Oratorio di Santa Cecilia

The Oratory of Santa Cecilia preserves ten fresco panels from the height of early sixteenth-century Bolognese painting. Francia, Costa, Aspertini and their circle depicted the martyr's story within a space reduced in size under the Bentivoglio.

Why it matters

The Oratory of Santa Cecilia preserves a coordinated cycle of early sixteenth-century painting. Between 1504 and 1506, leading painters of the Bentivoglio court, including Francia, Costa and Aspertini, worked in the small devotional hall. Its scale and continuous painted surfaces preserve the character of a private chapel within the Augustinian complex of San Giacomo Maggiore.

What to notice

Ten framed scenes from the lives of Saint Cecilia and her husband Valerian run along the walls, separated by pilasters painted with grotesques. Francesco Francia, Lorenzo Costa and Amico Aspertini contributed to the cycle, alongside Cesare Tamaroccio and Giovanni Maria Chiodarolo. The scenes incorporate architecture, textiles and faces characteristic of early sixteenth-century Bologna.

Context and history

The oratory descends from an ancient parish church that passed to the Augustinians of San Giacomo Maggiore in 1323. They rebuilt it in 1359 within the convent precinct. In the late fifteenth century Giovanni II Bentivoglio had the space reduced, and the new wall surfaces were decorated between 1504 and 1506. The fall of the Bentivoglio in 1506 left the ensemble unfinished. Luigi Cavenaghi restored the cycle in 1874 on the advice of critic Giovanni Morelli, bringing the frescoes into modern art-historical discussion.