Chiesa di Santa Maria dell'Angelo

Santa Maria dell'Angelo, Faenza's first Baroque church, was begun by the Jesuits in 1621. Its unfinished brick facade contrasts with a vast dome, a high altar attributed to Borromini and a Renaissance altarpiece of uncertain authorship.

Why it matters

This is the building that introduced the Baroque to Faenza. The Jesuits brought in Girolamo Rainaldi, the Roman architect, and the classic Jesuit church type — single nave, side chapels, transept under a great dome — landed here with full force. The site's difficulties became history: raising the dome required a change of architect in 1646, and the facade was left forever unfinished, its two upper sections still raw, toothed brickwork awaiting pediments that never came. At the high altar, the marble design is attributed to Francesco Borromini himself on a drawing by Father Virgilio Spada, making this one of the earliest appearances of Borrominian motifs in the city.

What to notice

• The unfinished facade: two sections of raw, serrated brick above the lower storey, reserved for a top pediment and one over the doorway; despite the incompleteness, the moulded wall surfaces create deliberate light-and-shadow contrasts.
• The interior volume: a single nave with side chapels and a transept covered by an enormous dome, following the model of the Gesù in Rome.
• The high altar: two flanking obelisks — the first Borrominian motifs to appear in Faenza — with the marble work's final design attributed to Borromini on Father Virgilio Spada's original drawing.
• The Renaissance altarpiece on the high altar, a sixteenth-century pala placed there only in 1778; its author is unknown, and the traditional attribution to the Faentine painter Sigismondo Foschi is disputed by scholars.
• The dome seen from the crossing, where the change of architect in 1646 — Ercole Fichi of Bologna replacing Rainaldi — left its mark on the vaulting.

Context and history

The Jesuits committed to Faenza in the early seventeenth century and broke ground in 1621. The project proved long and difficult: financial and structural problems, especially those involving the dome, caused repeated setbacks. When Rainaldi was replaced by Ercole Fichi in 1646, the decisive problem of raising the cupola was resolved. The church, also known as Santa Maria Nuova, took its name from the altarpiece of the Madonna with angels, installed on the high altar in 1778. After the suppression of the Jesuits, the building passed to diocesan and civic uses; the former Jesuit convent beside it became the municipal art gallery. The bare-brick facade remains a distinctive element of the church's urban setting.