass pane and see the artwork and frescoes of the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola, as well as the scaffolding hiding the last statue to be restored.
Luckily for the Bacchioccas, their current project appears less work-intensive. The statue of San Filippo Neri primarily requires the removal of layers of accumulated paint. Matteo points out the segments that have been restored.
“On this side [of the statue], you can feel the flavor of the original, and you can see all the little scratches,” he says. “It feels antique. On the other side, you can see all the new paint.”
Matteo laughs, gesturing at the contrasting textures. “In short, this,” he points at the unrestored part, “is ugly.” He delicately brushes some plaster dust off a freshly cleaned scroll on the statue, and taps it with the tool. “And this is beautiful.”
According to Isidoro, the church represents the only example of its style in Urbino. After having been rebuilt in the 1600s atop the ruins of an older church, it has largely retained the aesthetics of its time. While other buildings like the nearby Oratorio di Santa Croce were built during the same period, they have undergone changes since.
However, the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola has some commonalities with another building in Urbino. Four of the statues in the church were created by artist Marcello Sparti, who was also responsible for creating some of the statues inside the city’s cathedral. These statues are the only example of Sparti’s work in Urbino, as he worked mainly in Genoa and Siena.
The Bacchioccas have been restoring the statues in the church since 2017, but the end is not in sight. They estimate that will take at least four more years to strip layers of paint from the gilded balcony, polish the frescoes on the ceiling, and restore the front of the church.
“When someone comes in in the future–after the restoration—the atmosphere will be important,” says Matteo. “The tourists that come into this church should experience the same feelings that believers in the past would, when entering for the first time.”
Cucco agrees with the restorers, noting that his personal approach is quite different to those of priors past.
“I just want to restore [the church] to how it was at the beginning,” he says.
He gestures at the statue of San Filippo Neri, where a cherub rests on the saint’s foot, carrying an open book. Cucco highlights a corner of the page where Isidoro and Matteo have done tests to show the difference in color of the original (demarcated neatly with a dotted line) and the paint on top.
“Beati qui ambulant in lege domini–blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord,” reads Cucco, in halting Latin.
The phrase is written over the new coats of paint, which still partially obscure the book. Different letters, however, emerge from the corner that the Bacchioccas have marked. It’s enough to confirm that the two inscriptions are different, but not enough to ascertain what the original means.
For all his digging, even Cucco can’t crack the mystery of the hidden phrase.
“I’m curious too,” he admits with a smile.
Although five statues have already been restored, many such mysteries remain within the church. The balcony above the door is gray, but streaked with two bright flashes of gold, where Isidoro and Matteo have done tests to strip away the new paint. The frescoes on the ceiling are dusty and faded with age. Only time–and the Bacchioccas’ efforts–will reveal all.
—
The interior of the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola lies behind two doors, the first of which is solid wood. The second door, however, is glass, which allows tourists to peek in and those within to see the street outside. From his perch on the scaffolding, Matteo spies an important teaching opportunity on the street outside. There’s a crowd of young children led by two teachers who are passing by, and the restorer hurries to unlock the door and usher them inside the church, his movements animated and eyes flashing with excitement.
Onlookers line the stairs of the ducal palace, cheering and raining handfuls of confetti down on the group. As they near the main plaza, there is applause and a crescendo of chatter. It appears that the entire city of Urbino has turned up to celebrate.
The children cluster around Matteo, staring in quiet awe at the small space that seems gigantic to them. The teachers lurk near the back of the church, ceding their responsibility momentarily to the restorer as he tells the group about the history of the church and the nature of his profession. Already, some of them are growing restless.
“How much do you earn?”
One of the boys in the group grins cheekily up at Matteo, and there is a smattering of laughter. The restorer smoothly avoids the question, ending his brief lecture to let the fidgety children resume their day.
For Matteo, it’s important for the younger generation to familiarize themselves with history and art by entering his place of work whenever possible.
“After all,” he says, “this is an important piece of history. If it’s supposed to be available to the world and humanity, you shouldn’t deprive them of being able to come and take a look. If we’re able to let them view it for as long as possible, why close the church?”
This is a subtle jab at the local tourist attraction, the Duomo di Urbino. The famous cathedral has been closed to visitors while it is being rebuilt after the earthquake that hit Urbino in August of 2016.
That’s why Cucco has installed a motion-activated light above the inner door that comes on at night. The decision was made by the confraternity a year ago, some time after the restorers first began their quest to restore the church.
—
Mass is held at the little church on Wednesday nights, beginning at 7:15 on the dot. Inside, the right side of the pews is blocked off by the scaffolding around San Filippo Neri. People are sitting slumped in pews and plastic chairs on the left side of the room. Silence permeates the small space. A bird trills hesitantly from outside, before the congregation chimes in.
They take turns reading from a prayer book. A girl in a red puffer jacket takes the pulpit, her voice high and tremulous. However, as she reads, her tone becomes steadier. When she pauses at a break, the congregation’s voices swell around her in song, a chorus with various timbres of the old and young, male and female: Hallelujah!
The girl in red is Lucia Marchetti, an education student at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. In a congregation dominated by older members, she stands out. According to Marchetti, much of Italy’s youth are not religious, since bible study classes are boring and not relatable to the younger generation. She found her way to religion, however, through community. Marchetti attends mass daily, either here in Urbino, or in her hometown of Rimini, but most of the time with friends.
Domenico Campogiani is also at mass that Wednesday night, and belongs to the older crowd. Even though he wasn’t born in Urbino, he’s lived in the city since 1972 and considers it his hometown. Like Marchetti, he’s built a community around his religion, going to mass twice a week and meeting with like-minded friends monthly to share the latest happenings.
“For me, being Catholic means following our Signore–our Lord,” he says. “It means living in a community with other persons of our religion, and if possible, to be a good husband, a good father, a good colleague at work, and so on.”
When he talks about his four children, Campogiani seems reluctant to describe them as purely religious in the traditional way, instead highlighting the importance of a community of believers.
“Young people [today] can be religious, and be Catholic, if they meet other people who are happy to share in the experience with them,” he explains.
—
June 1. It’s the day of the feast of San Crescentino, the patron saint of Urbino. Afternoon sunlight filters in between the buildings, illuminating the Chiesa di San Domenico and the crowds in the square outside the Palazzo Ducale. The babble of the crowd is cut with strains of hymns emanating from inside the church. At length, people begin streaming out. Two men bearing a banner of Urbino’s flag lead the parade, followed by a crowd of children, and then various organizations and brotherhoods in their religious vestments, and finally, four men carrying a painted statue of San Crescentino. The Confraternita del Corpus Domini is among them, and Cucco appears amidst the brotherhood as they begin to walk. Wearing the red, white, and gold robes of his order and a stern expression, he cuts a completely different figure from the smiling, casually attired prior at the church.
The procession winds its way down a serpentine, scenic path at the edge of the city’s walls, passing under arches and the shade of trees. Somewhere in the throng, a marching band plays a solemn tune as accompaniment to a disembodied, melancholy voice that echoes through portable speakers.
Curious onlookers line the stairs of the ducal palace, cheering and raining handfuls of confetti down on the group as they pass by. As they near the main piazza, there is applause and a crescendo of chatter. It appears that the entire city of Urbino, religious or not, has turned up to celebrate.
The procession stops in the square, where the crowd has parted around the sunniest spot. A small group including the Bishop of Urbino breaks out of line, and the crowd around him quiets. From within the folds of his voluminous robes, the bishop retrieves a golden object, and it is hard to make out what it is until he raises it high above his head. He turns this way and that, blessing the gathered masses with San Crescentino’s relic.
The crowd erupts into cheers and applause, and soon, the procession resumes its course out of the square and back to the church. The crowd begins to disperse. The main event is over, the blessing complete for another year.
“The procession consists of taking the statue of the saint through the streets where people live,” Cucco explains. “It means asking for the protection of the saint in everyday life. For me, it’s also a demonstration of my faith to everyone.”
Tonight, the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola stands empty. But someone in the crowd may meander down Via Giuseppe Mazzini and wander past the outer doors of the church to peek in through the glass pane. If it’s dark outside, a light will flicker on, and allow them approach the deep layers of history embedded within the church.
This article, by Meaghan T’ao, won a Raffie Award for Best Magazine Text Story. Translation of interviews and other language assistance by University of Urbino students and graduates Liliana Cogliandro, Giulia Mazzoni, Bianca Sartini, Silvia Malagoli. This article also appears in Urbino Now magazine’s Arte e Cultura section. You can read all the magazine articles in print by ordering a copy from MagCloud.
